Conceptualizing Magnification and Scale: The Roles of Spatial Visualization and Logical Thinking

This study explored factors that contribute to students’ concepts of magnification and scale. Spatial visualization, logical thinking, and concepts of magnification and scale were measured for 46 middle school students. Scores on the Zoom Assessment (an assessment of knowledge of magnification and scale) were correlated with the Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT) and a series of four spatial visualization tests. Results showed that the TOLT was significantly correlated with the Zoom Assessment. There was also a significant correlation between the TOLT and spatial visualization assessments MV1 (Shape Memory), MV2 (Building Memory), the Storage Test, and the Surface Development Test. The implications of this study for further research are discussed.     

Information Technology in Education and Teacher Education in France

This paper concerns the use of information technology in education in France and is presented in two parts. The first part provides a brief survey of the development of information technology in education and the second presents the authors’ observations of the current situation, made during a recent series of visits to educational institutions in France. The report provides a broad overview of the development of IT in education in France with a focus on the authors’ particular interest: the nature and organisation of teacher education for information technology development     

Oral history in education: teacher's memory and teachers' history

This paper explores the educational experiences of a specific group of refugees, namely academic women refugees who were members of various branches of the International Federation of University Women, and who came to Britain under the auspices of the British Federation of University Women from 1933. As a result of voluntary or forced migration some 400 such women from Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria sought entry to Britain following Hitler’s accession to power in Germany in 1933. The help they received from the specially formed Emergency Refugee Committee of the British Federation of University Women, not only in gaining entry to the country but in refashioning their pre‐migration educational and academic achievements, is looked at in detail, and the extent to which the women were able to retrain, re‐qualify or complete training courses curtailed by political events and migration is considered.