Digital video as a pedagogical resource in doctoral education

In recent years, multimedia technologies have become increasingly common in teaching practice. Digital video has provided a welcome alternative to traditional instructional techniques. Though it has been used to facilitate research collaboration [Armstrong, V., & Curran, S. (2006 Armstrong, V., & Curran, S. (2006). “Developing a Collaborative Model of Research Using Digital Video.” Computers & Education 46 (3): 336–347  [Google Scholar]). “Developing a Collaborative Model of Research Using Digital Video.” Computers & Education 46 (3): 336–347], it remains an under-utilized resource for presentation and research dissemination in doctoral education. The Innovation Academy at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin has established innovation and entrepreneurship alongside research and education as an integral element of the PhD programme. Since 2010, the Innovation Academy has facilitated the use of digital video within an interactive multidisciplinary learning environment. While enrolled on a Graduate Certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, over 100 doctoral students have planned, shot, edited and presented a short video, ‘pitching’ their PhD research. This paper details the rationale and process of capturing complex research findings using this medium. We explore the challenges of using video to organize empirical data, visually represent theoretical concepts and evaluate its effectiveness in communicating PhD research to non-expert groups, the wider academic community and potential industry partners. Based on our findings, we reflect on how digital video may be used as a valuable tool for learning in action.     

Teachers’ discourse during cooperative learning and their perceptions of this pedagogical practice

This article describes the types of discourse seven high school teachers used during cooperative leaning. One classroom lesson where students worked in cooperating groups was audiotaped and fully transcribed for each teacher and a vignette of two of the teachers and one of the groups in his or her room are also provided. The data from the audiotapes showed that the teachers used a range of mediated-learning behaviours that included challenging students’ perspectives, asking cognitive and metacognitive questions, and scaffolding students’ learning. In turn, the students used many of the discourses they heard their teachers use in their interactions with each other. Follow-up interviews of teachers’ perceptions of cooperative learning as a pedagogical practice that had efficacy revealed that they believed it was important to structure the groups (i.e., tasks, composition), teach the appropriate social skills, and present tasks that encouraged students to think critically and reflectively about their learning.     

Community-based field experiences in teacher education: possibilities for a pedagogical third space

The present article discusses the importance of community-based field experiences as a feature of teacher education programs. Through a qualitative case study, prospective teachers’ work with homeless youth in an after-school initiative is presented. Framing community-based field experiences in teacher education through “third space” theory, the article discusses the value that such experiences have for prospective teachers’ learning. The goals of the article align with the commitment to preparing a future teaching force for the diverse educational settings that they will encounter in the twenty-first century.     

Teachers’ views on organizational and pedagogical approaches to early bilingual education: A case study of bilingual kindergartens in Germany and Israel

The article focuses on bilingual kindergartens in Germany and Israel offering education in both host (German or Hebrew) and immigrant (Russian) languages. The main questions are how teachers of bilingual kindergartens understand and explain the organizational and pedagogical principles of the kindergartens and how they negotiate home and host country pedagogical experience. The methodological background of the study is Critical Discourse Analysis. The results reveal differences in the organizational and pedagogical principles that can be attributed to the preschool education policies in Germany and Israel, the status of the Russian language, and the specific characteristics of the kindergartens.     

Children and adolescents as political actors: Collective visions of politics and citizenship

This article presents a case study on the political thought and citizenship conceptions of children and adolescents. Considering children and adolescents as reflexive citizens and partners in community development processes, it is our purpose to understand the development of political thought, and particularly how children conceive the exercise of citizenship and participation. Participants were 97 children of a primary and middle secondary (basic) school, aged 5 to 14?years, organized into age groups of 12 children each. Focus group discussions were used as participatory research methodology which involves children as active collaborators, a method that appears to be a good alternative to the traditional individual interviews used in previous research. Results point to the existence of a developmental process of political thought that begins before the start of formal schooling, and a parallel evolution of the conception of social organization and the concepts of citizenship and participation.     

Global economies of fear: affect,politics and pedagogical implications

This article seeks to explore the importance of the affective politics of fear in education and to discuss the implications for educational policy, theory and practice. The aim is to explore how discourses of fear work in some educational contexts and draw significant boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ through the structuring of curriculum and pedagogy. This analysis is done through argumentation and research evidence from the author's ethnographic work in the United States and Cyprus. Based on this analysis, the author draws out pedagogical openings that emerge from such efforts, and extends the space in which pedagogues might move to induce a critical interrogation of the affective politics of fear. It is argued that if educators are committed to inspire individual and social change – a change that would eventually problematise the symbolic violence exerted by the affective politics of fear – then much work needs to be done at the affective level.     

Inside and outside the integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel: Teachers’ perceptions of personal, professional and political positioning

The purpose of this study was to investigate how teachers of the integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel construct their school culture in relation to various outside pressures in their attempt to achieve educational change. Field notes from an in-service training workshop were analyzed according to three levels of the teaching context: the personal, professional and political. It was found that the teachers perceive themselves as primarily pedagogical experts with a shared vision based on multiculturalism and coexistence. According to the findings, recommendations are made for improving the positioning of the teachers in relation to pupils, parents and policy-makers.     

Software visualization as a pedagogical tool

The teaching of computer programming can benefit from looking ahead towards the needs of experienced programmers, who routinely use industrial strength programming environments. Two of the main attributes of such environments are (a) their ability to scale up to handle large examples and (b) the way they facilitate visualization of program execution. We describe our approach to software visualization, a collection of techniques which allows beginners to see the innards of program execution clearly and at the same time allows experts to view high level program abstractions which help them home in quickly on buggy code. This approach can be combined with recent developments in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) and has the added benefit of allowing students to explore on their own using a discovery-based paradigm. Were-work some well known examples from the ITS community and show how our approach scales up to handle a more sophisticated problem involving a 7,500 line operating system.     

The Many Identities of Pedagogics as a Challenge: Towards an ontology of pedagogical research as pedagogical practice

The history of pedagogics gives the impression that pedagogics has never had an identity of its own. Throughout history it has borrowed its identity from philosophy, theology, psychology and sociology. Against the background of this historical challenge, the article proposes pedagogical practice as an alternative identity to pedagogics, although not in the classical sense of an absolute and self‐sufficient identity, and it develops one particular ontological theory of pedagogical practice viewed from a life‐world approach with the ambition of suggesting a theoretical point of departure for pedagogical research.     

Teachers’ critical incidents: Ethical dilemmas in teaching practice

The aim of this study is to explore ethical dilemmas in critical incidents and the emerged responses that these incidents elicit. Most teachers try to suppress these incidences because of the unpleasant feelings they evoke. Fifty teachers participated in the study. A three-stage coding process derived from grounded theory was utilized. A taxonomy of critical incidents by means of the ATLAS.ti 5.0 revealed a multifaceted model of ethical dilemmas, among them clashing with rules, standards, or norms in school, as well as a multitude of derived responses. The results encourage the development of educational programmes based on teachers’ critical incidents.     

大学英语自主学习:教师信念与教师行为的视角

大学英语教学的终极目标之一是培养大学生自主学习的意识和能力。以往的研究关注自主学习理论的探讨以及影响自主学习的学习者因素,忽视教师这一重要主体是如何认识自主学习以及在实践中的具体情况和遇到的问题。事实上,一方面,教师对学生自主学习能力的培养有重要作用;另一方面,教师信念和教师行为又存在着不一致的情况,并会对学生的学习产生影响。本文采用问卷调查、课堂观察和访谈的综合研究方法,对西南某211高校的32名大学英语教师进行信念和行为的双向考察,研究结果表明大学英语教师对学生自主学习的信念和其教学行为之间存在脱节的现象。本文拟从教学方法和课型差异两方面论述产生这一现象的原因以及英语课程培养学生自主学习能力的特殊性,希望对教师教育、英语课程设置和教材编写等提供参考。     

Teachers’ reflections of professional change during a literacy-reform initiative

Policymakers recently have targeted teacher quality, and school systems have increased their attention to instructional reform through professional development. The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ views about the change process and professional development that supports change. Semi-structured focus-group data were gathered from 41 primary-grades teachers (students ages 5–9) across five schools in a high-poverty urban district that participated in a 2-year literacy-reform initiative. Results indicated that teachers viewed the change process from two stances: as learners and as change agents. Three conditions supported their professional growth: professional development embedded in school and classroom contexts, professional development focused on limited and clearly defined learning goals, and on-demand access to time and resources. Changes that occurred did so in three phases: movement from curriculum-centered to student-centered practices, increased collaboration, and requests for policy changes via teacher autonomy and advocacy for students.     

Terry's Learning: some limitations of Shulman's pedagogical content knowledge

This exploratory article seeks to map out some possible practical limitations of Shulman's notion of pedagogical content knowledge and the associated concept of pedagogical reasoning. Interview extracts are used to illustrate the argument that the views and prior knowledge of a trainee teacher of mathematics may subtly shape what is learned in the context of training. It is suggested that representations of mathematics and mathematics teaching, originating in the trainee's own learning, might be concomitant with the development of a particular style of pedagogical reasoning which then determines the type of pedagogical content knowledge that is acquired. Shulman's framework is useful for understanding the trainee's learning, but insufficient to cover a broader range of pedagogical knowledge that might be deemed desirable in the trained teacher. It is suggested that a wider framework, extending pedagogical content knowledge to incorporate alternative forms of teaching, is needed.     

Teachers’ conceptions of teacher-research and self-perceptions as enquiring practitioners—A longitudinal case study

Recognizing the importance teachers’ own voices play in their own professional development, the case study reported in this paper aims to illuminate the role that formal instruction and immersion in research can play in shaping teachers’ views of teacher-research and of themselves as future enquiring practitioners. The study was conducted with a group of nine overseas teachers attending a B.Ed. (Honours) degree in TEFL run by a higher education institution in Britain. Data were collected via questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and field notes from direct observation. Using a grounded theory methodology, the multiple sources of data were integrated into a theoretical model of ways of describing teacher research. The results of the study confirm previous assumptions that the highly-structured nature of the academic format of doing and reporting research may fall short of providing teachers with skills and tools for reflection that are easily transferable to practice.     

Teachers’ professional identity: Contributions of a critical EFL teacher education course in Iran

This paper is a report on contributions of a critical EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher education course to Iranian teachers’ professional identity reconstruction.² Pre-course and post-course interviews with seven teachers, their reflective journals, class discussions, and the teacher educator’s reflective journals were analyzed as guided by grounded theory. Three major shifts were observed in their professional identities: from conformity to and romanticization of dominant ideologies to critical autonomy, from no orientation or an instrumentalist orientation to a critical/transformative orientation of teaching, and from a linguistic and technical view to an educational view of second language education.     

Direct instruction as a pedagogical tool in religious education

Recent advances in the cognitive sciences along with theoretical perspectives from a Vygotskian learning paradigm are used to provide a justification for direct instruction in religious education. Direct instruction is not seen as the end of the learning process but one way in which students can be equipped to engage in more complex learning tasks which both challenge and engage them. To be pedagogically effective, direct instruction must be part of a wider teaching strategy and be based on a number of key principles, such as coherence, signalling and recognition of prior learning. The paper argues that direct instruction is especially relevant when dealing with conceptually difficult material. In addition, it also has a place when working with students who lack strong content knowledge.     

Teachers’ emotions in the reconstruction of professional self-understanding

This research study explores teachers’ specific emotions and the reconstruction of teachers’ professional self-understanding during a comprehensive school reform initiative. Through interviews and archival material, this study seeks to examine teachers’ specific emotions during critical incidents that occurred during the period of reform and to explore the reconstruction of their professional self-understanding. The findings illustrate that the teachers experienced fear and intimidation when their professional self-understandings were challenged. However, with the support of a literacy coach and university faculty they reconstructed these self-understandings, leading to improvements in student achievement and their own instructional practices. These positive changes led to emotions of pride and excitement. The study provides recommendations for state and local school administrators and highlights implications for future research.     

Teacher pedagogical constructions: a reconfiguration of pedagogical content knowledge

A brief review of the history of pedagogical content knowledge reveals various definitions and conceptualizations of the construct, as well as some conceptual problems. A new conceptualization—teacher pedagogical constructions—is offered to address some of the problems associated with PCK. Seven assertions that comprise the new conceptualization are presented, explained and defended. These are: (1) PCK represents personal and private knowledge; (2) PCK is a collection of basic units called teacher pedagogical constructions; (3) teacher pedagogical constructions result mainly from planning, but also from the interactive and post‐active phases of teaching; (4) pedagogical constructions result from an inventive process that is influenced by the interaction of knowledge and beliefs from different categories; (5) pedagogical constructions constitute both a generalized event‐based and a story‐based kind of memory; (6) pedagogical constructions are topic specific; and (7) pedagogical constructions are (or should ideally be) labeled in multiple interesting ways that connect them to other categories and subcategories of teacher knowledge and beliefs. The proposed definition results from a reconceptualization of the nature of PCK as originally proposed, taking the results of major later studies and conceptualizations of PCK into consideration, appropriating new ideas about the structure of memory, and undertaking a reanalysis and presentation of data from a previous study. The article calls for viewing PCK as neither a subcategory of subject matter (subject matter knowledge for teaching) nor as a general generic form of knowledge. It presents a view of PCK as a collection of teacher professional constructions, as a form of knowledge that preserves the planning and wisdom of practice that the teacher acquires when repeatedly teaching a certain topic. Viewing PCK as a collection of TPCs, more precisely defining it, clarifying its relations to other knowledge and beliefs entities, and speculating about its development should facilitate future investigations of PCK.     

Teachers’ perspectives on innovations: Implications for educational design

Educational designers often develop a ‘powerful learning environment’ that is subsequently implemented by teachers. Due to a lack of cooperation with teachers they may receive limited feedback on the quality of their design and the way it is implemented. This study focuses on teachers’ perceptions of a Dutch innovative learning environment called the “Second Phase”, as well as their desires and their dis/satisfaction with this environment. The results show that teachers are reserved about student autonomy and productive learning. Perceptions and desires are related to their individual approaches to teaching. The findings provide useful feedback for designers and a starting point to intensify their cooperation with teachers.