Each year teachers spend millions of hours marking and writing comments upon papers being returned to students, apparently in the belief that their words will produce some result, in student performance, superior to that obtained without such words. Yet on this point solid experimental evidence, obtained under genuine classroom conditions, has been conspicuously absent. Consequently each teacher is free to do as he likes; one will comment copiously, another not at all. And each believes himself to be right.The present experiment investigated the questions: 1. Do teacher comments cause a significant improvement in student performance? 2. If comments have an effect, which comments have more than others, and what are the conditions, in students
Recent articles have argued that family size and birth order have important cognitive influence, and may partially explain the different performances of social class and ethnic groups. Support for such claims has often depended on the analytic strategy, which has concentrated on the means of aggregated groups with large N's. For the present analysis, data are reviewed from the massive U. S. National Longitudinal Study of Educational Effects. Results from aggregate analysis are quite similar to those reported by Zajonc and others. When individual variation is explored, however, the effects of family configuration become relatively trivial, and the confluence theory appears untenable. The apparent effects of family size, far from explaining population differences, seem themselves to be better explained as the result of group admixtures. And the small, residual birth-order effects therefore appear to result from other phenomena, still to be explained.The most popular current theory of family effects is the confluence theory (Zajonc, 1975(Zajonc, , 1976 Zajonc & Markus, 1976), in which family size and birth order are argued to be major causal influences on human intelligence. According to Zajonc (1976), such family factors are "deeply implicated in the declining SAT scores as a special case of a general phenomenon that
par MURRAY TONDOW, Palo Alto, USA Cet article est en premier lieu un compte rendu d6taill6 de l'organisation et de la fonction des ordinateurs utilis6s dans la circonscription de Palo Alto en Californie. -L'auteur est d'avis que la technologic et, partant, l'ordinateur sont aussi bien la cause que la cons6quence de la r6volution qui bouleverse actuellement la science. I1 en arrive ~ la conclusion qu'avec le recours de plus en plus fr6quent aux ordinateurs, ceux-ci deviennent de plus en plus indispensables au bon fonctionnement des services scolaires des circonscriptions les plus peupl6s. L'ordinateur et ses possibilit~s viennent ~ peine d'entrer dans le champ de vision des jeunes nations; mais sa flexibilit6 et sa capacit6 de travail en font, pour les 6coles des r6gions en voie de d~veloppement, un auxiliaire ideal qui leur permettra d'accomplir un grand pas darts le sens d'un enseignement moderne. L'auteur traite alors des applications technologiques de l'61ectronique, des rayons-laser, des satellites d'information, qui dans les dix ann6es ~ venir rendraient possible la grande r6volution scolaire. Un tel d6veloppement pourrait en m~me temps conduire ~ l'6dification d'un syst~me d'enseignement h l'echelle mondiale et garantir ~ tousles enfants une 6ducation mieux adapt~e aux besoins du monde moderne. Prenant l'exemple d'une exp6rience r6alis6e ~ Palo Alto ~ l'aide d'ordinateurs, l'auteur souligne les devoirs et les obligations des spgcialistes en la mati~re et essaie de d6gager les Iondements de leur responsabilit6. Chemin faisant, il 6voque certains problgmes d'organisation comme le budget, les effectifs et la structure des diverses sections. L'auteur mentionne aussi les diff6rents syst~mes d'information dont on dispose actuellement et qui concernent par exemple les 61~ves, le personnel enseignant et tel ou tel centre de moyens d'enseignement. -Dans sa pr6sentation du domaine de l'enseignement proprement dit, l'auteur fair la diff6rence entre deux aspects importants: l'ordinateur comme moyen d'enseigner, et l'enseignement faisant usage de l'ordinateur (les instructions se rapportent au travail avec les 6tudiants et les membres du personnel.) -Enfin il fair 6tat des diverses experiences men6es h Palo Alto en mati~re de recherche et d6veloppement, et portant sur des probl~mes aff6rents ~ la technologic des ordinateurs.
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