Admission to Higher Education in Israel and the Role of the Psychometric Entrance Test: Educational and political dilemmas     

Michal Beller 《Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice》2001,8(3):315-337

This paper describes the admissions process to higher education in Israel, which is frequently debated in public. It presents the historical background, outlines the psychometric considerations, summarises the extensive research data gathered in validity and evaluation studies, and provides the social and political perspectives. The paper points to how developments in the volume and importance of higher education have affected the way upper-secondary certificates mediate university entrance. Particular reference is made as to how far the pressures are changed by the use of a psychometric entrance test. Two laws, dealing with admissions to higher education, that are currently being put to vote in the Israeli parliament, are described and discussed.  相似文献   

Contribution of a contralateral hearing aid to perception of consonant voicing, intonation, and emotional state in adult cochlear implantees     

Most T  Gaon-Sivan G  Shpak T  Luntz M 《Journal of deaf studies and deaf education》2012,17(2):244-258

Binaural hearing in cochlear implant (CI) users can be achieved either by bilateral implantation or bimodally with a contralateral hearing aid (HA). Binaural-bimodal hearing has the advantage of complementing the high-frequency electric information from the CI by low-frequency acoustic information from the HA. We examined the contribution of a contralateral HA in 25 adult implantees to their perception of fundamental frequency-cued speech characteristics (initial consonant voicing, intonation, and emotions). Testing with CI alone, HA alone, and bimodal hearing showed that all three characteristics were best perceived under the bimodal condition. Significant differences were recorded between bimodal and HA conditions in the initial voicing test, between bimodal and CI conditions in the intonation test, and between both bimodal and CI conditions and between bimodal and HA conditions in the emotion-in-speech test. These findings confirmed that such binaural-bimodal hearing enhances perception of these speech characteristics and suggest that implantees with residual hearing in the contralateral ear may benefit from a HA in that ear.  相似文献   

Integrating actual time usage into the assessment of examination time extensions provided to disabled college engineering students     

Maya Golan  Gonen Singer  Neta Rabin  Dvir Kleper 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2020,45(7):988-1000

Abstract

In this study, we suggest combining the monitoring of actual examination time used with grades in order to assess examination time extensions in terms of access provision and expected outcome. Using naturally-occurring data collected from a large sample (N?=?2315) of undergraduate engineering students, we argue that extended examination time may be regarded as providing equal access when a disabled student actually utilizes more examination time than a normally achieving student, regardless of the grade obtained. We further argue that extended examination time may be regarded as resulting in the expected outcome when a disabled student either (a) utilizes less or equal examination time and achieve grades that are lower than a normally achieving student, or (b) utilizes more examination time and achieve grades that are equal to a normally achieving student. In our data, equal access was provided in all courses (i.e. disabled students utilized more time than normal achievers), but the expected outcome (i.e. equal grades) was not observed in software and English examinations. The results of this study emphasize the importance of monitoring actual time usage in addition to performance measures when assessing examination time extensions.  相似文献   

Stage theory of the development of alternative conceptions     

Shulamith G. Eckstein  Michal Shemesh 《科学教学研究杂志》1993,30(1):45-64

A systematic study of children's ideas on motion of macroscopic objects was carried out with the participation of 631 subjects in Grades 2–12 (ages 7–8 through 17–18). An open-ended, four-part questionnaire was administered to the subjects. The responses were categorized according to the level of sophistication of the answer. The results were analyzed using a mathematical model that was first applied to the development of Piagetian stages (Eckstein & Shemesh, 1992, in press). For three of the questions, the responses change as the children mature, and it appears that the children pass through distinct, successive stages with respect to their conceptual understanding of these questions. The mathematical model predicts that the proportion of subjects at each stage is a linear combination of decreasing exponentials. The model fits the experimental data well. Characteristic times for transition between stages were calculated. If teaching strategies to overcome misconceptions are to be effective, then they must be appropriate to the particular misconception prevalent at each stage.  相似文献   

Do dyslexic individuals present a reduced visual attention span? Evidence from visual recognition tasks of non-verbal multi-character arrays     

Menahem Yeari  Michal Isser  Rachel Schiff 《Annals of dyslexia》2017,67(2):128-146

A controversy has recently developed regarding the hypothesis that developmental dyslexia may be caused, in some cases, by a reduced visual attention span (VAS). To examine this hypothesis, independent of phonological abilities, researchers tested the ability of dyslexic participants to recognize arrays of unfamiliar visual characters. Employing this test, findings were rather equivocal: dyslexic participants exhibited poor performance in some studies but normal performance in others. The present study explored four methodological differences revealed between the two sets of studies that might underlie their conflicting results. Specifically, in two experiments we examined whether a VAS deficit is (a) specific to recognition of multi-character arrays as wholes rather than of individual characters within arrays, (b) specific to characters’ position within arrays rather than to characters’ identity, or revealed only under a higher attention load due to (c) low-discriminable characters, and/or (d) characters’ short exposure. Furthermore, in this study we examined whether pure dyslexic participants who do not have attention disorder exhibit a reduced VAS. Although comorbidity of dyslexia and attention disorder is common and the ability to sustain attention for a long time plays a major rule in the visual recognition task, the presence of attention disorder was neither evaluated nor ruled out in previous studies. Findings did not reveal any differences between the performance of dyslexic and control participants on eight versions of the visual recognition task. These findings suggest that pure dyslexic individuals do not present a reduced visual attention span.  相似文献   

Instrument Development and Validation of the Infant and Toddler Assessment for Quality Improvement     

Michal Perlman  Ashley Brunsek  Anne Hepditch  Karen Gray  Olesya Falenchuck 《Early education and development》2017,28(1):115-133

Research Findings: There is a growing need for accurate and efficient measures of classroom quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Observational measures are costly, as their administration generally takes 3–5 hr per classroom. This article outlines the process of development and preliminary concurrent validity testing of the Assessment for Quality Improvement (AQI), a new measure of global quality. The AQI is a classroom-level measure of structural and process quality. It consists of 24 items on a 5-point scale designed for use in ECEC infant and toddler classrooms. At between 60 and 90 min per room, the AQI is a relatively efficient measure. Item response theory modeling was used to ensure logical and coherent ordering of subitems. Exploratory factor analysis supported the use of the AQI total score and the Interactions section as a stand-alone measure. Correlations between the Infant and Toddler versions of the AQI and the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale–Revised were moderate, providing preliminary support for the concurrent validity of both versions. Practice or Policy: Our results suggest that the AQI is a promising, efficient measure of global quality in infant and toddler ECEC environments. This may be especially relevant for Quality Rating and Improvement Systems, for which the observational component is a major cost driver.  相似文献   

What science is about – development of the scientific understanding of secondary school students     

Jan Cincera  Michal Medek  Pavel Cincera  Miroslav Lupac  Irena Tichá 《Research in Science & Technological Education》2017,35(2):183-194

  相似文献   

Professional development of mathematics teachers toward the facilitation of small-group collaboration     

Michal Tabach  Baruch B. Schwarz 《Educational Studies in Mathematics》2018,97(3):273-298

Collaborative work in small groups is often a suitable context for yielding substantial individual learning outcomes. Indeed, small-group collaboration has recently become an educational goal rather than a means. Yet, this goal is difficult to attain, and students must be taught how to learn together. In this paper, we focus on how to prepare teachers to become facilitators of small-group collaboration. The current case study monitors a group of six prospective teachers and their instructor during a one-semester course. The instructor was a skilled mathematics teacher with strong beliefs about what is entailed in establishing a mini-culture of learning to learn together and about how to facilitate student group work in problem-solving situations. We describe the learning path followed by the instructor, including the digital environment. The findings show that by the end of the course, the students became more competent facilitators of learning to learn together.  相似文献   

Israeli high school teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards a pedagogy of inclusion     

Michal Razer  Michael Motola  Noa Bar-Gosen 《International Journal of Inclusive Education》2013,17(9):944-964

The aim of this study was to investigate attitudes of teachers towards a pedagogy of inclusion in their classroom, focusing on differences between teachers in schools with lower socioeconomic status (SES) populations and those in schools with more affluent students, and between homeroom as opposed to subject teachers. Our study population consisted of 214 teachers from Jewish secondary schools (7th through 12th grade) in Israel's state school system. The schools surveyed were classified by socioeconomic level (high, intermediate, or low). The study demonstrates that teachers in low-SES schools report more inclusive attitudes and behaviour than do teachers in high-SES schools. Another key finding was that homeroom teachers self-report greater inclusiveness than do subject teachers. This finding is very important for the Israeli high school system, since subject teachers constitute roughly 70% of its teaching personnel, whereas students engage with homeroom teachers, on average, no more than 10% of their time in school. In the context of exclusive practices, we found a lack of differentiation between various types of behavioural problems: teachers responded to aggressive or disruptive behaviour in the same manner as they would handle disengagement, truancy, or learning avoidance. Finally, with regard to the form of punishment imposed by schools, a common response encountered in this study was the withholding of remedial instruction in response to problematic behaviour.  相似文献   

Signifying the accumulation graph in a dynamic and multi-representation environment     

Michal?YerushalmyEmail author  Osama?Swidan 《Educational Studies in Mathematics》2012,80(3):287-306

The present study focuses on the accumulation process involved in the integration of a single-variable function. Observing the work of two high-school calculus students who had not yet learned any other integral-related ideas, we analyze the emergence of the semiotic relationship between personal and mathematical meanings, as expressed through the understanding of mathematical signs in integration tasks. Adopting Radford's educational perspective whereby learning is defined as a process of objectification, we identify a three-stage evolution of the double semiotic meaning of the lower boundary and of its role in the definition of the accumulation graph: (1) objectifying a zero accumulation in relation to the lower limit, (2) objectifying zero as marking the zero sum of accumulated areas, and (3) objectifying the accumulation graph as dependent on the lower-limit value. This evolution is marked by semiotic changes related to the pivotal role of the “zeros” in the accumulation graph.  相似文献