Measuring teaching quality and student engagement in South Korea and The Netherlands

Six observation scales for measuring the skills of teachers and 1 scale for measuring student engagement, assessed in South Korea and The Netherlands, are sufficiently reliable and offer sufficient predictive value for student engagement. A multigroup confirmatory factor analysis shows that the factor loadings and intercepts of the scales are the same, within acceptable boundaries, in both countries. Therefore, we can compare the average scores of teachers in both countries in a reliable and valid way. The 289 Dutch teachers score significantly better on “creating a safe and stimulating learning climate” and “intensive and activating teaching” and almost significantly on “efficient classroom management”. We find no significant differences in “clear and structured instruction”. The 375 South Korean teachers perform significantly better than the Dutch teachers on “teaching learning strategies” and almost significantly on “differentiating instruction”. Furthermore, we find better student engagement in South Korea.     

Quality of teaching in four European countries: a review of the literature and application of an assessment instrument

Background From 2002 onwards, initiatives and first steps for the project International Comparative Analysis of Learning and Teaching (ICALT) have been taken by the inspectorates of education in England, Flanders (Belgium), Lower Saxony (Germany) and The Netherlands. The inspectorates of education in these European countries reviewed the results of research on the basic characteristics of good and effective teaching and selected standards and indicators for an observation instrument that could be used to evaluate the quality of teaching. The inspectorates from these countries jointly developed an instrument to observe and analyse the quality of learning and teaching in primary schools.

Purpose The observation instrument was piloted for reliability and inter-rater reliability, and for validity, in the four countries.

Sample Mathematics lessons in England, Flanders (Belgium), Lower Saxony (Germany) and The Netherlands were observed in 854 classrooms, with children who were about 9 years old when they started the school year.

Design and methods Inspectors in the four countries were trained in the proper use of the observation instrument, and used the instrument during their own inspections or evaluations.

Results This study shows that the quality of teaching in the four countries can be compared in a reliable and valid way as regards five aspects: ‘efficient classroom management’, ‘safe and stimulating learning climate’, ‘clear instruction’, ‘adaptation of teaching’ and ‘teaching–learning strategies’.

Conclusions It is found that only a few percentage points of difference between teachers are due to differences existing in the four countries. Furthermore, it may be concluded that the five aspects of quality of teaching are positively and significantly correlated with pupil involvement, attitude, behaviour and attainment.     

A cross‐cultural study of teacher perspectives on teacher roles and adoption of online collaborative learning in higher education

This study aims to understand teachers’ perspectives on their roles in higher education, their views about the adoption of a social‐constructivist approach to teaching and learning and the integration of online collaborative learning in blended learning environments in higher education from a cross cultural perspective. We interviewed 60 Chinese teachers from Beijing Normal University and Capital Normal University in Beijing, China and 30 Flemish teachers from Ghent University in Flanders, Belgium. The results revealed differences as well as specific similarities in perspectives between the Chinese and Flemish university teachers. The cultural and educational context is taken into consideration when discussing the results.     

Breaking Fresh Ground: Regional Co‐operation in Higher Education

One of the most recent European developments in the internationalization of higher education is the stimulation of regional co‐operation among institutions. In the so‐called border countries policy, Flanders, The Netherlands, and the German Länder of North‐Rhine Westphalia, Bremen, and Lower Saxony are collaborating in different ways to establish an “open higher education space”. Within the framework of this border countries policy, various initiatives have been taken in order to support co‐operation among higher education institutions from the countries involved. Amongst other things, research was undertaken in order to gain insight into the differences and similarities of the programmes offered in the five countries. In addition, the Ministries of Education of the participating countries have begun to allocate funds to institutions that have taken co‐operation initiatives that coincide with the policies of the countries concerned. These two aspects of the border countries policy will be discussed in this article.     

Validating a model of effective teaching behaviour and student engagement: perspectives from Spanish students

Research consistently shows that teaching behaviour is a highly-important indicator of learning environments. Based on a teacher effectiveness model with six observable teaching behaviour domains (safe learning climate, efficient classroom management, clarity of instruction, activating teaching, teaching–learning strategies, and differentiation), the present paper examines the psychometric quality of the My Teacher questionnaire for capturing student perceptions of teaching behaviour in the Spanish secondary-education context. Additionally, this study validated the model of teaching behaviour and student engagement and its relevance in Spain. 7114 students of 410 teachers attending 56 public and private Spanish schools constituted the sample. The six teaching behavioural dimensions model were confirmed in the Spanish context. Regarding student academic engagement, the presence of two domains (behavioural and emotional engagement) were confirmed. Furthermore, results of a multiple-group structural equation modeling path analysis, examining the relationship between teaching behaviour and student engagement across different teaching experiences, revealed differential effects of teaching behaviour influences on students’ engagement. The percentage of explained variance was larger for emotional engagement than for behavioural engagement. Furthermore, teachers’ teaching experience explained differences in the relationship between perceived teaching behaviour and engagement. Two domains (learning climate and activating teaching) appeared to be the two most-important teaching domains for students’ behavioural engagement while, for emotional engagement, the most important domains for student engagement were learning climate and teaching learning strategies.

     

PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF CULTURALLY RELEVANT SCIENCE TEACHING IN AMERICAN INDIAN CLASSROOMS

This study explores the perceptions of culturally relevant science teaching of 35 teachers of American Indian students. These teachers participated in professional development designed to help them better understand climate change science content and teaching climate change using both Western science and traditional and cultural knowledge. Teacher perceptions of practices using culturally relevant instruction were evaluated. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results from the survey analysis show that the teachers’ existing practices of culturally relevant science teaching were limited in choosing topics relevant to American Indian culture. We found three common themes from the teachers’ perceptions of culturally relevant science teaching, meaning of culturally relevant science teaching, teaching strategies, and purpose of culturally relevant science teaching from the qualitative data. We also found that teachers with higher survey scores perceive culturally relevant science teaching differently than teachers with lower survey scores, specifically for the purposes and teaching strategies of culturally relevant science teaching. The results show that teachers with higher survey scores tended to perceive culturally relevant science teaching as a two-way learning process between teachers and students where the teachers can learn traditional science knowledge from the students. They also tend to perceive using concrete traditional science examples as effective teaching strategy for culturally relevant science teaching and building strong relationships with American Indian students as the most important purpose of culturally relevant science teaching. We also discuss common challenges faced by science teachers when trying to implement culturally relevant science teaching with American Indian students.     

What We Learned about Using Metaphors in College Teaching: Methods and Meanings

The field of education is rich with metaphors that reveal one's perspective on the nature of teaching and learning—ideas are “covered,” students “absorb” information, teachers offer writing “clinics.” Each of these metaphors indicate nuanced ideas about what schooling is and is for—to be checked off? Taken in unquestioningly? For those who are sick? Two teacher educators in the field of early childhood education share insights from their own experiences in considering novice teachers' metaphors in their preparatory experiences, particularly wondering what these unveil about heretofore unanalyzed beliefs and what instructors can learn so as to form further instruction. Methods are shared and reflection led educators to find important instructional and relationship-building implications for working with novice teachers.     

Learning to teach: Effects of classroom observation,assignment of appropriate lesson preparation templates and stage focused feedback

This article focuses on improving the instructional quality of student teachers in elementary education. We developed a coaching approach involving classroom observation and appropriate lesson preparation and feedback templates. Using an untreated control group design with pre-test and posttest (n = 198), we answered the question ‘whether student teachers who learned to teach with the new coaching approach achieved a higher level of pedagogical and didactical teaching skills compared to student teachers who did not receive this approach’. The effect variable used was the observation instrument ICALT. We compared the average scores of the control group and the experimental group on the posttest (ANCOVA). The differences found on the posttest, after controlling for the confounding variables, were significant on all ICALT scales. These effect sizes are medium on the scales; ‘Safe climate’, and ‘Clear instruction’, and large on the scales; ‘Classroom management’, ‘Activating pupils’, ‘Adaptive teaching’, and ‘Teaching learning strategies’.     

"三教改革"背景下高职英语教师专业成长的策略研究

基于“三教改革”大趋势背景下,有效培养职教人才的核心内容是系统解决人才培养与评价中“谁来教”“教什么”“怎么教”的问题。高职院校由于教学及管理模式相较于本科院校较为特殊,使之运营管理、教学水平存在一定局限性,制约着教师队伍发展,影响了人才培养效果。“三教改革”提出,教师是教学改革之核心点、突破口,应以多方资源合力并行的理念培养教师队伍,力争不断提升其专业技能、综合素质,从而促进教学效果提升,助力应用型人才培养。基于此,以“三教改革”理念为导向,分析高职英语教师队伍发展现状并根据其存在的问题提出相应策略,以期对高职英语专业师资队伍发展提供有益参考。     

教师学习:本质、影响因素与路径特征——基于近十年研究的阐释

教师学习是教师专业发展的核心路径.对教师学习的本质、影响因素与路径特征等三个根本性问题的探究,是实现高质量教师专业发展与教师队伍建设的逻辑起点.采用文献分析法,对最近十年的93篇相关文献进行编码分析后发现,教师学习是"系统中的"和"交互下的",其本质是个体与系统多重互动中教师整体变化的过程,它受到教师所在整个系统的复杂影响,呈现出"三个面向"与"三重取向"的路径特征:面向复杂教育教学实践,实践取向的教师学习成为趋势;面向差异化教师,个性化教师学习正在发育;面向多变环境,线上线下混合式学习或将成为教师学习新常态.复杂性、整体性、系统性、交互性、实践性、差异性等是当前理解教师学习的关键词,日常化、校本化、团队化、高科技化等成为教师学习实践的发展趋势.     

The effect of primary education teachers on the formation of pupil citizenship

Decreasing levels of civic participation and political engagement are generating an interest in citizenship and citizenship education. New forms of citizenship education which go beyond traditional instruction on political institutions are being sought, such as “democratic citizenship education”, “education of, for and through democracy” and “teaching democracy”. One area which has been little investigated is primary school teachers and citizenship education. This article reports on questionnaire‐based research among Slovak teachers that shows great variety in the focus of citizenship education. Teachers emphasised national pride as well as multicultural, global, regional and human rights aspects and the common good of an entity. The connections between teacher focus on citizenship education, the curricular framework, models of citizenship education and generational differences are all discussed.     

“以学生为中心”的理念在高中国际课程融合教学中的实践与思考

随着基础教育阶段国际化的不断深入,在坚持立足本土、兼容并包的课程融合实践中,研究提出了高中国际课程融合教学实践的三个支点和四个突出特点以及课程融合教学实践中采用的“差异化教学”“混合式学习”“多元化评价”三个策略。“以学生为中心”并不是要弱化教师的作用;要真正落实“眼中有人,心中有人”;“以学生为中心”是为了学生,而不是站在学生的立场上。     

Chinese teachers' attributions and coping strategies for student classroom misbehaviour

In this study, we investigated Chinese teachers' attributions and coping strategies for classroom misbehaviour across grade levels. A total of 244 teachers (Grades 1–12) from the Chinese mainland participated in this survey. Results indicated that Chinese teachers first attributed misbehaviour to student characteristics, such as being “lazy, not making enough effort”, and second to “bad learning habits”. Looking across grade levels, elementary teachers first blamed student learning habits while secondary teachers blamed student effort. With regard to coping strategies, inconsistencies were found across grade levels and between teachers' perceptions and actions. The majority of sampled elementary teachers tended to choose “praising good students” as the most effective and often-used strategy, while secondary teachers believed in “talking after class”. In fact, “talking after class” was viewed to be more effective as grade level increased. However, teachers reported that they did not actually use the strategy of “talking after class” very often when coping with misbehaviours.     

Teachers’ professional learning goals in relation to teaching experience*

In this study, we explored the relationships between teachers’ self-articulated professional learning goals and their teaching experience. Although those relationships seem self-evident, in programmes for teachers’ professional development years of teaching experience are hardly taken into account. Sixteen teachers with varying years of experience and subjects were interviewed. The results show different learning goals, related to communication and organisation, curriculum and instruction, innovation, responsibilities, and themselves as professional. Various relationships between learning goals and teaching experience emerged, which clearly reflect the development from early- to mid- and late-career teachers. Issues related to curriculum and instruction appeared to be learning goals for early- and mid-career teachers. This implies that regardless of increasing teaching expertise, curriculum and instruction remain central to teachers’ continuous learning. Late-career teachers were interested in learning about extra-curricular tasks and innovations. Models of professional life phases have been used to interpret these results.     

论信息时代教师教学技术体系的范式变革

信息时代,教师教学技术体系将从“信息呈现”范式走向“信息处理”范式,实现“精准培养”的功能旨趣,构建以“组织技术”为中心的基础结构并凝结教师“教学生学”的价值共识。“信息呈现”范式的教师教学技术体系将形成摆脱教师个体依赖和时空限制的语言技术体系,铺设学生个性化学习路径的设计技术体系,促进学生自主学习有序进行的组织技术体系,监控教学过程和描述学习轨迹的教学评价技术体系。     

Can Increasing Teachers’ Teaching Autonomy Help Improve Instructional Quality? — Based on the Results of TALIS 2018

Teaching autonomy is an important power of teachers as professionals and also a key factor affecting instructional quality. Based on the relevant data of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018, this study analyzes teachers’ teaching autonomy and its effect on instructional quality. It finds that, firstly, as compared to those in the countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), teachers in Shanghai, China, have greater teaching autonomy, but there is still room for improvement in this regard. They have sufficient autonomy in determining the instructional content and disciplining students, but not in assessing students’ learning. Secondly, increasing the teaching autonomy in Shanghai can significantly improve instructional quality. Increasing their autonomy in assessing students’ learning has the greatest effect on improving instructional quality, while increasing the autonomy in choosing teaching methods has the least effect, which is culturally different from the situation in OECD countries. Thirdly, the influence of teaching autonomy on instructional quality is positively moderated by teaching efficacy, which means that teachers need to have the “ability” in addition to the “autonomy.” Based on this, suggestions are also made.     

试论高职高专教师校本培训创新

高职高专校本培训要立足学校与岗位实际,注重培训价值与培训效率提升;根据学校教学改革实际、不同类型教师特点以及不同专业特色设计校本培训目标、选择培训内容与培训形式并不断创新;加强高职高专校本培训,要“以教师为本”,分解教师专业发展目标,营造激励氛围,实现工作学习化与学习工作化,着力解决培训中的难点问题,促进培训策略的不断创新。     

Europe and Flanders: Partners in E-Learning? A Comparison of Public Policies

Working towards e-learning success in higher education, i.e. the institution-wide acceptance and use of ICT applications for teaching and learning purposes, means choosing an approach of least resistance . Internal and external consistency or at least complementarity in policy seem crucial. This article presents the results of a desk research concerning the current European and Flemish e-learning public policy approaches with reference to higher education. By means of a document analysis the author traces policy options and strategies in order to find out if , and to what extent they are attuned. The results show that Flanders has quite successfully converted the European general education and innovation policies to its own policy level. Both are on the same wavelength with regard to political views, strategies and action points. What differs is the pretext in time: Europe advises, Flanders agrees afterwards. Nevertheless, the Flemish policy-makers need a 'wake-up call' in order to develop an e-learning action plan with specific measures to enhance e-learning implementation in the region.