中小学教师信息技术应用能力现状及培训建议

信息技术能力已成为信息化社会教师必备的专业能力,2014年6月,教育部颁布了《中小学教师信息技术应用能力标准(试行)》,开启了中小学教师新一轮信息技术应用能力提升培训。为了了解现阶段中小学教师信息技术应用能力水平,为能力提升培训的实施提供依据。该文以湖北、河南、安徽和广西四个省市中35个市区的414名中小学教师为调研对象,从标准的角度对其信息化应用能力现状开展较为全面的调研。结果表明中小学教师应用信息技术优化课堂教学能力的达标情况优于转变学习方式的能力。根据测评结果对中小学教师信息应用能力培训提出建议,也为我国推进信息化环境下教师队伍的建设提供借鉴。     

基于建构主义学习理论的教师专业发展

建构主义学习理论是当代主流的学习理论,其核心观点包括以下三个方面:学习是学习者的主动建构过程;学习依赖于个体已有的经验以及真实的情境;学习离不开社会性的交往和对话。以建构主义学习理论为基础的教师专业发展呈现出如下特征:教师专业发展是教师主动建构专业知识的过程;教师专业发展必须依托于真实的实践情境;教师专业发展离不开教师与专业伙伴的合作与对话。     

形成性评价在英文报刊阅读教学中的实践探讨

英文报刊阅读课程主要针对学生的阅读、翻译和语言综合运用能力进行培养.形成性评价运用于英文报刊阅读课程中,可以通过跟踪学习过程有效整合语言知识技能目标、文化目标和人文素养目标三者的达成度评价,这样不仅能够弥补以书面考试为主的终结性评价方式的不足,而且也有利于充分激发和维持学生的英语学习热情,培养学生的自我评价能力,发挥学生学习的主观能动性,培养学生的思辨能力、自主学习能力、自我管理能力和自我约束能力,在获得成就感的同时增强学习英语的自信心.教学实践证明,在英文报刊阅读教学中采用教师观察、自评互评、学习档案、访谈等形成性评价手段,能够充分尊重学生个体差异和学习优势,提升学习效果.与此同时授课教师可以及时发现英文报刊阅读教学中存在的问题,及时改进教学,提升教学效果.     

Teacher perspectives on partnerships on families of children with autism

The success of students with disabilities in school and community largely relies on productive family professional partnerships (FPPs). The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004) recognises the importance of family collaboration to student success by mandating that parents be involved in the Individualised Education Plan (IEP) process as full team members. While several previous studies examined the perspectives of parents of children with disabilities on partnerships with educators, less research exists on teacher perspectives on family professional collaborations. Additionally, there are even fewer studies that focus on teacher perspectives on partnerships with parents of children with autism, a disability category which continues to increase in prevalence. The present study contributes to the literature by examining teacher perspectives on factors that build and hinder positive partnerships with families of children with autism. Researchers surveyed 25 Special Education teachers and conducted additional individual interviews and open-ended questionnaires to examine teachers' first-hand experiences. Findings identified four common themes that educators felt helped and hindered collaborative relationships with families. Study results may lead to the development of specific family professional collaboration strategies that can be implemented and discussed in school districts, teacher trainings, pre-service teacher education programs and family workshops.     

Building the expert teacher prototype: A metasummary of teacher expertise studies in primary and secondary education

While expert teachers remain a frequent focus of research in education, to date there have been very few attempts to conduct systematic reviews of this literature. This paper presents the findings of the first systematic metasummary of research on teacher expertise in K12 education (primary/elementary and secondary levels), based on analysis of 106 empirical studies from 16 countries involving 1124 teachers identified as experts. The inductively-developed coding framework was applied independently by both authors to the dataset to generate agreement counts for specific coding themes, firstly for specific domains of teacher expertise, and then stratified to compare primary and secondary studies. We present 73 specific features organised into six domains in our expert teacher prototype. Salient findings indicate that, with regard to professional practice, expert teachers reflect extensively and often critically on their practice, help their colleagues frequently, and are continuous learners throughout their careers. Concerning knowledge, we find that expert teachers have well-developed pedagogical content knowledge and knowledge about their learners. In the domain of pedagogic practice, we observe that expert teachers display flexibility in the classroom, build strong interpersonal relationships with their learners, whom they engage through their choice of activities and content, and frequently make use of strategies typically emphasised in both constructivist and learner-centred education literatures. We offer our prototype as a useful initial sketch of family resemblance among expert teachers rather than a checklist of necessary or expected features of expertise, also cautioning that the prototype remains far from complete.     

The Domain-Specificity of Elementary School Teachers’ Judgment Accuracy

Teachers’ diagnostic competence for accurately judging students’ achievement is essential for instructional practice and professional decisions. To promote their judgment accuracy, it is important to know if this is a general or domain-specific skill. We investigated teachers’ judgment accuracy in German language (one subdomain: reading) and mathematics (two subdomains: geometry; stochastics) and examined differences across domains (i.e., German and mathematics) and across subdomains (reading; geometry; stochastics). We examined the judgment accuracy of 59 German elementary school teachers who teach both German and mathematics, judging the achievement of 1227 students in the three subdomains. We conducted multilevel analyses with a subsample of 39 teachers and 787 students and calculated different accuracy components (i.e., rank, level, and differentiation) to examine the comparability of our results. In line with prior research, findings revealed that teachers’ judgments were fairly accurate. However, there were significant differences between teachers’ average judgment accuracy in different subdomains (between-person comparisons) and no or only a weak relation between individual teachers’ judgment accuracy in different subdomains (within-person comparisons). Findings support the notion that teachers’ judgment accuracy of student achievement is domain-specific with respect to the investigated subdomains. Practical implications for the promotion of teacher judgment accuracy are discussed.     

教师发展对转变教师教学方式的影响

生物教师发展是指生物教师在知识、教学经验以及理念上不断成长的过程。文章分析了生物教师发展的内涵所包含的三个方面,以及生物教师在这三个方面的发展对转变生物教师的教学方式的重要影响,并提出了促进生物教师发展的方法。     

Intercultural Communication Training for English Language Teachers: A Case Study of an Immersion Program for South Korean Teachers

Little research has been conducted that explores connections between the fields of intercultural communication and English-language instruction. To address this gap, we report on an intercultural communication course delivered as an integral part of a short-term professional development immersion program for English-language teachers from South Korea. Study results indicate that intercultural communication training served to enhance participants’ pragmatics awareness along with sensitivity regarding sociocultural influences on communication that they experienced in situ. After the four-week course, most of the participants expressed desire and readiness to integrate intercultural communication into their teaching in South Korea. Intercultural communication training promises to complement pragmatics instruction aiming at improving English-language learning and teaching.     

Achievement and engagement: How student characteristics influence teacher judgments

Teachers' judgments of student characteristics are affected not only by the characteristic in question, but also by other factors. This article presents three studies examining whether students' achievement influences teachers' judgments of their engagement (as a proxy for motivation) and vice versa. First, a field study was conducted with N = 52 teachers and N = 1135 students. Structural equation modeling revealed an effect of student achievement on teacher judgments of student engagement and an effect of student engagement on teacher judgments of student achievement—above and beyond the association of each student characteristic with teacher judgments of that characteristic. These results were then replicated in two experimental studies involving a computer simulation of an instructional situation, the Simulated Classroom, with N = 40 and N = 181 teacher candidates, respectively. The psychological determinants of the effects observed are discussed, as are their practical implications.