Art teachers and action research

The qualitative educational research literature is increasingly advocating the use of literary/artistic techniques. This article describes and evaluates educational action researches by three art teachers, and questions why they have not capitalised methodologically on their artistic expertise. Analysis of commonalities in practitioner-based research in education and practice-based research in art and design reveals significant differences in these two paradigms however. Whereas artists and educational researchers both engage in qualitative problem solving and may use the same kinds of materials and tools, they develop different kinds of hypotheses, look for different sorts of evidence and apply different quality controls.     

教研活动与教师

如何在有限的时间内把人长期积累的经验和智慧的结晶及最新文明成果传授给学生,如何针对信息社会的要求培养学生的学习能力和创造能力,如何针对改革和社会进步对学生成长环境带来的变化进行思想品德教育和信息教育、智育和环境教育、体育和生存教育,如何提高课堂教学效益和教育质量,这些都是教研必须面对的课题。在研究、解决这些课题的过程中,教研人员做出了很大的贡献。     

Scientific explanations and piagetian operational levels

Explaining natural phenomena is an important goal in science teaching. A logical analysis reveals that causal explanations exhibit formal operational structures in that they consist of implication statements chained together through transitive reasoning. It was hypothesized in the present study that individuals who do not reason formally will have difficulty in learning explanations presented in instruction. To test this hypothesis, the effect of levels of operational thought on the explanations which ninth-grade (n = 26) and college (n = 40) physical science students reconstructed after instruction was investigated. Subjects in the study were classified through Piagetian tests as concrete or formal operational. Both concrete and formal subjects were successful in recalling explanations requiring the chaining of two implication statements. Formal operational subjects performed significantly better than concrete operational subjects in three of the four tests of the reconstruction of complex explanations requiring the chaining of six implication statements. In teaching complex causal explanations to students at the concrete operational level, it is suggested that teachers be prepared to furnish some external structuring which the students can rely on in logically relating the various propositions of the explanation to one another.     

Empowering teachers: empowering children? How can researchers initiate and research empowerment?

The relationship between reading and empowerment, though often taken for granted, is complex. The paper describes a pilot research project, which sought to explore how teachers might change their practice in such a way as to empower the children in their care, rather than enculture them into the rather more passive and compliant practices of schooled literacy in the time of the National Literacy Strategy. The paper particularly explores the challenge of methodology: a project about empowerment needs emancipatory research methods. Can research empower, and can teachers, so dominated by the status quo, find the confidence to take on the responsibility that power confers? The paper describes the attempt to empower teachers and the researchers' attempt to gather evidence of that empowerment.     

有声思维——英语专业教师应具备的研究方法

有声思维是英语专业教师应具备的一种研究方法,文章对该研究方法进行了介绍,并以翻译、听力、阅读、写作等课程的教学为例,说明有声思维对英语专业教学的作用.     

Recent doctoral dissertation research on teachers for gifted

In the Mind's Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People with Learning Disabilities, Computer Images, and the Ironies of Creativity Thomas G. West Prometheus Books, 1991 700 East Amherst St. Buffalo, NY 14215 359 pages, cloth, $24.95

The Challenge of Art to Psychology Seymour B. Sarason Yale University Press, 1990 New Haven CT and London 92 A Yale Station Cloth, $25.00     

Factors affecting the impact of inservice courses for teachers: Implications for policy

A central component of government strategies for improving the quality of education and the implementation of new programs and policies is often the short inservice course. The context for this particular study was the National Computer Education Program in the State of Victoria, Australia. Week-long courses were provided from 1984 to 1986 for over 2,000 teachers on the applications of microcomputers in schools at a cost of approximately $2m. Policy-makers within the State Program had a second agenda: that course participants would act as “change-agents” when they returned to their schools. Teachers were surveyed up to 2 years after attending the course about the extent to which they had implemented course objectives. What had been done varied greatly from school to school and the factors which mainly accounted for this variation were the levels of administrative support and follow-up assistance teachers received after their course. The study indicates that returns from investments in inservice education by school systems will be limited if the need for such support and assistance is not anticipated; that is, if planning for policy implementation goes no further than the provision of inservice courses alone, without the orchestration of follow-up support, both from within the school and from external sources.     

Assumptions underlying quantitative and qualitative research: Implications for institutional research

For institutional researchers, the choice to use a quantitative or qualitative approach to research is dictated by time, money, resources, and staff. Frequently, the choice to use one or the other approach is made at the method level. Choices made at this level generally have rigor, but ignore the underlying philosophical assumptions structuring beliefs about methodology, knowledge, and reality. When choosing a method, institutional researchers also choose what they believe to be knowledge, reality, and the correct method to measure both. The purpose of this paper is to clarify and explore the assumptions underlying quantitative and qualitative research. The reason for highlighting the assumptions is to increase the general level of understanding and appreciation of epistemological issues in institutional research. Articulation of these assumptions should foster greater awareness of the appropriateness of different kinds of knowledge for different purposes.     

Implications of research for mathematics teacher education

This paper reviews the research areas considered to be significant for mathematics teacher education. The research is reviewed in several sections: construing children's thinking, affective ideas, teaching methods, the mathematics classroom, and curriculum analyses. In the final section ways of using ideas from this research are discussed. The review seeks to reflect recent research developments and to indicate promising avenues for future study.