School refusal is heterogeneous in aetiology and presentation. The heterogeneity in its presentation, the focus of this study, complicates the conceptualisation and assessment of school refusal. The present study documents the development of a descriptive model of school refusal that was used to inform the development of a questionnaire for…

In September 1977, all of France's middle schools implemented the so-called "collège unique" reform in the seventh year, i.e. the elimination of tracking (or streaming) and the mixing of all pupils and teachers for the first year of secondary education. This article examines the genesis and implementation of this reform from the point of…

This study, conducted in France, sought to describe the organization of the content of the social representations that high school students in transition construct of work and their own future, taking into account two variables: their type of secondary school and the anticipated length of their post-secondary education. For this purpose, 669…

This paper examines the respective contribution of two theoretical approaches to teaching and learning: the classroom ecology (CE) framework from Anglo-American research and the joint action in didactics (JAD) framework, which is part of French "didactique" research. This theoretical comparison is grounded in data from a case study in a…

Purposeful and strategic connections between schools, families, and communities are critical characteristics of effective middle level education. Area-based initiatives (ABIs) have been particularly visible family-school-community policy developments in recent years--especially the federally funded "Promise Neighborhoods," which attempt…

The whole-school approach to bullying prevention is predicated on the assumption that bullying is a systemic problem, and, by implication, that intervention must be directed at the entire school context rather than just at individual bullies and victims. Unfortunately, recent meta-analyses that have looked at various bullying programs from many…

In scientific teaching, especially in physics and chemistry, some historical aspects have been introduced at the secondary level in France, since 1993. Particularly, in 2007, the syllabuses of 11'-15' years old level ("college") propose precise activities in history of science and technology. Detailed guidance has been distributed in…

Understanding the contribution of the whole-school staff to health education (HE) is an important goal in HE research. This study aimed to identify the views of staff (principals; teachers; school nurses and doctors; counsellors and administrative, maintenance, canteen and cleaning staff) regarding the nature of their contribution to HE. The…

We conducted an experimental study to assess the effects of two physics-learning situations that differed in the type of teacher-student interactions that took place: evaluative or co-constructive. As found in various studies on physics teaching and social psychology, the results showed that co-constructive interactions generated a more effective…

This paper reports the findings of a survey conducted to investigate students' knowledge of geography, such as an accurate understanding of the basic vocabulary and essential concepts associated with the representative geographic locations, described here as "spatial landmarks". The factors that influence their learning, and how their…

French-speaking hearing and deaf children, ranging in age from 6-14 years were required to spell words including phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences that were either statistically dominant or nondominant. Of interest was whether the nature of linguistic and the precocity of such experience determines accuracy in the use of phoneme-to-grapheme…

After violence in poor immigrant neighborhoods shook the country last year, France responded by focusing more resources on schools facing the most pressing disadvantages. This article discusses on a project dubbed as "ambition reussite" or ambition success, which refocuses the extra resources granted to needy schools under France's…

Investigates the idea that teachers are not passive transmitters, and that some general trends can be found in the way they transform proposed strategies. Presents the case of elementary optics in grade 8 in France in which four sets of data--interviews before teaching, logbooks, assessment tasks, and video-recorded class observations--lead to…

This paper tries to explain why all the students of a same class who have got the same teaching do not go so far in their conceptual change. Here we have studied the students' conceptual change about volcanoes in a French 5th grade. The different students' preconceptions before teaching have been categorized and related to the well-known…

The Aplusix system has been designed for helping students to learn algebra. Its capacity to tell the students whether their calculations are correct or not, to provide families of exercises of a chosen level, and to give scores after tests allows this system to be used in the regular functioning of the class. Its capacity to record the students'…