Quels impacts des contextes socio-économique et linguistique sur l’apprentissage des mathématiques au Luxembourg ?

Scientific Conference (2023, August 17)

This article presents the results of longitudinal data collection from the Luxembourg national school monitoring (Standardised Tests, ÉpStan) on the mathematical performance of students with a regular or ... [more ▼]

This article presents the results of longitudinal data collection from the Luxembourg national school monitoring (Standardised Tests, ÉpStan) on the mathematical performance of students with a regular or delayed school career from grade 3 to grade 9 according to their linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds. Since Luxembourg has a trilingual education system and a high level of immigration, the extent to which students' linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds influence their educational path will be addressed. The results prove with what Martin and Houssemand had already shown in 2003: multilingualism and the socio-economic background of students, as practiced in Luxembourg, negatively influence the acquisition of mathematical skills. Moreover, this influence increases over the years, which reduces the efficiency and equity of the educational system. In conclusion, recommendations for teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms will be proposed in order to promote equal opportunities for students attending school in Luxembourg, and to help them develop their skills to the fullest. [less ▲]

Do your magic, Harry Potter! popular fiction books and their impact on students’ reading performances

Poster (2022, November 10)

Previous surveys on the reading habits of Luxembourgish secondary school students (conducted within the framework of the national school monitoring programme Épreuves Standardisées (ÉpStan) in 2016 and ... [more ▼]

Previous surveys on the reading habits of Luxembourgish secondary school students (conducted within the framework of the national school monitoring programme Épreuves Standardisées (ÉpStan) in 2016 and 2019) revealed better reading comprehension results in French and German for those students who frequently read printed narrative texts in their leisure time. However, these studies only focused on different reading modes and text types. They did not investigate which digital and/or printed books students actually read for pleasure, nor which text features determine the positive impact narrative texts have on their reading performances: Is it, for example, the language quality, the richness and complexity of content, or simply the amount of written language they need to process? Therefore, we conducted an explorative follow-up survey within the framework of ÉpStan 2020 and asked secondary school students (Grade 7: n=3055; Grade 9: n=5781) to indicate up to three book titles – printed and e-books respectively – they had read in their leisure time. Despite the omnipresence of digital media, preliminary findings show that both age groups prefer paper-based reading activities when reading longer texts (or books) for pleasure. Nevertheless, the most popular text types and book titles are the same for printed books and e-books: Among them, we find the novel series “Harry Potter”, the rather comic-like book series “Gregs Tagebuch”, and the mangas from the “Naruto”/“Boruto” series. The linkage between students’ leisure time reading activities and their ÉpStan reading performances will be drawn, and some first linguistic text analyses of extracts from the most popular book titles will be conducted in order to reveal some of the text features that foster reading comprehension skills. [less ▲]