Abstract/Notes: One of the issues which attracted the attention of language testers in the 1990s was the impact of high-stakes tests on the classroom: what kind of influence did such tests have on teaching and learning and what could educators do to ensure that this was beneficial rather than harmful? Some progress was made in defining notions such as ‘impact’ and ‘washback’, and a number of studies appeared which analysed the relationship between tests and teachers’ and learners’ attitudes and behaviour. There was a growing awareness of the importance of factors other than test design in determining whether tests would have the impact that was desired. These factors also appear in the literature of educational innovation, and it is to this field that some testers turned for guidance on whether test impact could be predicted or controlled. This paper summarises what language testers have learned about test impact in the last decade and discusses what one model of educational innovation has revealed about how tests interact with other factors in the testing situation. It concludes with a set of recommendations about the steps future test developers might take in order to assess the amount of risk involved in attempting to create change through testing.
Abstract/Notes: In recent years, philosophers and psychologists have criticized character- or virtue-based normative theories on the basis that human behavior and cognition depend more on situation than on traits of character. This set of criticisms, which initially aimed at broadly Aristotelian virtue theories in ethics, has expanded to target a wide range of approaches in both ethics and, recently, epistemology. In this essay, I draw on the works of Maria Montessori to defend her conception of character and particularly of intellectual virtue in the light of situationist objections. I start with an overview of the situationist challenge before turning to some reasons to think that Montessori’s virtue epistemology might be susceptible to it. I then offer a brief discussion of Montessori’s approach to character. After laying out two ways that Montessori, like recent conservative defenses of virtue epistemology, deflates the significance of situationist findings, I show some ways that Montessori’s virtue epistemology resembles so-called “accommodationist” responses to situationism.
“Man is Only Human When at Play”. Friedrich Schiller’s Ideas Concerning the “Aesthetical Education of Man” and Maria Montessori’s Thoughts on Pedagogics
Abstract/Notes: In Schiller’s opinion, to play means to act free from the force of need as well as of duty and thus to enjoy liberation from necessity. It is this experience of freedom that links play with the aesthetical phenomenon of beauty and causes its high edu...
Language: German
ISSN: 0352-7875, 1848-2317
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Relation between Pupils’ Mathematical Self-Efficacy and Mathematical Problem Solving in the Context of the Teachers’ Preferred Pedagogies
Abstract/Notes: In research focused on self-efficacy it is usually teacher-related phenomena that are studied, while the main aspects related to pupils are rather neglected, although self-efficacy itself is perceived as a belief in one’s own abilities. Evidently, this strongly influences the behavior of individuals in terms of the goal and success in mathematical problem-solving. Considering that alternative teaching methods are based on the principle of belief in one’s own ability (mainly in the case of group work), higher self-efficacy can be expected in the pupils of teachers who use predominantly the well-working pupil-centered pedagogies. A total of 1133 pupils in grade 5 from 36 schools in the Czech Republic were involved in the testing of their ability to solve mathematical problems and their mathematical self-efficacy as well. Participants were divided according to the above criteria as follows: (i) 73 from Montessori primary schools, (ii) 332 pupils educated in mathematics according to the Hejný method, (iii) 510 pupils from an ordinary primary school, and (iv) 218 pupils completing the Dalton teaching plan. In the field of mathematical problem-solving the pupils from the Montessori primary schools clearly outperformed pupils from the Dalton Plan schools (p = 0.027) as well as pupils attending ordinary primary schools (p = 0.009), whereas the difference between the Montessori schools and Hejný classes was not significant (p = 0.764). There is no statistically significant difference in the level of self-efficacy of pupils with respect to the preferred strategies for managing learning activities (p = 0.781). On the other hand, correlation between mathematical problem-solving and self-efficacy was confirmed in all the examined types of schools. However, the correlation coefficient was lower in the case of the pupils from the classes applying the Hejný method in comparison with the pupils attending the Montessori schools (p = 0.073), Dalton Plan schools (p = 0.043), and ordinary primary schools (p = 0.002). Even though the results in mathematical problem-solving are not consistent across the studies, the presented results confirm better performance of pupils in some constructivist settings, particularly in the case of individual constructivism in the Montessori primary schools. The factors influencing lower correlation of self-efficacy and performance in mathematical problem-solving ought to be subject to further investigation.
Publication: Studies in Philosophy and Education,
vol. 30, no. 5
Date: 2011
Pages: 491-497
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Abstract/Notes: Thayer-Bacon tells her story in a conversational tone that traces her personal and professional roots as she describes various chapters of her life: first as a philosopher, how she became involved in education, and then how that involvement became a career as a philosopher of education, in a large teacher education program, and now at a research institution. She sketches her philosophical contributions, as a pragmatist, feminist, postmodernist, and cultural studies scholar, to philosophy, philosophy of education, and education.
