Change Within a Teacher Education Program and Laboratory: A Reflective Commentary

Intentional, systemic philosophical change on an educational program level and on an individual level is often a slow and cyclic process. In this article, we reflect on the journey of philosophical change and growth from a traditional philosophy to an inquiry-based, Reggio-inspired one that occurred on both levels in an early childhood teacher education program and laboratory school over a period of 7 years. As an inquiry group, we reflected on the change we experienced in our own teaching methods, our interactions with staff members and each other, and our perceptions of change in interaction with our students. After carefully and systematically reviewing our reflections, five trends in change were identified. They were (a) recasting the image of the teacher and reevaluating the process of teaching and learning, (b) valuing dialogue, (c) cultivating a reflective mindset, (d) valuing outside perspectives, and (e) building meaningful relationships. The process of reflecting on and documenting our journey has improved our ability to articulate the change we made and to see our growth. Further it has illuminated future teaching and learning directions and aims that we intend to pursue. Finally, we hope that sharing this process will encourage others to examine what, how, and why of their teaching and learning in order to enhance their own professional development journey.     

Toward Improving the Modeling of MTMM Data: A Response to Geiser,Koch, and Eid (2014)

Geiser, Koch, and Eid (2014) expressed their views on an article we published describing findings from a simulation study and an empirical study of multitrait–multimethod (MTMM) data. Geiser and colleagues raised concerns with (a) our use of the term bias, (b) our statement that the correlated trait–correlated method minus one [CT–C(M–1)] model is not in line with Campbell and Fiske’s (1959) conceptualization of MTMM data, (c) our selection of a data-generating model for our simulation study, and (d) our preference for the correlated trait–correlated method (CT–CM) model over the CT–C(M–1) model. Here, we respond to and elaborate on issues raised by Geiser et al. We maintain our position on each of these issues and point to the interpretational challenges of the CT–C(M–1) model. But, we clarify our opinion that none of the existing structural models for MTMM data are flawless; each has its strengths and each has its weaknesses. We further remind readers of the goal, findings, and implications of our recently published article.     

Developing a Pedagogy of “Making” through Collaborative Self-Study

We believe that the ideas associated with the Maker Movement have profound implications for teacher education. We have isolated the pedagogical principles of hack, adapt, design, and create as central to exploring how they work with teacher candidate participants in a maker pedagogy lab. We frame these ideas as Maker Pedagogy, which is the enactment of the principles inspired by the maker movement in the classroom to foster learners who operate as innovators, creators, sharers and givers of knowledge, tools and technologies. The purpose of our self-study research is to describe, interpret and analyze how our pedagogies of teacher education and our critical friendship have changed and developed as a result of providing experiences for teacher candidates in our maker pedagogy lab. In this project we use self-study methodology to investigate our teaching and practices, and we dialogue about our tacit and personal knowledge as it contributes to the knowledge and understanding of our teaching through Maker Pedagogy. In particular, the emphasis is on critical collaborative inquiry through critical friends and on dialogue as a valued component of our research. Of particular interest were data in the video recordings of each lab that indicated that one or both of us had reframed our understanding of maker pedagogy. The findings are framed as three themes that document what we are learning about Maker Pedagogy through teaching teacher candidates. These are (1) the value of self-study methodology, (2) Maker Pedagogy as distinct and (3) deepening our pedagogies of teacher education.     

Interconnectedness and difference between action research and a lesson design study in Shanghai,China

ABSTRACT

The professional development of teachers in China takes place, to a large extent, in Teaching Research Groups (TRG) that exist in all schools. Though there are diverse models of TRG activities, these might, on the surface, appear to resemble forms of Action Research (AR) or include elements that might resemble AR. In conducting a Lesson Design Study (LDS) with a TRG in Shanghai, we encountered the specific challenge of what might be the interconnectedness and differences between AR and our LDS. To address this issue, we applied a research-informed depiction of the distinguishing characteristics of AR to our LDS. Based on this analysis, we found that (1) in contrast to the depiction of AR that encompasses a choice of methods, our LDS follows a specific ‘design research’ methodology, (2) whereas the depiction of AR is simultaneously directed towards teacher self-change and restructuring the organisation or institution within which the teacher works, LDS concerns more than the practical questions in one local social context and aims to tackle bigger questions across the social contexts in the subject research field, and (3) whereas in the depiction of AR, teachers engage in a process of authentic collaboration with other teachers seeking to improve their practices, in the LDS community the external researchers and expert teachers play other roles in the TRG. Even though there may be differences between the depiction of AR and our LDS, the interconnectedness is important in that both AR and our LDS contribute directly to school-based teacher professional development.     

Two for One: Squeezing Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering into a Core Computer Science Course

The final report of the Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula (CC2001) suggests that an updated computer science curricula must reflect the broadening nature of our discipline. Two areas that are included in the CC2001 are software engineering (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI). While the first inclination might be to incorporate HCI concepts into a traditional SE course, we propose a different approach. This paper outlines a project-oriented HCI course in which we are able to emphasize some SE notions in the context of HCI concepts. Our course is also a maturation class for our students because they are exposed to a number of non-programming computer science activities, including project specification, software and interface design, user testing, prototyping and use of guidelines. We include an overview of course content that illustrates our approach. We also describe our coverage of specific CC2001 knowledge units and provide some feedback data for our course.     

Improving Student Engagement in Commercial Art and Design Programmes

The continued viability of art and design programmes depends on our ability to produce graduates able to contribute successfully and confidently to the future of the creative industries. This in turn depends on our ability to lead students to develop both the ability and the motivation to learn. A significant proportion of our students however, are not adequately prepared or inclined to engage with the learning environment. Based on a review of the literature on student engagement, this article attempts to identify the origins and examine the impact of the perceptions and attitudes (the ‘mental pictures’) that currently limit our students' ability and inclination to engage as well as those factors (including the features of our programmes) through which these ‘mental pictures’ may be inadvertently reinforced. It then proposes a number of practical suggestions to make more effective use of the learning outcomes of art and design programmes in order to mitigate their influence and thereby improve both our graduates' capacity and inclination to become more competent professionals, as well as self‐directed learners.     

Understanding Starts in the Mesocosm: Conceptual metaphor as a framework for external representations in science teaching

In recent years, researchers have become aware of the experiential grounding of scientific thought. Accordingly, research has shown that metaphorical mappings between experience-based source domains and abstract target domains are omnipresent in everyday and scientific language. The theory of conceptual metaphor explains these findings based on the assumption that understanding is embodied. Embodied understanding arises from recurrent bodily and social experience with our environment. As our perception is adapted to a medium-scale dimension, our embodied conceptions originate from this mesocosmic scale. With respect to this epistemological principle, we distinguish between micro-, meso- and macrocosmic phenomena. We use these insights to analyse how external representations of phenomena in the micro- and macrocosm can foster learning when they (a) address the students’ learning demand by affording a mesocosmic experience or (b) assist reflection on embodied conceptions by representing their image schematic structure. We base our considerations on empirical evidence from teaching experiments on phenomena from the microcosm (microbial growth and signal conduction in neurons) and the macrocosm (greenhouse effect and carbon cycle). We discuss how the theory of conceptual metaphor can inform the development of external representations.     

Walk-rally support system using two-dimensional codes and mobile phones

‘Walk Rally’ (WR), an orienteering-like recreation game, is common, especially in Japan. Numerous trials to combine WR with educational activities are being carried out by some educators. However, participants are always at the risk of straying and subjected to various accidents during the WR. We developed a WR support system based on mobile phones enabled with a two-dimensional (2D) code reader. Our system can be adapted to the following two cases: (1) WR participants read 2D codes placed at each check point (CP) with their mobile phones. (2) Human checkers having a mobile phone at each CP read a 2D code printed on each WR participant's identification (ID) tag. The WR organizer's anxiety over straying participants will be eased because our system can continuously show the last check points at which each participant has checked in. In addition, our system can incorporate e-learning (m-learning) essences into the WR. We tested our system with three events, which included 100?600 participants. During these events, our system worked successfully. These results indicate that our system has enough potential to be used as a new type of outdoor edutainment (education + entertainment) tool with a better safety of participants.     

Memorial: D. Campbell Wyckoff (1918–2005)

Religious practices have long drawn on the social sciences to broaden our understanding of how human beings develop, learn, relate, and are formed. While the religion and science conversations have not always been friendly, a growing number of theologians and scientists are engaged in promising dialogues where the interests of both parties overlap. This article sketches three domains of recent neuroscientific research that show particular promise for those engaged in thinking about the practices of religious communities: Story telling, memory, and human relating. The purpose of the present discussion is threefold: (1) to demonstrate the ways the neurosciences are now making claims about matters that religious communities have experienced and pondered for millennia, (2) to acknowledge the contributions the sciences can make to our understanding of our religious practices, and (3) to suggest a methodology for engaging the sciences in ways that are, at the same time, faithful to our own religious traditions.     

Sedimentation of a single particle between two parallel walls

INTRODUCTIONThecenteringofaparticlewhichsettlesatsmallReynoldsnumbershadbeenstudiedbyseveralresearchers.ChristophersonandDowson(1959)foundthattheoretically,whentheeffectofinertiaisnegligible ,aballachieveseccentricequilibriuninaverticaltubehavingadiameteronlyslightlyexceedingthediameteroftheball.Theyverifiedtheiranalysiswithexperiments.VaseurandCox (1977)didexperimentsonthesedimentationofasmallsphereinaverticalductofarectangularcross section .Theyobservedthatthespherealwaysmigratedtothec…     

Fostering Community Life and Human Civility in Academic Departments Through Covenant Practice

Creating desirable academic departments for individuals’ well-being and quality scholarship is an important effort as well as a novel idea. The focus of this reflective article is twofold: (a) We present a social capital theory of social justice covenants as a product and process of community building, and (b) we share the multiple lived experiences of three scholars within the context of our department's covenant ideology and practice. We explore how faculty can promote community and civility by not only developing but also enacting an internally generated covenant while operating within a larger institutional context that produces tension. As related to our purposes, we examined the relevant literature on social capital, capacity building, workplace environments, and organizational covenants to frame our discussion of community-driven action in education. We include an extended application of a covenant that guides our departmental faculty's social outlook, interpersonal behavior, scholarly work, and communal activism. Although our focus is on change-oriented, grassroots activity within higher education, the public schooling context is considered.     

Sedimentation of a single particle between two parallel walls

The sedimentation of a single circular particle between two parallel walls was studied by means of direct numerical simulation (DNS) and experiment. The improved implementation of distributed Lagrange multiplier/fictitious domain method used in our DNS is a promising new way for simulation of particulate flows. The settling behaviors of the particle are presented ranging in Reynolds number from 0 to about 700, which showed that our results for low Reynolds numbers agreed well with that reported before. Nevertheless, for higher Reynolds numbers our results were different from theirs. The long-term mean equilibrium positions in our results were all on the centerline, but not at off-center position as reported before. In order to validate our simulation, experiments were also conducted. The results showed that the sedimenting behavior simulated in this paper agreed well with our experiment result.     

Structural Identity Consultation: Story Telling as a Culture of Faith Transformation

In this contribution we explore processes of Structural Identity Consultation (SIC) with primary school teachers, and the opportunities this kind of team meetings offers for a nontraditional way to live with religious tradition(s). We take our start in everyday classrooms, characterized by religious diversity. The thoughts of Levinas, and his view on the relationship of “I” and “the other,” open our mind for the encounter with the other, and the sensibility for the need of the other, resulting in an “answer-ability” for the other. Structural Identity Consultations in our view create an open space to explore differing narrations on encounter. The narration of a young teacher, and the deconstructive reading of this narration as a text, shows the innovative power of (religious) tradition. It is our conviction that teachers' story telling in Structural Identity Consultations enlarges religious literacy and improves religious sensibility.     

‘Power to empower’: conceptions of teaching and learning in a pedagogical co-design partnership

ABSTRACT

This study is an autoethnographic reflection on power and expertise in an evolving student/staff partnership. The partnership was initiated as pedagogical co-design in the development and implementation of a peer-assisted learning programme. Through a process of critical reflection that linked our partnership experience with themes from relevant literature, we (the staff and student authors) became co-researchers of our practice. The evolution of the partnership provided a unique perspective from which to compare our experiences of power and expertise across both contexts. We characterised our pedagogical co-design partnership as a shift from the more traditional ‘power over’ model of delivery towards ‘power to empower’ where both student and staff partners had agency and voice. Key to this important transition was a shared philosophy of student-centred teaching. As the partnership transformed from co-teaching to co-researching we needed to re-negotiate power dynamics; while our different pathways had converged on a common view of student-centred learning, our research expertise remained disparate. We were able to negotiate this challenge by drawing on our existing relationship based on respect, reciprocity and responsibility, reinforcing views of partnership that value equality of opportunity and a focus on learning and process, rather than equality of contributions and outcomes.     

The influence of teachers’ interests,personalities and life experiences in intercultural languages teaching

This paper reports on a study that investigated teachers’ perceptions about the significance of intercultural understanding (IU) in the modern foreign languages (MFL) curriculum. The research was conducted in the wake of a National Curriculum revision in 2007 in England that for the first time listed ‘IU’ as one of the four key concepts underpinning the study of languages in the Programme of Study. In contrast to other writers who frequently explain MFL teachers’ attention to intercultural learning as a consequence of their (lack of) knowledge about intercultural languages theory or pedagogy, or as the result of contextual factors, our findings suggest that the significance attached to IU seems to be profoundly affected by the interests, personalities and life experiences of individuals. This finding emerged from a qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 teachers in 13 secondary schools in the North-West of England between May 2008 and June 2009. We illustrate our point by mapping the narratives of four teachers, conveyed through pen-portraits, with an adapted version of Kelchtermans’s personal interpretive framework, and thus draw on narrative inquiry as our research approach. We claim that our hitherto relatively unnoticed finding, i.e. the central influence of the teacher as an individual on intercultural language teaching, has important implications for MFL teacher education. We suggest that the stories of the four teachers could be used as a professional development tool to identify motivators and inhibitors in developing IU that may resonate with practitioners’ own beliefs and practice, and that parallel to this, our adapted Kelchtermans’s framework may be used as a blank template to scaffold self analysis. Whilst this article considers teacher development in intercultural languages education, it also seeks to make a contribution to the literature on the usefulness of teacher narrative as a professional development tool.     

Novel algorithm for complex bit reversal: employing vector permutation and branch reduction methods

We present novel vector permutation and branch reduction methods to minimize the number of execution cycles for bit reversal algorithms. The new methods are applied to single instruction multiple data （SIMD） parallel implementation of complex data floating-point fast Fourier transform （FFT）. The number of operational clock cycles can be reduced by an average factor of 3.5 by using our vector permutation methods and by 1.1 by using our branch reduction methods, compared with conventional implementations. Experiments on MPC7448 （a well-known SIMD reduced instruction set computing processor） demonstrate that our optimal bit-reversal algorithm consistently takes fewer than two cycles per element in complex array operations.     

“What sort of person ought I to be?” – Repositioning EPs in light of the Children and Families Bill (2013)

The changes brought by the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) code of practice: 0 to 25 years, 2014, is an opportunity for educational psychologists (EPs) to reposition ourselves so that we can improve our contribution to the services for children and young people with special educational needs (SENs) or a disability. Underpinning such a repositioning is a reaffirmation of our core moral principles of promoting autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and social justice. Taking up a new position is difficult. However one way of thinking about it is reminding ourselves of our values. Values underpin our morality and interact with a person’s character (virtue). Socrates’ famous rhetorical questions remains unanswered for EPs “what sort of person ought I to be?” The purposes of this article is to draw attention to the moral principles that could underpin our work with the new code and lead us to build our practice around advocacy, practice based evidence and a social model of disability     

Mentoring graduate students through the action research journey using guiding principles

Our department has adopted action research (AR) projects as the culminating task for our master’s degree candidates. This article presents our work on mentoring graduate students towards the completion of their final AR research projects and details the deliberate structures put in place to guide them through the AR process. These structures include a full-semester course, individual meetings with an AR chair, and collaborative faculty–student feedback sessions. These collaborative conversations (between students and faculty) have allowed us to clarify our understandings of AR, set standards and goals for AR, and raise our expectations on the quality of final AR projects. We hope that the discussion in this article will give students assigned AR new insights as they conduct their research. Also, we hope that the guiding principles we have derived through our efforts can inform others who currently use or plan to assign AR to their students.     

Scaling Up Innovative Technology-Based Mathematics

We report on the initial attempts at evaluating at scale a particular technological/curricular innovation that enables more students to develop deeper knowledge. The methods, issues, and findings of the current pilot experiment speak not only to the success of SimCalc MathWorlds, the focus of our research program, but also to the evaluation at scale of a broad class of representationally innovative technologies and to the merit of long-term investment in design-based research. In particular, we present conditions and findings from a completed pilot experiment involving 21 seventh-grade mathematics teachers from Texas. Pilot outcomes suggest that (a) innovative representational technologies can have an important impact on student learning, (b) considerable impact can be found across a wide range of teachers and conditions, and (c) these gains can be detected even in the absence of other desirable conditions. In particular, detection of student gains does not, in our case, depend on having a long-term context of learning, long-term teacher professional development, or a shift to learner-centered constructivist pedagogy. The full experiment will replicate and extend our experimental design with a wider range of teachers and schools, model the factors that contribute to classroom success with such technology, and explore what happens as research support fades away.