Emotions involved in encountering classroom diversity: Beginning teachers’ stories

This article addresses emotions involved in encountering classroom diversity as appearing in beginning teachers’ stories. Previous research has pointed out that teachers’ emotions related to growing classroom diversity are seldom addressed, although increasing classroom diversity has been distinguished as a significant emotional challenge for teachers. In this article, teachers’ work is viewed as relational and moral work, in which emotions are inherently present. We conceptualise emotions as simultaneously social and individual. Instead of predefining the term ‘diversity’, we are interested in what kind of classroom diversity seems to become meaningful in teachers’ stories. The data consists of narrative interviews with seven Finnish beginning teachers. The findings illustrate how, in beginning teachers’ stories, students are both categorised and approached as unique individuals. Furthermore, the findings show diverse ways that emotions are present in teachers’ stories about classroom diversity, and how the working community also affects teachers’ emotions. We argue that teachers’ stories related to emotions and classroom diversity can be interpreted as moral negotiations, in which teachers’ own values and ideas of teaching are challenged. The findings of this article may add understanding of teacher–student relationships in diverse classrooms, and are also significant for teacher educators and teacher education programmes.     

因子分析法在宁夏区县经济评析中的应用

运用因子分析法,通过统计软件SPSS,将反映经济发展的10个指标综合成4个因子,利用因子得分对2009年宁夏19个区县按经济发展情况进行排序和分类.结果表明,宁夏各地区经济发展存在着明显的不平衡,北部川区好于南部山区.最后给出几点建议.     

Visuospatial working memory in adolescents with poor performance in mathematics: variation depending on reading skills

The first purpose of this study was to investigate whether the visuospatial working memory (VSWM) skills of 15–16‐year‐old pupils with difficulties in mathematics differ from those of their normally achieving peers. The goal was to broaden the view of the complex system of VSWM. A set of passive and active VSWM tasks was used. The study’s second purpose was to investigate whether pupils with mathematical difficulties differed in their VSWM skills based on whether they had signs of reading deficits or not. Results indicate that the pupils with poor performance in maths showed poorer performance on certain VSWM tasks. The group with deficits only in maths had less capacity for storing passive visual simultaneous information, while the group with difficulties both in maths and reading had deficits in both storing (passive visual and visuospatial information) and processing, and had less ability to control irrelevant visuospatial information compared to their peers of the same age. The results indicate a general VSWM deficit in pupils with both mathematics and reading problems and a specific VSWM deficit in pupils with only mathematics problems.     

Girls' Groups and Boys' Groups at a Municipal Technology Centre

This article describes the Swedish initiative of municipal technology centres from a gender point of view. These centres provide after‐school technology education for children aged 6–16. By means of an ethnographic study, the effects of the use of single‐sex groups in increasing the interest of girls and boys in technical activities have been studied at one of the centres. The importance of the gender of the teacher relative to the gender of the pupils is also considered. The results show that single‐sex groups meant different things to boys and girls, and that the teachers’ way of “doing” femininity and masculinity, respectively, in the different groups was of some importance. The results indicate that single‐sex groups alone do not break down gender barriers. However, there are lessons to be learnt from a leisure‐time activity that provides a different setting from that of single‐sex science education in ordinary schooling     

秦岭地区人口问题与可持续发展研究

人口问题是可持续发展的核心问题.深入分析山区农村发展中存在的人口问题,对于加深人口问题的认识、强化人口意识、促进农村人口与经济社会的协调发展均具有十分重要的意义.以秦岭山区为例,就山区人口问题对可持续发展的影响作进一步分析研究.     

西安市城市化进程与人居环境的定量研究

以城市地理学、生态经济学的基本理论为指导,结合西安市的系列实证资料,运用主成分分析法。对影响西安市城市化与城市人居环境关系的主要因素进行定量分析,探讨两者之间的相互关系。研究表明。西安市城市化水平与城市人居环境之间有较大的一致性,并根据研究结果提出了加快西安城市化进程与提升城市人居环境质量的建议。     

Assessing giftedness with the WISC‐III and the SB‐IV

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Third Edition (WISC‐III) and the Stanford‐Binet Intelligence Scale–Fourth Edition (SB‐IV), were administered to 20 gifted children and 20 non‐gifted children to examine the extent of the difference in IQ scores obtained on the two tests and whether order effects were present. Results show that the SB‐IV Composite Score was significantly higher than the WISC‐III Full Scale IQ for both groups. However, for the gifted group, unlike the non‐gifted group, this difference achieved significance only when the SB‐IV was administered first. When either IQ test was administered to the gifted students for the first time, without the confound of a learning influence, there was no significant difference in mean scores. However, when both tests were administered, it was found that the SB‐IV influenced the WISC‐III Full Scale IQ in a downward direction whereas the WISC‐III influenced the SB‐IV Composite Score in an upward direction. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Exploring urban print environments: a comparative study across San Antonio and Santiago and implications for early childhood literacy practices

In this study, we compared the types of texts found in two metropolitan areas (Santiago, Chile, and San Antonio, TX, USA) as a way of documenting the sponsorship of literacy within these two communities. We found (roughly) equal number of texts across the sites but interesting patterns within each. San Antonio's texts were primarily sponsored by industry and the military and Santiago's texts by political and religious sponsors. Similarly, there were statistically significant differences in the types of texts across neighbourhoods based on how well they were historically resourced. Our findings have implications for teaching early literacy through environmental print.     

Help-seeking behavior in a problem-solving situation: Development of self-regulation

The development of self-regulation in school-aged children's help-seeking behavior was studied in a Vygotskian framework. It was hypothesized that studying pupils of two different ages would make it possible to define two levels reached by the children in their capacity to take charge of their help-seeking behavior. When placed in a problem-solving situation, children (80 2nd-graders and 87 4th-graders) had the opportunity to seek help from the experimenter, if needed. Three self-regulation aspects were evaluated: (1) awareness of the need for help, (2) capacity to restrict questions to what is necessary, and (3) ability to re-use received help in analogous tasks. The results showed that the level of self-regulation depended on both age and academic achievement; only high-achieving 4th-graders exhibited advanced capacities of self-regulation.