Abstracts - Earli

global/meta-level activities in one school compared with the other school. In addition, in one ofthe cases there was also more emphasis on transformational activities in one of the schools. Thestudy suggests explanations to these differences that are related to the different situations in whicheach of the teachers worked, highlighting the role of the classroom and the school in curriculumenactment.Assessment of flexibility and fluency of strategy use in written arithmetic at the upper grades ofprimary schoolCornelis M. van Putten, Leiden University, Department of Psychology, NetherlandsMarc L. Molendijk, Leiden University, Department of Psychology, NetherlandsMeindert Beishuizen, Leiden University, Department of Education, NetherlandsThis paper describes the development of a valid and reliable test to assess the amount of student’sflexible and fluent strategy use in written arithmetic at the upper grades of primary school.Flexibility was defined as the ability to choose a strategy that best fits a problem. Fluency wasdefined as the ability to solve a problem in an efficient way as reflected in the number of solutionsteps and the total solution time. A test of 18 items covering four domains - addition &subtraction, division, multiplication, and numerical estimation - was constructed and administeredto 283 students from 12 primary schools. Students were asked to write down their workings andtheir answer for each item. The results show that both flexible and fluent strategy use could beassessed in an internally valid and a reliable way with this instrument. Scores for flexibility andfluency were very strongly correlated, even after correction for general mathematical competence,so the question arises whether these two concepts should be discriminated. Within-subject effectswere found for mathematical domain and for item format (context versus number problem).Between-subject differences were found for general mathematical competence and for gender.However these effects were rather different for flexibility and fluency, which is an argument forkeeping the discrimination between these concepts.N 731 August 2007 16:00 - 17:20Room: 3.67 BékésyPaper SessionEducational effectivenessChair:Hans Gruber, Universität Regensburg, GermanyTeaching and learning environments – (How) do they affect language learning?Nina A. Jude, German Institute for Int. Educational Research, GermanyJohannes Hartig, German Institute for Int. Educational Research, GermanyKlieme Eckhard, German Institute for Int. Educational Research, GermanyLanguage teaching and learning in school is not only influenced by various individual factors, butalso by different characteristics of the teaching and learning environments. Theoretical models andlatest empirical studies emphasize the important role of learning opportunities and classroomstructure and name various teaching methods to be fundamental for learning. One aim ofeducational research is to identify those classroom characteristics that are positively related with– 736 –