Signifying the accumulation graph in a dynamic and multi-representation environment

The present study focuses on the accumulation process involved in the integration of a single-variable function. Observing the work of two high-school calculus students who had not yet learned any other integral-related ideas, we analyze the emergence of the semiotic relationship between personal and mathematical meanings, as expressed through the understanding of mathematical signs in integration tasks. Adopting Radford's educational perspective whereby learning is defined as a process of objectification, we identify a three-stage evolution of the double semiotic meaning of the lower boundary and of its role in the definition of the accumulation graph: (1) objectifying a zero accumulation in relation to the lower limit, (2) objectifying zero as marking the zero sum of accumulated areas, and (3) objectifying the accumulation graph as dependent on the lower-limit value. This evolution is marked by semiotic changes related to the pivotal role of the “zeros” in the accumulation graph.     

Non-abandonment as a foundation for inclusive school practice

The authors of this article describe an essential feature of inclusive educational practice: non-abandonment. When students’ needs and difficult behavior are overwhelming, teachers may abandon them emotionally as a defensive reaction to their own experience of emotional distress and helplessness. Non-abandonment represents a constructive strategy for dealing with these students based on the psychodynamic concepts of containing and holding. The authors provide a theoretical grounding for the processes of abandonment and non-abandonment, and then illustrate how these two processes play themselves out in school practice, drawing on action research conducted with educators in Israeli schools. They then describe eight elements in an active strategy of non-abandonment. These are: (1) make a conscious choice to assume professional responsibility for these students; (2) “stand by” students whose behaviour leads others to abandon them; (3) reframe self-defeating ways of thinking to open new avenues for action; (4) attempt to understand students’ real needs, including emotional ones; (5) adapt teaching practice to meet these needs, even going beyond traditional pedagogy; (6) create school frameworks in which teachers can systematically reflect on and improve practice; (7) address teachers’ emotional needs by making their own negative feelings openly discussable; and (8) promote teamwork and supportive relations among school faculty based on honest feedback and mutual non-abandonment.     

Whole‐word shape effect in dyslexia

The research question here was whether whole‐word shape cues might facilitate reading in dyslexia following reports of how normal‐reading children benefit from using this cue when learning to read. We predicted that adults with dyslexia would tend to rely more on orthographic rather than other cues when reading, and therefore would be more affected by word shape manipulations. This prediction was tested in a lexical decision task on words with a flat or a non‐flat outline (i.e. without or with letters with ascending/descending features). We found that readers with dyslexia were significantly faster when reading non‐flat compared with flat words, while typical readers did not benefit from whole‐word shape cues. The interaction of participants' group and word shape was not modulated by word frequency; that is word outline shape facilitated reading for both rare and frequent words. Our results suggest that enhanced sensitivity to orthographic cues is developed in some cases of dyslexia when normal, phonology‐based word recognition processing is not exploited.     

Do Mothers or Children Lead the Dance? Disentangling Individual and Influence Effects During Conflict

Are mother–child conflict discussions shaped by time-varying, reciprocal influences, even after accounting for stable contributions from each individual? Mothers were filmed discussing a conflict for 5 min, separately with their younger (ages 5–9, N = 217) and older (ages 7–13, N = 220) children. Each person’s conflict constructiveness was coded in 20-s intervals and data were analyzed using dynamic structural equation modeling, which separates individual and influence effects. Children influenced their mothers’ behavior under certain conditions, with evidence for developmental differences in the magnitude and direction of influence, whereas mothers did not influence their children under any circumstance. Results are discussed in the context of child effects on parent behavior and changes in parenting across middle childhood.     

Caregivers’ use of metacognitive language in child care centers: Prevalence and predictors

Use of metacognitive language by child care center staff in classrooms that serve preschool-aged children was examined. Staff's use of mental-state talk, perspective-taking talk, and activity-relevant questioning with children were coded in a series of 20-s snapshots taken over the course of one full morning per classroom. A total of 3401 snapshots were observed for 393 teachers in 103 classrooms. Staff used mental-state talk in 22% of the snapshots, activity-relevant questions in 12%, and perspective-taking talk in 3%. Structural and process predictors of staff's metacognitive language were examined for full-time staff (n = 148 in 95 classrooms) using multilevel modeling and ordinary least squares regression. Caregiver positive interaction style predicted caregivers’ engagement in all three types of language. Caregiver punitive interaction style was also a positive predictor of caregivers’ talk about others’ perspectives. In general, structural characteristics of the classroom were not significant predictors of staff's language. However, the proportion of children receiving a child care subsidy in the center negatively predicted perspective-taking discourse. Results indicate the importance of caregiver relational style in providing a more discourse-rich child care context.     

工业革命4.0给科技伦理带来的风险与挑战

2010年以来,以信息化、智能化、物理、数字和生物等领域新技术融合为标志的工业革命4.0,给社会生产生活带来巨大变化和新的机遇,同时,也使人类陷入前所未有的新的伦理困境。工业革命4.0有其深刻的历史根源,西方主要学术流派对工业革命4.0带来的科技伦理风险进行了反思,并提出了有代表性的观点。在此基础上,系统梳理了全球化时代工业革命4.0的科技进步带来的伦理挑战,探讨了新时代科技与工程教育的新视角、新观点与新方法。     

STUDENTS’ OPPORTUNITIES TO ENGAGE IN TRANSFORMATIONAL ALGEBRAIC ACTIVITY IN DIFFERENT BEGINNING ALGEBRA TOPICS AND CLASSES

This study compares students’ opportunities to engage in transformational (rule-based) algebraic activity between 2 classes taught by the same teacher and across 2 topics in beginning algebra: forming and investigating algebraic expressions and equivalence of algebraic expressions. It comprises 2 case studies; each involves a teacher teaching in two 7th grade classes. All 4 classes used the same textbook. Analysis of classroom videotapes (15–19 lessons in each class) revealed that the opportunities to engage in transformational algebraic activity related to forming and investigating algebraic expressions were similar in each teacher’s 2 classes. By contrast, substantial differences were found between 1 teacher’s classes with regard to the opportunities to engage in transformational algebraic activity related to equivalence of algebraic expressions. The discussion highlights the contribution of the interplay among the mathematical topic, the teacher, and the class to shaping students’ learning opportunities. Specifically, the mathematical topic appeared to play a prominent role in certain situations, with the topic involving deductive reasoning generating high variation in classes of 1 teacher but not in the other’s.     

Israeli high school teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards a pedagogy of inclusion

The aim of this study was to investigate attitudes of teachers towards a pedagogy of inclusion in their classroom, focusing on differences between teachers in schools with lower socioeconomic status (SES) populations and those in schools with more affluent students, and between homeroom as opposed to subject teachers. Our study population consisted of 214 teachers from Jewish secondary schools (7th through 12th grade) in Israel's state school system. The schools surveyed were classified by socioeconomic level (high, intermediate, or low). The study demonstrates that teachers in low-SES schools report more inclusive attitudes and behaviour than do teachers in high-SES schools. Another key finding was that homeroom teachers self-report greater inclusiveness than do subject teachers. This finding is very important for the Israeli high school system, since subject teachers constitute roughly 70% of its teaching personnel, whereas students engage with homeroom teachers, on average, no more than 10% of their time in school. In the context of exclusive practices, we found a lack of differentiation between various types of behavioural problems: teachers responded to aggressive or disruptive behaviour in the same manner as they would handle disengagement, truancy, or learning avoidance. Finally, with regard to the form of punishment imposed by schools, a common response encountered in this study was the withholding of remedial instruction in response to problematic behaviour.     

On complexity reduction of concept lattices: three counterexamples

We discuss the paper by Cheung and Vogel, Inf Retr 8(2), pp 285–299 (2005). We introduce some counterexamples showing that the theoretical results, the paper is based upon, are incorrect.     

The Concept of Nondeterminism: Its Development and Implications for Teaching

Nondeterminism is a fundamental concept in computer science that appears in various contexts such as automata theory, algorithms and concurrent computation. We present a taxonomy of the different ways that nondeterminism can be defined and used; the categories of the taxonomy are domain, nature, implementation, consistency, execution and semantics. An historical survey shows how the concept was developed from its inception by Rabin & Scott, Floyd and Dijkstra, as well as the interplay between nondeterminism and concurrency. Computer science textbooks and pedagogical software are surveyed to determine how they present the concept; the results show that the treatment of nondeterminism is generally fragmentary and unsystematic. We conclude that the teaching of nondeterminism must be integrated through the computer science curriculum so that students learn to see nondeterminism both in terms of abstract mathematical entities and in terms of machines whose execution is unpredictable.

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