Two countries—one system of vocational education? A comparison of the apprenticeship reform in the commercial sector in Switzerland and Germany

In both Switzerland and Germany, necessary reforms in vocational education have been taking place for the past few years. By taking a closer look at the commerce sectors of both countries and their reforms, one can better compare their systems of apprenticeship. While the necessity for change in the commercial sector was similar in both countries, the course of these changes has been quite different. A widespread reform of the Swiss commercial sector began in 2003. In Germany, a comparable sweeping change in commercial apprenticeships cannot be seen, although many reforms have been implemented. In order to analyse the process and results of modernisation of both vocational education systems, they are compared and contrasted. Finally, hypotheses are formed about the possible reasons for the differences in vocational education in these two countries.     

The influence of on-farm advice on beliefs and motivations for Swiss lowland farmers to implement ecological compensation areas on their farms

Purpose: Farmers hold a key to reaching biodiversity targets, but will only carry out this service to society if they are sufficiently motivated to do so. The aim of this study is to evaluate the potential of on-farm advice as a tool for motivating farmers to take action to preserve or even to enhance biodiversity on their farms.

Design/methodology/approach: To address this aim, we surveyed 133 farmers (response rate 43.9%), of whom 23 had received on-farm advice about farmland biodiversity conservation over a period of six years.

Findings: The results showed that key beliefs and motivations were positively influenced by farmer advisory services. Farmers who had received advice agreed significantly more strongly in the compatibility of biodiversity conservation and production; that biodiversity is important; and that nature conservation on farms is appreciated by society.

Practical Implications: These results allow the conclusion that on-farm biodiversity advice might be a useful way of positively influencing the beliefs and enhancing motivations of farmers to contribute to biodiversity conservation on their farms.

Theoretical implications: Although several papers have examined the influence of agricultural extension on farmer behaviour, the results of this study contribute to explaining some of the contradictions in the literature about the effectiveness of advisory services. Furthermore, this study addresses [Batary, P., L. V. Dicks, D. Kleijn, and W. J. Sutherland. 2015. “The Role of Agri-Environment Schemes in Conservation and Environmental Management.” Conservation Biology 29: 1006–1016.] challenge that there has been insufficient research on the link between farmer advice and the effectiveness of agri-environmental schemes.

Originality/value: This paper is among the first to address these research gaps and is the first to examine the influence of advice on farmer conservation behaviour in the Swiss context.     

Beliefs About Knowledge and Knowing: Integrating Domain Specificity and Domain Generality: A Response to Muis, Bendixen, and Haerle (2006)

In their review of the empirical research, Muis, Bendixen, and Haerle (2006) bring closure to the debate between domain specificity and domain generality of epistemic beliefs and provide a framework for future research. In response to their review, this article comments on issues that remain for those who wish to examine the nature of the interaction between epistemic domain specificity and domain generality and its relation to learning. These issues include methodological concerns, philosophical contributions, terminology, epistemology beyond academic domains, and educational implications.     

Constructivism in Practice: an Exploratory Study of Teaching Patterns and Student Motivation in Physics Classrooms in Finland,Germany and Switzerland

For the last three decades, moderate constructivism has become an increasingly prominent perspective in science education. Researchers have defined characteristics of constructivist-oriented science classrooms, but the implementation of such science teaching in daily classroom practice seems difficult. Against this background, we conducted a sub-study within the tri-national research project Quality of Instruction in Physics (QuIP) analysing 60 videotaped physics classes involving a large sample of students (N?=?1192) from Finland, Germany and Switzerland in order to investigate the kinds of constructivist components and teaching patterns that can be found in regular classrooms without any intervention. We applied a newly developed coding scheme to capture constructivist facets of science teaching and conducted principal component and cluster analyses to explore which components and patterns were most prominent in the classes observed. Two underlying components were found, resulting in two scales—Structured Knowledge Acquisition and Fostering Autonomy—which describe key aspects of constructivist teaching. Only the first scale was rather well established in the lessons investigated. Classes were clustered based on these scales. The analysis of the different clusters suggested that teaching physics in a structured way combined with fostering students’ autonomy contributes to students’ motivation. However, our regression models indicated that content knowledge is a more important predictor for students’ motivation, and there was no homogeneous pattern for all gender- and country-specific subgroups investigated. The results are discussed in light of recent discussions on the feasibility of constructivism in practice.     

The logic of success: the relation between complex problem-solving skills and university achievement

This article deals with the demands that plagiarism places on academic communities, and with the resources staff possess in dealing with these demands. It is suggested that plagiarism ought to be placed in the context of network of intertwining communities (scholarly, pedagogical and administrative), to which participants are engaged to a different extent. The relationship to the ethical issue of plagiarism is related to the subject’s engagement in these communities. The article examines the way teachers deal with plagiarism from the point of view of work engagement and work-related wellbeing. In particular, we analyse job demands created by episodes of dealing with plagiarism as well as job resources teachers possess that aid them in coping with these demands. We used thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews of teachers in two universities. Our results show that the demands fall on five thematic categories: 1. rupture in the personal pedagogical relationship, 2. challenge on the supervisory “gatekeeping” responsibility; 3. a breach of the “everyday normality”; 4. ambivalence in explaining plagiarism and 5. the strain of performing the act of accusation. A key job demand in dealing with plagiarism is that teachers must balance both rule-ethical and care-ethical orientations in their reactions and actions. The resources teachers draw upon when dealing with these demands are: 1) dialogue and reflection in collegial dialogue 2) support from superiors and administration 3) shared protocols, procedures and plagiarism detection software. Our analysis shows that there are various demands that make dealing with plagiarism a strenuous task, but university environments also provide teachers with resources to cope with them.     

Providing Written or Oral Explanations? Differential Effects of the Modality of Explaining on Students' Conceptual Learning and Transfer

Learning-by-explaining (to fictitious others) has been shown to be an effective instructional method to support students' generative learning. In this study, we investigated differential effects of the modality of explaining (written versus oral) on students' quality of explanations and learning. Forty-eight students worked on a hypertext about combustion engines. Afterwards, they were asked to explain the learning content, either orally or in writing. Findings indicated that providing written explanations was more effective than providing oral explanations in supporting students to organize the content of the explanations. The higher levels of organization yielded higher levels of students' conceptual knowledge. In contrast, generating oral explanations, relative to written explanations, triggered students' elaborative processes to a more pronounced extent, which was more beneficial to attaining transferable knowledge. Thus, we conclude that the modality of explaining plays a critical role in learning-by-explaining inasmuch as different modes differentially support student learning.     

Students’ individual schematization pathways - empirical reconstructions for the case of part-of-part determination for fractions

According to the design principle of progressive schematization, learning trajectories towards procedural rules can be organized as independent discoveries when the learning arrangement invites the students first to develop models for mathematical concepts and model-based informal strategies; then to explore the strategies and to discover pattern for progressively developing procedural rules. This article contributes to the theoretical and empirical foundation of the design principle of progressive schematization by empirically investigating students’ individual schematization pathways on the micro-level for the specific case of part-of-part determination of fractions. In design experiments series in laboratory settings, nine pairs of sixth graders explored the part-of-part determination and progressively schematized their graphical strategies before discovering the procedural rule. The qualitative in-depth analysis of 760 min of video shows that progressive schematization is a multi-facetted process that cannot be described by internalization of graphical procedures alone. Instead, the compaction of concepts- and theorems-in-action is crucial, especially for the goal of justifiable procedural rules.     

Moral impasses in sustainability education? Empirical results from school geography in Austria and Germany

Abstract

The expert-driven and normative character of sustainability education aims to promote societal transformation and global change. While some authors underline the ethical claims of education, others have criticized that there is a problematic tendency to prescribe certain actions beyond ethical education. The article aims to provide an empirical contribution, including students’ and teachers’ perspectives, and geography textbooks, to the debate. Based on the results of an empirical study with 1001 secondary school students in Austria and Germany, we discuss the “ethical turn” and the moral code in sustainability education. The questionnaires are completed with students’ drawings, qualitative interviews with geography teachers and an analysis of geography textbooks. We argue that most students have a precise idea what sustainability and sustainable behavior means, but they harbor right-wrong binary perceptions of sustainable lifestyles. Many students lack knowledge of the interdependence of consumption and production networks, which impedes the understanding of complex sustainability patterns. Therefore, we recommend pluralistic and interconnected perspectives in sustainability, in the frame of school geography. A more democratic classroom contributes to develop an own moral compass. Additionally, passion and participatory approaches can help students reflect on their affective relationships with consumer goods and consider alternative consumption-production paradigms.     

The face(t)s of biotech in the nineties: how the German press framed modern biotechnology

The following article deals with the different images of modern biotechnology created by the German press in the last decade of the twentieth century. To describe these images we have chosen the theoretical concept of framing, which in general denotes the idea that the media deal with certain issues in different ways and that therefore the coverage offers different perspectives to the reader. We understand a frame as a certain pattern of a text that is composed of several different text elements. We assume that some of these text elements group together systematically in a specific way, thereby forming a certain pattern that can be identified across several texts in a sample. These patterns we call frames. By means of cluster analysis we are able to identify not only predefined but also newly emerging frames and the way framing of an issue changes over time. This methodological approach allows us to give a dynamic overview of how the German press dealt with biotechnology in the early and late nineties.