Challenging the feminisation of the workforce: rethinking the mind–body dualism in Early Childhood Education and Care

Despite the political and academic debate on the demands for more male workers in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), no European country has reached the benchmark set for 2006 to have 20% male early childhood workers. This has predominantly been countered by challenging the idea that care for the youngest implies an activity ‘that women naturally do’ and by consequently arguing for a higher status and better working conditions for caring jobs. In this article, we analyse the recent ‘schoolification’ of ECEC, and in so doing, we argue that the traditional explanations of the feminisation of the early years workforce do not suffice. In addition, we dwell upon contemporary feminism to challenge the mind–body dualism in discourses and practices of care and explore the concepts of embodied subjectivity and corporeality to further explore pathways to a more equally gendered workforce in early childhood provision.     

Etude en temps réel de la production eEcrite chez des enfants de sept et huit ans

The aim of this research is to study on-line written production in children. Twelve seven year old children and twelve eight year old children were asked to compose two texts (a narrative and a report). They were filmed as they wrote in order to investigate the temporal caracteristics of their composition (pauses, rates…). The results show three main findings:

- the rates increases from seven to eight year old.

- pauses times varied according to the syntactic organisation of the next sentence.

- longer pause times are localized after punctuation marks and before connective.

     

Le mouvement de réforme de la formation des enseignants en Grèce

The article undertakes a close analysis of the perceived weaknesses of Secondary teacher training in Greece. The analysis is based upon the criticisms of other observers and of the Greek Federation of Secondary Teachers, and especially upon an enquiry conducted of 233 Secondary teachers in May 1983 (approximately 2% of the cadre). The teachers concerned were invited to report upon their own perceptions of the training which they had undergone, and of its relevance to their later professional careers. The overall picture is one of considerable dissatisfaction with a training which is labelled, at one point, ‘anachronistic'; the view is expressed that the education given does not even attain its declared aim of instilling an understanding of scientific methodology.

There exists a strong demand for a greater emphasis upon pedagogy, with the approach through psycho‐pedagogics being much favoured; the author enters the reservation that the scepticism which begins to be shown in some European countries is not yet evident in Greece. There is also a demand for greater emphasis on practical training, though there exists a debate over the question of consecutive versus concurrent training, with the majority favouring the former.

Explanations for the present ‘disastrous’ situation in Greek teacher training are varied, ranging from the view that forces of political conservatism are at work to the view that Greek educational thinking is over‐dependent upon ideas brought in from other European countries. Certainly the author sees the Greek system as imposing a high level of conformity upon the beginning teacher, who is ill equipped to offer challenging ideas to existing practice. The climate, however, is one of change, and the author is finally optimistic about the growing contribution of educational sciences to Greek teacher training.     

Favouring reflexivity in technology-enhanced learning systems: towards smart uses of traces

During learning activities, reflexive processes allow learners to realise what they have done, understand why, decide on new actions and gain motivation. They help learners to regulate their actions by themselves, that is, to develop metacognitive regulation skills. Computer environments can support reflexive processes to support human learning, for example by analysing traces of learner activity and providing synthetic views by the way of indicators. Nevertheless, traces are underused in technology-enhanced learning (TEL) systems. In this article, we draw up the potential and limits of TEL systems based on traces for reflexive purposes. We then highlight the characteristics which TEL systems should have to use traces to foster reflexivity. We finally discuss how systems could enrich the self-confrontation process with traces.     

Judgement and production of drawings by 3- to 10-year-olds: Comparison of declarative and procedural drawing knowledge

In this experiment, 80 children between the ages of three and ten produced and judged drawings of a person and a house. Two alternative hypotheses were tested. Under the first hypothesis, young children have internal models of persons and objects which are comparable to those of adults, but they have problems implementing their knowledge and planning and managing the graphic activity. If this hypothesis is true, we should obtain an interaction between age and type of task (production vs. judgement). Under the second hypothesis, children’s drawings are a direct reflection of their internal models of the items drawn. This hypothesis predicted a significant positive correlation between performance on production and judgement. In the judgement task, the subjects were presented with pairs of drawings and asked to indicate the more elaborate drawing. For the house and the man drawing, children by the age of three were able to correctly determine the most elaborated of the two presented drawings. A strong interaction was obtained between age and type of task (production or judgement), due to the fact that the difference between production performance and judgement performance decreases with age. The discussion suggests a limited cognitive capacity hypothesis to account for the results, and proposes some possibilities for future studies.     

Characterizing the mechanical parameters of forward and backward falls as experienced in snowboarding

Wrist injuries are frequently observed after falls in snowboarding. In this study, laboratory experiments mimicking forward and backward falls were analysed. In six different falling scenarios, participants self-initiated falls from a static initial position. Eighteen volunteers conducted a total of 741 trials. Measurements were taken for basic parameters describing the kinematics as well as the biomechanical loading during impact, such as impact force, impact acceleration, and velocity. The effective mass affecting the wrist in a fall also was determined. The elbow angle at impact showed a more extended arm in backward falls compared to forward falls, whereas the wrist angle at impact remained similar in forward and backward falls. The study results suggest a new performance standard for wrist guards, indicating the following parameters to characterize an impact: an effective mass acting on one wrist of 3–5 kg, an impact angle of 75° of the forearm relative to the ground, and an impact velocity of 3 m/s.     

Impact des formulations sur la résolution de problèmes additifs chez l’enfant de 6 a 10 ans

An experiment was carried out concerning arithmetical problem solving in children. Three between sujects variables were manipulated. All problems followed the same underlying pattern with an initial state (Ei), two additive transformations (T1 and T2), and a final state (Ef); yet the unknown state concerned either Ef (S1 problems) or Ei (S2 problems). The order of introducing the transformations was counterbalanced: either state first (O1 order) or transformations first (O2). Finally, the question was located either at the end of the problem (Q1) or at its beginning (Q2). One hundred and ninety two subjects (64 six, eight, and ten year-olds) were submitted to 8 different problems of the same type. The difficulties of the numerical series were tentatively controlled on an atempt to render the computations roughly «proportional» to ages. Quantitative and qualitative analysis were conducted. Results show that: a) Problems with final state unknown (S1) are solved more easily and early, whereas problems with initial state unknown (S2) are better solved as the children grow older. b) Introducing the transformations first (O2) and placing the question at the beginning of the problem-text (Q2) yields better performances c) The procedures used to solve the problems are clearly dependant on the wording of the problems. An interpretation is proposed which takes in account both the knowledge available in L.T.M. and the limitations of working memory.