Young Maltese children's ideas about plantsFifty Maltese children, 25 in the second year of pre-school (4 years olds) and 25 in the first year of compulsory education (5 years old), were interviewed about their knowledge of plants. Analysis showed that they had a restricted understanding of the term, meaning something small, with a thin stalk, leaves and a flower. Trees, cacti and nettles were not classified as plants. Children's knowledge was observed to increase with age. Parents were identified as the main source of knowledge; schools were rarely mentioned. Maltese teachers should be made aware of children's limited knowledge about plants and they need to use readily available resources in schools to expose pre-school children to the plants in their immediate surroundings.
Working alone, schools cannot reverse the high rates of school failure in the poorest communities in Europe; they need the contributions of the entire community.Coordination between families, the larger community, and the school has proven crucial in enhancing student learning and achievement, especially for minority and disadvantaged families. However, families from such backgrounds often participate in their schools only peripherally, because the schools take a "tourist" approach, call parents to inform them about school projects and teachers' programmes, or consult them about decisions to be made by professionals, rather than engaging them deeply in their children's education. In contrast, the INCLUD-ED project has studied schools across Europe whose students are culturally diverse and from low SES backgrounds; here the communities are deeply involved in the schools and the students do well academically.This article focuses on three strategies these successful schools use to engage immigrant and minority community members in more active, decisive, and intellectual ways and thus have greater impact in the school and the students' learning. It also describes some 2 specific practices of involvement grounded in those strategies, and the improvements they generate. Though the schools studied use different practices, the three strategies have been found to contribute to a transformative result in all schools: moving minority and disadvantaged families from the periphery of school participation to the centre.
The scientific community has provided a wide range of evidence that family and community involvement in schools benefits not only students' learning but also their surrounding community. The INCLUD-ED project has conducted case studies of successful schools around Europe that have strong community participation. Some of them are engaged in the Learning Communities project, an international project of educational and social transfonnation aimed at overcoming school failure. Through these case studies, INCLUD-ED has gone beyond the state of the art in the field and has provided a classification of types of family and community participation and identified forms of involvement that improve students' academic achievement. This article presents the benefits of those fonns of participation and focuses on some forms of commooity involvement in the Learning Communities that have been found to improve students' school learning and other education-related aspects, such as living together.
Young Maltese children have experience and knowledge of animals. We explored the range of animal with which they are familiar and the origin of this knowledge. The children interviewed were in Pre School, aged 4 years, and in the first year of compulsory education, aged 5 years Verb l questions and photographs were used as the probe to access understanding and the sources of their learning. Different questions explored different concepts -effectively three groupings, animal knowledge, habitats, and source of knowledge. The animals photographed were from three areas that were established as popular with children, namely: pets usually found in homes, familiar animals such as farm animals and wild animals. Reduced sized colored photographs of the animals were used as a cue to encourage children to talk Children recounted instances where they have met animal pictures printed on books, charts and posters. The majority of children were familiar with the selected animals. Apart from the animals shown on the photo cards the children were able to mention a range of other animals the animals mentioned include a range of animals that are not found locally. The most two popular animals children mentioned were the tiger and the lion. Results show that these children possess a high sense of observing detail and interpreting visual material. They mentioned other materials where they have encountered animals, including toys, clothes, blankets, pillows and school stationery and often mentioned their favorite animal characters from the media
De los actos comunicativos de poder a los actos comunicativos dialógicos en las aulas organizadas en grupos interactivosEsther Oliver Suzanne Gatt universidad de Barcelona universidad de Malta España MaltaResumen: Los grupos interactivos son una de las formas de organización de las aulas que está obteniendo más éxito en Europa en la superación del fracaso escolar y los problemas de convivencia. Este artículo muestra cómo en el análisis llevado a cabo en INCLuD-ED se ha encontrado una de las claves para ese éxito: la continua sustitución de actos comunicativos de poder, típicos de las aulas tradicionales, por actos comunicativos dialógicos. Los actos comunicativos de poder que afectan al alumnado excluido en las aulas ordinarias, en espacios de educación compensatoria, o apartado de los espacios regulares a través de otras formas de segregación educativa, son transformados en actos comunicativos dialógicos basados en el diálogo igualitario (y que incluyen las condiciones de sinceridad y consenso). Por un lado, el artículo analiza en profundidad actuaciones educativas relacionadas con el fracaso escolar y basadas en actos comunicativos de poder, donde predominan las interacciones de poder. Se ha prestado especial atención a la presencia de actos comunicativos de poder en dinámicas de segregación que afectan principalmente a estudiantes de grupos vulnerables. Por otro lado, se estudian los grupos interactivos como una actuación educativa de éxito donde predominan las interacciones dialógicas basadas en un diálogo igualitario, y donde se consigue un mayor impacto en la mejora de los resultados educativos. Como resultado de nuestro análisis, se identifican los principales elementos que explican la relación tanto entre los actos comunicativos de poder y el fracaso escolar como entre los actos comunicativos dialógicos y el éxito educativo.Palabras Clave: Interacciones dialógicas, interacciones de poder, diálogo igualitario, grupos interactivos, actuaciones educativas de éxito. Recibido:20-IV-2010 Aceptado: 9-VII-2010 From power-related communicative acts to dialogic communicative acts in classrooms organised in interactive groups Abstract: Interactive groups is the form of classroom organisation that is having quite a success in Europe in terms of overcoming school failure and coexistence problems. The analysis carried out in the INCLuD-ED project identified that one of the keys to this success was the continuous replacement of power-related communicative acts, which are typical of traditional classrooms, with dialogic communicative acts. The power-related communicative acts, which affect students either excluded from ordinary classrooms or placed in compensatory education classes or removed from mainstream areas through other forms of educational segregation, are transformed into dialogic communicative acts in groups based on egalitarian dialogue (which involves the conditions of sincerity and consensus). This article develops the provious argument through an in-depth analysis of educational actions linked to school f...
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