德国高等(继续)职业教育的形势 ——IT行业继续教育改革

德国的职业教育举世闻名,也是二战后德国实现经济腾飞的重要法宝.本文全面而详细地论述和分析了德国的高等(继续)职业教育的形势.文章首先指出,德国高等职业教育的核心是继续职业教育,接着对继续职业教育的构成进行了介绍,并对职业资格证书与学历文凭证书之间的等值关系进行了论述;然后以IT行业为例,对德国继续职业教育的途径和改革进行了介绍.最后还提出了有关德国继续职业教育的一些论题并做概要的讨论.     

A comparison of the affect of two types of student behavior with manipulatives on the development of projective spatial structures

The primary problem investigated was whether examining materials from a variety of perspecitives enhances the development of projective spatial abilities more than examining materials from a single perspective. A secondary consideration dealt with gender effects. One hundred and five (56 females and 49 males) fifth grade students were randomly assigned to one of four groups. Two teachers taught two classes apiece-one receiving instruction encouraging examination of materials from a single perspective, the other from multiple perspectives. All four groups received instruction consisting of access to manipulatives-SCIIS, 2nd edition, Level 5. Instruction occurred twice a week, 45 minutes per session, for 6 weeks. The experimental design was the Solomon Four Group Design. A Battery of 8 Piagetian-type tasks were used to assess possession of the projective groupings. The main and interactive effects of pretesting were determined to be negligible, while the treatment was determined to have a statistically significant effect on the development on projective spatial abilities. Gender was determined to have no direct effect on the dependent variables.     

The role of teacher characteristics in an educational standards reform

The policy of performance standards aims for quality improvement in schools by stimulating teachers to plan and organize their teaching according to competence-based performance standards (competence-based teaching) and to use performance data feedback from national standard-based assessments for evidence-based teaching development. The research so far indicates that many teachers seem to make less use of performance standards and data feedback than expected and to use it in partly unintended ways. Cognitive adaption theory suggests that the reaction of individuals to change is strongly influenced by individual characteristics. In particular, self-efficacy, locus of control, and positive affectivity have been found to foster openness to change and therefore enable participation in change. Following this approach, the paper explores to what extent teachers’ use of performance standards and data feedback can be linked to individual dispositions such as self-efficacy, perceived control, and positive affectivity. Using data from Austrian primary teachers, the results suggest that self-efficacy and positive affectivity foster openness to the educational standards reform which in turn increases the likelihood of teachers’ participation in competence-oriented teaching and data use.     

Coteaching: Creating resources for learning and learning to teach chemistry in urban high schools

How do new teachers become confident and competent while they are interns in inner‐city neighborhood schools challenged by many problems, often associated with economic shortfalls and cultural differences between the students and their teachers? Many science teacher education programs place a lot of emphasis on the planning stages of curriculum. But considerable discrepancies emerge between planned and lived curriculum, particularly in inner‐city, comprehensive high schools, and especially in classrooms that honor student interests and culture as starting points for learning. Previous research showed that coteaching provides opportunities for learning to teach even though the lived curriculum emerges often in unpredictable ways from the dialectic of collective (teacher and students) agency and structure. The present study allowed us to understand the underlying processes: the presence of a coteacher increases access to social and material resources, and thereby increases opportunities for actions that otherwise would not occur. Greater teaching opportunities provide newcomers with greater opportunities of learning to teach. ? 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 882‐904, 2004.     

Lessons on and from the dihybrid cross: An activity–theoretical study of learning in coteaching

During their training, future teachers usually learn the subject matter of science. However, they are largely left on their own when it comes to figuring out how to teach this subject matter, that is, how to find appropriate pedagogical forms. In this article we present a model of collective teaching and learning, which we term coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing, as a way to build deep learning of science concepts while learning about alternative ways to teach the same subject matter. As praxis, coteaching brings about a unity between teaching and learning to teach; cogenerative dialoguing brings about a unity between teaching and researching. Both are potential sites for deep learning. We articulate coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing in terms of activity theory and the associated first‐person research methodology that has been developed by critical psychologists as a method of choice for dealing with the theory–praxis gap. Our detailed case study highlights opportunities of learning subject matter and pedagogy by university professors who participate in coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing in an urban high school. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 253–282, 2002     

Addition versus deletion as a signal

Subjects typically show superior discriminative performance when a distinguishing feature appears on reinforced rather than nonreinforced trials. The phenomenon is usually attributed to the relative predictiveness of the reinforcer by different stimulus elements. However, stimulus addition may be more effective than stimulus deletion as a signal. By removing the standard intertriai intervals, we made addition and deletion equally predictive of the reinforcer in four operant experiments involving between- and within-subject comparisons. Pigeons consistently performed better on operant discriminations when the addition rather than deletion of an auditory or visual stimulus served as the cue for food. This general finding persisted despite manipulation of the relative duration and localizability of the signal. Thus mere presence as opposed to absence plays a role in the feature-positive superiority, an outcome that may reflect a fundamental, biologically based difference between addition and deletion as effective signals of reinforcement.     

Generalization of visual matching and delayed matching by a California sea lion (Zalophus californianus)

Only a limited number of species have been found capable of generalized matching-to-sample (MTS) after exposure to relatively few training exemplars. We trained a juvenile, experimentally naive California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) in MTS, using a pair of three-dimensional objects as samples. Successful matching to a criterion of 90% correct or better over 2 successive sessions was attained in 12 sessions (269 trials and 70 errors). Two subsequent “partial” transfer tests, in which each of the two training objects was paired with a novel test object, and four additional transfer tests, all with novel objects, were presented following training. An 80% performance criterion over 2 successive sessions was reached, or closely approximated, in from 2 to 4 transfer sessions for all transfer tests; errors to criterion tended to be reduced across the successive novel transfer tests and were as few as five during the final two tests; and performance on the first 48 trials of the last two novel transfers was not significantly different from a near-ceiling level baseline performance measure. Neophobic responses of the sea lion to new objects precluded an unbiased evaluation of immediate (Trial 1) transfer. The sea lion’s short-term memory for sample objects was also measured. Matching performance was maintained at a level of 78% correct responses or better for delays through to 45 sec after removal of the sample object. At a 58-sec delay, the longest tested, performance declined to 69% correct responses. These retention levels are only somewhat below levels reported for dolphins and nonhuman primates tested on visual delayed MTS, but they are above levels typically reported for pigeon subjects.