Pupils’ Perceptions of Teachers

Abstract

The study, with 536 second-sixth graders as subjects, attempted to investigate the relationships between teacher and “idea”-teacher discrepancies (hereafter designated as discrepancies) and six dependent variables. Results of the study were summarized as: (a) high-school achievement scorers tended to manifest low discrepancies, and vice versa; (b) boys appeared to exhibit higher discrepancies than girls did; (c) those more socially acceptable children seemed to exhibit low discrepancies, and vice versa; (d) those children who indicated higher school attitude scores had a tendency to show low discrepancies, and vice versa; (e) those children who rated themselves high on aggressiveness were inclined to show high discrepancies, and vice versa; and (f) there was no statistically significant relationship between peer-report aggressiveness and such discrepancies.     

Observation: The Impact of Teachers’Behavior in Teacher-students Interactions on Pupils’Motivation

To find out in what ways the teacher’s behavior in interactions could motivate students effectively,a two-day observation concerning the relationship between the teacher’s behavior in teacher-students interactions and students’motivations in the classroom was carried out in a primary school in Scotland.The author illustrated the basic content of classrooms observed and the methods of collecting and analyzing the data.Then,it focused on the discussion of the data and related literacy.Finally,it drew the conclusion that the positive feedback,explanations for the reason of doing the task and enthusiastic actions could effectively motivate students to learn.     

Teachers’ and Pupils’ Perceptions of Technology and the Implications for Curriculum

The recent explicit inclusion of technology into the science component of the school curriculum in Western Australia necessitates changes in both curriculum materials and the nature of classroom teaching. This paper reports an investigation of the perceptions of technology of senior teachers who are heads of the science department in their schools, and relates these perceptions with those of a sample of 13‐year‐old pupils in this state. The investigation reveals that many teachers have a restricted view of technology which may be interpreted as a view that technology is dependent upon science. Such a view may neglect the historical aspects and societal influences on science and technology. Further, the available evidence indicates that local pupils have a low level of awareness of technology. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for curriculum change and suggests a starting point for achieving a successful balance in the teaching of technology, science and society issues in the classroom.     

Sweden’s Double Decade for Roma Inclusion: An Examination of Education Policy in Context

This article analyzes the Swedish Strategy for Roma Inclusion. Drawing on interviews and documentary materials produced around the Strategy by official sources and Roma organizations, we describe its background, rationale, and evolution, as well as the rifts it has revealed around the issues of minority representation and the framing of inclusion. We describe the Strategy as a framework for education policy, aligned with the European Framework for Roma integration, and discuss it in relation to issues of representation, inclusion, and policy formation. We argue that, at the discursive level, the Strategy has engaged positively with the politics of Roma inclusion and has introduced a number of new issues in the public debate. However, at the same time it has given rise to policy tensions that reflect inadequate representation of and discussions with Roma stakeholders. For policy makers this has presented opportunities to rethink the design of the Strategy and to opt for an open final text that allows for a more versatile and flexible set of policy options to emerge at the local level.     

The Effects of Teachers’ Training on Pupils’ Achievement: The Case of Elementary Schools in France

This investigation examines the effects of teachers’ training on pupils’ achievement in French and mathematics. The aim of the research is to compare the effectiveness of three samples of elementary school teachers with different levels of experience and training. Using a multilevel model, the results demonstrate that training enhances the effectiveness of novice teachers. In addition, experience was also found to have a positive effect. Neither training nor experience have a significant effect on equity, defined as the capacity of reducing the initial gap between high and low achieving pupils.     

A quest for legitimacy: on the professionalization policies of Sweden’s Teachers’ Unions

The aim of this article is to contribute to the ongoing discussion on teacher professionalism by analyzing the professional strategies of Sweden’s two teachers’ unions from an organizational perspective. Drawing on institutional theory, the article argues that the teachers’ unions’ focus on strategies of professionalization has as much to do with questions of legitimacy in the eyes of the public, as with any specific effort at transforming the practice of teaching in a professional direction. Against the background of two recent Swedish education reforms, the article shows that the unions are ‘trapped’ within a normative order emphasizing professionalization as the primary way of organizational development and legitimacy, resulting in a need for the unions to adopt professional attributes. In the case of the Swedish unions, this is accomplished through mimetic processes whereby union policies, aimed at the improvement of teaching, are modeled upon the medical profession, regardless of the differences between the technologies and practices of the occupations. In this way, the professional rhetoric of the unions is decoupled from the practice of teaching in order to maximize the public legitimacy needed for improving the declining societal status of teaching.     

Seeking Understanding of Foreign Language Teachers’ Shifting Emotions in Relation to Pupils

Teaching is recognised as an emotional practice. Studies have highlighted the importance of teachers’ emotional literacy in the development of pupils’ emotional skills, the central position of emotions in teachers’ ways of knowing, and in their professional development. This longitudinal study draws on a dialogic understanding of emotion to present findings from qualitative interviews with teachers. This study aims to provide further understanding in this area by offering a perspective into 7 foreign language teachers’ emotions in relation to their pupils during their first decade in the profession. The most important finding was that negative emotions decreased while the positive emotions increased. Understanding what emotions teachers face and how they deal with them may help practicing teachers better understand their daily work and support student teacher preparation.     

Strangers and Professionals: Positioning Discourse in ESL Teachers’ Work

English Language Learners (ELLs) usually spend most of the school day with regular classroom teachers. The ability of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers to help these students, then, depends in part on their ability to influence how the classroom teachers think of ELL students and ESL itself. One way ESL teachers do this is through “positioning discourses”—discursive practices that connect the children in certain ways to neighborhood reputations, political imagery, policy priorities, and professional responsibilities. This paper examines how ESL teachers in two contrasting school systems produce different kinds of positioning discourses in responding to different contextual constraints and pressures. Drawing on interview data, we show how teachers in an urban setting use elements of neighborhood reputation to position their students, while teachers in a more affluent suburb use discourses of expertise and professional knowledge to reshape the way ESL is understood. Our goals are to explicate how these discourses are produced and used.     

Pupils’ and Teachers’ Views on a British Science Magazine for Youth

This paper focuses on students' ability to transfer modelling performances across content areas, taking into consideration their improvement of content knowledge as a result of a model-based instruction. Sixty-five sixth grade students of one science teacher in an urban public school in the Midwestern USA engaged in scientific modelling practices that were incorporated into a curriculum focused on the nature of matter. Concept-process models were embedded in the curriculum, as well as emphasis on meta-modelling knowledge and modelling practices. Pre–post test items that required drawing scientific models of smell, evaporation, and friction were analysed. The level of content understanding was coded and scored, as were the following elements of modelling performance: explanation, comparativeness, abstraction, and labelling. Paired t-tests were conducted to analyse differences in students' pre–post tests scores on content knowledge and on each element of the modelling performances. These are described in terms of the amount of transfer. Students significantly improved in their content knowledge for the smell and the evaporation models, but not for the friction model, which was expected as that topic was not taught during the instruction. However, students significantly improved in some of their modelling performances for all the three models. This improvement serves as evidence that the model-based instruction can help students acquire modelling practices that they can apply in a new content area.     

What Jim Crow’s Teachers Could Do: Educational Capital and Teachers’ Work in Under-resourced Schools

This article explains how Jim Crow’s teachers—former teachers of legally segregated schools for blacks—prepared and motivated disadvantaged students in spite of funding and resource deprivation. According to the author, black teachers fashioned situated pedagogies for the acquisition of educational capital that could be used in exchange for jobs, rights, and social power. Findings reveal three strategies of opportunity which provide some clues to how urban teachers today can educate poor children of color in under-resourced schools, such as generating materials and supplies, situating curriculum and instruction, and mobilizing human resources. The analysis draws upon 44 oral history interviews with former teachers in the coastal plains of North Carolina, as well as secondary historical sources.     

Preservice and Inservice Teachers’ Challenges in the Planning of Practical Work in Physics

Practical work in school science plays many essential roles that have been discussed in the literature. However, less attention has been paid to how teachers learn the different roles of practical work and to the kind of challenges they face in their learning during laboratory courses designed for teachers. In the present study we applied the principles of grounded theory to frame a set of factors that seem to set major challenges concerning both successful work in the school physics laboratory and also in the preparation of lessons that exploit practical work. The subject groups of the study were preservice and inservice physics teachers who participated in a school laboratory course. Our results derived from a detailed analysis of tutoring discussions between the instructor and the participants in the course, which revealed that the challenges in practical or laboratory work consisted of the limitations of the laboratory facilities, an insufficient knowledge of physics, problems in understanding instructional approaches, and the general organization of practical work. Based on these findings, we present our recommendations on the preparation of preservice and inservice teachers for the more effective use of practical work in school science and in school physics.     

Multilevel Multivariate Regression: An Illustration Concerning School Teachers’ Perceptions of their Pupils

Survey data on teachers’ perceptions of the ability and of the economic circumstances of their pupils are used to illustrate multilevel multivariate linear regression. The main substantive conclusions are that (i) on average, teachers in a school share beliefs about the pupils, and that these beliefs form a fairly coherent view in which economic disadvantage is seen to go along with low ability, but that (ii) individual teachers within the school vary substantially around this average. These conclusions have a bearing on the debate about school ‘ethos’. The main methodological conclusion is that investigating such topics can be made more subtle and more able to respect the complexities of educational structures by adopting both a multilevel and a multivariate approach, and that computer software now exists to achieve this. Résumé Les données d’une enquête sur les perceptions des enseignants relativement aux capacités de leurs élèves et à leur appartenance socio-économique ont été utilisées ici pour illustrer l’utilisation de la méthode de régression lin?aire multiple sur plusieurs niveaux. Les conclusions principales sont les suivantes: (i) en moyenne, dans une école, les enseignants échangent sur leurs croyances par rapport à leurs élèves, et l’on peut remarquer une grande cohérence dans le fait de croire qu’être issu d’un milieu économique désavantagé va de pair avec des capacités moins grandes; (ii) mais on peut constater que le point de vue des enseignants — pris individuellement — s’écarte considérablement de cette moyenne. Ces conclusions alimentent le débat sur le “génie” (“ethos”) à l’école. Sur le plan méthodologique, on peut principalement conclure au bien-fond? du choix d'une approche … la fois multiple et sur plusieurs niveaux dans le cas d'investigations, telles celle-ci, portant sur des thématiques nécessitant beaucoup de finesse et de respect envers la complexit? des structures de l’éducation. Relevons encore que le software est actuellement disponible pour effectuer des démarches de ce type. (Traduction: Catherine Cusin, Collaboratrice scientifique du CSRE, Aarau, Suisse.)     

The Democratization of Schools and the Politics of Teachers’ Work in South Africa

As the South African state begins to democratize, so questions are raised about how this process might be mediated by schools and teachers or how schools’ and teachers’ practices might inform the wider process of social change. This paper explores these issues through an examination of how teachers sought to alter relations of authority and the nature of their work within schools, and how these have interacted with new managerial and state initiatives. It examines the conditions of teachers’ work under apartheid, the challenge to these by the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union and the struggles in schools over changing relations of authority and teachers’ work in the crucial transition years of 1990‐1997. It argues that alternative conceptions and practices were developed and institutionalized. This paper uses the results of both a 3 year longitudinal study and research conducted on teacher appraisal with the teachers’ union.     

Social Work Students’ Experiences With Group Work in the Field Practicum

The study reported on in this article assessed MSW and BSW students’ opportunities to practice group work in their field practicum. More than one third of participants had no such opportunity during their yearlong internship, despite their program’s requirement that group work opportunities be available. Among the students who did have experience leading a group for clients, their opportunities to engage in core group work activities and skills was limited, as was their academic preparation to do so. Students demonstrated a desire to practice group work as professionals. Yet the findings call into question whether they were adequately prepared to effectively engage in the modality. The findings underscore the need for schools and programs of social work to collaborate more closely with field instructors and agencies to ensure that students are provided with suitable opportunities to practice group work. Greater attention also must be focused on ensuring that practice opportunities in the field reflect the depth and breadth of the group modality and complement learning in the classroom.     

Teachers’ Professional Identity Negotiations in Two Different Work Organisations

Recent studies have described professional identity as the interplay between individual agency and social context. However, we need to understand how these are intertwined in different kinds of work settings. This paper focuses on teachers’ professional identity negotiations as involving the work organisation, the professional community and individual agency. The data were gathered from two work organisations representing different management cultures and sources of control over teachers’ work. Open-ended narrative interviews were used, focusing on teachers’ own experiences and perceptions. A data-driven qualitative analysis was applied. Our findings indicated that different work organisations provided differing resources for teachers’ professional identity negotiations. Teachers were more committed to their work organisation if they had enough agency, if they had opportunities to practise their own orientations towards the profession, and if major changes were not imposed on their working practices from outside.     

The Impact of Primary School Teachers’ Expectations of Pupils,Parents and Teachers on Teacher Track Recommendations

To advance the understanding about primary school teachers’ allocation process of pupils during the transition to secondary education, this study aims to investigate the influencing teacher expectations of teacher track recommendations. Using a qualitative research design consisting of an inductive approach, interview data were gathered from 15 Flemish sixth-grade teachers. The results indicate that foremost teacher expectations of pupils, more specifically of pupils’ perceived motivation or interests and learning attitude, were considered by teachers as influencing their track recommendations. Although empirical evidence was also found for the impact of expectations held by teachers about pupils’ parents and about themselves as teachers, as well as about teaching, teachers’ awareness of the impact of one’s own expectations was limited.     

Pupils’ voices about citizenship education: comparative case studies in Finland,Sweden and England

The aim of the article is to present and discuss a study in which Finnish, English and Swedish pupils’ understanding of citizenship education with regard to: (a) political literacy; and (b) attitudes and values was explored. The study was a cross‐national, multiple case study and data were collected through 18 focus group dialogues with 15‐year‐old pupils. Results showed that English pupils were much more well‐informed about rights and responsibilities than their Nordic counterparts and also more skilled rhetorically, but appeared less accustomed to open and confident relationships with adults than the Swedish pupils. Finnish pupils did not seem to be encouraged to talk; instead they kept their thoughts and feelings to themselves. One conclusion, among others, was that the study illuminates conditions for the development of a so‐called key competence – i.e., ‘interpersonal, intercultural, social and civic competence’.     

Teachers’ and Their Pupils’ Performance on Plant Nutrition: a Comparative Case

Research in Science Education - The research compares teachers’ and their pupils’ performance on plant nutrition. The misconceptions of 89 primary school children from one state school...     

Specialist Teachers for Pupils with Learning Difficulties? A Survey of Headteachers in Schools and Units

Georgina Julian, a third year undergraduate, and Jean Ware, a lecturer in the Psychology of Education and Special Educational Needs, at the University of Wales, Cardiff, report on research into the current position on the relevant qualifications of teachers, and intending teachers, in schools and units for pupils with moderate to profound learning difficulties. They suggest that there has been little consistent progress in the preparation of teachers for this work since the ACSET (Advisory Committee on the Supply and Education of Teachers) Report in 1984.     

Pupils’ self-perceptions: the role of teachers’ judgment controlling for big-fish-little-pond effect

This article aims to study the relationship between teachers’ judgment and pupils’ self-perceptions controlling for the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE). Three studies were conducted among third-grade pupils. Study 1 (n?=?585) focused on pupils’ perceptions of their scholastic competence. Teachers’ judgment and BFLPE were found to have an independent relation with pupils’ self-perceived scholastic competence. Study 2 (n?=?660) replicated the same results of study 1. Study 3 (n?=?683) extended the analysis to other domains of self-perception identified by Harter (Child development, 53, 87–97, 1982). The results showed that the relation with the BFLPE was significant only for pupils’ self-perceived scholastic competence. They also showed that the teachers’ judgment was related to two other domains of self-perception (behavioral conduct and peer acceptance) but was not directly related to pupils’ global self-worth.