Clickers in the flipped classroom: bring your own device (BYOD) to promote student learning

Flipped classrooms continue to grow in popularity across all levels of education. Following this pedagogical trend, the present study aimed to enhance the face-to-face instruction in flipped classrooms with the use of clickers. A game-like clicker application was implemented through a bring your own device (BYOD) model to gamify classroom dynamics in the spirit of question-and-answer competitions. A series of flipped learning lessons were created for the study, with clickers integrated into question-and-answer activities associated with each of the lessons as formative assessments to assist students in the learning of English as a foreign language. In this quasi-experimental research, the data were gathered using a summative assessment, a perception survey, and individual interviews. The collected data were then analyzed to compare the students’ flipped learning experiences, with or without clicker use. The results indicated that the gamified use of clickers had positive influences on student learning, with regard to their performance, perceptions, and preferences. This study thus suggests that the emerging generation of clicker technology allows for a cost-effective BYOD integration model in flipped classrooms, through which it is possible to seamlessly bridge pre-class and in-class activities and to effectively promote student learning.     

Academics leave your ivory tower: form communities of practice

Institutions of higher education (HE), public and private, are moving through a crisis period of tapped‐out states, funding cuts, tuition increases and layoffs. It makes good sense to rise to meet these new realities with new ways of doing things, and the places that succeed will be the ones that do. A holistic approach is necessary whereby excellence in teaching and learning as well as research should be the ultimate aim. Among the various ways to achieve this, is the promotion of communities of practices (CoPs) among the academics. Therefore, CoPs are to be seen as an “extension” of any programme to achieve excellence, because as it has been shown it is the sharing of the tacit knowledge that makes the difference in any organisation in its pursuit for a competitive advantage. An HE institution should be considered to be at a greater advantage than any other non‐academic organisation since each staff member is a knowledge worker whose mission is to transmit, create and incorporate new knowledge to the existing knowledge. This paper looks at the possible reasons preventing academics from participating in a CoP. It will be shown that CoPs can play a very important role in a university set‐up.     

Viewing classroom discipline as negotiable social interaction: A communities of practice perspective

Classroom discipline is a major concern of American teachers and why many leave teaching. A conventional view of learning is so deeply interrelated with schooling in the American culture it also drives the view of discipline, especially in urban contexts where students are disproportionately failed and excluded by the mainstream educational system. The purpose of this paper is to propose a critical social practice view of learning as defined by legitimate peripheral participation (LPP), providing a communities of practice framework to guide future research that sets out to transform conventional views of learning, particularly within the context of classroom discipline.     

The appearance of literacy in new communicative practices: interrogating the politics of noticing

ABSTRACT

This conceptual article examines how ready-made assumptions about literacy both frame and limit understandings of new communicative practices in educational contexts. Proposing a tripartite heuristic that interrogates the appearance of literacy in terms of emergence, semblance and performance, it uses stories from a study of touchscreen tablets in one early years setting to illustrate the social-material arrangements associated with moments when tablets became texts to be looked at, shared or made. The authors argue that a sociomaterial sensibility can not only sensitise researchers to new communicative practices, but also to the ways in which sociomaterial arrangements help to construct habits of noticing often active in accounts of literacy practice and research. It is their contention that exploring the relations between emergence, semblance and performance is particularly valuable at a time when conceptualisations of literacy are being challenged in response to diversifying communicative practices.     

中国教育技术学科:进展、问题和前景

教育技术学科在我国得到了蓬勃的发展,但是制约学科进一步发展壮大的问题也慢慢凸显,学科建设任重而道远。本文对我国教育技术学科的发展历程进行了简要的回顾和总结,重点分析并指出了影响学科发展的六大主要问题,在对学科理论及其研究趋势进行展望的基础上,对我国教育技术学科的建设进行探索。     

从学科结构,教材结构到教学结构

一门科学的学科结构是由诸多科学事实,概念、原理、定律等按照一定的联系和方法构成的逻辑体系。教材内容之间的主要内在联系即教材结构,教学内容结构、教学方法结构、学生心理结构有机地统一于教学过程形成教学结构。一个合格的教师,要深谙学科结构,要精通教材结构,尤其要创造性地针教材结构转化为适宜的教学结构。     

The datafication of discipline: ClassDojo,surveillance and a performative classroom culture

ABSTRACT

This paper critically examines the ways in which ClassDojo is altering the disciplinary landscape in schools through the datafication of discipline and student behaviour. ClassDojo is one of the most popular and successful educational technologies and is used internationally. It is a school-based social media platform that incorporates a gamified behaviour-shaping function, providing school communities with a centralised digital network in which to interact. We argue that ClassDojo’s datafying system of school discipline intensifies and normalises the surveillance of students. Furthermore, it creates a culture of performativity and serves as a mechanism for behaviour control.     

The ethical claim of partiality: practical reasoning,the discipline,and teacher education

Practical reasoning refers to a teacher's capacity to discern particulars and make wise judgements about how to act in pedagogical situations. But how do teachers know what is right? How are teachers' preferences to be grounded and their choices justified? I explore the disciplines as one source of moral perception. Assuming that narrative unities underscore the coherence and continuity of an individual's experience, I generated data in the context of a 2‐year teacher education programme. The case study of an aspiring teacher of secondary school language arts illustrates how the intellectual virtues of a discipline can influence a student teacher's practical reasoning. I conclude that teacher educators must attend to the complex ways in which a prospective teacher's prior discipline may influence aspiring teachers' orientations to experience, their consideration of educational ends, and, finally, their characters.