First Results from a Study Investigating Swedish Upper Secondary Students’ Mathematical Modelling Competencies

Author(s):  
Peter Frejd ◽  
Jonas Bergman Ärlebäck
2020 ◽  
pp. 209653112097395
Author(s):  
Zhengmei Peng ◽  
Dietrich Benner ◽  
Roumiana Nikolova ◽  
Stanislav Ivanov ◽  
Tao Peng

Purpose: This article presents the theoretical framework, research design, methodology, and main findings of the comparative measurement of ethical–moral competences of 15-year-old upper secondary students in Shanghai, under the ETiK-International-Shanghai project. Design/Approach/Methods: By dividing the ethical–moral competences into the categories of basic ethical–moral knowledge, ethical–moral judgment competence, and competence in developing ethical–moral action plans, a survey of 2,036 students was conducted, using a reliable and valid testing instrument. Findings: In general, 15-year-olds from homes with more educational resources perform higher in all three scales across all countries taken under consideration in our study. Furthermore, school practices, teaching, as well as quantity and quality of instruction play a very important role in the moral education process and especially in developing students’ proficiency levels of ethical–moral knowledge, reasoning competence, as well as students’ high abilities in developing moral action plans. When relevant educational background factors are held constant, Chinese students show lower average scores on basic ethical–moral knowledge and moral judgment competence. With exception of the tested Vienna students, all other European samples scored better than the Chinese students—also on the test for developing ethical–moral action plans. However, Chinese students are especially able to display outstanding empathy when dealing with suffering, misfortune, and sorrow, as well as in their willingness to help others. Originality/Value: The findings of this article can foster thinking about which topics should be further discussed to improve the ethical–moral knowledge and competences of Chinese students and highlight requirements for the further development of moral education in China at the levels of teaching, curriculum, teacher education, and research.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harison Mohd Sidek

The purpose of the present study was to determine how well Malaysian EFL Secondary Curriculum prepares upper secondary students for tertiary reading in English. This study is explorative in nature. The data for this study were acquired from a Malaysian national EFL upper secondary textbook. The data were in the form of comprehension reading passages in the selected EFL textbook. In this case study, reading instructional design in the EFL textbook was analyzed in terms of types and the grade-level length of passages used in the textbook. The findings show that reading instructional design in the EFL textbook significantly emphasizes the use of narrative passages with the majority of the passages being below grade-level texts.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-87
Author(s):  
Ruth Wong

This paper publishes the results of a study of Hong Kong Chinese upper secondary students (Form 4 and Form 6) regarding their motivation orientations for learning English. The study analysed male and females student groups using Gardner and Lambert's (1972) 'extrinsic and intrinsic motivation' theoretical framework in order to elicit the most revealing results from the data. Findings will have meaningful implications for pedagogy, helping educators identify strategies more appropriate to distinct Chinese-speaking second-language student groups.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-236
Author(s):  
Asila Halilović ◽  
Vanes Mešić ◽  
Elvedin Hasović ◽  
Andrej Vidak

Conventional teaching about the law of conservation of mechanical energy (LCME) often results with students trying to solve problems by remembering similar problems they already covered in classes. Consequently, many students fail to transfer their knowledge to simplest real-life problems. Therefore, a pre-test – post-test quasi-experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of an alternative, system-based approach to teaching about LCME. The study included 70 upper-secondary students from the First Bosniak Gymnasium Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Firstly, all students learned about energy in a conventional way. Then they wrote a test on LCME and had three additional hours of teaching about this topic, where one group of students learned in line with the forces-variant of the system approach (e.g., discussing conservative and non-conservative forces) and the other group with the process-variant of the same approach (e.g., discussing system’s states and processes like in thermodynamics). For both variants, only three hours of system-based teaching proved to substantially improve the students’ level of LCME understanding compared to the level of understanding they had after conventional teaching. It follows that the system approach may work well at the upper-secondary level, if it is introduced through the scaffolding-and-fading technique. Keywords: quasi-experiment, mechanical energy, teaching materials, teaching strategies


Author(s):  
Uffe Thomas Jankvist ◽  
Mogens Niss

Abstract This paper first introduces and reviews the existing research on the well-known “students–professors (S/P) problem”, which was first formulated in 1979. Next, it presents an empirical study of Danish upper secondary students’ answers to two mathematical modeling versions of the S/P-problem; a mathematization version (296 students), and a de-mathematization version (658 students). Besides reproducing several previously reported findings, e.g., the so-called reversal error, the study identifies new error types not previously reported in the literature. The mathematical modeling perspective adopted, along with a mixed-methods design, give rise to new potential explanations of the reversal error as well as explanations of the new error types. Our study shows that interpreting the linguistic formulation of the S/P-problem statement is not only related to language but is intrinsically of a mathematical – and cognitive – nature as well. Altogether, there is still more to be said about the S/P-problem forty years after its emergence. The impact sheet to this article can be accessed at 10.6084/m9.figshare.16610104.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saša A. Horvat ◽  
◽  
Dušica D. Rodić ◽  
Tamara N. Rončević ◽  
Snežana Babić-Kekez ◽  
...  

Mathematical calculations are an important part of chemistry. Those problems are difficult for students, especially if the task is set with a limiting reactant. The aim of this study was development of a Procedure for evaluation of cognitive complexity of the Stoichiometric Tasks with a Limiting Reactant. The procedure created included an assessment of the difficulty of concepts and an assessment of their interactivity. As a research instrument for assessing performance, the test of knowledge was specifically constructed for this research. Each task in the test was followed by a seven-point Likert scale for the evaluation of the invested mental effort. The research included 58 upper-secondary students. The validity of the procedure was confirmed by a series of regression analyses where statistically significant correlation coefficients are obtained among the examined variables: students’ achievement and invested mental effort from cognitive complexity (independent variable). Keywords: chemistry education, stoichiometry, problem tasks, achievement, mental effort


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