Cognitive skills used to solve mathematical word problems and numerical operations: a study of 6- to 7-year-old children

This study investigates the relationship between skills that underpin mathematical word problems and those that underpin numerical operations, such as addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. Sixty children aged 6–7 years were tested on measures of mathematical ability, reading accuracy, reading comprehension, verbal intelligence and phonological awareness, using a mix of standardised and experimenter-designed tests. The experimental hypothesis was that mathematical word problems will call upon cognitive skills that are different and additional to those required by numerical operations, in particular verbal ability and reading comprehension, while phonological awareness and reading accuracy will be associated with both types of mathematical problems. The hypothesis is partly affirmed and partly rejected. Reading comprehension was found to predict performance on mathematical word problems and not numerical operations, and phonological awareness was found to predict performance on both types of mathematics. However, the predictive value of verbal ability and reading accuracy was found to be non-significant.     

Predicting child outcomes from preschool quality in Portugal

The main purpose of this study is to analyze whether quality of preschool classrooms relates to 4- and 5-year-old children developmental outcomes. The study was conducted in 60 classrooms in Porto Metropolitan Area, Portugal. Children (N?=?215) were evaluated in the literacy, math, and behavior domains. Preschool quality was assessed through classroom observations using the ECERS-R and the Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation. Global classroom quality although relatively low, predicted children’s literacy skills and behavior but not math skills. Quality of language and literacy environment was not consistently related to child outcomes. Mother educational level stood out as consistently predicting most of child developmental outcomes. The relevance of these results is discussed considering the Portuguese educational scenario, in the realm of an international context.     

Sources of differences in the pattern of adoption of organizational and managerial innovations from early to late 1990s, in the UK

This paper explores empirically how the pattern of adoption of an organizational and managerial innovation changes as diffusion occurs. In particular, the paper investigates whether and how differences over time in the patterns of use of organisational innovation are related to changes in the characteristics of the innovation in terms of its functionality and relative complementarity with other innovations, as well as to changes in the needs and capabilities of firms. For this purpose, firm level data from the British Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, in 1990 and 1998, are used.     

Mapping public support for innovation: A comparison of policy alignment in the UK and France

This paper proposes and tests a three-dimensional model of public support design as a framework to compare public incentives for innovation in firms through time and across countries, and consequently to compare forms of policy alignment of innovation objectives in an economy. Using data on 149 French and British policy programmes from the early 1980s to 2002, this paper shows that policy-makers implement programmes within a different three-dimensional design space in order to align several distinctive objectives and consequently strengthen the impact of governmental measures. Moreover, as the objectives of the national players and policy-makers evolved, the portfolio of innovation policies also evolved in their separate ways. Nevertheless, some similar trends are also observed.     

Independent Olympic Athletes and the Legitimacy of the International Olympic Committee in Resolving International Conflicts

Abstract

Over the last three centuries (nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first) humanity has been facing huge political and ideological conflicts, especially wars. For these reasons, it was seen how necessary it was to create global institutions that aimed to promote peace and reduce or stop conflicts of this magnitude. Therefore, an international institution had already brought on its premises the principles of international peace and reconciliation through sport: the International Olympic Committee (IOC). However, despite bringing together nations around peaceful ties in an international competition, the IOC and the Olympic Games event have always been affected by constant conflicts along their path in the twentieth century, emphasizing issues involving nationalities. Thereby, in a mediator posture of international conflicts and in an effort to reduce the subversions that surrounded it, the IOC, in the 1990s, created the delegation of Independent Olympic Athletes. Such a delegation consists of athletes who cannot represent their respective nationalities at the Olympics due to political factors and/or armament conflicts. This proposal of the IOC demonstrates its posture to avoid, minimize, and even cease ideological and political events that might interfere with the Olympics Games or the athletes participating in them.     

Dynamics of need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behavior: the bidirectional relationship with student engagement and disengagement in the beginning of a lesson

Background: According to the classroom ecology paradigm, teachers and students interpret, predict, and respond to each other repeatedly in a reciprocal way. Such a reciprocal relationship is reflected in bidirectional interactions between a teacher's behavior and student (dis)engagement, an issue that has been confirmed in longitudinal studies including measures at different moments in a school year.

Aims: Starting from the perspective of self-determination theory, the aim of the present study was to investigate bidirectional relationships between student (dis)engagement and need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behavior during the first 15?min of a lesson.

Sample &; method: The first three 5-minute intervals of 100 videotaped physical education lessons taught by 100 different teachers (51.9% male, M age?=?37.5?±?10.9 years) were observed and coded for need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behavior, student engagement, and student disengagement. Correlations were calculated to explore relationships between student (dis)engagement and teaching behavior over the first 15?minutes of a PE lesson. Next, path analyses were conducted to analyze 5-to-5?minute interactions between teaching behavior and student (dis)engagement.

Results: Student engagement correlated positively and disengagement correlated negatively with need support, while engagement correlated negatively and disengagement correlated positively with need-thwarting over the first 15?minutes of the lesson. There were few significant relationships between student engagement and teachers’ behavior across and between each of the three 5-minute intervals. Only when teachers provided more need support during the first 5?minutes of the lesson, students were more engaged in the third 5?minutes of the lesson. When students were more disengaged during the first 5?minutes of the lesson, teachers displayed less need support in the following 10?minutes of the lesson. In contrast, student disengagement in the second 5?minutes of the lesson related to more need support in the next 5?minutes. Most of the within-interval relationships between student engagement and teachers’ behaviors were inconsistent, but we did find positive relationships between student disengagement and need-thwarting teaching behaviors in the first and third interval, suggesting a rather direct and momentary within 5-minute intervals interaction between teachers and students.

Conclusions: Findings of the present observational study suggest that, although overall relationships between student (dis)engagement and teachers’ behavior were in the expected directions, the picture might become more complicated when relationships are investigated according to the timing of the lesson, an issue that has remained uncovered in self-reported studies. While student disengagement was related to less need support and more need-thwarting teaching behaviors, more detailed analyses showed that it was particularly student disengagement in the beginning of a lesson that elicited less positive teaching behaviors. When students display disengagement further along in the first 15?minutes of the lesson, teachers seemed to respond in a more need-supportive way to student disengagement. Such findings provide interesting insights to build interventions for teachers around certain critical moments during the lesson, for example when dealing with student disengagement at a specific moment in the lesson.     

The Use of Representations and Argumentative and Explanatory Situations

This paper discusses the use of non-verbal representations in a modelling-based science teaching context, in which argumentative and explanatory situations occur. More specifically, we analyse how the students and teacher use representations in their discourse in modelling activities, and we discuss the relationships between the functions of these representations and the demands of the explanatory and argumentative situations that exist in that classroom. The data were collected by video recording all the classes in which a teaching sequence about intermolecular interactions was used—a topic which the students had not previously studied. In the activities, the students had to create, express, test, and discuss models in order to understand the difference between intermolecular and interatomic interactions, as well as their influences on the properties of substances. Initially, we selected excerpts of the recorded classes in which a non-verbal representation was used. Then, we used criteria to identify the argumentative and explanatory situations (previously defined), and we created categories for the functions of the representations that were used in order to analyse all the identified situations. The analysis supports conclusions indicating the relevance of the use of non-verbal representations in the construction, use, and defence of explanations. As the defence of explanations was the main context in which argumentative situations occurred in this study, our conclusions also indicate the contribution that representations make towards changing the status of the students' explanations.