A Formalization of the French Elementary School Curricula

International audienceIn the education field, in order to achieve learning goals, it is necessary to define learning paths that foresee a gradual and incre-mental acquisition of certain knowledge and skills that students should acquire. In this paper we analyze the educational progressions of the French educational system, we show how to formalize them through a web ontology and how to perform knowledge extraction from the official texts describing them to automate the population of such an ontology

A Formalization Of Standard Knowledge And Skills For The French Elementary School Curricula

International audienceIn the education field, in order to achieve learning goals, it is necessary to define learning paths that foresee a gradual and incre-mental acquisition of certain knowledge and skills that students should acquire. In this paper we analyze the educational progressions of the French educational system, we show how to formalize them through a web ontology and how to perform knowledge extraction from the official texts describing them to automate the population of such an ontology

European studies: Taking stock and looking ahead

This essay is an attempt to generalize experiences of Central and Eastern European universities in the field of European Studies over the past 20 years. The paper follows the logic of business analysis in order to come up with proposals for future action

Notes for a study of the didactic transposition of mathematical proof

It is nowadays common to consider that proof must be part of the learning of mathematics from Kindergarten to University1. As it is easy to observe, looking back to the history of mathematical curricula, this has not always been the case either because following an old pedagogical tradition of rote learning proof was reduced to the formalism of a text and deprived from its meaning or, despiteits acknowledged presence anywhere in mathematics, proof did not get the status of something to learn for what it is. On the long way from its absence as such in the past to its contemporary presence as a content to be taught at all grades, proof has had to go through a process of didactical transposition to satisfy a number of different constraints either of an epistemic, didactical, logical ormathematical nature. I will follow a chronological order to outline the main features of this process with the objective to better understand the didactical problem that our current research is facing.Comment: ISSN 1465-2978 (online). Philosophy of Mathematics Education Journal, In pres

Problems in the application of science education to national development

Failure to make important distinctions between science and technology and failure to recognize science as a cultural form leads to school science inappropriate to national development. Although there are instances to show that science can have on important impact on technological growth, other examples show that science is not of necessity a precursor to technology. On occasion the application of science to technical problems may impede technological and hence economic development. In order for school science to have a desirable effect on technological and economic development, it is important to recognize science as a cultural form. Cultural theory, supported by recent evidence in the cognitive sciences, suggests that knowledge learned in particular social and cultural contexts, such as that of the school, remain applicable only under the cultural rules of that context. Knowledge so learned is not transferred to contexts where other rules of cognition apply. We possess insufficient knowledge about the cultural and social attributes of science and technological learning both in and outside the school to design school science curricula and methods which are demonstrably related to economic and technical development

Geometry and professionality of primary education teachers after education program – 1959 to 1971

This study develops a characterization of professionality used to analyze proposals for geometry courses linked with primary education and teacher training programs in Brazil and France. Official prescriptions were published between 1959 and 1971. In this period, the concepts of Modern Mathematics were disseminated at international level. Professionalities strongly influenced by the proposals of Modern Mathematics were identified, which consider that the main function of teaching this discipline is the development of logical thinking and generalization as the goal of learning process. Regarding geometry, priority is placed on the study of properties of both plane and spatial geometry using methodologies that mix old systems and innovative methods especially based on cognitive psychology. In both Brazil and France, based on the documents analyzed, the teaching trajectory moves from space to plane full of comings and goings

Teaching and learning of probability

In this paper, we develop a personal synthesis of the most outstanding research on the teaching and learning of probability in the past years. We conducted a systematic search to examine publications on this topic in mathematics education, statistics education, education, and psychology journals. This exploration was complemented by additional studies published in conference proceedings or books. We classified these papers to highlight the main recent research tendencies in the field, according to the theme studied and considering the research objectives. Epistemological analyses suggest that informal inference based on simulation diminishes the topic abstraction but reduces probability to its frequentist view. Topics receiving particular attention include children’s probabilistic knowledge, the effect of visualizations on solving conditional probability problems, teachers’ education and probability modelling. In the final section, we recommend relevant points in which more investigation is needed to complete our knowledge about teaching and learning. In particular, we miss research on teachers’ mathematical knowledge of many probability concepts and on their didactic knowledge.Project PID2019-105601GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.Funding for open access publishing: Universidad de Granada / CBUA

Die Macht der Erzählung als Mittel zur Entwicklung der literalen Kompetenz

In this paper we tried to demonstrate the power of a story in the function of language literacy. We are going to build up our argument from the general premises of the cultural psychologist Jerome Bruner dispersed in many of his books, which postulate that our experience of ourselves and the world is structured in a narrative form – like a story. We think that the best way to acquire language literacy is to start from a story and then to proceed to language. Listening to stories (told or read by a teacher) equips students with the skills and attitudes that afterwards enable easier acquisition of pre-reading and reading skills. Such pre-reading skills are making distinction between written and spoken language, recognition of articulation, intonation and diction in language, and understanding that language is always entangled in meaning. The studies have shown that having access to imaginative and properly structured stories adequate for students’ developmental level is very important and beneficial for understanding of how language works. Language and stories are essentially interconnected and one cannot exist without the other and that is why the structure of narratives discloses the structure of language.U ovom radu pokušat ćemo prikazati moć priče u funkciji jezične pismenosti. Izgradit ćemo naš argument iz općih premisa kulturalnoga psihologa Jeromea Brunera zastupljenim u mnogim njegovim knjigama koje pretpostavljaju da je naše iskustvo o nama samima i svijetu strukturirano u narativni oblik – kao priča. Smatramo da je najbolji način za stjecanje jezične pismenosti početi od priče, a zatim prijeći na jezik. Slušanje priča (koje je učitelj ispričao ili pročitao) razvija kod učenika vještine i stavove koji će im kasnije omogućiti lakše stjecanje predčitalačkih i čitalačkih vještina. Takve predčitalačke vještine čine razliku između pisanoga i govornoga jezika, prepoznavanja artikulacije, intonacije i dikcije u jeziku te spoznaje da je značenje bit jezika (da nešto znači). Istraživanja su pokazala da je pristup maštovitim i pravilno strukturiranim pričama koje su primjerene razvojnoj razini učenika vrlo važan i koristan za razumijevanje funkcioniranja jezika. Jezik i priče u svojoj su biti isprepleteni i ne mogu postojati jedno bez drugoga i zato struktura narativa otkriva strukturu jezika.Diese Arbeit versucht die Macht der Erzählung als Mittel zur Entwicklung und Förderung der literalen Kompetenz darzustellen. Unsere Argumente bauen auf den allgemeinen Prämissen des Kulturpsychologen Jerome Bruner, die in zahlreichen seiner Schriften vertreten sind und die voraussetzen, dass unsere Selbsterfahrung und die Erfahrung der Welt in narrativer Form – als Erzählung – strukturiert ist. Wir finden, der beste Weg zur Aneignung literaler Kompetenz ist, mit der Erzählung anzufangen und dann zur Sprache überzugehen. Wenn Schüler Erzählungen, die der Lehrer erzählt oder liest, zuhören, entwickeln sie Fertigkeiten und Einstellungen, die ihnen später einen einfacheren frühen Schriftspracherwerb und die Aneignung der Lesefertigkeiten ermöglichen. Diese Vorläuferfertigkeiten des frühen Schriftspracherwerbs machen den Unterschied aus zwischen der geschriebenen und gesprochenen Sprache, des Erkennens der Artikulation, Intonation und Diktion in der Sprache sowie der Erkenntnis, dass Bedeutung der Kern der Sprache ist (dass sie etwas bedeutet). Untersuchungen zeigen, dass der Einsatz phantasievoller und korrekt strukturierter Erzählungen, die dem Entwicklungsstand der Schüler angemessen sind, sehr wichtig und nützlich ist für das Verständnis der Funktionsweise der Sprache. Sprache und Erzählungen sind in ihrem Wesen ineinander verflochten und können ohne des anderen nicht existieren. Deshalb enthüllt und offenbart die Struktur der Narration die Struktur der Sprache