Education for all and attrition/retention of new teachers: A trajectory study in Chile

This article centres on teacher retention and its importance for achieving quality education for all. It analyses the state of early career teaching attrition and turnover in Chile over a ten-year period, and goes on more closely to the study of new teacher trajectories over their first two years of teaching. In line with literature on issues of retention/attrition it considers the impact of school conditions and changes in professional satisfaction and self-efficacy perceptions in the early years of teaching. Data sources include econometric analysis of existing databases as well as surveys, interviews and narratives. Quantitative results indicate high attrition rates of early career teachers in Chile, and teacher narratives show “critical” as well as “protective” conditions that foreshadow decisions to leave or the stay in the profession.     

The Problem of Training in Higher Education

As universities are centres of learning, the lecturer/teacher is, so to speak, the basic institutional journeyman who as an academic and scientist devotes much of his/her time to teaching rather than to pure research. The task of teaching, given the massification of universities, the diversity of students, and the advent of the new information technologies, is much more a question of inducing student learning than of mechanically transmitting knowledge. Therefore, newly recruited university lecturers must have come to their posts with an understanding of university pedagogy. As their careers begin, lecturers must be offered continued instruction in the art of teaching and the inducement of learning in others. Good teaching/inducement‐of‐learning work is a contribution to knowledge and should be as well rewarded as the contribution to knowledge that comes from pure research. Prior professional training should also be made available to university teachers taking up administrative responsibilities.     

远程高等教育质量保证:反思与评论

本文主要针对开放远程教育质量保证的理论与实践进行了思考,着重分析了开放远程教育质量保证实践的现状、存在的不足、今后发展的策略等。     

国内外数字化学习资源及服务认证的比较分析

我国现代高等远程教育历经十余年的发展,已在数字化学习环境和资源建设领域积累了丰富的经验。但是由于各远程教育机构的开发能力和管理能力存在差距,造成数字化资源的质量良莠不齐,数字化学习的支持服务水平也存在很大的差异。尽管相关部门对资源和服务的质量进行了一系列评估、评优工作,但其评审的公正性、社会认可度、评审标准的可操作性以及评审的持续性等都存在明显不足。从国际上看,质量认证是保证教学质量的一种有效方式。与台湾、英国、美国以及欧洲等认证机构的比较发现,我国数字化学习资源与服务认证在机构性质、专家来源、认证费用、认证指标、认证流程以及认证有效期方面,都有需要改进之处。为促进优质数字化教学资源开发以及教学服务质量的提高,我国应树立以学习者需求为中心的意识,将政府支持和第三方认证结合起来,引入非教育行业的专家,积极开展认证前期培训和自我评估,注重实地考察和反馈,以制定更加科学的认证标准和构建更加公平有效的认证机制。     

教学主体辨析

多年来,虽然对于主体教学有多种探讨,但现实中实施的教学仍多是以教师的"教"为中心,表现在教学的内容、方法等一系列的教学过程,都是教为主的体现.对"学为主体"没有更深的研究.现代教育的发展要求研究主体,研究教法与学法结合,寓学法于教法之中.作为主导的教师要会教、会引导作为主体的学生由学会到会学,要使学生充分发挥出自身潜力,和谐发展,就应当研究主体,辨析主体,使教育教学与社会发展和谐.这正是教与学的宗旨.     

中职学校学生英语学习效率低的原因及对策

由于近年来中等职业学校生源质量下降,在校学生学习成绩不佳,学习效率不高,特别是英语学科,大多数学生学习动力不足,方法不当,有些甚至放弃英语学习。本文通过问卷调查及相关数据资料,分析了学生英语学习效率不高的原因,并提出了分层教学、因势利导,使其明确学习动机,纠正学习方法,提倡随兴而导,凸现个性教育等相关对策。     

关于奥数与小学生数学思维能力发展冲突的思考

近年来,小学“奥数”越来越热。小学生做奥数题是否真的有利于小学生的数学思维能力发展,这一问题成为一些教育界人士与家长关心的重要议题。文章认为,大面积的小学生“奥数”培训热,降低了小学生数学学习的兴趣,不利于提高小学生的数学能力。小学数学教学应该把提升小学生的数学素质作为基本出发点,促进小学生的数学思维能力发展。     

构建独立学院教学质量监控体系的实践探索

教学质量关系到独立学院的生存与发展。在独立学院创办伊始，就必须树立科学的高等教育质量观，为区域经济建设服务，以学生就业为导向，以过程控制为重点，构建符合独立学院特色和发展需求的教学质量监控体系和长效机制。     

我国网院学习支持服务体系之现状调查

本文对具有一定代表性的17所现代远程教育试点高校的网络教育学院学习支持服务体系进行了现状调研,从组织结构、信息服务、资源服务、人员服务、实践性教学环节、作业和考试等几个方面进行了分析,进而对我国现代远程教育学习支持服务体系的建设提出了相关建议。     

Government Policy and School Development

The last 10 or 15 years of this century have been a time of great challenge as well as considerable excitement for educational systems around the world. Governments everywhere have been embarking on substantial programmes of reform in an attempt to develop more effective school systems and raise levels of student learning and achievement. We see in these policy initiatives an unfortunate paradox that inhibits them from realising their aspirations. The community of educational change researchers and practitioners has finally begun to learn something about how ongoing improvement can be fostered and sustained in schools. However, government policy on education has not taken adequate account of this knowledge about school development, with the result that an enormous potential source of synergy has been lost and student learning continues to lag behind its potential. Our argument in this article is that as a consequence of this gap government efforts to improve schooling are less effective than they might be and that many school improvement efforts have to swim against the current of government regulation. Following our analysis of this central irony in educational policy, we go on to outline an approach that would be more likely to help governments achieve their educational objectives by building policy initiatives more explicitly on the knowledge base of school development.     

Action research and collaborative research: their specific contributions to professional development

The increasing complexity of the teaching profession calls for engaged professionals in their professional development. This article claims that participative types of research contribute differently to professional development. Its intent is to explore the different contributions action research and collaborative research bring. One action research and one collaborative research have been conducted involving school personnel. They have been assessed mid‐course with regard to various components of professional development, including the learning taking place, changes made to professional practices and development of the collective competencies. Group interviews were conducted and each participant produced a written summary. The results show that participants’ individual competencies are strengthened, as well as collective competencies emerging such as the development of a common vocabulary and a shared vision about the school’s mission and mathematics curriculum. Learning is more relational in the action research project, and more connected to knowledge in the collaborative research project. Tensions are also present. They deal with the need to come up with concrete results, the urgency of action, the need to be open to the unknown, a tacit agreement to expose one’s vulnerability to others, the need for interdependence and for accountability. In conclusion, researchers identify their own sources of tensions and recognize that those types of research are important situations of learning.     

Teachers in the Twenty-first Century: Time to renew the vision

Governments in all parts of the world recognize the value of education to the personal, social and economic health of the community. Once the responsibility to provide basic educational opportunities for all is fulfilled, as it has been in most developed countries, emphasis is placed upon raising standards of teaching, learning and achievement. More recently, calls for investing in lifelong learning across the community have increased. Arguably, attitudes to this should be formed in the years of schooling yet often the measures put in place to drive student progress forward have neglected the needs of teachers themselves - arguably the most important component in engaging the motivation and commitment of students, and in the transmission of knowledge and values. This paper considers the contexts and range of challenges for teachers in the twenty first century and suggests that investment in maintaining their intellectual and emotional selves is key to the educational success of schools in changing times.     

What do distance language tutors say about teacher motivation?

Research into motivation in education mainly centres on students’ learning motivation. This article reports on an interview study of teacher motivation with the aim of investigating the effects of student-related factors and tutors’ personal factors on the motivation of language tutors in the distance learning context. Findings from the study indicate that external sources of influence include students’ engagement in learning English, motivation to learn English, progress made, foundation in English and appreciation of tutors’ teaching, while tutors’ internal factors are their self-efficacy in teaching, reflection and self-initiated professional development, interest in the profession of teaching English as well as their sense of achievement. Analysis of the data also suggests that more concrete measures are needed to counteract the demotivating effects from these two dimensions. Implications and suggestions are discussed with regard to enhancing tutor motivation more effectively.     

研究性教学在电子技术课程中的实践

本文依据研究性教学和创新教育相关理论,引入大学电气类电子技术教学的部分章节进行实践,采用以课题为先导的认知方式,推动教学主线的深入和展开,提高学习者主动性和对系统性的认识,达到了锻炼创新实践技能的目的。     

One and One is Sometimes Three in Small Group Mathematics Learning

In recent years, Mathematics teaching has been confronted by demands for higher standards and better pupil achievement in several parts of the world. Researchers have suggested the shift from teacher‐centred instruction towards more active participatory learning methods as one way to improve the quality of the teaching and learning process. The tension between whole‐class teaching versus small group learning in Mathematics has been particularly apparent in many education systems. This article analyses the development of Mathematics teaching by asking whether small group learning is an effective arrangement in teaching school Mathematics. We conclude that although there is no unanimity about the affects of small group learning on student achievement in school Mathematics, it seems that it produces at least equal academic outcomes among all students compared to more traditional methods of instruction. Working in pairs is a particularly effective form of learning Mathematics and that small groups are beneficial for developing mathematical problem‐solving skills. We also conclude that the present educational policies and increased quality assurance structures in many countries conflict, or are not consistent with scientific‐professional thinking and research on the teaching of Mathematics.     

Quality Assurance in UK Higher Education: Issues of Trust, Control, Professional Autonomy and Accountability

This article explores the issues of trust, control, professional autonomy and accountability in higher education quality assurance in the UK. The main part of this article is conceptual, but it includes results from semi-structured interviews with academic staff that were conducted at two “new university” business schools. Both institutions are broadly similar in their key characteristics and have experienced a transformation to university status in the early 1990s. The article argues that there has been a change from informal “light-touch” quality control systems based on local practices and a significant amount of trust and professional autonomy in the early 1990s to a highly prescribed process of audit-based quality control today. The article argues that accountability and transparency are important principles that academics should wholeheartedly embrace, but that the audit format adopted in the UK introduces a one-way accountability and provides “rituals of verification” (Power 1997) instead of fostering trust, has high opportunity costs and may well be detrimental to innovative teaching and learning.     

农电专业现代控制工程课程教学改革与建设

现代控制工程是农业电气化与自动化相关专业的一门学科基础课。为进一步提升农业电气化与自动化专业研究生课程质量,根据学科发展、生源素质及其专业背景知识以及课程实际教学效果,从优选教材、优化教学内容与教学大纲、改革教学模式与教学方法、构建课程学习支持体系和建立课程考核与评价标准等方面进行课程改革与建设,切实提高教学质量。     

Academics’ perceptions of the impact of internal quality assurance on teaching and learning

Internal quality assurance systems are expected to improve the institutions’ core mission of teaching and learning. Using data gathered through an online survey, distributed in 2014/2015, to the teaching staff of all Portuguese private and public higher education institutions, this paper examines the impact of internal quality assurance systems on teaching and learning from the perspective of academics. Findings suggest that Portuguese academics feel that, despite the positive contribution of internal quality assurance towards an increased awareness of teaching quality issues at their institutions, the practical effects of these systems have been more related to increasing bureaucracy than to substantive improvements in teaching and learning. The use of information with a view to improvement and teaching staff involvement in the development of quality assurance were found to induce positive changes in teaching and learning, in academics’ perceptions. Based on the findings, the paper makes recommendations for institutional practice.     

Non-Human Animals and Educational Policy: Philosophical Post-humanism,Critical Pedagogy,and Ecopedagogy1

Questions about the conscious, conative and cognitive life, as well as the status and treatment of other-than-animals have been receiving systematic consideration by philosophers for close to 50 years. It is all the more puzzling, then, that it is only in recent years that these issues have been addressed by educational philosophers and scholars of moral education, the focus being mainly on the eating of animals. This essay examines some of the approaches that have been suggested for including the ethical treatment and moral status of animals as an urgent concern within educational policy, pedagogy and teaching and learning generally.