Exploring Effectiveness of Classroom Assessments for Students’ Learning in High School Chemistry

Research in Science Education - New notions of science teaching and learning provide challenges for designing and using classroom assessment. Existing assessments are not effective in assessing and...     

Improving Students’ Diagram Comprehension with Classroom Instruction

The authors tested whether students can be taught to better understand conventional representations in diagrams, photographs, and other visual representations in science textbooks. The authors developed a teacher-delivered, workbook-and-discussion–based classroom instructional method called Conventions of Diagrams (COD). The authors trained 1 experienced teacher to deliver COD to two 10th-grade biology classes (n = 31) and compared gains in diagram comprehension from COD to those from a business-as-usual control condition (n = 30) in 2 classrooms taught by the same teacher. Students in the COD condition showed statistically significantly greater growth in comprehension of literal and inferential biology diagrams. The control condition in some cases advantaged high-spatial, high-knowledge students, whereas the COD condition for the most part did not. Entries in the COD workbooks were analyzed for amount of student effort. Students with a combination of low pretest biology knowledge and low effort showed much lower gains from pretest to posttest on the inferential biology diagrams measure than did other students in the COD condition.     

Science Students’ Classroom Discourse: Tasha’s Umwelt

Over the past twenty-five years researchers have been concerned with understanding the science student. The need for such research is still grounded in contemporary issues including providing opportunities for all students to develop scientific literacy and the failure of school science to connect with student’s lives, interests and personal identities. The research reported here is unusual in its use of discourse analysis in social psychology to contribute to an understanding of the way students make meaning in secondary school science. Data constructed for the study was drawn from videotapes of nine consecutive lessons in a year-seven science classroom in Melbourne, post-lesson video-stimulated interviews with students and the teacher, classroom observation and the students’ written work. The classroom videotapes were recorded using four cameras and seven audio tracks by the International Centre for Classroom Research at the University of Melbourne. Student talk within and about their science lessons was analysed from a discursive perspective. Classroom episodes in which students expressed their sense of personal identity and agency, knowledge, attitude or emotion in relation to science were identified for detailed analysis of the function of the discourse used by students, and in particular the way students were positioned by others or positioned themselves. This article presents the discursive Umwelt or life-space of one middle years science student, Tasha. Her case is used here to highlight the complex social process of meaning making in science classrooms and the need to attend to local moral orders of rights and duties in research on student language use, identity and learning in science.     

How to Improve Students’ Originality in Classroom Teaching

Economic invigoration relies on education. With the rapid advancement of science and technology and the fast development of society, more and more demand has been put on fostering talented people. And how to improve students’originality has become one of the hot topics in Chinese education forum. Beginning with analyzing different foreign language teaching approaches in foreign countries and the general language teaching situation in China, this article holds that enhancing teachers’qualification, analyzing the factors that influ ence students’originality, creating positive classroom atmosphere and conducting creative class activities are indispensable measures of im proving students’originality in classroom teaching.     

Looking Beyond the Undergraduate Classroom: Factors Influencing Service Learning's Effectiveness at Improving Graduate Students’ Professional Skills

This study provides a greater understanding of which factors influence the effectiveness of service learning projects at improving graduate students’ professional skills. Data for this study was gathered from students in eight Master of Public Administration (MPA) courses taught during two semesters at a large state university. Younger students were more likely than older students to believe that their service learning project was helpful in improving their professional skills. We also find that students who spent more time working on a service learning project outside of class reported their projects were more helpful in improving their professional skills. In addition, our ANOVA analysis indicates that for projects involving group activities, students who were members of groups that worked as teams reported that their projects were more helpful in improving their professional skills than students in less cohesive groups.     

Classroom Observation on Developing Students’Competence in SEIB

China’s entry to WTO and China’s 2008 Olympic Games have widely opened the door to the outside world.Tal ents with business knowledge and excellent oral English are urgently needed.For students in English major,we give the course of Spoken English for International Business(SEIB) to improve their abilities in SEIB.The author aims to use the methods like classroom observation,interview,questionnaire survey to observe and compare two classes and two teachers to explore the rela tions between students’competence development and teachers’with different levels and teaching practice,and to gain some enlightenment on students’competence developing in SEIB from the study.     

On Tibetan Students’ Willingness to Communicate in EFL Classroom

Set as the primary and ultimate goal of language teaching process by MacIntyre et al.(1998),willingness to communicate in second language(L2 WTC) has been put much attention in L2 acquisition field.This study examined quantitatively the willingness to communicate in English as a foreign language(EFL WTC) in Tibetan context with a questionnaire.Tibetan college students’ EFL WTC was found significantly lower than Han students.No significant difference was found between Tibetan male and female students in their EFL WTC.Causes were explored andsome pedagogical suggestions were made in this study.     

The Research of College Students’ English Classroom Behavior Investigations

By employing quantitative research methods, the paper investigates college students' preferences to English classroom behaviors and the relations between behaviors and achievements. The results indicate that there are significant differences among the subjects' behavior, cognitive and emotional elements, and their classroom behaviors are mainly visual, individual, imitative and exterior-motivated; there are significant differences in behavior element and emotional element between high-result group and low-result group; confident and oral classroom behaviors have prominent relations with CET-4 achievements, and different teaching methods may make learning behaviors produce good or bad effects to achievements.     

Testing Leader–Member Exchange Theory as a Lens to Understand Students’ Classroom Justice Perceptions and Antisocial Communication

The purpose of this study was to test whether leader–member exchange theory (LMX) offers an explanatory lens for the program of classroom justice research. To that end, relationships among justice, LMX, and antisocial communication were explored. Findings indicated that perceptions of justice and LMX were positively related. Likewise, perceptions of interactional and procedural justice negatively predicted indirect interpersonal aggression, hostility, and revenge. Similarly, LMX perceptions were negatively related to students’ hostility and revenge and mediated the relationships between students’ perceptions of distributive justice and these outcomes. LMX also moderated the relationships between students’ perceptions of classroom justice and indirect interpersonal aggression and deception. Implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.     

Teacher’s Role in Students’Group Work in College English Classroom

The implementation of group work in China is aroused by the teaching reform and proposal of the New Curriculum Standard, in order to improve the language teaching and learning. However, in many cases group work is far less effective and desirable than it should have been. The effectiveness of group work depends on many factors in real language classroom setting. This paper mainly focuses on the factor of teacher’s role. The main implication of this paper is to suggest the appropriate teacher role in students’group work and put forward some skills in organizing group work in order to make group work more effective and significant.     

How to Develop College Students’Competence of Cross-Cultural Communication

Nowadays many college students lack the competence of cross-cultural communication.They can not communicate with each other appropriately.In response to the problem,this paper analyses its cause and puts forward two countermeasures:fostering students’cultural-awareness and positive attitude towards cross-cultural communication;creating an authentic or semi-authentic language environment.A teacher should combine them together and put them into practice in order to improve students’competence of cross-cultural communication.     

Communication Disorders and Challenging Behaviors: Supporting Children’s Functional Communication Goals in the Classroom

Children with communication disorders may express frustrations through challenging behaviors such as aggressive behaviors and social withdrawal. Challenging behaviors may lead to difficulties with building social competencies including emotional regulation and peer engagement. Individualized planning of functional goals for children with communication disorders provides support for social communication to increase quality classroom interactions. Teachers, families and service providers can work together to assess the purpose of the child’s behaviors in order to create more functional ways for the child to communicate as the spoken language continues to improve. This article focuses on strategies including considerations for collaboration in initial planning, communication modifications, and peer supports.     

College Students’ Identity Self-awareness and Shaping in English Classroom Teaching

The paper is to find out whether the college students have the appropriate culture awareness, which helps intercultural communication and promote the transformation of cultural identity.     

Connecting Classroom Science with Everyday Life: Teachers’ Attempts and Students’ Insights

This multiple case study examines how teachers request students’ use of their content knowledge and conceptual understandings from out-of-school experiences while reasoning about science concepts and the ways in which students perceive and respond to these requests. Three middle school teachers and a total of 57 middle school students participated in this study. The data collection involved classroom observations and multiple interviews with each of the teachers individually and with small groups of students. The findings indicate that the students appreciate the usefulness of making relevant connections between their in-school and out-of-school learning, but seldom do so during science lessons. We also found that teachers’ attempts to facilitate these types of connections during classroom discourse events involved the use of analogies, examples, or questions. Finally, the findings also indicate that students often recognize teachers’ requests but seldom relate to these requests in the way the teacher intends.     

On Nurturing Students’ Nonverbal Communication Awareness and its Pedagogical Implications

1.Introduction Language is a way for communication,but people can use the other way which is called nonverbal communication to express their thoughts feelings and attitudes.This kind of communication is that people do not use language to communicate with others(Hu Wenzhong,1999).In the middle of 1960’s,Rivers(1946),an American applied linguist,brought the achievement in     

Students’ Motivation in the Mathematics Classroom. Revealing Causes and Consequences

Students’ affective domain has been popular in the mathematics education community in an ongoing attempt to understand students’ learning behavior. Specifically, enhancing students’ motivation in the mathematics classroom is an important issue for teachers and researchers, due to its relation to students’ behavior and achievement. This paper utilized achievement goal theory—an important theoretical prospect on students’ motivation in school settings—to investigate the existence of a model presenting the relation between motivation and other affective constructs and students’ performance in mathematics. In this regard, two types of tests were administered to 321 sixth grade students measuring their motivation and other affective constructs and their performance in mathematics. Using structural equation modeling, we examined the associations among the affective constructs, motivation, and the extent to which these constructs influence students’ performance and interest in mathematics. The data revealed that students’ performance and their interest in mathematics were influenced by fear of failure, self-efficacy beliefs, and achievement goals. We discuss these findings in terms of teaching implications in the mathematics classroom.     

A Meta-Analytical Review of Students’ Out-of-Class Communication and Learning Effects

A random-effects meta-analysis (N = 7,113) was conducted examining the relationships between students’ out-of-class communication (OCC) and learning outcomes. The findings revealed positive summary effects for OCC on affective learning (k = 7, N = 1478, r = 0.321, p < 0.001) and perceived cognitive learning (k = 11, N = 5635, r = 0.261, p < 0.001). Several moderators were identified, indicating the association between OCC and cognitive learning varied systematically because of the measurement instruments used to operationalize OCC and learning and because of interdisciplinary treatments of the constructs. Recommendations are made for future researchers including the need for a theoretical explanation of the OCC-learning relationship.     

Students’ Motivation in the Mathematics Classroom. Revealing Causes and Consequences

Students’ affective domain has been popular in the mathematics education community in an ongoing attempt to understand students’ learning behavior. Specifically, enhancing students’ motivation in the mathematics classroom is an important issue for teachers and researchers, due to its relation to students’ behavior and achievement. This paper utilized achievement goal theory—an important theoretical prospect on students’ motivation in school settings—to investigate the existence of a model presenting the relation between motivation and other affective constructs and students’ performance in mathematics. In this regard, two types of tests were administered to 321 sixth grade students measuring their motivation and other affective constructs and their performance in mathematics. Using structural equation modeling, we examined the associations among the affective constructs, motivation, and the extent to which these constructs influence students’ performance and interest in mathematics. The data revealed that students’ performance and their interest in mathematics were influenced by fear of failure, self-efficacy beliefs, and achievement goals. We discuss these findings in terms of teaching implications in the mathematics classroom.

     

Community College Engineering Students’ Perceptions of Classroom Climate and Fundamental Engineering Skills

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to examine community college engineering students’ perceptions of their classroom climate and how these perceptions are related to fundamental skills in engineering. The study was guided by the following research question: How are community college engineering students’ perceptions of their fundamental engineering skills related to their perceptions of classroom climate? Data from a 2009 National Science Foundation sponsored project, Prototype to Production: Processes and Conditions for Preparing the Engineer of 2020 (P2P), which contains information from students in 15 pre-engineering community college programs, were examined. Measures of classroom climate and fundamental skills related to engineering were first established through an exploratory factor analysis. In order to explore differences in student perceptions by individual characteristics and by institution, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used. Results indicated that for community college engineering students, a warmer perception of classroom climate was associated with a higher perception of fundamental engineering skills. At community colleges, class sizes are generally smaller, especially compared to introductory courses at universities, and may provide a warmer climate for students considering beginning their engineering degrees. Given the diversity within community colleges, these institutions may provide an important pathway for underrepresented groups in engineering.