Teacher: students’ interpersonal relationships and students’ academic achievements in social studies

Background: The classroom is a social system in which the teacher and the students interact as organizational members. The quality of classroom relations is dependent on the activities of both the instructor and the students. Several environmental conditions and circumstances often tend to either improve or depress the academic performances of students in defiance of their natural academic endowments. Aim: This study was to identify the relationship between teacher–students’ interpersonal relationships and students’ academic achievements in social studies. Methods: The work used the ex post facto design and a sample of 1954 Junior Secondary School (JSS) III randomly drawn from 50 Government Secondary Schools in Calabar Educational Zone of Cross River State, Nigeria. Two instruments were used: The Teacher–Students’ Relationship Questionnaire and a 50-item multiple choice questions in social studies set using the JSS social studies syllabus and validated by test experts. The data were analysed using the Pearson product moment correlation analysis (r). Product moment correlation analysis (r) is used in finding the relationship between two variables X and Y, if these variables are continuous and are obtained from the sample. Outcomes: There was a significant relationship between teacher–students’ interpersonal relationship and students’ academic achievements in social studies. As a researcher, this means much for me. Students themselves are classroom observers. They are aware, to a great extent, of their own academic standing in the classroom as well as those of others. Some examples of the strategies students use to evaluate their own academic standing include the tasks they are given, grouping strategies implemented in the classroom (e.g. ability grouping) teacher feedback and information regarding ability, the responsibilities that teachers provide students with and the quality of teacher–students relationships. Conclusions: The major conclusion forwarded by this research was that there was a significant relationship between the teacher–students’ interpersonal relationship and students’ academic performances in social studies. This has a serious implication for me and others, viz, a good human relationship is one of the lubricants of high productivity. Teachers should therefore galvanize cordial relations between themselves and students. All teachers, including this researcher, should bear in mind that a healthy interpersonal relationship is one indispensable instrument of high productivity and achievement in all fields of human endeavour including the education industry.     

Enhancing students’s social and ethical development in schools: An intervention program and its effects

This chapter describes effects on students social and ethical attitudes and behaviors of a comprehensive elementary school program that was implemented in 12 elementary schools in six school districts in the United States over a four-year period, with an additional 12 schools serving as a comparison group. The program as a whole is designed to promote a sense of the school as a community. Data, collected in a baseline year and each of three program years, included classroom observations and student and teacher questionnaires. Data analyses showed variability both within and between schools in teacher changes from baseline to classroom program implementation. Positive effects on students’s sense of community and on several social/ethical variables were found for the five program schools that showed adequate changes in implementation. Structural equations modeling analyses of classroom-level data showed clear support for a model in which program effects on social-ethical outcomes for students were mediated through intervening linkages with program implementation and with the sense of community.     

‘Responsibility in mobility’: international students and social responsibility

Enhancing the educational experience and social connectedness for international students is the responsibility of different involved parties among whom international students themselves and host institutions play a key role. However, the question of how the condition of cross-border mobility has shaped and re-shaped international students’ responsibility towards the home and host country and other social relationships that have been formed via their mobility experiences is often neglected. This paper examines the social nature of international students’ responsibility. It is derived from a research project funded by the Australian Research Council that includes fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with 155 staff and international students from 25 institutions in Australia over 4 years. Using positioning theory as a conceptual framework, the study shows that it is important to take into account the tangible aspects of transnational mobility in understanding international student responsibility rather than merely locating their responsibility in simple cultural, personal or institutional parameters. The study suggests the important roles of host institutions and community in creating conducive conditions and opportunities for international students to exercise responsibility as social members and intercultural learners. Enhancing student social responsibility and capacity for enacting responsibility is essential for nurturing meaningful transnational citizenship.     

Exploring the role of India’s secondary school compulsory curriculum textbooks in students’ national identity constructions in an overseas school

This study problematises the contribution of India’s school textbooks in students’ national identity constructions in an overseas school in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The textbooks construct students’ national identity on the concepts of India’s secular democracy, colonial resistance and equal citizenship rights. Notwithstanding study participants’ ambivalent identification with these ideals, they mostly express confusing identities evincing religious tendencies, gendered beliefs towards women and antipathy for India’s neighbouring states. This entails implications for India’s national cohesion and students’ ability to live in harmony with other communities in the diasporic setting. It also poses risks to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 2030.     

The lag effect in secondary school classrooms: Enhancing students’ memory for vocabulary

Educators often face serious time constraints that impede multiple repetition lessons on the same material. Thus, it would be useful to know when to schedule a single repetition unit to maximize memory performance. Laboratory studies revealed that the length of the retention interval (i.e., the time between the last learning session and the final memory test) dictates the optimal lag between two learning sessions. The present study tests the generalizability of this finding to vocabulary learning in secondary school. Sixth-graders were retaught English–German vocabulary after lags of 0, 1, or 10 days and tested 7 or 35 days later. In line with our predictions, we found that the optimal lag depends on the retention interval: Given a 7-day retention interval, students performed best when relearning occurred after 1 day. When vocabulary was tested after 35 days, however, students benefited from lags of both 1 and 10 days. Model-based analyses show that enhanced encoding processes and stronger resistance to forgetting—but not better retrieval processes—underlie the benefits of optimal lag. Our findings have practical implications for classroom instruction and suggest that review units should be planned carefully by taking the time of the final test into consideration.     

The role of social identification as university student in learning: relationships between students’ social identity,approaches to learning,and academic achievement

This article describes research exploring the relationship between students’ self-perceptions in the context of university learning (i.e. student social identity), their approaches to learning, and academic achievement. The exploration of these inter-related aspects requires a mix of theoretical approaches, that is, in this research both social identity perspective from social psychology and the student learning research framework are used to explore student identity and learning in the context of higher education. Two structural equation models drawing on both these theoretical frameworks were tested. In the first of these models, deep approaches to learning are positively associated with students’ social identification as university student and positively predict academic achievement. In the second model, surface approaches to learning are negatively associated with students’ social identification and negatively predict academic achievement. The mediational roles of deep and surface approaches to learning in the relationship between student social identity and academic achievement are also explored.     

Understanding student learning in context: relationships between university students’ social identity,approaches to learning,and academic performance

This research focuses on understanding how socio-psychological dimensions such as student social identity and student perceptions of their learning community affect learning at university. To do this, it integrates ideas from phenomenographic research into student learning with ideas from research on social identity. In two studies (N = 110, and N = 97) the relationships between student social identity, perceptions of the learning community, approaches to learning, and academic performance were explored. Our findings suggest that a strong student social identity is associated with a deep approach to learning, which in turn is linked to higher academic performance. Also, perceptions of learning community mediate the relationship between student social identity and deep approaches to learning. Significantly, a surface approach turns out not to be associated with student social identity or perceptions of the learning community, but it is negatively related to academic performance. Our research argues for the value of an integration of complementary frameworks, emphasising social and psychological aspects of the learning experience that can be used to improve our understanding of how and why students vary in the quality of their learning.     

Chinese students’ social integration into the university community: hearing the students’ voices

According to UNESCO statistics, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) sends far more students to study overseas than any other country in the world. Similarly, from the receiving countries’ point of view, PRC students form by far the highest proportion of international students. In many respects, this is a success story, but it also poses a number of risks to universities. This paper focuses on one of those key risks that of student dissatisfaction (including from PRC students themselves). Using a sequential mixed-method study, it addresses two research questions: (a) Chinese students’ level of satisfaction with their social integration into the university community and (b) the barriers that Chinese students’ perceive in becoming more socially integrated into the university student community. The research finds that many Chinese students are dissatisfied with their range of friendships and that they find it more challenging to socialise with students of other nationalities than other students do. They point out a number of barriers to integration, with cultural distance playing a major role, but also argue for the impact of individual factors. The paper concludes by considering the implications for universities and suggestions for further research.     

Enhancing students’ mathematical reasoning in the classroom: teacher actions facilitating generalization and justification

A proof is a connected sequence of assertions that includes a set of accepted statements, forms of reasoning and modes of representing arguments. Assuming reasoning to be central to proving and aiming to develop knowledge about how teacher actions may promote students’ mathematical reasoning, we conduct design research where whole-class mathematical discussions triggered by exploratory tasks play a key role. We take mathematical reasoning as making justified inferences and we consider generalizing and justifying central reasoning processes. Regarding teacher actions, we consider inviting, informing/suggesting, supporting/guiding and challenging actions can be identified in whole-class discussions. This paper presents design principles for an intervention geared to tackle such reasoning processes and focuses on a whole-class discussion on a grade 7 lesson about linear equations and functions. Data analysis concerns teacher actions in relation to design principles and to the sought mathematical reasoning processes. The conclusions highlight teacher actions that lead students to generalize and justify. Generalizations may arise from a central challenging action or from several guiding actions. Regarding justifications, a main challenging action seems to be essential, while follow-up guiding actions may promote a further development of this reasoning process. Thus, this paper provides a set of design principles and a characterization of teacher actions which enhance students’ mathematical reasoning processes such as generalization and justification.     

Being ‘religious and cultural rebels’ or being ‘cultural hybrids’? The role of identity capital in Muslim female university students’ self-construction

ABSTRACT

Research on university-educated Muslim women in different cultural contexts has displayed an intricate and paradoxical connection between experiences of higher education and identity mediation. A traditional model conceptualizes Muslim female university students as ‘rebels’ against their heritage religion and culture. Recent developments in the context of poststructural feminism highlight the configuration of a hybrid self-image embracing the target and heritage cultures in an additive and empowering manner. To enhance our understanding of the potential impact of higher education on identity negotiation, this study employs the notion of identity capital in an analysis of two South Asian Muslim female university students in Hong Kong over a two-year period. Participants’ life histories reveal that personal capacity to invest in identity capital (a contextually-dependent hybrid self) relies on an individual’s unique possession of various forms of capital. This study thus cautions against generalizations about Muslim women’s university experiences, and suggests that Muslim minorities as multicultural students and that their multilingual/multicultural skills, as forms of ‘intercultural capital,’ should be valued by all societal institutions.     

University mergers in Russia from the students’ perspective: uncertainty and loss of identity

University mergers are a common practice in higher education systems around the world. Merger-related aspects such as the transformation of organizational and administrative structures, the impact on the internal funding allocation mechanisms, or changes in academic strategies and profiles, are well researched. However, the role of students in university mergers and their understanding of these processes are hardly investigated. The aim of this study was to identify how students are affected by merger processes. Through the conceptual framework, integrating university organizational identity theory and studies of the human side of mergers and acquisitions, this article encompasses six institutional cases in Russian higher education. These cases were selected to illustrate different scenarios of university mergers and accordingly to analyze the variety of student experience in changing universities. The project’s data included the results of document analysis, analysis of the merged universities’ representation in the public space, interviews and focus-groups with university administrators and with students who studied during the process of university merger. It highlights such perceived effects of mergers as anxiety and perceived unfairness due to post-merger changes, activization of we-they opposition between the students of merged universities, loss or transformation of organizational identity, and clash of university cultures.

     

‘I’m good,but not that good’: digitally-skilled young people’s identity in computing

Computers and information technology are fast becoming a part of young people’s everyday life. However, there remains a difference between the majority who can use computers and the minority who are computer scientists or professionals. Drawing on 32 semi-structured interviews with digitally skilled young people (aged 13–19), we explore their views and aspirations in computing, with a focus on the identities and discourses that these youngsters articulate in relation to this field. Our findings suggest that, even among digitally skilled young people, traditional identities of computing as people who are clever but antisocial still prevail, which can be unattractive for youths, especially girls. Digitally skilled youths identify with computing in different ways and for different reasons. Most enjoy doing computing but few aspired to being a computer person. Implications of our findings for computing education are discussed especially the continued need to broaden identities in computing, even for the digitally skilled.     

Teachers’ use of educative curriculum materials to engage students in science practices

New reform documents underscore the importance of integrating science practices into the learning of science. This integration requires sophisticated teaching that does not often happen. Educative curriculum materials – materials explicitly designed to support teacher and student learning – have been posited as a way to support teachers to achieve these ambitious goals, yet little is known about how elementary teachers actually use educative curriculum materials to support student engagement in science practices. To address this gap, this study investigated how five upper elementary teachers supported students to engage in science practices during an enactment of two curriculum units. Three of the teachers had units enhanced with educative features, informed by current research and reforms, while two of the teachers had units without these features. The teachers varied in how they supported students in the science practices of justifying predictions, constructing evidence-based claims, recording observations, and planning investigations. For example, some of the teachers with the educative features supported students in constructing evidence-based claims and justifying predictions in ways called for by the educative features. Implications for curriculum developers and teacher educators are discussed based on the patterns found in the teachers’ use of the educative curriculum materials.     

Body talk: students’ identity construction while discussing a socioscientific issue

Vision II school science is often stated to be a democratic and inclusive form of science education. But what characterizes the subject who fits into the Vision II school science? Who is the desirable student and who is constructed as ill-fitting? This article explores discourses that structure the Vision II science classroom, and how different students construct their identities inside these discourses. In the article we consider school science as an order of discourses which restricts and enables what is possible to think and say and what subject-positions those are available and non-available. The results show that students’ talk about a SSI about body and health is constituted by several discourses. We have analyzed how school science discourse, body discourse and general school discourse are structuring the discussions. But these discourses are used in different ways depending on how the students construct their identities in relation to available subject positions, which are dependent on how students at the same time are “doing” gender and social class. As an example, middle class girls show resistance against SSI-work since the practice is threatening their identity as “successful students”. This article uses a sociopolitical perspective in its discussions on inclusion and exclusion in the practice of Vision II. It raises critical issues about the inherited complexity of SSI with meetings and/or collisions between discourses. Even if the empirical results from this qualitative study are situated in specific cultural contexts, they contribute with new questions to ask concerning SSI and Vision II school science.     

Forms of mathematical interaction in different social settings: examples from students’, teachers’ and teacher–students’ communication about mathematics

The study presented in this article investigates forms of mathematical interaction in different social settings. One major interest is to better understand mathematics teachers’ joint professional discourse while observing and analysing young students mathematical interaction followed by teacher’s intervention. The teachers’ joint professional discourse is about a combined learning and talking between two students before an intervention by their teacher (setting 1) and then it is about the students learning together with the teacher during their mathematical work (setting 2). The joint professional teachers’ discourse constitutes setting 3. This combination of social settings 1 and 2 is taken as an opportunity for mathematics teachers’ professionalisation process when interpreting the students’ mathematical interactions in a more and more professional and sensible way. The epistemological analysis of mathematical sign-systems in communication and interaction in these three settings gives evidence of different types of mathematical talk, which are explained depending on the according social setting. Whereas the interaction between students or between teachers is affected by phases of a process-oriented and investigated talk, the interaction between students and teachers is mainly closed and structured by the ideas of the teacher and by the expectations of the students.

School‐based restructuring and curriculum change: teachers’ and students’ contrasting perspectives

Abstract

This article is set within the context of a school‐based change initiative, where we studied a number of teachers and students in order to understand the ways in which they understood and experienced the complexities of the change process, and to add their voices to the ongoing discussions around restructuring and school‐based change. We found that although there were some commonalties between how teachers and students experienced the changes being implemented, there were also some profound differences between the curriculum as planned by teachers and the curriculum as experienced by students. For the teachers, the themes of caring for students’ lives, recasting themselves as classroom practitioners and of working as collaborative colleagues were identified; for students, the themes were those of getting used to the place, and of re‐establishing their preferred way of working in this new setting. In our discussion and analysis of these themes we look at the implications for future school‐based change initiatives, and at some of the complexities and difficulties which present themselves as schools take on increased authority and responsibility for self‐management and for the creation of improved learning environments for students and teachers. We suggest that future change efforts should give more importance to the perspectives of teachers and students, and to the interactive and programmatic exchanges of teachers and students. We suggest also that changed school structures should originate in a focus on the improvement of teaching and learning, and on the facilitation of teachers’ and students’ collaborative efforts to create a curriculum for the classroom and a learning community which is both enabling and transformative for both.     

Teachers�� emotions and professional identity in curriculum reform: A Chinese perspective

In educational research, emotion has attracted substantial attention since the mid-1990s. While there are many studies of teacher emotion in educational change in the West, there is a remarkable dearth of such studies in China. This qualitative study attempts to address this issue by examining teachers?? emotional experiences in the national curriculum reform of senior secondary education in China. Results indicate that teachers revealed complex emotional responses to the reform. These emotions were related to teachers?? perceptions about the use of new textbooks, teaching approaches, and, more importantly, the uncertain changes in college entrance examinations. Three types of teachers with different emotions and professional identities are identified in the reform (i.e., the losing heart accommodators, the drifting followers, and the cynical performers). These findings highlight the Chinese perspective on teacher emotion and provide some implications for the management of curriculum reform and teacher emotion in the Chinese context.     

Teachers’ enactment of policy in classrooms: making students accountable through inscriptions from the curriculum in classroom interactions

The purpose of this paper is to examine the complex relationships between educational policy and classroom practice. By employing a sociocultural perspective, we examine formulations inscribed in socio-material artifacts about what students should learn and how they should engage with knowledge. We explore how these formulations are mobilized in instructional work and the implications this activity has for student participation. To address this issue, we analyzed video data of how teachers invoke competence aims from the national curriculum in their instructional work in six classrooms. The analytical procedures were derived from interaction analysis. The analysis focuses on how such formulations explicitly mediate social interaction as it unfolds on a micro level. The findings show that competence aims gain different functions as they are mobilized in classroom practice; in other words, they serve different purposes in teachers’ instructional work and anticipate different modes of student participation. In this study, the competence aims were (a) invoked as a source of authority, (b) translated into instructions, and (c) mobilized to obtain social order in the classroom. More rarely, the competence aims were used in meta-level discussions, where they functioned to reach agreements on how to pursue work toward joint goals. We discuss the implications of these ways of invoking competence aims for student participation.

     

Correction to: Primary school students’ perceived social support in relation to study engagement

European Journal of Psychology of Education -