“Fish in the pond”. Ksenia Tenisheva’s report at the European Conference on Educational Research in the University of Cadiz.
“Fish in the pond”. Ksenia Tenisheva’s report at the European Conference on Educational Research in the University of Cadiz.
From 17th till 21th of September took part annual the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) in Cadiz city. Theme of the conference “he Need for Educational Research to Champion Freedom, Education and Development of All” has something in common with research area of educational net ESA in Gent. However this meeting includes more wide range of possible problems and questions. Moreover, it differs from ESA in Gent by scale. More than hundreds and thousands of participants all over the world: the USA, Canada, Austria, China, Russia and lots of European countries took part at this conference. It is very important event to researchers, which is conducted from 1992 in different universities. For instance, last year it was carried out in Berlin, at that time I spoke first time at such high level conference.
I presented my report “Conditional Environmental Effects on Self-Confidence in Learning Math”. It is research of our laboratory, in which is evaluated influence of progress in learning math on self-confidence in this subject. We used data from TIMSS from 2007. As theoretical conception we have taken conception of Gerber Marsh, it is also called as conception of “big fish in small pond”.
Suppose it to be pupil from strong math class, he realizes that he is „middler“. To feel yourself confident in such classes you have to be winner in All-Russian competition, be in the first group of three, took part in international competition, not less. Before it is happened, he thinks: “I know math better than others, but it is not enough”. At the same time if this pupil learned in class with bad progress in math where he worse than two, but better than seven, he would be more self-confident. Those pupils from good progress class and bad have different ways to measure themselves.
Conception of Marsh is closely linked with conception of frame of reference. Relative group gives bar for the bad and good. For the good schools – with best pupils, for the bad school – with the worse. If you better than worse, it is achievement. If you are worse than betters, you are not self-confident. This is the main meaning of this conception, in small pond little fish seems to be bigger than others, i.e. big.
After having an notions about organization of scholastic education in Russia at all and in Saint Petersburg we hypothesized that there are some schools with well-known excellent reputation. And getting education in such kinds of schools raises up self-confidence for the worse pupils, fact of getting education in good schools will help them.
We have tested these hypotheses and discovered that this effect is real, but only in countries with strict stratificated educational system as in Russia. Educational way from the beginning depends on choice between gymnasiums, lyceums and comprehensive schools. Undoubtedly this choice is often made not by pupil but by parents and schools through reception or declining his candidacy. Similar situation exists in Czech Republic, but choice takes part later. The main point is that if you learn in strong school (we define them as better progress in study schools), you are more self-confident. On the other hand, countries, where schools not differ from each other and nobody knows if it is good or bad school (Sweden and Norway), this effect disappears. Colleagues – researches founded our results interesting.
To sum up September 2012 were reach on international conferences, which are devoted to research of education – the main research theme of our laboratory. I hope, that I have brought up moder and new ideas in our Laboratory and we will work active one more year.
Ksenia Tenisheva
Translated by Sofya Semenova