Computing in the curriculum: Challenges and strategies from a teacher’s perspective

Computing is being introduced into the curriculum in many countries. Teachers’ perspectives enable us to discover what challenges this presents, and also the strategies teachers claim to be using successfully in teaching the subject across primary and secondary education. The study described in this paper was carried out in the UK in 2014 where teachers were preparing for the mandatory inclusion of Computing into the curriculum. A survey was conducted of over 300 teachers who were currently teaching Computing to elicit their perspectives on challenges and strategies. From the analysis of the data, extrinsic and intrinsic challenges were identified for both teachers and students. In addition, a variety of pedagogical strategies were recommended by teachers from their own practice. In categorising approaches taken by teaching to support students five key themes emerged: unplugged type activities, contextualisation of tasks, collaborative learning, developing computational thinking, and scaffolding programming tasks. Further investigation could support whether these strategies can alleviate the challenges of teaching and learning of Computing for students and teachers. In particular developing student resilience in Computing is seen as a challenge while not many strategies are suggested. The results of this study will be useful for teachers who are new to the teaching of Computing.     

Standards and assessment: coherence from the teacher’s perspective

We sought to understand how teachers’ perspectives on standards-based instructional practices, classroom assessment, and external testing do or do not show coherence and alignment. Based on survey methods (n?=?155) and interviews with a sample of secondary school teachers (n?=?9) in a large urban district in the USA, we explored general trends and individual teachers’ viewpoints. Our results suggest that the teachers’ instructional use of standards, classroom assessment preferences, and beliefs about the test-driven system are moderately correlated. Interview data provide insight into reasons teachers hold beliefs that do or do not fit well into a coherent assessment system.     

Teachers’ and teacher educators’ lives: the role of emotion

This paper reports research which focuses on ways of enhancing understandings by teachers of the key role that emotions play in their personal professional growth. It combines the narrative, autobiographical accounts of teachers attending part-time masters degree programmes in England (Continuing Professional Development and School Improvement) and Northern Ireland (Personal and Social Development) with an interrogation of the underlying values which affect the practices of their tutors. It reveals the effects of powerful and often unacknowledged interaction between personal biography and professional and social contexts upon teachers in schools and higher education.     

What does the teacher do?: Constructivist pedagogies and prospective teachers’ beliefs about the role of a teacher

The constructivist pedagogies that are increasingly part of teacher education course work and expectations emerge from an intellectual world where knowledge is seen as created rather than received, mediated by discourse rather than transferred by teacher talk, explored and transformed rather than remembered as a uniform set of positivistic ideas. Increasingly, teacher educators ask new teachers to learn how to elicit and then use students’ existing ideas as a basis for helping them construct new, more reasoned, more accurate or more disciplined understandings. While the role a teacher plays in developing or shaping students’ thinking via constructivist pedagogies is obvious to teacher educators who advocate such strategies, the case of Taylor, a prospective English teacher, suggests that the role a teacher plays when using these strategies may not be at all clear to prospective teachers. Rather than understanding constructivist pedagogies as techniques for thinking with learners, for teaching them, Tayor saw these strategies as ends in themselves. Faced with models of constructivist pedagogies, Taylor concluded that the teacher's role ends when she has activated learners, invited them to talk, successfully engaged their participation. This article describes how she reached this conclusion and explores the ways in which constructivist pedagogies can lead prospective teachers to project a thin vision of their role as a teacher.     

Adolescents’ emerging habitus: the role of early parental expectations and practices

This study makes two contributions to the literature. First, it bridges the sociological discussion of social class habitus with psychological notions of adolescents’ educational expectations, locus of control, and self-concepts. Second, it empirically examines the relationships between early employed parental practices and expectations and adolescents’ dispositions using a recently available wave of data from a nationally representative sample of US students. The findings reveal that students from higher socioeconomic status families had more positive general and area-specific self-concepts, higher educational expectations, higher internal locus of control, and higher academic achievement, and higher parental educational expectations were positively associated with all studied outcomes. The findings provide only partial support for the effects of early parental practices and highlight the role of gender and race/ethnicity in shaping adolescents’ habitus.     

Generating knowledge in a Learning Study – from the perspective of a teacher researcher

The purpose of this article is to discuss and describe how a clinical research method can be used to generate knowledge about teaching and learning. This will be addressed from a teacher researcher’s perspective, taking a conducted Learning Study as the departure. Learning Study is an interventionist, iterative and collaborative research approach, focusing on the teaching of an object of learning. The actual study was conducted by a teacher researcher leading a teacher research team in a study about story-writing in primary school. The research process and the results are discussed using four areas that are described as dichotomies by Labaree (Labaree, D.F. 2003. “The Peculiar Problems of Preparing Educational Researchers.” Educational Researcher 32 (4): 13–22). Labaree states that teacher researchers need to go from being normative, experimental, personal and particular to being analytical, theoretical, intellectual and universal. By using examples from the Learning Study, I argue that these areas do not have to be seen as dichotomies; instead they can be combined and intertwined. Thus, in a Learning Study, elements from both the teaching practice and the academic practice matter, thus enhancing the possibility that results are useful for practitioners.     

Classroom management and students' mathematics achievement: The role of students’ disruptive behavior and teacher classroom management

Establishing a well-organized classroom conducive to learning is a key element of high-quality teaching. However, less is known about the degree to which the classroom management process is affected by the specific students in the classroom. Using two large-scale datasets of German secondary school students, the present two studies examined the effectiveness of teachers' classroom management in mathematics while taking into account students' disruptive behavior in the classroom. When controlling for the average level of disruptions in the classroom, both students' disruptive behavior and teachers' monitoring activity were negatively associated with students' mathematics achievement, whereas no associations occurred for teachers' structure and rule clarity. The results suggest that teachers' monitoring activity needs to take into account students’ disruptive behavior in the classroom, highlighting the complexity of effective classroom management.     

The role of teacher behavior in adolescents’ intrinsic reading motivation

Given the weak intrinsic reading motivation of many adolescents on the one hand and the importance of this type of motivation for reading competence on the other hand, the aim of the present study is to identify the related role of teacher behavior. To pursue this aim, a secondary analysis was carried out on PISA 2009 data. More particularly, data of a subsample of 4,269 Flemish 15-year olds were examined by means of multilevel modeling. In line with self-determination theory, the results provide evidence for the significance of perceived autonomy-supportive, structured, and involved teacher behavior. Teacher involvement was most strongly associated with adolescents’ intrinsic reading motivation. Further, students’ perception of teachers’ autonomy support was particularly related to girls’ intrinsic reading motivation.     

Adolescents’ profiles based on student agency and teacher autonomy support: does interpersonal justice matter?

In this study, we adopted a person-oriented approach to (a) identify latent profiles of adolescents characterized by unique patterns of perceived teacher autonomy support and student agency, (b) investigate whether perceived interpersonal justice can predict profile membership and (c) compare different profiles in relation to personal responsibility. Participants were 545 Italian secondary school students (55% boys, 94% born in Italy, M_age = 14.24, SD_age = .53). Five adolescents’ profiles emerged: disengaged (24%), average students (34%) and committed (28%), with low, mean and high scores, respectively, in both teacher autonomy support and agency; resistant (5%), with low scores in teacher autonomy support and high scores in agency; compliant (9%), with high scores in teacher autonomy support and low scores in agency. Perceptions of interpersonal justice significantly predicted profile membership in the comparison of almost all profiles. Several significant differences in responsibility among profiles also emerged. Implications of the findings for practices and policies are discussed.

     

Analyzing the relationship between principals’ learning-centered leadership and teacher professional learning: The mediation role of trust and knowledge sharing behavior

This study tested the relationship between principals’ learning-centered leadership and teacher professional learning in Iranian primary schools, with a focus on the mediating role of trust and knowledge sharing behavior. Survey data collected from 886 teachers in 121 primary schools, representing a range of socioeconomic status, distributed across three districts in the city of Mashhad. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results illustrate significant path relationships between the constructs, linking learning-centered leadership with teacher professional learning. Learning-centered leadership directly influenced the professional learning of teachers, and such a relationship was fully mediated by the teachers’ trust and knowledge-based sharing behavior in these Iranian primary schools. These results provide evidence that principals can enhance teacher learning by emphasizing teaching and learning to develop trust among teachers and foster knowledge sharing.     

‘The conference was awesome’: social justice and a mathematics teacher conference

Professional development comes in many forms, some of which are deemed more useful than others. However, when groups of teachers are excluded, or exclude themselves, from professional development opportunities, then there is an issue of social justice. This article examines the experiences of a group of teachers from a Māori-medium school who attended a mathematics teacher conference. By analysing the teachers’ sense of belonging through their ideas about engagement, alignment and imagination, we are able to describe how different kinds of relationships influence the inclusion/exclusion process. This leads to a discussion about what can be done by the teachers as well as conference organisers to increase these teachers’ likelihood of attending further conferences in the future.     

Examining a teacher’s negotiation through change: understanding the influence of beliefs on behavior

Previous research asserts the connection between teacher beliefs and behaviors in the classroom. However, using broad, general constructs collected in teacher self-reported surveys has provided neither clear connections between beliefs and behaviors, nor explanatory power between connected or disparate beliefs. This research examines teacher beliefs from a collection of beliefs perspective that acknowledges a multitude of beliefs coalescing to shape practice observed in the classroom. In this research, qualitative research methods including interviews and classroom observations were used to examine one teacher’s navigation through programmatic change to collect data regarding the teacher’s beliefs central to shaping praxis. Based on the methods employed, two central beliefs emerged (i.e., motivation is key to learning and the teacher’s role as interpreter). While these specific beliefs are interesting and informative, they are understood in this qualitative study as specific to this individual. So, care is taken not to overly extend the importance of these specific beliefs beyond this teacher, but instead to understand the implication that beliefs have on praxis, as well as how beliefs support or compete in their foundational support of instruction.     

Education’s role in the economy: towards a new perspective

The economics of happiness is a developing field of inquiry that is arousing more and more interest among public policy-makers. This article discusses some of the educational implications that stem from this new field of inquiry. The article argues that the economics of happiness shows that the present educational focus on enhancing productivity is insufficient in and of itself and that greater emphasis should be placed on how education can help to transform wealth into happiness. It also maintains, however, that it would be inadvisable to directly derive the role that education should play in the economy from the findings of the economics of happiness. The current educational aim of enhancing productivity, it is concluded, must be complemented by an educational emphasis on informing, guiding and even shaping people’s economic preferences.     

University students’ conceptions of the good teacher: A Hong Kong perspective

One way that universities assess teaching effectiveness is by eliciting student feedback. However, what standards do students themselves use to judge whether a lecturer is a ‘good’ teacher? As part of a study carried out at a Hong Kong university, students were interviewed about their first-year learning experience and asked what they felt constituted ‘good’ and “bad’ teaching. Unlike when asked to complete teacher effectiveness surveys, no criteria or characteristics were given. Responses focused primarily on teaching skills that supported student learning and encouraged critical thinking, particularly the teacher’s ability to give clear explanations supported by relevant, practical examples.     

From externalizing student behavior to student-specific teacher self-efficacy: The role of teacher-perceived conflict and closeness in the student–teacher relationship

Data gathered from a longitudinal study within regular upper elementary schools were used to evaluate a theoretical model within which teachers’ perceptions of conflict and closeness in the student–teacher relationship were considered as the intermediary mechanisms by which individual students’ externalizing behavior generates changes in teachers’ student-specific self-efficacy beliefs (TSE) across teaching domains. Surveys were administered among a Dutch sample of 524 third-to-sixth graders and their 69 teachers. Longitudinal mediation models indicated that individual students’ externalizing behavior generally predicted higher levels of teacher-perceived conflict, which, in turn, resulted in lower student-specific TSE across teaching domains (i.e., instructional strategies, behavior management, student engagement, and emotional support). Teacher-perceived closeness, however, was not found to mediate the link between externalizing student behavior and student-specific TSE. Instead, support was found for an alternative model representing the hypothesis that TSE, irrespective of teaching domain, mediated behavior-related changes in teachers’ perceptions of closeness in the student–teacher relationship.     

Classroom disruptions,the teacher–student relationship and classroom management from the perspective of teachers,students and external observers: a multimethod approach

This study used questionnaires and systematic behavioural observations to examine how teachers, students and external observers perceived classroom disruptions, the teacher–student relationship and classroom management in grade 5 and 6 classrooms in Switzerland. The questionnaire showed that the students of a class agreed to a certain extent in their ratings of classroom disruptions, the teacher–student relationship and classroom management. Comparison of teachers’ and students’ ratings showed that agreement on these constructs varied. We found weak to moderate agreement on classroom disruptions, a weak correspondence for the teacher–student relationship, and no association on classroom management. The results of the behavioural observation showed a moderate agreement between external observers’ and students’ ratings, but no association between external observers’ and class teachers’ ratings and only a weak correspondence with the subject teacher ratings. Thus external observers’ low-inference observations corresponded far better with students’ than teachers’ ratings. To sum up, students, teachers and observers perceive classroom processes differently.

     

Language teacher education in Finland and the cultural dimension of foreign language teaching – a student teacher perspective

The increasing importance attributed to the cultural dimension of FL education has entailed new demands for teachers and teacher educators. This paper explores the cultural agenda in Finnish language teacher education from a student teacher perspective. The focus is on the students' perceptions regarding how effectively cultural aspects are dealt with in their training, and how these perceptions may be affected by the length of time they have spent abroad. The empirical evidence suggests that both the language studies and the pedagogical studies tend to address cultural aspects to a small or very small extent. The main emphasis is placed on traditional aspects of culture, such as literature and Realia knowledge, and strategies for teaching language seem to overshadow strategies for teaching language and culture in an integrated way. Interestingly, the students' perceptions seem to vary depending on the extent to which they have experienced first‐hand contacts with other cultures.     

Korean and foreign students’ perceptions of the teacher’s role in a multicultural online learning environment in Korea

This study investigated Korean and foreign students’ perception of the teacher’s role in multicultural online learning environments in Korea. On the basis of a literature review, a survey questionnaire was developed and piloted with 248 university students in Korea. The questionnaire was subsequently modified on the basis of the results of the pilot study, and a final 20-item questionnaire was constructed. Three hundred and eighty-four university students participated in the main study. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used for statistical analyses. The results indicated that students have a particular perception of the teacher’s role in a multicultural online learning environment. Five different types of teacher’s roles—pedagogical, managerial, technical, affective, and differentiating—were identified. The teacher’s affective and differentiating roles, which were not identified as crucial in previous research, were found to be significant roles for both Korean and foreign students.