Do student perceptions of teaching predict the development of representational competence and biological knowledge?

Dealing with representations is a crucial skill for students and such representational competence is essential for learning science. This study analysed the relationship between representational competence and content knowledge, student perceptions of teaching practices concerning the use of different representations, and their impact on students’ outcome over a teaching unit. Participants were 931 students in 51 secondary school classes. Representational competence and content knowledge were interactively related. Representational aspects were only moderately included in teaching and students did not develop rich representational competence although content knowledge increased significantly. Multilevel regression showed that student perceptions of interpreting and constructing visual-graphical representations and active social construction of knowledge predicted students’ outcome at class level, whereas the individually perceived amount of terms and use of symbolic representations influenced the students’ achievement at individual level. Methodological and practical implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the development of representational competence in classrooms

Exploring contested authenticity among speakers of a contested language: the case of ‘Francoprovençal'

This paper explores the notion of speaker authenticity in the context of obsolescent ‘Francoprovençal’: a highly fragmented grouping of Romance varieties spoken in parts of France, Italy, and Switzerland by less than 1% of the total regional population. While Francoprovençal has long been losing ground to the dominant language(s) with which it is in contact, new speakers have begun to emerge within the context of revitalisation movements and activities geared more favourable language planning policies and increased literacy. The emergence of these new speakers has polarised native-speaker communities, and has blurred the lines associated with the traditional view of sociolinguistic authenticity. Through an analysis of qualitative data collected in 2012, this article argues in particular that it may not be sufficient to simply examine contested authenticities from a native–non-native perspective, but rather it is important to consider how new speakers might themselves form a complex spectrum of speaker types with new sets of tensions as has been argued elsewhere

O nastanku določnega člena v romanskih jezikih

Als Spracbwandelphänomen bat die Artikelentstebung im Romaniscben einerseits universale Gegebenbeiten als notwendige (wenngleicb nicbt binreicbende) Voraussetzung, und sie weist Parallelen in anderen Spracbfamilien auf, ist also ein Fali unter Fallen - und bat docb aucb andererseits als bistoriscber Vorgang ibre unverkennbare Eigenart: sie ist "vergleicbbar und unvergleicblicb" (M. Wandrusika) je nacbdem, ob wir sie sub specie universalitatis oder sub specie individualitatis betracbten.Nastanek romanskega člena je v svojih podrobnostih enkraten dogodek iz zgodovine neke jezikovne skupnosti, ki se razkraja in postaja jezikovna družina. Istočasno pa gre za nepovrnljiv zgodovinski razvoj, ki ne teče povsod enako, vendar pa po splošnih zakonitostih. Razlike v rabi člena med posameznimi romanskimi jeziki (pri tem najbolj odstopata francoščina in romunščina) se dajo vsaj deloma razumeti kot različne-etape za celo Romanijo paralelno potekajočega procesa, namreč neprestano naraščajoče rabe lat. ILLE (oziroma IPSE). Tako zgodovina kakor tudi funkcionalnost romanskega člena se dasta bolje dojeti kot doslej, če pritegnemo k primerjavi slovanske jezike, od katerih eni imajo neki člen, drugi pa ne

Überlegungen zur Entstehung des bestimmten Artikels im Romanischen

Als Spracbwandelphänomen bat die Artikelentstebung im Romaniscben einerseits universale Gegebenbeiten als notwendige (wenngleicb nicbt binreicbende) Voraussetzung, und sie weist Parallelen in anderen Spracbfamilien auf, ist also ein Fali unter Fallen - und bat docb aucb andererseits als bistoriscber Vorgang ibre unverkennbare Eigenart: sie ist "vergleicbbar und unvergleicblicb" (M. Wandrusika) je nacbdem, ob wir sie sub specie universalitatis oder sub specie individualitatis betracbten

Vom Latein zum Katalanischen

Catalan, as a linguistic system, is the uninterrupted continuation of the language of the Romans. Having a different name from "Latin" is a matter of conscience that can be explained by Charlemagne's reforms. The fact that Catalan and Occitan are now considered two separate languages ​​was not predetermined but was a corollary of 13th-century political events. Linguistic change is a universal fact due to the activity of speakers, but without their intention. In any language, the three irreversible processes of phonetic shrinkage, syntactic and lexical extension, and fusion of contiguous elements in the spoken string take place continuously. These processes are illustrated by Catalan examples