Vol 16 No 4 - April 2017

International Journal
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Vol.16 No.4

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International Journal of Learning, Teaching and
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VOLUME 16 NUMBER 4 April 2017
Table of Contents
“Failing Public Schools”: The Consequences of the Misleading Framing of American Education Policy .................1
Karl F. Wheatley
Building Integrated Situations in the Teaching of Probability and Statistics Oriented to Professional Skills for
Economic Majored Students – Case Study at Lachong University Viet Nam .............................................................. 16
Hoan Van Tran and Hang Thuy Nguyen
A Framework for the Creation of Leap Motion Gestural Interfaces for Handwriting Education to Children with
Development Coordination Disorder ................................................................................................................................ 31
Leonardo Ramon Nunes de Sousa and Ismar Frango Silveira
Teachers in Multi-Cultural Societies: Excellence and Leadership.................................................................................. 54
Tamar Ketko
The Impact of Demographic Influences on Academic Performance and Student Satisfaction with Learning as
Related to Self-Esteem, SelfEfficacy and Cultural Adaptability within the Context of the Military ......................... 67
Deborah Schreiber, Jean-Claude Agomate and Brian Oddi
Effects of Warm-Up Testing on Student Learning .......................................................................................................... 91
Kimberly M. Levere and Matthew Demers

© 2017 The author and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved.
1
International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research
Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 1-15, April 2017
“Failing Public Schools”: The Consequences
of the Misleading Framing of American
Education Policy
Karl F. Wheatley
Cleveland State University
Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.
Abstract. Over the last 20 years, American K-12 education has been
profoundly transformed to reflect the values and principles of market-
based thinking. The article examines the powerful role that the “failing
public schools” frame played in reducing American citizens’ faith in
public education, eroding teacher autonomy, and opening the door to a
range of market-based ideas previously resisted in American public
education. Evidence is provided that there has been a dramatic increase
in framing American public schools as “failing” since the 1990s, and that
this framing of the situation is profoundly misleading. Negative
practical consequences of this misleading framing of the situation are
discussed, as is the way in which this framing of the situation provides a
powerful obstacle to implementing superior educational practices.
Practical suggestions for re-framing educational discussions are
provided.
Keywords: educational reform, conceptual framing, failing schools,
accountability movement, neoliberal policies
Introduction
We have an obligation, I think, to refuse to accept the debate as it has
been framed for us. - Alfie Kohn
Whether we study educational policymakers aiming to transform schools
or computer hackers seeking to influence national elections, language is
increasingly being used as a key tool or weapon for bringing about substantive
changes in society. Reflecting that reality, one of the most striking features of
recent educational policies in the United States and some other countries has
been the increasing dominance of market-oriented language such as
“measurable objectives, alignment, value-added assessments, and greater
accountability.”
However, given that education works very differently than do economic
markets and manufacturing, it can be considered puzzling that the language and
ideas of markets and manufacturing have come to dominate American K-12

2
education (Kumashiro, 2008; Wheatley, 2009). How did this happen, especially
given that the practices ushered in by market advocates—highly standardized
curricula, high-stakes testing, teaching to the test—were once widely considered
to be inferior practices?
In this article, I analyze the unfolding of market-oriented education
policies over recent decades, and examine the role that the “failing public
schools” frame played in transforming American public education to strongly
reflect the values and principles of markets and manufacturing. I conclude that
the corporate-oriented policymakers were able to gain substantial control over
American K-12 education because they first took control of the organizing
narratives surrounding education and society. The result is that many
educational practices strongly favored by teachers and researchers alike (play,
project-based learning) now lie outside the boundaries of what seems acceptable
according to the current framing of educational debates in America.
I begin by reviewing how the conceptual framing of issues influences
thought, and then examine broader changes in American society and how those
changes set the stage for a market-oriented transformation of education. I then
explore the cognitive and practical consequences of Americans’ current habit of
implicitly or explicitly framing their discussions of education in terms of “failing
public schools.” Finally, I outline practical suggestions for more accurate and
constructive framing of educational policy and practice.
Conceptual Framing
What cognitive neuroscience teaches us is that we think in terms of
stories, images, and conceptual frames—short, punchy phrases such as “student
achievement” and “greater accountability” (Lakoff, 2014). Language has the
power to shift policy in dramatically different directions because different ways
of framing an issue steer the mind towards certain solutions while excluding
other possible solutions. For example, American politics has been strongly
framed in terms of “smaller government, lower taxes,” and “tax relief,” and
these frames can steer our minds and discussions towards cutting taxes and
avoiding tax increases (Lakoff, 2014). Similarly, framing education as being
about “student achievement” (i.e., test scores) steers the mind in a different
direction than would discussing education in terms of “healthy whole-child
development.” And just imagine the influence on policy if most Americans
routinely discussed educational inequality and the growing shortage of good
jobs in America as resulting not from “failing public schools” but from a “failing
economy” designed to serve the needs of the wealthy few very well, while
leaving everyone else struggling. Some ways of framing an issue directly teach
an idea by creating and reinforcing an association in our minds. For example,
repeatedly hearing or using the phrase “failing public schools” conditions our
mind to associate public schools with failure. As the cognitive neuroscientist
George Lakoff points out, when a certain way of framing an issue is well-
established in individual’s brain and those frames are active, facts that do not fit
that framing of the issue simply “bounce off”—they are rejected, ignored, or
treated as crazy (Lakoff, 2014). This phenomenon explains recent research
showing that when presented with facts about politics or the environment that

3
run counter to their dominant way of thinking, people not only have a strong
tendency to reject those facts, their previous thinking is often reinforced.
However, that same body of research shows that changing the framing of an
issues changes the degree of acceptance of the new ideas (Khazan, 2017). In
short, the language we use to discuss education or other issues powerfully
influences which policies and practices seem sensible and which seem unwise or
even unthinkable.
The Changing Social Context and Overarching Narratives in America
To be understood well, the stories we tell ourselves about education and
the educational policies that result from those stories must be understood in the
context of broader social and political developments. From the 1940s through the
1970s, the United State had a mixed-market economy in which the importance of
a strong central government was rarely questioned and there was substantial
faith in most public-sector institutions (Hacker & Pierson, 2010; Smith, 2012).
Informed by the harsh lessons of the Gilded Age, Great Depression, and World
War II, most Americans seemed to agree that government inherently does many
things better than the private sector does, and does some things that the private
sector will not do or cannot be trusted to do. This was America’s shared
overarching cultural narrative, and we’ll call it the “mixed-market story”
because this narrative promoted the idea that a mixed-market organization of
society works best.
But by the late 1970s, public faith in government and public sector
approaches had taken a huge hit, with a failed war in Vietnam, three major
political assassinations, the Watergate scandal, two humbling oil crises, and an
economy marked by stagnant growth yet sharp inflation. This context of
disillusionment and crisis set the stage for the “Reagan Revolution,” a radical
change in the perception of the proper respective roles of government and the
private sector (Hacker & Pierson, 2010; Smith, 2012). President Reagan’s 1981
inaugural address famously declared that “government is the problem,” and
thus began decades of increasingly market-oriented policymaking in the United
States. Over and over again, real or manufactured crises were blamed on the
government in general or on specific government programs and institutions, an
overarching narrative that I’ll simply call the “government-bashing story.”
Critically, the rhetorical assault on public sector institutions paved the way for
weakening, dismantling, or privatizing public sector programs and institutions,
accomplished through tax cuts, de-regulation, cuts in social programs, and
privatizing many government functions. The market-based assault on and
transformation of American public education got underway with the 1983 A
Nation at Risk report (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), a
report claiming that if another nation had intentionally caused our public
schools to be as weak as the ANAR authors claimed they were, then Americans
would have viewed that as an act of war. ANAR was just the beginning: For
over three decades now, Americans have read and listened to an unending
barrage of reports claiming that American public schools are generally failing.
That dominant cultural narrative that has sounded like this, with key frames in
quotes:

4
America and Americans are struggling largely because our “failing
public schools” are “inefficient government bureaucracies” that are not
adequately preparing students with the “marketable job skills” they need
“to compete in the global economy,” and this scandalous situation has
put our “nation at risk.” We know “our public schools are failing” due to
the “poor student achievement” of American pupils on international
tests, the unacceptable number of students “not on grade level” or “who
need remedial college courses,” and the “skills gaps” among workers
and the “shortages of scientists.” “All kids can learn,” but “our public
schools are failing” due to “low standards, inefficient government-style
bureaucracy, lazy and incompetent teachers, unscientific teaching
methods, obstructionist teachers’ unions,” and the “lack of competition,
accountability, and school choice.”
Key conceptual frames—brief phrases that Americans have heard or read
hundreds or thousands of times, appear in italics in the block quote above.
Notice that these frames teach the reader or listener how to view reality—for
example, the frame “failing public schools” teaches the listener to associate
public education with failure, actually reinforcing the connection between
“failure” and “public schools” in the listener’s brain. By the late 1990s and early
2000s, the unending “teacher bashing” by market advocates was so relentless
and often nasty that a former teacher turned educational activist felt motivated
to co-author a book titled Why is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?
(Emery & Ohanian, 2004). In 2004, America’s Secretary of Education, Rod Paige,
actually called the nation’s largest teachers’ union (the NEA) “a terrorist
organization,” a phrase he later retracted, but which captured the sense of just
how aggressively the American business community and sympathetic
politicians have attacked American public education. As a subset of the larger
government-bashing story, we’ll refer to this general shared narrative claiming
that public schools are generally failing as the “failing public schools story.”
To be clear, although Americans showed much more respect for public
education in the pre-ANAR era, Americans have always complained about their
public schools (Rothstein, 1998), albeit not as vigorously or viciously as became
common after 1983. The feeling inside public schools over recent decades is
captured by a quote by the late Gerald Bracey: “A war is being waged on
America's public schools. They are under siege.”
With this background on conceptual framing and the changing context of
American education, we turn next to analyzing the “failing schools” frame and
its effect on educational policy in the United States.
Analyzing the “Failing Public Schools” Framing
The Dramatic Rise of a Deeply Misleading Frame
The first key thing to understand about the various “failing public
schools” frames is that they have only become common during the period when
business leaders and sympathetic politicians have been vigorously pressing to

5
re-make American public education according to market-based values and
principles. For example, a Google Ngram search of word frequency in books
revealed that the term “failing schools” was used over 72 times as frequently in
books in 2008 as in 1983, the year when the “A Nation at Risk” report (ANAR)
was published. Similarly, “failing public schools” was used 146 times as
frequently in 2003—the year the No Child Left Behind Act was enacted—as in
1983. As someone who has spent much of the last decade studying the framing
of educational discussion in America, I can report that the American media
almost reflexively uses “failing public schools” or “failing schools” as their
default language for discussing American education, and the phrase “failing
schools” appears with remarkable frequency in the discourse of most American
citizens, including even strong supporters of public education.
The second key thing to understand about the various “failing public
schools” frames is that they attribute educational failures to the public schools
themselves, and thus to teachers also (e.g., Parsons, 2016). Historically, this
represents a profound shift in cultural thinking, for in the 1960s, Americans
routinely and largely attributed poor educational outcomes to the socio-
economic conditions the child was raised in, a tendency strongly reinforced by
the findings of the highly-influential Coleman Report (Coleman, 1966).
Depending on their political leanings, Americans might have viewed poverty as
more or less due to personal failings or conditions in society, but either way,
they did not expect teachers and schools to eliminate learning gaps created by
social forces as powerful as poverty. Americans believed that the quality of
teaching could influence educational outcomes at the margins, but conservatives
in particular traditionally expressed profound skepticism that education could
provide a substantial boost to life outcomes for children growing up in poverty.
But by the early 2000s, those pushing market-oriented educational policies,
including CEOs and officials in the second Bush administration, were routinely
and vigorously attacking anyone who claimed that poverty was in any way
determinative of a child’s educational or life chances. Specifically, president
George W. Bush repeatedly decried “the soft bias of low expectations,” and any
educators who argued that poorer educational outcomes among children living
in poverty were partly or largely due to family SES was attacked for “making
excuses.” This represented a radical shift in assigning responsibility for
educational outcomes. Given this re-framing of educational causality, citizens,
teachers, and other advocates for public education now often argue with one
breath that socio-economic factors are the primary drivers of educational
inequality (see Robinson & Brandon, 1994), but will later say “low-performing
schools,” thus implicitly assigning primary blame for poor education outcomes
for poor children to schools and teachers. Finally, it’s worth repeating that
schools, districts, and nations do not take the standardized tests that are often
used as the basis for these claims of failure, nor do they bear direct responsibility
for the disappearing good jobs that are also often blamed on American
education (i.e., “skills gaps”). Nevertheless, the “failing schools” framing laid the
blame for educational inequality and key economic problems in America
directly on public schools and their teachers. After decades of talking about
education this way, educators and non-educators alike now routinely talk as if
the average test scores of students in a school are a direct proxy for the quality of

6
the education the school provides, and thus, low test scores are treated as a
direct indicator of a “failing school.” It would be difficult to overstate just how
powerful a role this shift in language and understanding has played in the rise
of market-based educational policies and in the inability of public school
educators to regain control of educational policy.
The third key thing to understand about the various “failing public
schools” frames is that they directly condition the brain to view public education
as a failure. Reinforcing the neural pathways between “failing” or “failure” on
the one hand and “public schools” on the other hand means that anytime
someone thinks of public schools, they are now more likely to think of failure,
and anytime the idea of “failure” is activated in someone’s brain, “public
schools” are now more likely to come to mind as one example of failure. This
idea that public schools were allegedly failing was further reinforced by frequent
repetition of claims that public school teachers were “lazy and incompetent.”
This kind of classical conditioning or associationist learning is one of the most
elementary and fundamental learning processes (Berk, 2009). While corporations
routinely make use of this learning mechanism through celebrity endorsements
of their products, market-oriented educational policymakers made use of it
through clever framing of educational issues, framing that teaches the brain to
believe that standardized tests can be objective (“objective testing”) or that
private/charter schools are inherently better than public education (“high-flying
charter schools”) or, of course, that public schools are allegedly failing (“failing
public schools”). Finally, and critical for the agenda of CEOs and business
groups intent on downsizing and privatizing government while expanding the
influence of market ideology, the phrase “failing public schools” reinforces the
idea that what is failing is a public-sector institution.
The fourth and most critical thing to understand about the various
“failing public schools” frames is that at the best, they are deeply misleading,
and at the worst, they are dead wrong. There is simply is no trustworthy
evidence suggesting that America’s public schools are generally failing at their
assigned mission, which is largely to pursue higher test scores in schools based
largely on the logic of factories (Wheatley, 2015). To be sure, American education
could be much better if it were based more on principles of human development
and democracy (e.g., Kohn, 1999; Littky, 2004; Little & Ellison, 2015; Meier, 1995;
Sahlberg, 2015; Zhao, 2009) rather than the logic of manufacturing, but this point
suggests that policymakers have sent teachers on the wrong mission, and the
fault for that error rests primarily with policymakers, not public schools or
teachers. Next, the indicators usually used as evidence of these so-called failures
have been America’s middling ranking on international tests, but there are
several problems with using average standardized test scores as indicators of the
success of educational systems. Specifically, most of what people say they value
most in education is not on standardized tests (Sachs, 1999; Stoddard, 2010) and
these tests ignore the majority of academic subjects. Furthermore, average
national scores on these international tests are not a good predictor of the future
for highly-developed nations such as the United States (Ramirez, et al. 2006),
and roughly 80% or more of the variance in test scores is due to out-of-school
factors, primarily the socio-economic status of students’ families (Robinson &
Brandon, 1994). Significantly the U.S. has the highest or second-highest rates of

7
both child poverty and inequality among major developed nations. With this
confounding variable in mind, a 2009 analysis of 4th-grade reading scores on the
2009 PISA found that if you corrected for America’s much higher rate of child
poverty by comparing students from under-10% child poverty schools in the
United States to the performance of students in nations with under 10% child
poverty, those American students’ scores would have ranked them #1 in the
world (Riddile, 2010). A similar re-analysis of the 2009 4th-grade PISA
mathematics scores would have landed American students in under-10% child
poverty schools in third place globally in comparison to students from nations
with under 10% child poverty. Moreover, judging the effectiveness of American
teachers by the average test scores of its students is complicated by the fact that
the United States has far more linguistic and cultural diversity than many of the
nations whose students achieve higher average scores on these tests. Finally,
among major developed nations, only the United States does not have universal
healthcare coverage, and untreated medical, dental, and vision problems may
also play a role in the performance of a sizable subset of American students.
Thus, there has always been available a great deal of evidence that this
narrative of crisis and failure was profoundly misleading, but it continued
throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, thus motivating two well-respected
educational researchers to author a book tellingly titled The Manufactured Crisis:
Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools (Berliner & Biddle, 1995).
Since then, educational scholars have published a string of books de-bunking the
claim that American public education is generally failing at its assigned mission,
books whose titles use unusually strong language such as “myths, lies, hoax”
and “the attack on public education” (e.g., Bracey, 2004, 2009; Ravitch, 2013;
Rothstein, 1998). However, most Americans don’t read such academic books,
and there were also plenty of other academic sources and media sources
claiming that public schools were in fact failing. Thus, there are two sets of
forces that have kept many Americans falsely believing that American public
schools are generally failing.
Innocent Confusion or Cynical “Shock Doctrine” Ploy?
Innocent confusion as a motive for the “failing schools” framing. Since
the 1980s, I have engaged in literally thousands of discussions and debates about
education, both in-person and on-line, and sometimes with individuals who
have been influential in educational policymaking. These experiences convinced
me that many caring and intelligent Americans are deeply confused about the
state of American education. First, many Americans have come to believe that
standardized test scores are a true and accurate measurement of student
learning and teacher effectiveness, a misleading belief that market-oriented
educational policymakers have strongly encouraged (and many may themselves
believe). Second, conditions in American public education could be much better,
a fact that is largely accounted for by the vast child poverty and economic
inequality in America, coupled with the fact that educators have been instructed
to organize education largely around the principles of manufacturing, not
around what we know about how children develop and learn best. However,

8
most people are not educators and are too busy to think much about education,
and it’s simpler to just blame teachers and schools.
Shock doctrine motives for the “failing schools” framing. Over the last
half century, politicians worldwide have realized that creating a real crisis or the
illusion of a crisis can help them get even highly-unpopular policies enacted, a
disturbing process that Naomi Klein reported has been implemented in virtually
every field from education to economics to foreign policy (Klein, 2007).
Occasionally, educational policymakers have even gotten caught in the act of
creating a fictional crisis to serve their policy purposes:
In September, 1995, a video was leaked to the Canadian press of John
Snobelen, Ontario’s minister of education, telling a closed-door meeting
of civil servants that before cuts to education (and other unpopular
“reforms”) could be announced, a climate of panic needed to be created
by leaking information that painted a more dire picture than he “would
be inclined to talk about.” He called it “creating a useful crisis.” (Klein,
2007, p. 326)
Why such urgency to create the illusion of an educational crisis? It’s
possible that the most important function of the “failing schools” narratives for
economic elites was to establish a credible scapegoat for the negative economic
and societal consequences of the neoliberal trickle-down economic policies that
were established in the United States and elsewhere. Tax cuts, de-regulation,
and slashing social programs have had profoundly negative effects for average
families in America and other nations where such neoliberal policies were
implemented, and unless policymakers had public schools to blame for
deteriorating circumstances, it’s not clear how they would have explained what
caused these problems.
But fictional or not, the narratives that public sector institutions in
general and public schools in particular were terrible failures became widely-
accepted, largely because wealthy individuals and corporations promoted this
message and also established foundations (e.g., Cato Institute, Heritage
Foundation) and media outlets (e.g., Fox News, conservative talk radio stations)
to relentlessly promote these messages.
As Klein (2007) thoroughly documented, the power of an existing crisis
or the illusion of a crisis is that it can scare or disorient people, and make people
believe that “business-as-usual” will no longer work, thus enabling
policymakers to enact quite radical policy changes that would be vigorously
resisted under more normal circumstances. Indeed, this process has been used to
enact radical neoliberal economic policies all across the globe, from Chile and
Argentina in the 1970s to Bolivia, Poland, and Africa in the 1980s, to Russia and
China in the 1990s, and including a steady increase in neoliberal economic and
social policies in Europe and the United States. The idea of using a real or
manufactured crisis to get market-oriented policies implemented was famously
articulated by Milton Friedman, the person most often cited as the godfather of
the effort to remake both societies and schools in the image of neoliberal
economics:

9
Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that
crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying
around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to
existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically
possible becomes politically inevitable. (Friedman, 1982, p. ix)
Of course, what Friedman meant by “real change” was displacing mixed-
market systems with systems run according to the values and logic of unfettered
capitalism, an arrangement known variously as “neoliberalism, the Washington
consensus, or simply winner-take-all capitalism” (and also winner-take-all
politics). Questionable motives and lamentable confusion aside, what are the
practical consequences of so many people seeing the issue of American
education through the lens of the “failing public schools” frame?
Consequences of the “Failing Public Schools” Framing
The first and most important practical consequence of the relentless
framing of public education as a failure is that it profoundly affected the
American public’s faith in public education as a national institution. Gallup polls
given across the decades reveal that 50-60% of Americans expressed “a great
deal” or “quite a lot” of faith in public education as an institution in the 1970s,
but that number had dropped to 26-32% by 2012-2016 (Gallup Inc., 2017).
Leading credence to the theory that this erosion of trust resulted from the
concerted effort by the business community to repeatedly frame public
education as a failure in the media is that fact that parents who actually have
students in public schools have consistently expressed much higher levels of
satisfaction with the schools their children attend than they have with “public
schools in general” (Gallup Inc., 2017). Thus, the relentless teacher-bashing
seems to have convinced many Americans that public schools in general must not
be doing so well, even though they Americans across the nation simultaneously
express quite high levels of satisfaction with the public schools that they actually
know about.
The second practical consequence of the “failure” framing of public
education is that the resulting loss of faith in teachers and public schools
undermined public support for the substantial degree of teacher autonomy that
had been commonplace in American education prior to decades of attacks on
public education. As a result, teachers’ claims that they should be trusted to
make important curricular and assessment decisions have increasingly fallen on
deaf ears. Once people believed that public schools are generally “failing” and
filled with “lazy and incompetent teachers,” they lost their appetite for allowing
teachers freedom and autonomy, and instead wanted someone to tell teachers
exactly what to teach exactly how to teach it, and to watch them carefully to
make sure they do it, or else. This loss of professional autonomy is enormously
consequential for teaching as a profession because teacher autonomy has long
been cited as one of the most appealing aspects of teaching (Darling-Hammond,
1997), but the dramatic erosion of teacher autonomy, coupled with decades of
teacher bashing and the toxic climate created by high-stakes testing have made
teaching far less attractive as a profession. Thus, despite the relative lack of good

10
middle class jobs in the United States, shortages of teachers have been increasing
in many states.
The third practical consequence of the “failing schools” framing nestled
within the larger “government-bashing story” was that it opened the door for
the private sector to claim that public education should be run more like a
business. After all, if “government is the problem,” public sector institutions are
inherently “inefficient bureaucracies,” and “failing public schools” merely reflect
the inherent inferiority of public sector approaches, then where else can people
turn for solutions—other than the private sector? This playbook of creating a
crisis and then proposing radical market solutions had been utilized all over the
globe by market advocates seeking to re-make democratic nations in the image
of winner-take-all capitalism, but how did this dynamic unfold in American
educational policy? The self-styled “educational reformers”—a group
dominated by CEOs, wealthy individuals, and business organizations such as
The Business Roundtable (Emery & Ohanian, 2004)—declared with enormous
confidence that what American education needed was a much more market-
based approach. Those claims sounded like this:
“Everything works better if you run it more like a business,” and
“education is just like any other business,” so to fix “failing public
schools,” we must “run them more like a business.” That means setting
“higher standards”; focusing on “rigorous academics” and “a common
core of measurable student outcomes” all aimed at “developing
marketable job skills” so that our students can better “compete in the
global economy.” Teachers must use “evidence-based practices” and we
should “measure student achievement” using “objective tests.” To
motivate teachers and students, we need to “incentivize excellence”
using “value-added measurements” of teacher effectiveness and “hold
everyone more accountable” for results. Overall, we need “market-based
solutions” emphasizing “standardization, efficiency, competition,” and
“school choice.” And don’t claim that your students’ test scores are lower
just because your students are poor: “Poverty is just an excuse” and we
don’t accept any excuses.
We’ll call this story the “market-based solutions story,” and once again,
the phrases or conceptual frames that Americans have heard countless times in
recent decades appear in quotations above. To reiterate, hearing and saying such
phrases repeatedly literally re-wires our brains so that the market-based-
solutions story becomes dominant in our minds and the mixed-market story
fades away through lack of use.
In terms of conceptual consequences, the dramatic rise of the
government-bashing story and the market-based solutions story has meant that
many Americans seem only able to conceive as government as a problem and
believe all solutions come from market-based thinking. As it has now been 36
years since President Reagan declared that “government” is the problem,
America now has more than an entire generation of citizens who have been
raised entirely in a society that has rarely spoken the mixed-market story but

11
instead regularly repeats the government-bashing narrative and the market-
based-solutions narrative.
As for practical consequences, the ascendance of market-based thinking
has had profound and revolutionary consequences for American education.
Americans have traditionally thought of education as being about developing
well-rounded individuals, wise and active citizens, and ethical and competent
workers, but the market takeover of public education largely narrowed the
explicit focus of education to being about developing marketable job skills to
better compete in the global economy. Even kindergarten teachers are now
expected to document how they are preparing five- and six-year-olds for
“college and career readiness.” In turn, this increasingly narrow focus on
marketable job skills has led to profound neglect of social studies (history,
economics, psychology, sociology, government, etc.), literature, health and
physical education, and the arts. Like a factory trying to boost daily output,
these market-based policies focus on rapidly boosting testable outcomes in
reading, mathematics, and science, and this has led to increased use of long
blocks of direct instruction—methods that do boost test scores faster in the short
run but that also undermine intrinsic motivation, cause faster forgetting and
more behavioral problems, and generally seem less effective overall in the long
run (Wheatley, 2015a, 2015b). Lost in this process are broadly superior teaching
methods such as play and project-based learning—transdisciplinary methods
that are connected to real life and that are more effective in the long run for the
whole child and whole curriculum but that do not as rapidly boost test scores in
the short run. The narrowed curricular focus, loss of trust in teachers, and rise of
business ideas such as standardization and alignment led to the widespread
disappearance of creative and locally-developed curricula coupled with far
greater use of highly-profitable commercial curriculum packages aligned with
commercial high-stakes tests. Because everything often seems to revolve around
test scores in this context of test-based accountability, teachers, especially in
high-poverty districts, feel enormous pressure to raise students’ test scores,
especially because there are often harsh consequences for failing to do so. Most
educators see test-based judgments of teacher effectiveness as misleading at best
or flatly unscientific and fraudulent at the worst, but most feel powerless to
change the system. Not surprisingly, teachers and students alike often feel
burned out or alienated by the toxic stress created by market-oriented policies
centered on test-based accountability:
People who haven't darkened the door of a public school in decades have
no idea how “accountability” has robbed those institutions of vitality, of
zest, and of the intangible elements that make children want to succeed.
There's only so much brow-beating, only so much drilling, only so many
test-prep worksheets a small mind can endure without zoning out. Later,
when the option is availed, that uninspired child will drop out.
—John Young, Waco Tribune, 10/23/05
While these market-oriented policies have not created any meaningful
improvements in even long-term test score outcomes, multiple book-length
accounts have been published on the wide range of collateral damage these

12
policies have caused for students, teachers, and society (e.g., Bracey, 2009;
Nichols & Berliner, 2009; Ravitch, 2010, 2013; also see Wheatley, 2015a).
Discussion and Implications
What’s most striking about the findings above is that a series of profound
psychological and practical ripple effects were set in motion across an entire
nation simply by assigning primary blame for America’s educational and social
problems to government in general and public education in particular. That
framing, carefully conditioned into the minds of hundreds of millions of
Americans over time, allowed for the market takeover of public education (and
much of society). If we still doubt the power of frames and stories for shaping
policy and the destiny of nations, let’s imagine how American education policy
might have played out if the following story and frames were how most
Americans had understood reality starting in the late 1990s:
“Failed market ideology” is the main cause of the most serious social and
educational problems facing America. The extension of the “unhealthy
priorities” of market-based thinking to the broader society has created
“higher levels of poverty” and “increasing inequality,” which in turn
have caused a “vast array of social dysfunctions,” including “struggling
families, a disappearing middle class, vast educational inequality,
increasingly corrupt and dysfunctional governments,” and “accelerating
environmental destruction.” “Market ideology has failed repeatedly” for
achieving the broader goals we have for people and the planet, and has
backfired badly in public education. “Education is a unique profession,”
profoundly different than manufacturing or for-profit business, and
“educators are everyday heroes” who require substantial “freedom and
autonomy” in order to teach effectively.
We can debate the best wording of such a statement or debate the degree
to which the problems described therein are fully attributable to market-based
thinking and neoliberal policies or are partly due to other factors. However,
there is no debating the fact that if Americans understood their current situation
in light of that story and those kinds of frames, that would lead to very different
policies and practices than came about after America education was framed in
terms of the government-bashing, failing schools, and market-based-solutions
stories. Language matters, and the way we frame educational debates can have
profound implications for which policies and practices seem sensible and which
seem unthinkable. More specifically, while frames such as “measurable
objectives, objective testing, student achievement, value-added assessment,
greater accountability, merit pay, and school choice” all frame our thinking
about education in ways that have an array of negative consequences (Wheatley,
2009, 2015), it is the framing of public schools as failures that created the
possibility for market-based ideology to largely take over American public
education.
Given that the “failing public schools” framing is both deeply misleading
and inevitably creates various negative consequences, how might American
educators and citizens more constructively frame educational debates? The

13
insights from cognitive neuroscience can help guide us in these reframing
efforts.
1) One should never use the language that was designed to promote the
policies you oppose, in this case, frames that associate public
education with failure or that attribute student outcomes wholly to
the performance of schools themselves. That’s right, the
recommendation of Lakoff (2014) and others is to try to never speak
or write those frames, unless you must mention them to in a critique
or use them to establish a shared frame of reference with others.
2) One should develop concise frames and phrases to challenge and
replace the ideas and frames that you oppose. For example, one can
discuss educational inequality as primarily resulting from a “failing
market ideology” or “failing economy” that creates vast inequality
across the board. And we might talk about “America’s remarkably
successful public schools,” a framing that will surprise many listeners
but that is fair given how American schools have performed despite
facing much tougher challenges than those found in other major
developed nations. These frames should be used and repeated
frequently and whenever possible, because frequent repetition plays
a critical role in establishing new frames in listeners’ brains.
3) Develop concise frames and phrases to establish the seed ideas,
values, principles, and practices you consider most beneficial. Thus,
those supporting strong public education with substantial teacher
autonomy and progressive educational practices might promote the
idea that “education is a unique profession,” that “public education is
a national treasure” like our national parks or interstate highway
system, that “teachers are everyday heroes,” and that we want and
need “healthy motivations” for teachers and students alike, and that
all this will require more “freedom and autonomy” for teachers and
learners. To establish these frames in people’s brains, people should
use these phrases whenever they get the opportunity, and repeat
these phrases over and over again.
4) People should be ready with facts and examples to back up this new
way of talking about education. For example, the finding that fourth-
graders in under-10% child poverty schools in America would have
been #1 in the world in reading scores among nations with under
10% child poverty directly contradicts the narrative of general failure
for U.S. schools. However, in terms of effective persuasion, it is
usually more effective to start with compelling stories and concise
reframing anchored in one’s moral values, not with vague
paragraphs or minor details of research findings.
5) Understand that it takes hard work and effort across years to
establish a shared cultural understanding that will then allow you to

14
use short phrases and frames and everyone will know exactly what
you mean (Lakoff, 2014).
The late Robin Williams remarked that “No matter what people tell you,
words and ideas can change the world.” In this article, we have explored how
one powerful way of framing the situation in American schools (and society) has
enabled a profoundly destructive market-based takeover of American K-12
public education. The path to taking back American public education requires us
to apply the same framing principles and strategies that were used as a weapon
against American public schools and their teachers. However, this time, we
should use those framing principles and strategies to promote a more accurate
narrative aimed at the goals we value most for people and the planet, and
anchored in principles of healthy human development and democracy.
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© 2017 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved.
Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 16-30, April 2017
Building Integrated Situations in the Teaching of
Probability and Statistics Oriented to Professional Skills
for Economic Majored Students –
Case Study at Lachong University Viet Nam
Hoan Van Tran and Hang Thuy Nguyen
Lac Hong University
Dong Nai Province, Viet Nam
Abstract. Nowadays, the integration theories are applied to education has
become a theoretical view of teaching and learning popular in the world to
develop learner’s capacity. Teaching methods for integrating practices, impact
on the integration of knowledge with the formation and training of skills, this
teaching method to facilitate for learners to actively participate and improve
practical capacity through integrated learning situations. Probability - Statistics
is a subject that has many applications for the economic majors, applications do
not only stop at the level that the subject is equipped with basic knowledge to
study specialized subjects but also application of knowledge to solve the
economic problems set out in practice. Moreover, teaching Probability - Statistics
should be geared towards practice professional skills for economics students
specified in the learning outcomes. To do this, we researched a number of
integrated teaching situations in probability-statistics with other subjects and
practical economic situations, to meet the learning outcomes of the economic
majors.
Keywords: Learning outcomes; economy; integrated situation;
professional skill; Probability–Statistics.
Introduction
Improving quality, innovation in education and training is a vital criterion in
today's science and technology for a university. Innovation is an indispensable
trend of the times and according to the educational development strategy
reported at the 10th National Party Congress. "Educational development is a top
national policy. Fundamental Innovation and universally reform Vietnam's
education along the direction of standardization, modernization, socialization,
democratization and international integration” (Government, 2012).
Lac Hong University is a multidisciplinary, multi-level educational institutions;
combine training with scientific research and technology transfer in the areas of
engineering technology, economics and the humanities and social. The school

17
ensure to provide and care the conditions of quality learning for everyone in
need of training and retraining; on the other hand ensure to provide human
resources have qualifications, expertise and political savvy for the labor market
at Dong Nai province in particular , and the country in general. Lac Hong
University where manpower training provided directly to the industrial zones,
export processing zones at Dong Nai province and the neighboring regions.
Therefore, the school has set up training program according to rate of 60%
theory and 40% practice and self-study.
In recent years, one of the most important innovation content in Lac Hong
University has implement is establish the standard output with high
requirement. Standard output represents an affirmation of the ones that the
students need to know, understand and be able to do at the end of the
curriculum, including the specific requirements: Knowledge, skills, attitude,
ability to learn and improve, work placement after graduation (Lac Hong,
2015). However, a big question arises “What occupational skills of the students
are equipped and trained how through the process of learning the subjects in the
field of basic science and general knowledge?”.
Teaching of probability and statistics subject is always a topic of interest to many
researchers. Related to this topic, with the learned material, we see three
research trends associated with three goals:
- Help students realize intimately intertwined relationship between Probability
and Statistics.
- Help learners understand the meaning of the basic concepts of Probability -
Statistics.
- Help learners develop statistical thinking.
On the world, with Universities, piece of research of Artigue M. emphasizing the
relations between probability and statistics in economics education (Artigue,
1992), and research of Artaud M. (1993) with doctoral thesis "La
mathématisation en économie comme problème didactique - Une étude
exploratoire" made an analysis about history of mathematics and economics to
indicate that the creation of economic knowledge often associated with
mathematical investigations, research shows that a close relationship between
economics with mathematics, especially with Probability - Statistics theory
(Artaud, 1993).
In Vietnam there have been many studies on teaching the Probability - Statistics
in College and University, some doctoral dissertation authors, such as Trao Van
Phan (2009), Hieu Huu Ta (2010), Tinh Thi Phan (2011), Hoat Tat Ngo (2011),
Yen Thi Hoang Tran (2011), Hai Nam Hoang (2013),…. However, the object to
which the author is interested in training Maths teacher in the field of
Probability - Statistics and to improve the effectiveness of teaching Probability -
Statistics for students but no specific research on teaching Probability - Statistics
target at occupational skills training for economics students.

18
For these reasons above, we have done research “Building integrated situations
in the teaching of probability and statistics oriented to professional skills for
economic majored students at Lac Hong university”
Research methodology
Theoretical method: Analyze, summarize, collect information, research
documents, … to establish theoretical foundation of the topic.
Practical method: Method of observation, survey; Method of mathematical
statistics: Process surveyed and actual data.
Study results and comments
Introduction to integrated teaching
Integrated teaching concept
Integrated teaching is the teaching process in which the teacher organizes
students into teams, create knowledge, skills in many different fields and Many
other personal attributes such as strong-willed, co-operation, creativity,… to
solve learning tasks through it is the formation and development of qualities and
capacity needed (Roegiers 1996, 2004, 2005).
The essence of integrated teaching is teaching theoretical contents combine with
lesson practice and behind the hidden, it is a point of view of competence model
in education (Allal 2001).
Characteristics of integrated teaching
The purpose of integrated teaching is to take form and develop learner
competencies, help learners to solve problems in the practice of life, occupation.
The capacity of nature is the ability of the subject to flexibly and reasonable
organizes the knowledge, skills, attitude, values, motives to meet the complex
requirements of an operation, ensures that the activity is successful in a certain
context (situation); and the method of creating that capacity is integrated
teaching. Integrated teaching has the following characteristics (Roegiers 1996,
2004, 2005), (Gerard & Roegiers, 2003):
- Establish relationships, according to a certain logic of knowledge, different
skills to perform a complex operation.
- Select the information, knowledge and skills that students need to perform
practical activities in learning situations, to integrate them into the world of
life.
- Make the learning process clear and purposeful.
- Teachers do not prioritize the teaching of knowledge and single information,
but students must be able to search, manage, and use knowledge to solve
problems in meaningful situations.

19
- Overcoming the habit of communicating, absorbing discrete and discrete skills
make people "functional illiterates", meaning that they can be crammed with
much information but cannot be used. As such, integrated teaching is reform
to reduce unnecessary knowledge, to increase in useful knowledge. To select
the content that is included in the curriculum, first answer what knowledge is
needed and can make students aware of meaningful situations. Expression of
capacity is knowing how to use the content and skills in a meaningful
situation, not in discrete knowledge (De Ketele, 1996, 2004).
Creating an integrated teaching situation
In teaching, to develop capacity in an integrated perspective, it is necessary to
build a system of practical situations (Roegiers 1996, 2004, 2005), (Su, 2005). The
way to build an integrated situation is:
- First of all, what is the need to identify situations to help develop competencies
for learners?
- Each construction situation needs to meet the following requirements:
+ Contains problems.
+ When dealing with problems, they must apply different knowledge and
manipulate personal qualities.
+ Close to life, occupation of the learners.
+ The situation can be resolved.
- Situation systems toward will help develop the necessary capacity.
- System of integrated situations to be satisfied:
+ Each situation helps to develop some capacity
+ A Chain of situations is designed so that developmental capacities tend
to rise the level of that capacity. (However, Not all capacities are satisfied. "In the
following situations, that capacity must be at a higher level than in the previous
situation. Sometimes the following situations just need to make sure the
requirement to "strengthen" that capacity is available) (Bonniol, 1985), (Wu &
Adams, 2006).
The role and status of the probability and statistics teaching in comparison
with the economic majors's learning outcomes
The contents in the learning outcomes of economic majors under the
CDIO (Crawley et all, 2005) approach
One of the most important jobs done at Lac Hong University is to develop the
learning outcomes of the CDIO approach of each training discipline. After many
edits, up to now the learning outcomes of the school was completed with the
comments of many enterprises, departments and agencies in the area. From the
mission of the school and the annual surveys, the school built "the learning
outcomes 2016" (Benken 2005), (Crawley et all, 2005), (Lac Hong 2015), (Hoan &
Trung 2016):

20
1. KNOWLEDGE AND SPECIALIZED ARGUMENTS
1.1. BASIC SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE
1.1.1. Knowledge of the basic principles of Marxism-
Leninism; Vietnam Communist Party's Revolutionary
Platform; Ho Chi Minh Thought;
1.1.2. Have basic knowledge of mathematics and natural
sciences;
1.1.3. Have knowledge of social sciences and humanities.
1.2. BASIC KNOWLEDGE AND SPECIALTY CORE
KNOWLEDGE
1.2.1. Knowledge of fundamental principles for analyzing
activity in the economy, to grasp the policy issues related to
the overall performance of the economy, to find out some
solutions to achieve the goals of the organization.
1.2.2. Basic knowledge of corporate governance, marketing,
and economic law helps leaders make decisions to achieve the
goals of the organization.
1.2.3. Basic knowledge of Econometrics: Probability and
statistics, Linear programming,… applied to build linear
programming situations to solve real problems in business to
bring out optimal production options for businesses.
1.2.4. Knowledge of construction, estimating, the econometric
model tests used in the analysis, economic forecast, finance.
1.2.5. Basic knowledge about international business as well as
international investment has understood the factors affecting
international business operations, the opportunities as well as
challenges in the current trend of globalization like
regulations and the importance of international investment in
international economic integration.
1.2.6. Basic knowledge of accounting theory: concepts, nature,
functions, objects, purposes and requirements of accounting,
accounting methods, the process of collecting, recording
accounting data, accounting sequence, major business
processes, forms of accounting, content and organizational
forms of accounting work, as well as the preparation and
interpretation of financial statements.
1.2.7. Knowledge of the organization of the accounting
apparatus in various types of enterprises (production,
commercial, administrative careers, bank,…) as well as the
accounting data processing skills of economic operations
arising from the organization.
1.2.8. Basic knowledge of English for economics as well as
writing, speaking and reading skills in knowledge economic
growth in business.
1.2.9. Fundamental knowledge of monetary finance in general
and corporate finance, in particular to take forming new
thinking on monetary finance as well as corporate finance to
approach, to implement policies and economic policy
guidelines in reality.
1.2.10. The basic knowledge about how to use math tools in
financial operations to carry out a financial instruments
valuation, analyze projects, and select investment projects
help managers make the right decisions in business to achieve
high economic efficiency.
1.3. BASIC KNOWLEDGE AND ADVANCED MAJORS
2- SKILLS, PERSONAL QUALITIES AND OCCUPATIONS
2.1 ARGUMENTS THINKING AND SOLVING
ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
2.1.1 Detect and form problems
2.1.2 Generalize the problem
2.1.3 Skills in qualitative assessment and analysis of the
problem
2.1.4 Problem analysis skills when lack of information
2.1.5 Quantitative analysis skills
2.1.6 Problem-solving skills
2.1.7 To take solutions and recommendations
2.2 RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY
2.2.1 Form the hypothesis
2.2.2 Search and synthesis of documents
2.2.3 Experimental studies
2.2.4 Hypothesis testing
2.2.5 Ability to apply research in practice
2.2.6 Skills in collecting, analyzing and processing
information
2.3 SYSTEMS THINKING
2.3.1 Whole thinking /logic
2.3.2 Detect problems and correlations between problems
2.3.3 Identify priority issues
2.3.4 Analyze the choice between problems and find a
balanced solution
2.3.5 Multi-dimensional analysis thinking
2.4 SKILLS AND PERSONAL QUALITIES
2.4.1 Ready to take the lead and cope with risks
2.4.2 Patiently
2.4.3 Flexible
2.4.4 Confident
2.4.5 Laborious
2.4.6 Enthusiastic and passionate about the work
2.4.7 Creative thinking
2.4.8 Critical thinking
2.4.9 Understand and analyze the knowledge, skills, qualities
and attitudes of another individual
2.4.10 Discover and learn from life
2.4.11 Manage time and resources
2.4.12 Adaptive skills with the complexity of reality
2.4.13 Understanding of different cultures
2.4.14 The spirit of honor
2.4.15 Study skills and Self - study
2.4.16 Self management skills
2.4.17 Computer skills
2.5 PROFESSIONAL SKILLS AND QUALITIES
2.5.1 Professional ethics (honest, responsibility và credible)
2.5.2 Professional behavior
2.5.3 Planning skills for careers in the future
2.5.4 Organizational skills and job arrangements
2.5.5 Recognize and catch up with the modern world
economy
2.5.6 Ability to work independently
2.5.7 Confidence in the international working environment
2.5.8 Target skills
2.5.9 Motivational skills to work
2.5.10 Personal and career development skills
2.5.11 Customer and partners care skills
2.5.12 Skills in use english for specific
3- SKILLS AND QUALITIES BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS
(SOCIAL SKILLS)
3.1 WORK IN GROUPS
3.1.1 Create effective teamwork
3.1.2 Group operations
3.1.3 Group development
3.1.4 Team leader
3.1.5 Working skills in different groups
3.2 COMMUNICATION
3.2.1 Communication strategy
3.2.2 Communication structure (how to argue, arrangement
ideas.)
3.2.3 Communication skills documents
3.2.4 Communication skills through email / media
3.2.5 Presentation skills
3.2.6 Communication skills among individuals
3.3 COMMUNICATION IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES
3.3.1. English (Equivalent level B1 according to European
standard or TOEIC 450).

21
Thus, this learning out comes is stated that the content of probability and
statistics knowledge should equip students in economic majors to meet the
learning outcomes. 1.1.2; 1.2.3; 1.2.4; 1.2.10. Beside the content of knowledge, the
probability and statistics teaching can be towards training skills in the learning
outcomes, such as: 2.1.6. Problem-solving skills; 2.2.5. Ability to apply research
in practice; 2.2.6. Skills in collecting, analyzing and processing information; 2.4.7.
Creative thinking; 2.4.8. Critical thinking; 2.4.15. Study skills and self study;
2.4.17. Computer skills; 3.1. teamwork skills; 3.2.5. Presentation skills,…
The above analysis confirms that for the teaching of probability and statistics to
meet the knowledge and skills in the learning outcome built up, teaching should
be equipped toward the knowledge of probability and statistics to apply in
economics and students can use in studying the next module as well as learning
to improve after graduation and application in economics. Not only that, the
probability and statistics teaching towards skills training mentioned in the
learning outcomes.
The role of probability and statistics in the learning outcome of the economic
majors
Probability and statistics is a basic subject and today, knowledge of this field has
penetrated into almost every field and science. Knowledge about scientific
probability as well as statistics have been widely applied (Devore 2004). This is
one of the basic knowledge of the module that the Ministry of Education and
Training has defined as a compulsory subject for students in economics,
medicine, chemistry and the environment.…
The characteristic of probability and statistics is "finding stability in the
seemingly unstable, indispensable in the randomness by mathematical methods"
(Hayter, 2007), (Devore 2004). Incident is an indispensable part of life. Probability
and statistics becomes an important science subject, especially its applications. In
fact, individuals sometimes encounter situations in front of multiple choices
before deciding, the exact decision will lead they to success. Probability statistics
is necessary, It is an indispensable tool when economists need a basis to make
the final decision on their business strategies (Hayter, 2007).

22
Figure 1. Relationship between probability statistics and subjects of the
economic majors
Probability statistics equips economists, future engineers in the process of
collecting and processing information. It is a prerequisite to other subjects such
as Corporate Finance, Econometrics, Stock Market, Risk Management,
Insurance,...
Moreover, with particular applications in Mathematics should be training of
basic mathematical skills such as: generalizations, especially, modeling, detect
and solve problems... Learning probability and statistics is also contributing to
training the occupational skills associated with economics students, such as:
gathering skills, statistical data processing; observation skills; analytical skills,
decisions through estimation problems, accreditation; skills in information
technology applications; teamwork skills… These skills are an indispensable
part of the requirements for occupational skills for economics students that
"Learning outcomes" of Lac Hong University was set out. But, how to teach
probability and statistics to contribute to meeting the learning outcomes in Lac
Hong University is still a question without answers.
For these reasons above, we have done research “Training occupational skills
through teaching probability – statistics for economic majors ”
Reality of teaching probability and statistics subjects to the requirements of
the learning outcomes at Lac Hong University
In (Hoan, 2014) have pointed out that, teaching of probability and statistics at
school exist on limitations the following:
The practice of problem-solving skills have not shown more in the lectures. Most
lecturers taught in the traditional way is mainly (cognitive knowledge and
application of knowledge to solve specific exercises), leading to not practice
problem solving skills for students.
Don’t focus on assessment with practical subject contents. Example for the tests,
final exams have many properties of mathematics and applied to all majors,
without the installation practical problems for students in specific occupations.

23
No application of information technology in teaching an effective. At present,
most instructors only instruct students to compute by pocket calculator without
using the tool as a specific software (such as Maple, Mathematica,…) for solving
specific math problems like technique for students
Not to promote self-learning ability, ability to work collectively of students
through group exercises, assignments homework. Now, the school has not
compiled the major assignments of the subject, resulting in the training of the
above skills not yet implemented for this subject.
This reality led to the final examination results module of probability and
statistics is low, the number of students retake a test, repeat a module is high.
Moreover, the majority of students said that this is a difficult subject and not the
application-oriented subject for his/her specialized subjects as well as training
skills through this course. This is most evident in assessment of student for
teachers in the subject. For example, the content of questions, such as: 1)
Lecturers provide references to students by setting many problems related to the
subject; 2) Lecturer held for student group activities; and 3) Your comments
about the quality of teaching in this course. With selected items for students: a)
Totally disagree; b) Disagree; c) No comments; d) Agree; and e) Totally agree,
the students' answers are usually c: No comments.
Thus, teaching probability and statistics acccording to results of the survey
(Hoan, 2014) is not meet the requirements set forth in the school's learning
outcomes. Specifically, in criteria such as:
The content of probability and statistics is general knowledge, theoretical heavy,
not directly applied to economic majors.
Teaching is not organized towards of training professional skills for students as
defined in the learning outcomes
The integrated teaching method allows the selection of content into curriculum
and can make students apply their knowledge to specific job situations. On the
other hand, knowledge is also equipped to train the skills in a meaningful
situation, not just to equip the knowledge discrete.
The above analysis shows that research is needed "Give some integrated
situations in teaching of probability and statistics oriented to professional skills
for the students economic majors at Lac Hong University" is very necessary
requirement.
Some integrated situations in the teaching of probability and statistics
oriented to professional skills for students economic majors
Some practice skills for students through teaching situations are (Roegiers 1996,
2004, 2005; Hoan, 2015; Hoan & Hang, 2016; Schoenfeld, 1992).
- Skills in using mathematical language
- Skills in modeling a practical situation
- Problem-solving and decision-making skills

24
- Application research skills in practice
- Skills in collecting, analyzing and processing information
To solve the problem contained in the situation, students must apply the
following knowledge:
- Knowledge of probability and statistics: random variables, probabilities in the
classical sense, probability and statistics, expectations, variance of random
variables,…
- Basic knowledge of economics, such as risk measurement, optimal coverage,
utility function, expected return E(R), risk, balances…
Situation 1. Apply probability and statistics to solve the problem of insurance
Exercise. Suppose you have a motorbike worth 10 million VND. A company
invites you to buy insurance with the following conditions: Every year, you pay
a certain premium, if you lost the car, the insurance company will reimburse you
8 million (equivalent to 80% of the value of the car). How much is the highest
premium you accepting? Now, suppose you read the People's Police Newspaper
and know that in the past year, the rate of motorcycle theft in the city was 0.1%
(that is, with 1000 motorcycles, 1 motorcycles was stolen). How does this new
information affect the decision on the maximum premium you accept?
Problem situation, given: A person thinking how to protect personal property?
The solution that most people accept is to buy insurance for their motorcycles.
However, whether buying or not buying insurance, he still faces the risk of being
stolen. So, what to do to minimize losses, This question directs students to task
the mathematical expectations model to calculate the expected level of expected
holdings of all possible cases. We have to compare between two cases: When to
buy insurance and not to buy insurance?
Table 1. Cases of insurance fees
Insurance
Lost
(p = 0,1%)
Not lost
(p = 99,9%)
Expected asset value
(E (X))
Yes 0 million 10 million (99,9%). 10 million
No
(0,1%). 8
million
10 million
(99,9%) 10 + (0,1%) 8
million
Thus, if you buy insurance, expected asset value to be:
1EV (99,9%).10(million) (0,1%).8(million) IF   , with IF is insurance fees. If
not, buy insurance, expected asset value is:
2EV (99,9%).10(million) (0,1%).0 (99,9%).10(million)   . So, if only based
on the level of expectations to make decisions, you will buy insurance if
1 2EV EV , it means IF < 8.000 VND. This fee is 8.000 VND called fair premium
after performing all these calculations, we try to ask ourselves again what is the
maximum premium we can accept? And if the premium is not 8,000VND but
10,000VND, are we willing to buy insurance?

25
From a real situation in class, It is possible to draw some initial comments
related to the problem for students as follows: Why do we buy insurance
(demand for insurance)? We buy insurance to reduce variability in consumption.
Note that you only need to spend 8,000 VND a year you are not afraid of empty
hands when losing a motorcycle anymore. Thus, variability or variance is one of
the measures of risk. In statistics, people use the variance to measure the
variability of a random variable. “Variability” here means that the variance of
the mean (or expected value) (Thoyts, 2010).
Starting from the practical problem, students can ask questions: Will the
company always sell the desired amount of insurance? The rate of theft this year
increased over last year?,... Therefore, the insurers themselves are also at risk
when carrying out insurance projects above. What do they do to minimize the
risks they will face? This is precisely the premise for students to enter into new,
expanded and inherited models of mathematical and new economic model,
broader and inheritance of probability models was built from Application of
probability and statistics, such as: profit, risk, risk measurement, risk mitigation,
profit maximization, the application of choice in business,...
Situation 2. Apply probability and statistics of calculating the expected return
on financial investment (Integrate with the stock market subject and
Corporate Finance) (Hallwood & Ronald MacDonald, 2010)
Exercise. Mr. An works for a company with a monthly cumulative of 30,000,000
VND and is considering two investment channels as follows:
- Option 1: This amount will be deposited into the bank with a stable interest of
1,800,000 VND/year.
- Option 2: Investing in a stock market of 100,000 VND to buy a stock will
receive an annual dividend of 5,000 VND/year and after one year, expected
market price of that stock is 105,000 VND.
This is the result Mr. An obtained after collecting data, using calculations (which
in fact, many investors use Probability models) to process the data..
Problem situation, given: Which strategy is optimal?
Consider plan A: If Mr.An deposited money in the bank and then earn 1.800.000
VND/year, it means rate of profit equal to 1.800.000/30.000.000 = 6%/year.
Consider plan B: If Mr.An invested in securities, his investment information as
follows:
- The investment amount is 100,000 VND
- Income after 1 year of investment is: 5.000 + (105.000 - 100.000) = 10.000/ stock
(this is Stock market subject)
- Rates of profit = 10.000/100.000 = 10%/year
Thus, if you invest in the stock, the return on investment includes stock
dividends (5,000 VND/stock) and income from securities increased (5,000
VND/share), with Mr.An's 30 million VND can buy 300 stocks and earn

26
respectively 3,000,000 VND (300 stock x 10,000 VND/stock) (this is Business
finance subjet)
Therefore, in terms of margins to evaluate the efficiency of investment, we
choose option 2, which is to invest in stocks, the yield will be higher. However,
the risks of the two options are different. If Mr. An deposited into the bank will
have a profit of 6% per year. If Mr. An buys stock and holds until the end of the
year, he may or may not have the expected dividend as the stock price may
fluctuate up or down, so Option 2 to suffer a loss. In terms of the degree of risk,
it is clear that depositing money in a bank can not be considered as risky, but if
investing in stocks, the probability of stock price volatility is higher. This shows
that the choice of higher expected value always has a higher risk, that is, the
expected return and risk are two variable quantities in the same direction. This
problem continues to be covered in detail in the subjects: Economics of
Investment, Choice Uncertainty,...
Situation 3. Application of probability and statistics to solve the problem of
choosing a business plan (Integration with Management Accounting subjects)
(John Burns at all, 2013), (Moore & McCabe, 2006)
Exercise. At HAT company, there are data on the results of business operations
in accordance with the balance of receivables in November 2016 as follows:
(consumption of 4,500 products), Unit: 1,000 VND
Table 2. Data on the results of business operations in accordance with the balance of
receivables in November 2016 At HAT company
December, executives want to increase profits over the previous month, so they
have offered to reduce selling price by 2,000 VND/product and increase the cost
of advertising on the media by 8,000,000 VND (this is Management accounting
subject). So, the question is put: Will the proposed management plan become
feasible?
Problem situation, given: Is the proposed management plan feasible?
Before the situation, Financial analysts conduct calculations of probabilities
happens when put this plan into the business model of the company. To do that,
they conduct a market survey and assume that after studying the market survey
results of the sample survey at some business agents when implementing the
above plan, as follows: Consumption is expected to increase from 20% to 50%,
with the probability that consumption increase by 20% is 60%, the probability
that consumption will increase by 50% is 40%.
Total
Calculated for 1
product
Rate
1. Revenue 300.000 60 100%
2. Variable cost 225.000 45 75%
3. Contribution margin (CM) 75.000 15 25%
4. Fixed cost 25.000
5. Profit 50.000

27
From the results of the probability survey, the accountant can calculate the profit
(loss) corresponding to the survey results:
- If consumption of products increase by 20% then:
+ Unit Contribution margin = (60.000 - 2.000) - 45.000 = 13.000
VND/product.
+ Increased receivables: (5.000 x 120% x 13.000) – 75.000.000 =
3.000.000 VND
+ Profit increased: 3.000.000 – 8.000.000 = -5.000.000 VND (Profit decreases
7.000.000 VND)
- If consumption of products increase by 50% then:
+ Increased receivables: (5.000 x 150% x 13.000) - 75.000.000 = 22.500.000
VND
+ Profit increased: 22.500.000 – 8.000.000 = 14.500.000 VND
Inferred, the increase in profitability when calculating is: -5.000.000x60% +
14.500.000x40% = 2.800.000 VND (Profit increased 2.8 million VND).
The results show that the proposed management model can bring additional
profits for the company. Thus, the company should implement this option.
In the above situation, students realize that conducting surveys and collecting
data by application of probability and statistics model allows the enterprise to
verify the feasibility of a business plan from which to make the decision. Should
the business plan be implemented?
Research results and survey
Content, methods, evaluation aims and object of surveying
With the aim of evaluating the effectiveness of the application of teaching
methods towards occupational skills training for students through these
integrated situations in the teaching of probability and statistics, after impact
methods with the lecturer about integrated situations in charge of subject, we
conducted a survey on the subject is first year student of Faculty of Finance and
Accounting and Faculty of International economic business, Lac Hong
University, school years: 2015 to 2016. Votes have clear data to use for statistics
in the survey was N = 152.
Research methodology, at the time survey: Information and Documentation
Center of Lac Hong University conducted a survey on student course
evaluations after students semester exam in that subject, the survey was carried
out through the website.
Tools and content assessment survey: Questionnaire for the survey includes 20
questions with level scale: 5 = totally agree, 4 = agree, 3 = no ideas, 2 = disagree,
1 = totally disagree.
Survey results
Survey findings are taken from Information and Documentation Center of Lac
Hong University (Here only lists of questions related to skills-table 3).

28
Table 3. Course evaluation results of Probabilily and Statistics courses of students in
academic year 2015 - 2016
Survey results show that the majority of students agree with the comments set
out, in there the rate agree and totally agree, high in the critical comments
related to teaching towards skills training in standard learning outcomes.
Specific question No. 1: “During school hours, Teacher guides for students:
using mathematical language and modeling a practical situation” have 95.39%
students, question No. 2: “During school hours, Teachers guides for students:
using mathematical tools to solve practical problems” have 92,1% students,
question No. 3: “During school hours, Teachers focus on developing expression
skills, problem-solving skills and decision-making skills of students” have
94,74% students choice answers are agree and totally agree. This insists that
these integrated situations in the teaching of probability and statistics have
contributed to the teaching of subjects respond to standard learning outcomes,
as well as contact with the practical applications for job from Probability –
Statistics course.
Conclusions
Thus, creating integrated situations in the teaching of probability and statistics
has initially oriented teaching for economics students in order to purpose of
training professional skills.
The results initially showed that students learn probability and statistics in a
more positively, in particular the ability to apply probability and statistics to
solving occupational issues has been significantly improved. That helps us have
a well-founded, synchronized goal, the content and method of teaching
associated with vocational training to achieve the developmental learning
outcomes.
Ordinal CONTENT SURVEY
STUDENT'S
COMMENTS
1 2 3 4 5
1
During school hours, Teacher guides for
students: using mathematical language and
modeling a practical situation
0 0 7 135 10
2
During school hours, Teachers guides for
students: using mathematical tools to solve
practical problems
1 2 9 130 10
3
During school hours, Teachers focus on
developing: problem-solving skills and
decision-making skills of students
0 1 7 126 18
4
Lesson content connects with the real life, in
association with future career majors
0 3 7 132 10

29
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l'approche par les compétences, Mesure et évaluation (à paraître).
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Thomson, USA.
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TTg dated 16 - 06-2012, Ha Noi.
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Boeck Université.
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Lac Hong University, Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy, Journal of Science,
59(93), p.165–169.
Hoan V. T. (2015), Some measures to train problem-solving skill through teaching
probability – statistics for economic majored students at Lac Hong University,
Hue University, Journal of Science, Vol. 105, No. 6.
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---The end---
Full name of the author 1: Hoan Van Tran
Degree: MSc degree
Address: Lac Hong University - Dong Nai Province
PhD student at Viet Nam Institute of Educational Sciences (VNIES) - specialization:
theory and methods of teaching mathematics. Phone: 0973.851.989
Email: tranhoan.math@gmail.com
Full name of the author 2: Hang Thuy Nguyen
Degree: MAc degree
Address: Lac Hong University - Dong Nai Province
Phone: 0937967099
Email: nth2299@gmail.com

31
Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 31-53, April 2017
A Framework for the Creation of Leap Motion
Gestural Interfaces for Handwriting Education to
Children with Development Coordination
Disorder
Leonardo Ramon Nunes de Sousa
Mackenzie Presbyterian University and Federal University of Piauí
Teresina, PI, Brazil
Ismar Frango Silveira
Mackenzie Presbyterian University
São Paulo, SP, Brazil
Abstract. Gestural interfaced-based computational tools can be more
suitable than other kinds of interfaces during calligraphy education to
children with Developmental Coordination Disorder. The touchless
tools reduce difficulties with handwriting of these pupils because they
do not require physical contact and they dispense efforts of fine motor
skills needed to perform calligraphy. They also serve as a motivational
tool and they are more intuitive than touchscreen and graphical user
interfaces. This paper deals with concepts of Development Coordination
Disorder and human-computer interaction principles and it proposes a
framework with a set of specific guidelines for software for the
development of gestural interfaces for calligraphy education to children
with DCD. Containing 25 guidelines in 3 stages – Prototyping,
Development and Evaluation, this model takes into account the
characteristics of DCD and recognizes fine motor skills technologies,
relating all proposed guidelines to each other and supports the creation
of appropriate gestural interfaces to assist these children at this school
stage.
Keywords: Gestural Interfaces; Framework; Guidelines; Developmental
Coordination Disorder; Handwriting.
First Considerations
As gestural interfaces for children calligraphy learning are often inappropriate
or poorly designed (Saffer, 2008), it is recommended that the development of
these interfaces starts with its framework which contains a number of guidelines
to be followed and can be adapted to the reality of the process of teaching
handwriting to children with DCD, taking into account those devices that have

32
the characteristic of recognizing fine movements without tactile response, for
example, Leap motion (Nunes & Silveira, 2015b), (Nunes & Silveira, 2015c).
A framework, therefore, is a type of system or model to formalize a
conceptual process, capturing a common feature among different concepts
(Ferguson, Jelsma, Versfeld & Smits-Engelsman, 2014) and allow the reuse of
these definitions for analysis, design, implementation and testing, being
commonly used in the software programming area in computers (Landin,
Niklasson, Bosson & Regnell, 1995) and helping in the development of interfaces
(Johnson & Deutsch, 1993).
The advantage of using a framework is that it acts as a paradigm for the
development of something in accordance with an established standard, saving
additional time and research work, as the whole process is regulated, besides
productivity benefits in creating new tools, with reliability and quality, as well
as updating and constant maintenance of the model. A disadvantage has to be
the time spent in the creation of formulations and settings.
Therefore to use a framework, there is need of an analysis for a complete
understanding and handling during implementation in accordance with their
recommendations.
I. Developmental Coordination Disorder
Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a disorder linked to fine and
gross motor coordination with children and adults who commit to academic
achievement, physical education and everyday activities such as dressing,
personal hygiene, nutrition, social interaction/relationships and health, without
any clinically evident brain injury/damage. It is mainly characterized by spatial,
motor, postural and verbal difficulties, compromising movements, perceptions,
thought and language (Polatajko & Cantin, 2005), (Magalhães, Cardoso &
Missiuna, 2011), (Portwood, 2013).
People with DCD have an intellectual capacity in accordance with the
general population, but the presentation and difficulties of the disorder can vary
between individuals and may change in accordance with environmental
demands and life expectancy. For some, however, its impact is persistent and
significant up to adulthood, affecting daily life and creating problems with time
management, organization and planning (Kirby, Edwards & Sugden, 2011),
(Kirby, Sugden & Purcell, 2014).
It is estimated that there are 5% to 6% up to 22% of school-age children
with DCD, with 2% severely affected. In the general population, the number of
DCD prevalence is between 5% and 7%, most frequently with males (Martin,
Piek & Hay, 2006), (Cardoso & Magalhães, 2009), (Ferguson et al., 2014).
Discussing the difficulties that DCD presents before, the problem of
space is many times confusing for subjects, concerning concepts like high, low,
near or far, as well as the shapes and sizes of figures used in writing (Wilson &
Mckenzie, 1998), (Vaivre-Douret et al., 2011).
With neurological motor dysfunction, DCD prevents the brain from
performing all its functions, compromising balance, generating imprecision and
slowness (Geuze, 2003). The areas that suffer most are changes in body posture
and temporal-spatial orientation (Ferguson et al., 2014). The stance is reflected in
movements lacking rhythm and little control (Fong, Ng & Yiu, 2013). In some

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