What is behind a grade?: Greek primary school teachers' descriptions of their grading criteria and practices

Historically, research on grading, ie the allocation of marks by teachers to pupils has shown\ud that it represents an assessment of both the academic and non academic characteristics of\ud pupils. Recent research examining teacher grading criteria and practices, shows that little has\ud changed. The present study investigates the grading criteria and practices of Greek primary\ud school teachers . Interviews with 17 teachers investigated the extent to which the legislation\ud regarding grading is implemented by teachers, and the possible criteria that they believe they\ud use in grading. The analysis of the interviews showed that teachers' grading was affected not\ud only by the academic attainment of pupils, but also by non academic factors including the\ud overall picture of pupils' academic attainment assessed by tests, classroom participation and\ud homework, pupils' families, linguistic level, intelligence and motivation, pupils' behaviour,\ud teachers' personal likes of some pupils, pupils' differential attainment in different subjects,\ud pupils self perception of attainment, and local school factors. Different teachers' grading was\ud influenced to a different degree by these factors. On the basis of the interviews a\ud questionnaire was devised to enable a larger sample to be studied. 472 primary teachers of\ud both genders, working in different geographical areas of Greece, with different levels of\ud experience and education completed the questionnaire. Its analysis showed the extent to which\ud they were influenced by the criteria elicited in the interviews, and the differences between\ud them. Factor analysis of the questionnaire confirmed the interview findings, and enabled the\ud development of a possible model of the factors influencing grading, which may be used as the\ud basis for explaining teachers' actual grading practices as opposed to their beliefs about them

Investigating Primary School Children’s Creative Potential Through Dynamic Assessment

This paper focused on examining primary school students’ creative potential (CP) through dynamic assessment (DA). The study was carried out through a quasi-experimental design. The sample consisted of 90 Greek primary school students between fourth and sixth grade who were randomly divided into a group that received DA (N = 37) and a control group (N = 53). Both groups were initially tested with the graphic-artistic form of the Evaluation of Potential Creativity (EPoC) test. The DA group received mediation with graduated prompting while no such treatment was applied to the control group, and both groups were post-tested. The results demonstrated that mediation significantly improved DA group’s CP. It appeared that DA contributes in demonstrating a clearer portrait of students’ CP which can be of valuable assistance for nurturing creativity

What hinders creativity? Investigating middle school students’ perceived influence of barriers to creativity for improving school creativity friendliness

In recent years, cultivation of students’ creativity is a widely recognized goal of modern education. Yet, various barriers hinder the expression of creative ability within the school context. The influence of many barriers that research has identified may vary within different cultural contexts as well as in relation to individual creative ability. In this regard, the present study investigated the perceived influence of certain barriers to creativity on Greek secondary students in terms of their gender and creative ability. For the purposes of the study, 152 young adolescents completed the translated version of Barriers to Personal Creativity (ALENCAR, 1996; MORAIS et al., 2014), while their creative potential was evaluated by the graphic-artistic scales of the Evaluation of Creative Potential Battery (EPoC). Results demonstrated that barriers such as lack of time and opportunities, inhibition, shyness and lack of motivation were perceived by participants as common obstacles that considerably affect their creativity, whilst social repression was reported to be affecting their creativity to a lesser degree. In general, perceptions of obstacles to creativity did not appear to significantly affect students’ creative potential or gender. In this regard, the perceived high influence of specific inhibitors to creativity reflected a climate in Greek schools which in general seems to be of limited friendliness towards creativity. Thus, interventions for enhancing students’ creativity should focus on removing such barriers and improving the school climate

Greek Primary School Teachers' Descriptions of the Criteria and Practices they adopt in assessing pupils' academic attainment

Natural history collections house an enormous amount of plant and animal specimens, which constitute a promising source for molecular analyses. Storage conditions differ among taxa and can have a dramatic effect on the success of DNA work. Here, we analyze the feasibility of DNA extraction from ethanol preserved spiders (Araneae). We tested genotyping success using several hundred specimens of the wasp spider, Argiope bruennichi, deposited in two large German natural history collections. We tested the influence of different factors on the utility of specimens for genotyping. Our results show that not the specimen's age, but the museum collection is a major predictor of genotyping success. These results indicate that long term storage conditions should be optimized in natural history museums to assure the utility of collections for DNA work. Using historical material, we also traced historical genetic and morphological variation in the course of a poleward range expansion of A. bruennichi by comparing contemporary and historical specimens from a native and an invasive population in Germany. We show that the invasion of A. bruennichi is tightly correlated with an historical increase of genetic and phenotypic variation in the invasive population