Gender differences in reading comprehension achievement in English as a foreign language in Compulsory Secondary Education

Resumen basado en el de la publicación. Resumen en inglés

Psychometric properties of the School Anxiety Inventory-Short Version in Spanish secondary education students

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Executive summary : Roma students in secondary education in Spain : a comparative study

Resumen basado en el de la publicaci??n

Some indicators of satisfaction with the support system for students with disabilities in Secondary Education in Croatia

Resumen basado en el de la publicaci??n

How initial vocational education and training (IVET) teachers in Sweden perceive their prospects of being able to prepare upper secondary school pupils for a future occupation

Vocational teachers in Swedish upper secondary schools are a heterogeneous category of teachers, connected to different types of trade. These teachers represent a broad set of trade skills varying in content and character. In their teacher role, they continue to wear the clothes, speak the language, share the culture and remain mentally in their former professions. Still, it is central that they keep up this contact to be able to school the pupils into the environment of the trade in question, but also to help them to understand what skills a profession demands. However, the individual teacher also has to distance himself from the negative elements in the culture of the profession: patterns and habits that, for various reasons, have to be broken or changed. This paper draws attention to the ways in which a group of vocational teachers, who were participants in a project that aimed to train unauthorized vocational teachers, expressed their ambitions to prepare the pupils for a future professional career. When collecting information, we used the degree dissertations they produced and discussed in seminars, and informal dialogues. The result shows that it is important that the instruction location resembles a real working site as far as possible. These places are more or less realistic copies of a garage, a restaurant kitchen, a hairdressing salon, and so on, in order to give the pupils a realistic setting for instruction. However, the fact that these simulated workplaces lack the necessary support functions that exist in a company creates problems, problems which make a lot of extra work for the teachers. Vocational teachers also have to instruct the pupil in the experienced practitioner’s professional skills and working situation, but the pupil herself/himself must learn the job by doing it in practice. Some vocational upper secondary programs lack relevant course literature and the businesses give little support. This also makes extra work for the teachers. Moreover, the distance between the vocational programs and the trainee jobs was experienced as being difficult to overcome. One reason seems to be differences between businesses and differing preconditions between small and big companies’ abilities to take care of these pupils. The upper secondary school vocational programs also play a role in cementing existing gender roles, as well as perpetuating class-related patterns on the labour market.

How initial vocational education and training (IVET) teachers in Sweden perceive their prospects of being able to prepare upper secondary school pupils for a future occupation

Vocational teachers in Swedish upper secondary schools are a heterogeneous category of teachers, connected to different types of trade. These teachers represent a broad set of trade skills varying in content and character. In their teacher role, they continue to wear the clothes, speak the language, share the culture and remain mentally in their former professions. Still, it is central that they keep up this contact to be able to school the pupils into the environment of the trade in question, but also to help them to understand what skills a profession demands. However, the individual teacher also has to distance himself from the negative elements in the culture of the profession: patterns and habits that, for various reasons, have to be broken or changed. This paper draws attention to the ways in which a group of vocational teachers, who were participants in a project that aimed to train unauthorized vocational teachers, expressed their ambitions to prepare the pupils for a future professional career. When collecting information, we used the degree dissertations they produced and discussed in seminars, and informal dialogues. The result shows that it is important that the instruction location resembles a real working site as far as possible. These places are more or less realistic copies of a garage, a restaurant kitchen, a hairdressing salon, and so on, in order to give the pupils a realistic setting for instruction. However, the fact that these simulated workplaces lack the necessary support functions that exist in a company creates problems, problems which make a lot of extra work for the teachers. Vocational teachers also have to instruct the pupil in the experienced practitioner’s professional skills and working situation, but the pupil herself/himself must learn the job by doing it in practice. Some vocational upper secondary programs lack relevant course literature and the businesses give little support. This also makes extra work for the teachers. Moreover, the distance between the vocational programs and the trainee jobs was experienced as being difficult to overcome. One reason seems to be differences between businesses and differing preconditions between small and big companies’ abilities to take care of these pupils. The upper secondary school vocational programs also play a role in cementing existing gender roles, as well as perpetuating class-related patterns on the labour market.

Using remote lab networks to provide support to public secondary school education level

The advantages of networking are widely known in many areas (from business to personal ones). One particular area where networks have also proved their benefits is education. Taking the secondary school education level into account, some successful cases can be found in literature. In this paper we describe a particular remote lab network supporting physical experiments accessible to students of institutions geographically separated. The network architecture and application examples of using some of the available remote experiments are illustrated in detail. ©2008 IEEE.

Challenges for secondary education in Latin America

Includes bibliography

Rol estratégico de la educación media para el bienestar y la equidad = The strategic role of secondary education in achieving well-being and social equity

Incluye Bibliografía

Enseñanza media, estructura social y desarrollo en América Latina = Secondary education, social structure and development in Latin America

Incluye Bibliografía

CLIL materials in Secondary Education: focusing on the language of instruction in the subject area of Mathematics

[EN]Applying a CLIL methodological approach marks a shift in emphasis from language learning based on linguistic form and grammatical progression to a more ‘language acquisition’ one which takes account language functions. In this article we will study the elements of the “language of instruction” of the area of Maths in Secondary Education, by focusing on the analysis of the communicative functions, and the lexical and the cultural items present in the textbook in use. Our aim is to present the CLIL teacher with the linguistic and didactic implications that he or she should take into consideration when implementing the bilingual syllabuses with their students. In order to do that, we will present our conclusions emphasizing the need for coordination in different content areas, linguistic and communicative contents, between the foreign language teacher and the CLIL subject one.

Educational Expansion and Persistent Inequalities of Education: Utilizing the Subjective Expected Utility Theory to Explain the Increasing Participation Rates in Upper Secondary School in the Federal Republic Of Germany

This investigation attempts to answer the question why more and more parents have chosen the Gymnasium for their children's secondary school education in post‐war West Germany. Based on the theory of subjective expected utility, the crucial mechanisms of parental educational decisions have been emphasized. From this perspective it is assumed that increasing educational motivation coupled with changes in the subjective evaluation of the cost–benefit of education were important conditions for an increasing participation in upper secondary schools. These were, however, in turn, the result of educational expansion. The empirical analyses for three time‐periods in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s confirm these assumptions to a large degree. Additionally, empirical evidence was found to suggest that in addition to the intentions of parents and the educational career of their children, structural moments of educational expansion and their own inertia played an important role in the pupils' transition from one educational level to the next. Finally, evidence was found that persistent class‐specific educational inequality stems from a constant balance in the relative cost–benefit advantages between social classes as well as from an increasing difference of primary origin effect between social classes in the realization of their educational choice.