Teachers’ Perspectives on a Professional Development Intervention to Improve Science Instruction Among English Language Learners

Our 5-year professional development intervention is designed to promote elementary teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and practices in teaching science, along with English language and mathematics for English Language Learning (ELL) students in urban schools. In this study, we used an end-of-year questionnaire as a primary data source to seek teachers’ perspectives on our intervention during the first year of implementation. Teachers believed that the intervention, including curriculum materials and teacher workshops, effectively promoted students’ science learning, along with English language development and mathematics learning. Teachers highlighted strengths and areas needing improvement in the intervention. Teachers’ perspectives have been incorporated into our on-going intervention efforts and offer insights into features of effective professional development initiatives in improving science achievement for all students.

What Can We Do to Improve English?

This morning, I asked some of my classmates what they do to improve their English. Gretel said, reading English newspaper can improve her English. Linda said that watching English programs is very good for her English. Jack and Bill think playing English games is the best way to improve their English. And I think reading English books is very improtant to our English study. Books are our greatest friends.Most students choose reading Englishbooks,writing English articles to improvethei…     

How Can Blogging Help Teachers Realize the Goals of Reform-based Science Instruction? A Study of Nine Classroom Blogs

Science teachers struggle with meeting curricular goals outlined by professional organizations within the constraints of traditional school. Engaging science learners as a community who collaboratively and creatively co-construct scientific understanding through inquiry requires teachers to adopt new tools as well as a different mindset about the kind of classroom culture they need to nurture. Classroom blogs (i.e., blogs that are managed by a teacher for his/her students to post their work and exchange ideas) have been purported in the literature as offering unique opportunities to achieve this goal, although with little empirical support thus far. To fill this gap, nine classroom blogs were selected through an extensive search, and systematically analyzed to determine how the teachers’ instructional designs and classrooms’ enactment were able to capitalize on the specific affordances blogging may offer to support reform-based learning goals. The shift in teacher mindset needed to realize blogging affordances occurred as teachers engaged with students in the process of ‘living’ the classroom blog.     

How Can Brain Research Inform Academic Learning and Instruction?

This paper explores the potential of neuroscience for improving educational practice by describing the perspective of educational psychology as a linking science; providing historical context showing educational psychology’s 100-year search for an educationally relevant neuroscience; offering a conceptual framework for the connections among neuroscience, cognitive science, educational psychology, and educational practice; and laying out a research agenda for the emerging field of educational neuroscience.     

Can Increasing Teachers’ Teaching Autonomy Help Improve Instructional Quality? — Based on the Results of TALIS 2018

Teaching autonomy is an important power of teachers as professionals and also a key factor affecting instructional quality. Based on the relevant data of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018, this study analyzes teachers’ teaching autonomy and its effect on instructional quality. It finds that, firstly, as compared to those in the countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), teachers in Shanghai, China, have greater teaching autonomy, but there is still room for improvement in this regard. They have sufficient autonomy in determining the instructional content and disciplining students, but not in assessing students’ learning. Secondly, increasing the teaching autonomy in Shanghai can significantly improve instructional quality. Increasing their autonomy in assessing students’ learning has the greatest effect on improving instructional quality, while increasing the autonomy in choosing teaching methods has the least effect, which is culturally different from the situation in OECD countries. Thirdly, the influence of teaching autonomy on instructional quality is positively moderated by teaching efficacy, which means that teachers need to have the “ability” in addition to the “autonomy.” Based on this, suggestions are also made.     

Teachers Can Engage Disengaged Students

适用对象:中学英语教师学习是学生和老师共同努力的目标.列于学生上课注意力不集中. 不积极参与课堂活动、学习积极性不高的情况.除了学生自身的原因,你可还会想到从自己方面寻找改善的方法吗?     

Mathematics Teachers’ Approaches to Computer‐based Instruction

Schon (1987) has criticized the normative curriculum of professional schools including technical colleges: at first basic science (mathematics, physics, etc.), then applied science, and finally technical skills of day‐to‐day practice. In Schön's opinion, the tradition of professional education is an obstacle to changing teaching methods from drill and practice to open‐learning environments. Solomon (1986) presents the different approaches which teachers take in computer‐based instruction in stages from drill and practice to open‐learning environments. This paper reports a six‐year case study, inspired by the work of Schön and Solomon, on the impact of, and the teachers’ role in, the use of computers and Mathcad in the mathematics instruction of technical colleges. The teaching experiment was started with 51 first‐year students during the academic year 1988‐1989 at the Technical Institute of Jyvaskyld. The class of mechanical engineering had 162 and the class of electrical engineering 206 lessons of mathematics during the first experimental year. Two senior lecturers of mathematics taught the classes. Before the experiment, computers had never been used in mathematics instruction at the institute. The various ways of using Mathcad were classified on the basis of the forms filled and files saved by the teachers, as well as on the notes made by the researcher. The teachers’ ways of using computers in our experiment during the years 1988‐1995 clearly showed the existence of stages. Some of the stages were the same for both teachers, but there were also some differences. Both teachers started by fitting an open computer‐based environment into the traditional instruction.     

Preservice Teachers’ Conceptions and Enactments of Project-Based Instruction

We present results of an investigation of preservice secondary mathematics and science teachers’ conceptions of project-based instruction (PBI) and their enactments of PBI in apprentice (student) teaching. We evaluated their thinking and implementations within a composite framework based on the work of education researchers. We analyzed survey responses, both qualitatively and statistically, from three cohorts of preservice teachers both before and after apprentice teaching. In addition we interviewed and observed a subset of these future teachers. We found that in general the preservice teachers held superficial views of PBI, as compared to the researcher framework. Participants reported time and curriculum restrictions as major barriers; however, teachers for whom enactment of PBI was presented as an explicit goal, and who were given support toward that end, were more likely to enact authentic implementations, regardless of previous reservations about PBI. Without this additional scaffolding, even teachers with high affinity for PBI were unlikely to implement it authentically.     

Why Automate Instruction?

Automation of instruction can satisfy current needs to increase educational quantity and quality in business, industry and education. Though the ideas are not new, automation gives the first practical opportunity for widespread application. Automated instructional systems include teaching machines, individual "closed-loop" tutoring situations and "feedback" from the student to the machine. These systems exploit the principles of knowledge of results, reward immediacy of reinforcement, participation and individual differences. As a result, teaching is speeded up and improved as students understand and retain better. Automation of instruction will continue to be exploited as it increases in complexity and man-machine relationships. Benefits will be widespread, improving especially teachers' efficiency and market value as well as the nation's means to challenge, effectively, Communism's world-wide competition.     

When Can We Improve Subscores by Making Them Shorter?: The Case Against Subscores with Overlapping Items

Subscores can be of diagnostic value for tests that cover multiple underlying traits. Some items require knowledge or ability that spans more than a single trait. It is thus natural for such items to be included on more than a single subscore. Subscores only have value if they are reliable enough to justify conclusions drawn from them and if they contain information about the examinee that is distinct from what is in the total test score. In this study we show, for a broad range of conditions of item overlap on subscores, that the value of the subscore is always improved through the removal of such items.     

Can Rural Community Initiatives Improve Learning Outcomes in Local Primary Schools?

We evaluate the impact of initiatives of a rural community in Bukedea District (Eastern Uganda) aimed at improving learning at their local primary school (School A) between 2016 and 2018. We focus on how these community-driven initiatives influenced enrollment, survival, infrastructure development and academic outcomes (test scores) at the local school. As a natural control, we use a primary school (School B) where such initiatives were non-existent. Using methodologies developed by UWEZO, we also collect and analyze household socio-economic data from both communities to develop possible explanations for the observed outcomes. The approaches, achievements and lessons described in this study may inform efforts to improve learning environments at rural primary schools through community involvement.     

Can Providing Rubrics for Writing Tasks Improve Developing Writers' Calibration Accuracy?

Rubric-referenced calibration and the interaction between writing achievement and calibration, a measure of the relationship between one's performance and the accuracy of one's judgments, were investigated. Undergraduate students (N = 596) were assigned to one of three calibration conditions: (a) global, (b) global and general criteria, or (c) global and detailed criteria. Students in all three conditions provided global predictions and postdictions of essay exam scores. Although calibration judgments by condition did not affect calibration accuracy overall, statistically significant main effects were found between calibration accuracy by criteria and prior achievement. High achievers made more-accurate predictions and postdictions by criteria than low achievers. Regardless of achievement level, those students in the detailed rubric condition had higher postdictive accuracy for the organization criteria than did students in the general rubric condition.     

Chinese EFL Teachers’ Attitudes toward Corpus Use in Collocation Instruction

The purpose of the present study was to investigate Chinese EFL(English as a Foreign Language)teachers’attitudes toward corpus use in collocation instruction.Fourteen Chinese EFL teachers from seven different colleges or universities answered a questionnaire asking their perceptions about corpus use in collocation instruction.The statistical analysis revealed that significant difference(t=2.449,df.=9,p=.0370.1)was found between males and females in their perception of the learnability of the searching technique in collocation corpus.Besides,the result also revealed that significant differences were found between novice and experienced teachers’perception of helpfulness of corpus in writing native-like sentences(t=5.75,df=11,p0.1),identifying collocation errors in English(t=5.75,df=11,p0.1),usefulness of corpus in searching for English collocations(t=2.93,df=12,p0.1),and advocacy of corpus to colleagues(t=5.75,df=11,p0.1).Finally,some pedagogical implications were put forward.     

Can Teachers’ Reflections on Digital and Curriculum Resources Generate Lessons?

This article presents a critical action research study of six participants who reflected on their experiences and practices of digital resources in teaching Grade 12 mathematics Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). One-on-one semi-structured interviews, reflective activities, and journals were used for data generation to explore these reflections in order to encourage the teachers to reflect. Purposive with convenience sampling was used to select the teachers. The study reveals that ideological-ware (IW) resources and critical reflections are the main ingredients to ensure the success of CAPS implementation. When the teachers critically reflected on their practical use of the digital resources, they overcame the curriculum challenges that affected their teaching practice. This study recommends the promotion of IW resources and critical reflections in order to produce teachers’ reflective framework for teaching. This study consequently concludes that there were limited forms of reflections that were not compulsory to the teachers.     

Can Technology Offer a Means of Mentoring Pre-service Teachers about Diversity?

This article discusses a project which has the goal of raising the awareness of pre-service teachers about the needs and potentials of low-income minority students through using technology to develop a comentoring community composed of teacher educators, teachers, pre-service students and elementary students. Using the interactive capabilities of video conferencing over the Internet, pre-service teachers engage in a 'virtual' field experience with a bilingual grade three classroom in a distant inner-city school. Pre-service teachers involved in the programme have the opportunity to be involved with students they would not experience in the local area, to be mentored by a teacher with knowledge of diversity, and to use technology in meaningful, productive ways. Benefits for participants—faculty, pre-service teachers, teachers in the school, and students in host classrooms—implications for pre-service teachers' understanding of diversity and limitations of the technology are discussed. 1     

Teachers’ empathy: can it be predicted by self-efficacy?

Teachers’ social-emotional competencies seem to play a significant role in promoting social-emotional learning in schools. Empathic teachers were found to possess a higher level of morality; to communicate more successfully with their students; to encourage them to forge empathic relationships; and to successfully motivate their students. Yet, there is a dearth of literature on how to develop such empathy in teachers. The present study, which is based on a large body of research, investigated the contribution of teachers’ self-efficacy and emotional self-efficacy to teacher empathy. The sample comprised 543 teachers from the central region of Israel who completed self-report questionnaires. Findings indicated that both types of self-efficacy contribute to empathy in teachers, but the contribution of teacher self-efficacy is greater. These findings can benefit teacher educators, principals and others involved in teacher performance and well-being throughout the world. Findings may suggest that both efficacies are compelling variables that need to be addressed and enhanced in relation to teacher empathy. In addition, the findings strengthen the notion that social-emotional competence in teachers is strongly associated with teachers’ self-beliefs regarding their teaching efficacy.