Parents and Teachers: Partners in Improving Reading Skills

How do we know when students have learned? is an important question. By way of a narrative example of a classroom lesson, the Essentialist philosophy is described. This philosophy is teacher-directed and lacks any inherent requirement for student understanding. Rather, a teacher delivers the required information, and students absorb then give back what was delivered. Five missing characteristics of learning—understanding, thinking, problems, questions, and feedback—from the narrative classroom are briefly discussed, and a student-centered philosophy is presented, which has the ability to support and sustain learning that is rich, substantial, and meaningful.     

Developing a Primary Science Methods Classroom

The purpose of this paper is to describe how and why a primary science methods classroom was conceived, designed, and developed for preservice and inservice teachers. Just as science educators believe that students learn best by constructing their knowledge of the natural world with the aid of a teacher and colleagues, science educators also believe that preservice and inservice teachers should learn in a collaborative and constructivist environment. Multiple dimensions relating to the dynamic processes of learning to teach, a ‘technical factor’ related to the physical and resource constraints that exist within a school, and sociocultural theory were used for the theoretical framework. A survey was given to 97 students who took a course in the classroom, six instructors were given a questionnaire, and three of these instructors were interviewed. These data sources sought to determine the effect of design features on student learning and instructor teaching. The results of the evaluation suggest students who used the classroom found their learning positively affected by the room design and instructors who taught in the classroom benefited by being able to teach in an inquiry and constructivist manner.     

改进高师英语课堂教学的探索

21世纪高师英语教学改革的主要目标是培养学生创新意识和创新能力.本文针对当前高师英语教学中存在的一些问题,就如何在高师英语课堂教学过程中培养学生分析问题、独立提出见解能力、创新能力及运用知识的能力作一探讨.     

Are We Banishing Self-starters from Teaching?

This is an opinion piece that discusses problems created for self-starting teachers by growing external direction of teaching. The article points to the importance of self-starters in the classroom and suggests lessons to be learned from them.     

幼儿园学习环境质量评估对全纳教育的启示

美国的《幼儿学习环境评量表（修订版）》,作为世界各国广泛使用的学前教育评价量表,不仅可以有效地评估幼儿学习环境的质量,而且能够对特殊儿童的需要进行评估。该量表对空间和设施、个人日常照料、语言-推理、活动、互动、作息结构、家长和教师七方面内容进行评估。本研究根据该量表,通过对北京市7家随班就读幼儿园的40间教室进行为期2个月的评估发现：幼儿园可以通过提高学习环境质量来更好地实施特殊儿童的随班就读教育方案。研究结果表明,北京市随班就读幼儿园需在以下五个方面做出改善：教室安排/布置、教学材料、游戏活动、自由时间,以及针对特殊儿童的服务和策略。     

The exploration of student-centred approaches for the improvement of learning programming in higher education

The author has undergone a major shift in the way of teaching his undergraduate computer programming courses. In the classroom, the teacher＇s computer is connected to a splitter and a video projector that display the computer＇s screen to the entire class. Using this technology, the programming language itself is used live in class to help the students learn how to program. The students are learning in a context by far livelier than those of previous methods. Teaching computer programming is not achieved by lecturing and writing the program instructions on board or by displaying program instructions to the class on transparencies or slides of electronic presentations. With the implementation of student-centered approaches, the students migrated from the state of passive receivers to constructors of computer programming concepts. Students are coached to develop a sense of exploration, individuality and autonomous thinking. The enthusiasm for technology has been facilitating and supporting the learner-centered approach. Everyone in this approach is a learner, including the teacher.     

Influence of the Curriculum and Learning Environment on Group Learning Approaches Outside the Classroom

Case studies are presented of the out-of-class behaviour of two contrasting class groups of university students from departments with very different learning environments. One group displayed avoider behaviour, by working together to minimise the amount of work each individual had to do. The other class consisted of more coherent groups of students who socialised together and worked to reach a better understanding of conceptual material; we labelled this engager behaviour. The cases show that both the levels of social coherence of the groups and the out-of-class group learning approaches were strongly influenced by: the curriculum, the type of teaching, the nature of the assessment, the relationship between teachers and students, and the environment within the respective departments. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A model to predict educators’ attitudes towards technology and thus technology adoption

Abstract

“Technology”, the buzz word for the last ten to fifteen years in South Africa. Technology availability is quite often mistaken for technology adoption and use. Technology has been made available to almost all tertiary institutions and at least some public schools. However, in most tertiary institutions many professors still refuse to use technology to enhance their lectures and many educators in schools have not yet “come on board” in a manner of speaking. The South African government has indicated its intention to ensure that every school has access to a wide choice of diverse, high quality communication services that will benefit all learners and local communities (DOE 2004). It is important that the Department of Basic Education recognizes that regardless of the amount of technology and its sophistication, technology will not be used unless educators have the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary to infuse it into the curriculum. The aim of this paper is to determine educators’ attitudes towards technology and thus technology adoption in teaching and learning. In doing so, this study attempted to determine what educators’ attitudes/perceptions (used synonymously) are towards constructs (e.g. relative advantage, perceived behavioural control, complexity) extracted from the different information systems (IS) technology adoption models. Thereafter, regression analysis was used to determine the best predictor of educators’ attitudes and thus technology adoption. The findings of this study suggest that overall the educators perceptions are somewhat positive across most IS constructs with the notable exception of Perceived Behavioural Control and Facilitating Conditions where the mean are below 3.5. The analysis suggests that the independent variables explaining the greatest amount of variance in computer attitudes are in order of predicative value: extrinsic motivation, perceived usefulness, complexity, perceived behavioural control and relative advantage. The results point to the importance of educators’ vision of technology itself, their experiences with it, their perceptions towards computer attributes and the conditions that surround its introduction into schools in shaping their attitudes towards technology and its subsequent diffusion into their educational practice.     

What counts as reading? PIRLS,EastEnders and The Man on the Flying Trapeze

After briefly reviewing how reading is conceptualised in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the English National Curriculum, this article examines two unofficial reading activities in a class of 10–11‐year‐olds' to see how far these activities match up with the official definitions of reading, or whether they involve a different kind of interaction with text. Although the children's unofficial reading appears trivial, fleeting and fragmentary, analysis shows that they are applying, albeit in a rudimentary way, the comprehension skills of retrieval, inference, interpretation and evaluation promoted by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the National Curriculum. These skills, however, are driven by children's emotional, critical and creative responses to the texts. The children's reading is more imaginative and dialogic than is possible within official curriculum activities; they interweave emotional and moral response with argument and critique in one example and respond humorously to poetic rhyme, rhythm and tone in another. These spontaneous reading activities, where children are active, animated and engaged, provide evidence of important dimensions of literacy which are not adequately addressed in official surveys and curriculum assessment.     

学习与创新的关系及其教育

本从社会发展和个体生存发展的角度，阐述了学习与创新的重要价值。并从多方面深入研究了学习、创新之间的区别和联系，揭示了学习能力和创新能力之间的转化关系，论证了在大学里把学生教育和创新教育揉合在一起的必要性和可行性。     

研究性课堂教学及其心理效应

提出研究性课堂教学的命题 ,是对传统教学模式的挑战。以人为本 ,开发课堂教学的潜力 ,是研究性课堂教学的价值追求。倡导研究性课堂教学 ,对培养创造型人才具有现实性和前瞻性意义。     

The effects of a web-based learning environment on student motivation in a high school earth science course

Collaborating closely with a tenth-grade science teacher, we designed a Web-Based Learning Environment (Web-LE) to improve the students’ motivation to learn science. Factors believed to enhance intrinsic motivation (challenge, control, curiosity, and fantasy) were integrated into the instructional design of the Web-based learning tool. The Web-LE was implemented in the teacher’s tenth-grade classroom as a three-day student-centered learning activity. Data collection methods included individual student interviews, teacher interviews, motivation questionnaires, and observations. This study revealed multiple forms of evidence that the Web-LE and the associated learning activity improved students’ motivation. This study illustrates the benefits of educational researchers working closely with teachers using design-based research methods to successfully solve instructional problems and identify reusable design principles. Design principles for the integration of intrinsic motivation factors into the development of similar Web-LEs are presented as well as directions for future research.     

The Effects of a Web-Based Learning Environment on Student Motivation in a High School Earth Science Course

Collaborating closely with a 10th-grade science teacher, we designed a Web-based learning environment (Web-LE) to improve student motivation to learn science. Factors believed to enhance intrinsic motivation (challenge, control, curiosity, and fantasy) were integrated into the instructional design of the Web-based learning tool. The Web-LE was implemented in the teacher’s 10th-grade classroom as a three-day student-centered learning activity. Data collection methods included individual student interviews, teacher interviews, motivation questionnaires, and observations. This study revealed multiple forms of evidence that the Web-LE and the associated learning activity improved student motivation. This study illustrates the benefits of educational researchers working closely with teachers using design-based research methods to successfully solve instructional problems and identify reusable design principles. Design principles for the integration of intrinsic motivation factors into the development of similar Web-LEs are presented as well as directions far future research.