| European Educational | ISSN 1474-9041 | ||
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Volume 8 Number 1 2009 | |||
Other issues available | Journal home page | Publisher home page | |||
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CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text] | |||
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ECER 2008 KEYNOTE
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Why from Teaching to Learning? |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.1.1 |
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This article explores the changes in learning research that have been visible over recent decades. It describes how such concepts as learning, knowledge and learning environment have changed and what kinds of claims these transformations make in education in Europe. At the end of the article the author reflects how education should apply new concepts of learning, knowledge and learning environments in order to enhance quality of life. The important message is that teachers and teaching still play an important role in educational institutions but learning arenas have widened, crossing boundaries from formal settings. Teachers’ role as facilitators and mediators is like scaffolding for a new building. It is a process of creating minds through providing new tools based on multidisciplinary learning research, and continuous dialogue with new artefacts, human beings and environments. It is empowering people through learning. The article also illustrates how learning research and education can support each other. As a case, the author describes the major results of the Finnish national research programme entitled Life as Learning, and new initiatives to promote learning research through the multidisciplinary CICERO Learning Network. In many European countries corresponding research initiatives have been launched. The author claims that a stronger international cooperation of national research programmes and wider multidisciplinarity would provide more additional value, and sets these as a future challenge in Europe. |
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Gender and PISA Mathematics: Irish results in context |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.1.20 |
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This article examines the Irish results in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) mathematics, with particular reference to gender differences. As in most PISA countries, male students in Ireland achieved a significantly higher mean score than females on the overall mathematics scale in all PISA cycles to date. In 2003, when mathematics was a major assessment domain, male students in Ireland outperformed females on all four mathematics subscales representing the overarching ideas, with the largest difference on Space and Shape. This is contrasted with the stronger performance of female students on the state Junior Certificate (JC) mathematics examination, taken by all students at the end of 9th Grade. The authors’ analyses suggest that the stronger performance of male students on PISA is related to differential performance across content areas and cognitive levels, stronger performance at the top end of the overall mathematics proficiency scale, stronger performance on multiple-choice items, and stronger self-efficacy in and lower anxiety about mathematics. The findings are discussed in relation to existing theories of gender differences in mathematics and to features of schooling in Ireland. Throughout the article, reference is made to gender difference in PISA mathematics in other European countries. |
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The Case of Iceland in PISA: girls’ educational advantage |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.1.34 |
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Among 41 participating countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003, the gender difference in favour of females was greatest in Iceland in the three subjects tested: mathematics, science and reading. The aims of this article are to put these findings in national and international context, and report on a number of attempts to explain them. This large gender difference is confirmed and given concurrent validity through the results of the annual Icelandic national standard tests in these subjects. The female advantage is apparent at 4th and 7th Grade, depending on subjects, and is maintained through university level. A comparison of PISA 2003 results with PISA 2000 and recently with PISA 2006 indicates that the year 2003 was somewhat exceptional. However, the basic stability of the gender differences over the past years is demonstrated. A number of explanations for the overall female superiority in PISA and the national standard test performance in Iceland are examined, namely gender difference on low versus high stakes tests, regional effects, school variability and psychological factors. No evidence is found for a stable school effect on gender differences across years, stable regional differences or for the explanation that male disadvantage only appears in ‘low stakes’ exams like PISA. Various psychological factors such as anxiety and self-esteem are shown to have stronger links with academic performance for girls compared with boys. |
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Strengths and Weaknesses in the Swedish and Swiss Education Systems: a comparative analysis based on PISA data |
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ULF FREDRIKSSON Mid Sweden University, Härnösand, Sweden
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doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.1.54 |
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Sweden and Switzerland are among the wealthiest countries in the world, but also two countries with different approaches to how to provide welfare. Sweden has followed a social democratic welfare model and Switzerland a liberal model. This has implications for how the education systems have been organised. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study makes it possible to compare the achievements of students in reading and mathematics. Students in Switzerland are significantly better than Swedish students in mathematics. In reading, Swedish students are significantly better than Swiss students. In both countries, girls are better readers than boys. The gender difference in reading is larger in Sweden than in Switzerland. Boys are better than girls in mathematics. The gender difference in mathematics is smaller in Sweden than in Switzerland. The difference in reading between natives and non-natives is considerably lower in Sweden than in Switzerland. Sweden is among those countries where the variance between schools is very low. In Switzerland the variation in student performance among schools is higher than the average in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Both education systems may be regarded to be of high quality in an international perspective. The Swedish system has, with the exception of the gender gap in reading, produced a system that seems to have a higher degree of equity than the Swiss system. |
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Gender Gap in Comparative Studies of Reading Comprehension: to what extent do the test characteristics make a difference? |
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DOMINIQUE LAFONTAINE & CHRISTIAN MONSEUR University of Liège, Belgium |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.1.69 |
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In this article we discuss how apparently indicators that may appear straightforward, such as gender differences, need to be interpreted with extreme care. In particular, we consider how the assessment framework, and the methodology of international surveys, may have a potential impact on the results and on the indicators. Through analysis of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data we show how increases or decreases in the achievement of some groups of students (either of whole countries or population subgroups like males and females) can, at least partially, result from variations in the framework or the methodology of the respective assessments. The analyses provide evidence that the gender gap is larger for open-ended questions, for continuous texts and for more cognitively demanding reading tasks. |
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Identity Construction through Schooling: listening to students’ voices |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.1.80 |
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One of the main problems faced by several educational systems around the world is educational exclusion. Portugal is no exception. It is recognized that those who drop out of education are at risk of social exclusion, with reduced opportunities to participate in society. In order to understand this, the authors reconceptualized the school as a community of practice, where students not only appropriate academic knowledge, but also new ways of being and perceiving themselves and others, and school practice itself. This article aims to better understand educational exclusion from the perspective of at-risk students. How do their constructed positional identities originate ways of being, relating and acting in relation to school agents and practices? The authors developed four focus group interviews with students presenting high rates of truancy and failure. Against their expectations, several students showed intent of pursuing their own path within the school system and saw themselves as capable of changing the conditions of failure in order to succeed in school. |
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A Fresh Look at Spanish Scientific Publishing in the Framework of International Standards |
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PAZ KINDELAN Department of Linguistics Applied to Science and Technology, Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Spain |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.1.89 |
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Research has become a key element in the knowledge-based society with its role of producing and disseminating results. In this context, scientific publishing becomes the means by which research activity and knowledge production are circulated to the scientific community and society at large. However, there are factors influencing the system of scientific publications in every national community or country that have to be taken into consideration. The author discusses the effects of the Spanish research system on scholars and publications, with particular reference to the humanities, and the factors affecting this system. Recent research policy in Spain has moved scholars to publish internationally and adopt the linguistic and rhetorical conventions that characterise the discourse of the international English-speaking community. Consequently, all participants in knowledge production and dissemination have joined in a concerted effort to elevate the quality and standards of national scientific publications to obtain international visibility and recognition. |
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The Many Faces of Entrepreneurship: a discursive battle for the school arena |
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EVA LEFFLER Department of Teacher Education in Swedish and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Umeå University, Sweden |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.1.104 |
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Entrepreneurship and enterprise in schools are concepts that are appearing more and more frequently in local curricula for the compulsory nine-year school system in Sweden. The meanings of the concepts of entrepreneurship and enterprise in schools vary, however. Over the last few years, the concept of entrepreneurship has started to appear in contexts other than economic ones, and economic authorities are now expressing a need for a widening of the concept of entrepreneurship to include all sectors of society. This article further problematizes entrepreneurship and enterprise by discussing the following issues: the broader application of the perspective of entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial perspective that focuses on a business orientation, and the enterprise perspective concerning the development of an individual’s inherent abilities. The results show that teachers are still wrestling with the contribution of entrepreneurship in school activities. |
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The Pedagogical Dimension of Internationalisation? A Challenging Quality Issue in Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century |
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MONNE WIHLBORG Department of Management, Blekinge Institute of Technology & Department of Health Sciences, Lund University, Sweden |
doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.1.117 |
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What are the pedagogical impacts of internationalisation on the development of higher education in Europe? How can we proceed in this process and take a pedagogical stance on the issue? This theoretical article is partly based on a series of empirical studies, conducted by the author, investigating students’ and teachers’ experiences and understanding of an internationalised educational context in Sweden. Here, some further implications of these studies are examined and discussed in relation to recent publications and research concerned with internationalisation in higher education in various ways. Underpinned by the findings of earlier studies, this article argues that even though the internationalisation of higher education has been extensively researched in recent decades, more qualitative studies are needed. In particular, there is a lack of studies from the perspective of teachers and students concerned with their experience of internationalisation, and with how they interpret various aspects of this process in relation to their respective educational contexts. The empirical results of the series of studies conducted earlier in this area by the author show that teachers’ and students’ experience of internationalised contexts varied, and that they were experienced as ambiguous and difficult to grasp. Both teachers and students experienced such contexts as difficult to evaluate in terms of learning outcomes. This article argues in favour of a shift in research perspective, from an overall external perspective to a relational, experienced and context-based perspective, to understand how internationalisation in higher education is developed in practice. Adopting this perspective not only sheds light on issues of meaning making in learning and understanding knowledge content, but also raises significant questions of a general order, concerned with the nature of knowledge development in international educational contexts. |
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