The track of policies for educational equality and its implications in Korea

Most countries have taken equality of education as a paramount issue, but policy initiatives have not taken the same patterns across the nations. This paper addressed the features of equality policies and their changes in South Korea through an array of target groups and types of policy measures. According to a contingency approach, Korea relied critically on non-financial instruments characteristic of regulations, when the government was not financially well prepared for equalizing opportunities. It also gave a serious consideration to out-of-school factors besides school characteristics, because the equality policy confined to schools is destined to have only so little meaning. Regulations on the advantaged group were introduced along with preferential treatment for the disadvantaged in pursuit of equality. Now Korea is in transition from outside-in movements to inside-out improvements in the process of ensuring equality, and it means that the alternatives of equality policies have become dramatically narrowed. Recently, the Korean model is facing challenges from courts and constituents who advocate for constitutional rights to free choices of education.     

Learning to lose in the mathematics classroom: a critique of traditional schooling practices in the UK

“Back‐to‐basics” policies fit easily within many mathematics classrooms. Features such as order, control, rule following, uniformity, and conformity are relatively commonplace and are now more generally in demand with the current political backlash against progressive forms of schooling. This paper examines some of the influences of these traditional features of classrooms through a case study of one mathematics department in the United Kingdom. Interviews with students, lesson observations, results of questionnaires, and other case study data are analysed to show the ways in which traditional forms of learning can inhibit understanding, reify the divide between school and the “real world,” and suppress the transfer of knowledge. The findings suggest that two key elements of British Conservative education policy the commitment to traditional forms of schooling and the drive to produce school leavers capable of adapting to the demands of the 21st century — are fundamentally in conflict.     

A hybrid system of pedagogical pattern recommendations based on singular value decomposition and variable data attributes

To carry out effective teaching/learning processes, lecturers in a variety of educational institutions frequently need support. They therefore resort to advice from more experienced lecturers, to formal training processes such as specializations, master or doctoral degrees, or to self-training. High costs in time and money are invariably involved in the processes of formal training, while self-training and advice each bring their own specific risks (e.g. of following new trends that are not fully evaluated or the risk of applying techniques that are inappropriate in specific contexts).This paper presents a system that allows lecturers to define their best teaching strategies for use in the context of a specific class. The context is defined by: the specific characteristics of the subject being treated, the specific objectives that are expected to be achieved in the classroom session, the profile of the students on the course, the dominant characteristics of the teacher, and the classroom environment for each session, among others. The system presented is the Recommendation System of Pedagogical Patterns (RSPP). To construct the RSPP, an ontology representing the pedagogical patterns and their interaction with the fundamentals of the educational process was defined. A web information system was also defined to record information on courses, students, lecturers, etc.; an option based on a unified hybrid model (for content and collaborative filtering) of recommendations for pedagogical patterns was further added to the system. RSPP features a minable view, a tabular structure that summarizes and organizes the information registered in the rest of the system as well as facilitating the task of recommendation. The data recorded in the minable view is taken to a latent space, where noise is reduced and the essence of the information contained in the structure is distilled. This process makes use of Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), commonly used by information retrieval and recommendation systems. Satisfactory results both in the accuracy of the recommendations and in the use of the general application open the door for further research and expand the role of recommender systems in educational teacher support processes.     

Does weight status influence associations between children's fundamental movement skills and physical activity?

This study sought to determine whether weight status influences the association among children's fundamental movement skills (FMS) and physical activity (PA). Two hundred forty-eight children ages 9-12 years participated. Proficiency in three object-control skills and two locomotor skills was examined. Accelerometers objectively assessed physical activity. Body mass index was calculated to determine weight status. Correlations between physical activity and FMS proficiency were evident among boys and girls. No significant interaction was apparent when examining FMS proficiency scores, PA variables, and weight status. Future studies should examine a broader range of skills and types of activities to better characterize this relationship and to inform the promotion of movement skill proficiency and PA.