In this article I explore the question of videogame cybersubjects and the myths of violence and identification made available by the new interactive media so as to vivify what is at stake when it comes to educational technologies. I introduce the concept of interpassivity to provide an aspect of technological interactivity that is missing in the…

The purpose of this study was to examine students' perceptions of the extent to which reflection, a principle of cooperative learning, satisfied their needs for self-worth and belonging. Eight mature preuniversity students completed a scaled questionnaire and took part in a focus group interview following a 12-week preliminary study into the…

A 2003 study about the lives of retired leaders in teacher education reminds us of the significant role that others play in the academic development of professors of education. That study also reveals significant changes in the nature of our work as teacher educators. The authors stress the need for universities to pay greater attention to the…

Although Canadian students performed well on the 2000 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), there were considerable differences among provinces. Based on the Canadian sample of PISA 2000, our multilevel analysis examined the extent to which schools in various provinces produced differential effects on the reading achievement of…

This study is an intervention case study of fluency in Finnish-speaking children with dyslexia. Two 7-year-old children, a girl and a boy, were selected from the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. The intervention emphasised syllables as reading units, and proceeded from reading syllables to reading words and text. Letter knowledge, reading…

Explicit knowledge is highly valued in the traditional educational system at the expense of implicit equivalents. Why is this? Are we right to so value it? To provide an answer I attempt to characterise the relation between representations and referents of implicit and explicit knowledge. Whereas explicit representations are detached from…

In this study, a path model was utilised to model the relationships among motivational beliefs, metacognitive strategy use, and effort regulation in science courses. There were 391 high-school students participating in the study. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire was used to measure students' motivational beliefs, metacognitive…

The article reports an empirical study of how authors in popular science magazines attempt to render scientific knowledge intelligible to wide audiences. In bridging the two domains of "popular" and "scientific" knowledge, respectively, metaphor becomes central. We ask the empirical question of what metaphors are used when communicating about…

In this study a group of students with reading and writing difficulties relate their experiences of school to their expressed opinions concerning the possibilities of participation and influence in this setting. Twelve students at upper-level compulsory school or upper secondary school were interviewed. Mostly their reading and writing…

The present study investigated whether two summated rating scales used in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 2003), Mathematics Self-Concept (MSC), and Students' Valuing of Mathematics (VoM) seemed appropriate, meaningful, and useful in a Swedish context. The 4,256 Swedish eighth-grade students involved in TIMSS 2003…

The purpose of this article is to examine whether 13-year-old pupils in Sweden and the Netherlands have similar or different goal orientations for going to school and learning. For this purpose a cross-national comparative study was conducted involving 717 Dutch and 7391 Swedish pupils. The findings suggest that while goal…

Educational arenas are important sites for understanding how diversity and democracy become operationalised since they constitute and at the same time must attend to students' different needs. This article focuses on diversity from two specific angles: how research activities allow for particular ways of understanding human differences and how…

A longitudinal study is reported aiming at analysing niche characteristics in the classroom of skilled readers and children with reading and writing disabilities. Thirteen children are studied during their 1st and 4th years at school. The result is described using the concepts "capacity," "opportunity" and "interest." Capacity means the children's…

This study explored the relations between epistemological beliefs, social status of parents (n = 262), and school preferences. Epistemological beliefs were measured by 20 bi-polar statements. School preferences were derived from paired comparisons of educational quality of available primary schools. Social status was measured in two dimensions,…

Each child In Finland and in Estonia receives preschool training for a year before going to school, based on a new national framework curriculum of preschool education. The aim of the present study was to compare children's learning achievements in nine target areas, based on the teacher's evaluations at the end of the preschool year, in both…