Analyser l’expérience : analyser quel contenu, avec quels objectifs et quelles méthodes ?

Scientific Conference (2008, May)

La musique à vent recherche à Echternach

in Revue Musicale (2008)

Probleme der Implementierung selbstgesteuerter Lernformen in den Sportunterricht aus Lehrer- und Schülersicht

Scientific Conference (2008, May)

Les cours dits philosophiques dans l’enseignement luxembourgeois : Actualités et perspectives du point de vue des acteurs

Presentation (2008, April 16)

Activation and Local Welfare in Italy: Trends and Issues

in Social Policy & Administration (2008), 42(2), 143-159

This article deals with the development of local welfare in Italy and is grounded on a research project focusing on activation as a main feature of change in Italian social policies. Along with ... [more ▼]

This article deals with the development of local welfare in Italy and is grounded on a research project focusing on activation as a main feature of change in Italian social policies. Along with decentralization processes, many Italian regions have been acting as policy laboratories, developing and testing very different approaches according to their political attitude. On the one hand this results in a fragmented policy landscape which is difficult to recompose, and, moreover, in growing inequalities in the Italian welfare system. On the other hand, it opens opportunities for experimentation on institutional and organizational structures on a regional scale, creating a variety of practices for research and policy analysis. In the article we first describe the main trends in national social policies, with a specific focus on the dynamics of change referring to activation. We will then focus on a pilot programme which is aiming at the promotion and implementation of innovative practices in health and social care services in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a region in which there is a significant orientation towards enhancing social citizenship and enforcing the central position of the public actor. We investigate how the dynamics of territorialization and personalization, implied by the programme, trigger specific logics and practices of activation. Finally, referring to this case study, we propose an analytical overview of some relevant issues in the development of ‘local active welfare’ in Italy. [less ▲]

Learning under time pressure : the synchronizing of learning to various Zeitgebern

Scientific Conference (2008, April)

Sport science worldwide: DAAD programs and scholarships

in Ze-phir : Informationen für den Sportwissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs (2008), 15(1), 9-14

Brave new word: Multilingualism and language learning. A study of Portuguese immigrant children growing up in a plurilingual society

Poster (2008, April)

Working memory, the capacity to store and manipulate information over brief periods of time (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974) is suggested to play a crucial role in children’s language acquisition in native and ... [more ▼]

Working memory, the capacity to store and manipulate information over brief periods of time (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974) is suggested to play a crucial role in children’s language acquisition in native and foreign languages (e.g. Gathercole, 2006; Service, 1992). The present study investigated children’s working memory skills and vocabulary knowledge in their native and secondary languages in the context of immigration. Twenty Portuguese immigrant children growing up in Luxembourg, who speak Portuguese at home, and acquire Luxembourgish in a natural setting and German through scholastic instruction, participated in the study. Children were assessed on measures of phonological short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition) and complex working memory (counting recall and backwards digit recall) in both Luxembourgish and Portuguese, on vocabulary knowledge (Portuguese, Luxembourgish, and German) and on comprehension (Luxembourgish and German). The children were compared to three groups of monolingual children: 20 Luxembourgish speakers living in Luxembourg and 40 Portuguese speakers from Brazil growing up in families of high (N=20) and low (N=20) socio economical status (SES). Groups were matched on age (7 years), nonverbal ability and gender. In the Portuguese immigrant children, language competences in Portuguese, Luxembourgish, and German were at an equivalent level that fell below the linguistic competence of native speakers from Brazil and from Luxembourg. The 4 groups did not differ on two of the four working memory measures. On one of the complex working memory tasks (counting recall) the low SES group from Brazil manifested scores that fell below the three other groups. Finally, the Portuguese immigrant children performed equally well to their Brazilian counterparts in the repetition of the Portuguese sounding nonwords, whereas their performance in the repetition of the Luxembourgish nonwords fell below that of the native Luxembourgish speakers. These results are consistent with findings that phonological short-term memory performance is better for familiar rather than unfamiliar lexical material (Gathercole, 1995). As the Portuguese immigrant children and their monolingual peers from Luxembourg and Brazil performed at comparable levels on the working memory measures, their poor language performances in all three languages is unlikely to be related to a fundamental cognitive deficit. Their even lower knowledge of Portuguese, vocabulary than children from impoverished backgrounds in Brazil also rules out the hypothesis that their poor language skills are simply a reflection of lower socio-economical status. Instead, the findings appear to be a direct consequence of growing up as an immigrant in a multilingual society. [less ▲]

Dass mir de Wee nun och hu fonnt. Aspects sur l‘histoire de la musique au Luxembourg

Scientific Conference (2008, April)

Selbstgesteuertes Bewegungslernen: Ein Forschungsprogramm

Presentation (2008, April)