Crossing the communication divide: Intergroup contact and the desire to learn the outgroup’s language

This paper explores the role of ethnolinguistic vitality and intergroup contact in changing attitudes and the interest to learn Hungarian among Slovak-speaking secondary school students in Southern Slovakia (N?=?225). Several indirect paths linking the all these variables were found. In general, lower local ethnolinguistic vitality of Hungarian decreased intergroup anxiety and increased the quality of contact with members of the Hungarian minority, which led to a more positive attitude toward the Hungarian minority, and enhanced the interest to learn Hungarian.     

Technologically and artistically enhanced multi-sensory computer-programming education

Over the last decades more and more research has analysed relatively new or rediscovered teaching–learning concepts like blended, hybrid, multi-sensory or technologically enhanced learning. This increased interest in these educational forms can be explained by new exciting discoveries in brain research and cognitive psychology, as well as by the accelerated integration of technology (computers, intranets, internet, etc.) in education. We have investigated how the educationally valuable outcomes of these trends could be implemented in computer-programming education and in what ways this process could be catalysed by arts (dance, music, rhythm, theatrical role-playing). We present a theoretical basis for technologically and artistically enhanced multi-sensory teaching–learning strategies. This work focuses particularly on how dance can be involved in computer science classes.     

Coping strategies at the ages 8, 10 and 12

The aim of the cross-sectional study was to reveal what coping strategies 8, 10- and 12-year-old Hungarian students (N?=?167) use in situations that are frustrating, either for themselves or their peers. The coping strategies in school situations were assessed by our own questionnaires. The instrument enables the investigation of the following behaviourally observable strategies: physical aggression, verbal aggression, resistance, venting/crying, avoidance, teacher-seeking, peer-seeking, following the norms and following teacher’s instructions. The coping strategies were assessed by teacher-report and self-report questionnaires developed especially for this purpose. The most important finding of this study is that the occurrence of overt aggression increases with age, which is supported by the results of both the self-report and the teacher-report questionnaires. Results obtained by the self-report and teacher-report instruments correlated significantly in all three cohorts (p?相似文献   

Towards Teaching Chemistry as a Language

This paper presents views on the teaching of chemistry and directions for its further development. A detailed critical analysis is offered for the inadequacy of much of the current teaching, weighed that it is by a conventional, traditional and, as it turns out, rather outdated sense of the material to be covered. The ambient meta-discourse on the nature of chemistry is unduly dominated by the physicalist assumption, believing chemistry to be reducible to physics, which I hold to be unrefutable and thus parascientific. This all-too-tenuous link is countered with a parallel, bolstered by a slew of examples and analogies, between chemistry and linguistics: it is both more legitimate, in terms of the supporting evidence, considerably more effective than a physicalist approach. Chemical teaching needs to hybridize the bottom-up and the top-down communication vectors between the students and their teacher. It can only benefit from infusion of a strong dose of history. Chemistry ought to be taught in like manner to a language, on the dual evidence of the existence of an iconic chemical language, of formulas and equations; and of chemical science being language-like and a combinatorial art.     

The Reverse Effect of an Attempt to Shape Reader Awareness

In a previous study, Marton et al. (1992) asked Hungarian and Swedish secondary school students to read Franz Kafka's parable Before the Law several times. Rereading the text several times did not in itself improve or alter the students’ understanding of it. We found, however, that a more complex and advanced way of understanding the text was highly correlated with a certain way of reading; that is, in the use of a reflective variation. In order to determine whether it is possible to elicit reflective variation in readers and affect their awareness of alternative ways of understanding the parable, by giving explicit instructions, we conducted a new experiment in Sweden. The procedure for this experiment was designed with the aim of eliciting a variational reading and a more advanced understanding of the text. This procedure, however, created a strong reverse effect. Paradoxically, the variation in the readers’ understanding of Kafka's parable was dramatically reduced. The attempt to encourage readers to consider different interpretive options thus seemed to have enhanced the dominance of the most frequent form of understanding.