How to Write a Proof: Patterns of Justification in Strategic Documents for Educational Reform

Writing strategic documents is a major practice of many actors striving to see their educational ideas realised in the curriculum. In these documents, arguments are systematically developed to create the legitimacy of a new educational goal and competence to make claims about it. Through a qualitative analysis of the writing strategies used in these texts, I show how two of the main actors in the Czech educational discourse have developed a proof that a new educational goal is needed. I draw on the connection of the relational approach in the sociology of education with Lyotard’s analytical semantics of instances in the event. The comparison of the writing strategies in the two documents reveals differences in the formation of a particular pattern of justification. In one case the texts function as a herald of pure reality, and in the other case as a messenger of other witnesses. This reveals different regimens of proof, although both of them were written as prescriptive directives – normative models of the educational world

Scholarly collaboration across time zones

The barriers to global collaboration of yesteryear were, for example, country boundaries and time zones. Today however, in a world where communication is thriving on new technologies, these barriers have been overcome, not only by the technology itself, but also by the collaborators in a desire (and need) to extend knowledge, seize opportunities and build partnerships. This chapter reports on one such collaboration: a case study where the focus is the writing of a scholarly article between authors from Australia, England and South Africa. The challenges of different time zones, academic calendars, and managing the collaboration are outlined in this chapter. Findings from the case study suggests that the key elements of success are related to the individuals and project management techniques, and not the technology per se. The constructivist learning theory as well as the e-Moderation model are supported by this work and thus extend their application to the academic writing process

Proportion in school mathematics textbooks: A comparative study

This paper analyses how proportion is introduced and developed in selected mathematics textbooks for middle school students of Portugal, Spain, Brazil, and USA. The analysis focuses on the nature of the approach and on the cognitive demand, structure, and context of the tasks. The results show that the textbooks tend to present tasks at an intermediate level of cognitive demand and with a closed structure. Nonmathematical contexts predominate in three of the four textbooks. However, there are marked differences in the way textbooks approach the conceptual and procedural aspects of proportion. The way the students are addressed also varies, ranging from a questioning/problem solving style, to an explaining/practicing style, each of these styles supporting a rather different kind of activity.Este artigo analisa como proporção é introduzida e desenvolvida nos livros didáticos matemática para alunos do ensino médio (Ensino Fundamental II) em Portugal, Espanha, Brasil e EUA. A análise incide sobre a natureza da abordagem e na demanda cognitiva, estrutura e contexto das tarefas. Os resultados mostram que os livros didáticos tendem a apresentar as tarefas em um nível intermediário de demanda cognitiva e com uma estrutura fechada. Contextos não-matemáticos predominam em três dos quatro livros didáticos analisados. No entanto, há diferenças marcantes no modo como os livros abordam os aspectos conceituais e procedimentais de proporção. A forma didática de tratar o assunto também varia, indo de um estilo de questionamento / resolução de problemas, a um modo explicativo/prático; cada um deles ampara-se em um tipo diferente de atividade

Educational Leadership Policy Standards: ISLLC 2008

Presents revisions to the 1996 Interstate School Leader Licensure Consortium guidelines, designed to help states and school districts improve leadership policy and practice by incorporating new research into their standards

Assessing the relevance of higher education courses

The establishment of the European Higher Education Area has involved specifying lists of professional competencies that programs are expected to develop, and with this the need for procedures to measure how every course within a higher education program is aligned with the program’s competencies. We propose an instrument for characterizing this alignment, a process that we call assessing the relevance of a course. Using information from the course syllabus (objectives, contents and assessment scheme), our instrument produces indicators for characterizing the syllabus in terms of a competence list and for assessing its coherence. Because assessment involves quality, the results obtained can also be used to revise and improve the course syllabus. We illustrate this process with an example of a methods course from a mathematics teacher education program at a Spanish university