Talking About Teaching

Abstract

Although teaching is a primary function of social work educators, most instructors receive little training in teaching methods and, once engaged in teaching, have few opportunities to hone their craft and engage in dialogue about their classroom experiences. Teaching Circles are an example of ongoing curricula designed to improve classroom performance, foster support for excellent teaching and, ultimately, improve student satisfaction. This paper describes the rationale, structure, content, incentives, evaluation, and merit of Teaching Circles.     

远程英语写作教学中的书面反馈调查与研究

在远程语言教学中,由于交流机会有限,书面反馈就成为了开启和维持指导教师与学习者对话的重要手段。基于网络平台开放英语写作课程,以书面反馈为研究对象,采用问卷和访谈等方式,探索在远程语言教学环境下,指导教师和学习者对反馈的理念与实践。研究发现不同指导教师所提供的反馈类型和形式有明显差异,而不同学习者之间的期望和理解也差异较大。建议指导教师提供反馈前应了解学习者的学习需求与特点,同时,需要对指导教师和学习者进行有关有效利用书面反馈系统的培训,以提高书面反馈的对语言教学的促进效果。     

Learning From Cases and Questions: The Socratic Case-Based Teaching Architecture

The case-based teaching architecture provides a framework for computer-based learning environments that couple the benefits of active learning with learning from cases. A case-based teaching system consists of two interdependent components: a task environment that provides a learner with an engaging task, and a storyteller that monitors the learner's interactions with the task environment looking for opportunities to present instructive cases that will help the student learn from his or her situation. In Socratic case-based teaching, the task environment engages the learner in a dialogue by posing open-ended, thought-provoking questions. The development of Creanimate, a system designed to teach elementary school age students about animal adaptation, provided an opportunity to explore important research issues for the implementation of Socratic case-based teaching systems: dialogue management, indexing of cases in a computer memory, and reminding strategies for case presentation. Testing of Creanimate revealed patterns of use that illustrate the strengths and limitations of Creanimate as an implementation of the Socratic case-based teaching architecture.     

教学病理学视角下对“对话教学”实践的审视

引用了教学疾病的概念及其分类,指出＂对话教学＂在教学实践中产生了诸多副作用：教师话语权的丧失、＂对话＂主体的局限性、＂对话＂内容的机械性、＂对话教学＂与＂教学对话＂的模糊性等;从改变师生的思维方式和行为方式入手,提出＂对话教学＂疾病的整治策略。     

Opportunities to analyse pupils’ learning within coursework on campus: a remaining challenge in teacher education

To support pupils’ learning, teachers must understand what and how their pupils have learned, and teacher education should teach candidates how to do this. This article reports on survey data (n = 270) from three programmes and observation data (N = 104 h) from six programmes, located in Norway, Finland and the US. It examines the candidates’ opportunities to analyse pupils’ learning within their coursework. The authors argue that such opportunities might constitute profound possibilities to examine the complexity of teaching and learning. However, the study finds that the candidates have few opportunities to analyse pupils learning and that the full potential of these opportunities is unrealized. The authors argue for increased, specific attention to pupils’ learning within teacher education coursework, through a pedagogy of teacher education informed by existing research on how to elicit pupils’ learning.     

Dialogue and team teaching

Although dialogue is a common word in educational theory, its full significance is diluted if it is seen as a matter of exchange or negotiation of prior intellectual positions. In fact, the dia‐ of dialogue indicates through: dialogue moves through participants and they through it. Dialogue allows participants to have thoughts they could not have had on their own, yet to recognise these thoughts as developments of their own thinking. On this understanding of dialogue, education is a transformative rather than simply accumulative process. Similarly, team teaching is often thought to involve no more than the summative logic of sharing loads and adding perspectives. In dialogic pedagogy, however, team teaching refers to the way that the supportive relationship between teachers opens opportunities for students to join the team as teachers. Although teachers and students have different responsibilities, all learn through a collective dialogue. The article draws on our practice of dialogic team teaching large first‐year classes.     

Reframing the teacher profession as a dynamic multifaceted profession: A wider perspective on teacher quality and teacher competence frameworks

Many countries in Europe use some kind of competence framework to define the quality of teachers. They typically formulate one level of teaching quality which defines the competence level that teachers must have acquired after completing initial teacher education. In addition, most countries provide limited career structures that define career opportunities within the teacher profession itself, resulting in a profession where often the only option for career progression is to move to leadership positions. Competence frameworks that create opportunities for vertical and horizontal career structures can make being a teacher a more attractive profession. They offer teachers opportunities for ‘career crafting’ and professional growth and supply school leaders with tools for more elaborate career guidance. In this article, we present a framework that was developed in the Netherlands to support teacher growth and teachers' career development. It has been used as a starting point for creating a shared language and understanding of the teacher profession and as a catalyst for dialogue between teachers and school leaders on professional growth. We elaborate the main characteristics of the resulting model, its limitations, the feedback that has been collected and how this feedback has been incorporated in how the model is used and discussed by teachers, school leaders and teacher education institutes. Finally, we argue that the strength of the framework can be explained by the way it acts as a boundary object, inspiring mutual learning and dialogue between different activity systems (of teachers, school leaders and teacher educators).     

ePortfolio use by university students in Australia: a review of the Australian ePortfolio Project

In October 2008, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council released the final report for the commissioned project ‘ePortfolio use by university students in Australia: Informing excellence in policy and practice’. The Australian ePortfolio Project represented the first attempt to examine the breadth and depth of ePortfolio practice in the Australian higher education sector. The research activities included: surveys of stakeholder groups in learning and teaching, academic management and human resource management, with respondents representing all Australian universities; a series of focus groups and semi‐structured interviews that sought to explore key issues in greater depth; and surveys designed to capture students’ pre‐course expectations and their post‐course experiences of ePortfolio learning. Further qualitative data was collected through interviews with ‘mature users’ of ePortfolios. Project findings revealed that, while there was a high level of interest in the use of ePortfolios in terms of the potential to help students become reflective learners who were conscious of their personal and professional strengths and weaknesses, the state of play in Australian universities was very fragmented. The project investigation identified four individual, yet interrelated, contexts where strategies may be employed to support and foster effective ePortfolio practice in higher education: government policy; technical standards; academic policy; and learning and teaching. Four scenarios for the future were also presented with the goal of stimulating discussion about opportunities for stakeholder engagement. It is argued that the effective use of ePortfolios requires open dialogue and collaboration between the different stakeholders across this range of contexts.     

高效有序的高中历史对话教学刍探

教师在高中历史课堂上运用对话教学可以有效提高学生历史学习水平,培养学生的历史文化素养。文章从对话教学的内涵入手,分析对话教学存在的问题,并从合理创设教学情境和科学组织教学两个方面提出具体的高效教学策略。     

为增进学生思维而对话:课堂教学的终极追求

为增进学生的思维而对话,应成为课堂教学的终极追求。教育哲学、语言学、心理学和教育学等多个理论视角,共同诠释了对话是课堂学习之本质、增进深层次思维是课堂对话之根本这两个重要命题。要改进当前课堂教学对话中的问题,重在关注学生思维,倡导教师主控型对话走向师生互动型对话、封闭式对话走向开放式对话,创设自由宽松的课堂对话环境,提供对话策略指导师生学会对话。     

Enhancing the agency of the listener: introducing reception theory in a lecture

This article explores a teaching approach that aims to engage learners more fully in the deep learning process that is characterised by the development of critical thinking skills. The concept of critical thinking skills is reconsidered in the context of the need to shift focus away from teaching teachers about learning to teaching students about learning. A cross‐disciplinary approach is used, with the educational theory of interactional learning being placed alongside the literary theory of reception study. The result of placing these hitherto unconnected theories side by side is to open up a debate concerning the rhetoric we use when discussing the value of learning, by introducing a new discourse concerning ‘dialogue strategies’. This case study of the potentials in using dialogue strategies during a lecture illustrates how students’ conceptual sophistication in cognitive thinking is achieved by asking them to scrutinise their own involvement in the learning experience.     

论对话教学在大学英语阅读教学中的运用

对话教学主要有师本对话、生本对话、师生对话、生生对话这四种形式,它们相辅相成,有机统一,共同构成大学英语阅读教学实践形态。对话教学在建立民主、平等、开放的互动课堂,提高学生的阅读理解能力和促进学生自主发展等方面起了很大的作用。     

Other Teachers' Teaching: Understanding The Roles of Peer Group Collaboration in Teacher Reflection and Learning

Although most innovative professional development encourages reflective dialogue among teachers, we still know very little about how such dialogue enables teacher learning. This study describes how teachers make sense of the conflicts among their intended goals and actual practices by responding to their peers' teaching. Four teachers in a large urban high school each taught, evaluated, and shared four lessons they designed to enact self-identified goals absent from their practices. Patterns across the critiques, questions, compliments, and self-critiques that the teachers used to respond to others' lessons indicate the different ways they used the peer context to diversify, personalize, or slow down their thinking about their own teaching, and cross-case patterns reveal how they all learned in ways that would have been less likely in non-peer contexts. The findings suggest why diverse reflective peer groups are crucial starting points for larger professional networks designed to support systemic changes in teacher practices.     

Use of Dialogue Journals and Video-Recording in Early Childhood Teacher Education

This study utilizes students' journaling and video-recording of field experience teaching sessions as vehicles for inquiry into the development of the process of productive reflection within the piloting phase of an experimental course, designed by the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education (NCRECE). The NCRECE course is designed to improve teachers' interactions with children as well as their implementation of curricula to promote gains in children's social and academic development. The piloting of the NCRCEC course took place in the Winter Quarter of 2007 in a 4-year university in the Midwest United States. By guiding students to reflect on their actions through use of dialogue journals and video-recording, this action research aimed at scaffolding students' productive reflection. Students participating in the pilot course kept weekly journals with the instructor in an online dialogue format throughout the quarter. As a culminating activity, they video-recorded one language-based lesson in a preschool classroom and wrote a self-analysis of the lesson. The paper presented here is a report of a part of this study pertaining to the use of dialogue journals and videos in supervision of preservice early childhood teachers. It is hoped that this action research study will validate the concurrent use of journals and video case analyses as a means of promoting self-conscious productive reflections, and as an opportunity to clarify content knowledge and link theory to practice.     

Designing pedagogic strategies for dialogic learning in higher education

This article focuses on the pedagogic value of dialogue to strengthen pre-service teachers’ reflective practices and improve their knowledge about the power of talk for learning. Dialogic learning was introduced to a unit of study taken by a final-year cohort of students in an initial teacher education degree at an urban university in Australia. Various opportunities for dialogue were designed into the unit through blended learning such as face-to-face tutorials, social networks and Viva Voce contexts. In the face of mixed opinion on their efficacy, the author profiles the use of social networks as a means of incorporating more interactive discourse through Web 2.0 platforms in higher education. The mixed-methods study reports on data collected from focus group interviews run at the end of the semester. An analytical framework based on Alexander’s principles of dialogic learning is used to interrogate the data set. The results illustrate the positive impact that dialogue employed as a pedagogic tool had on the value students perceived of their learning experience. It is recommended that designs for learning in higher education incorporate iterative exchanges across a variety of blended learning contexts to encourage productive interactions between students, peers and tutors.     

Creating scientific dialogue through social media: exploration of Saudi pre-service science teachers

Background: This study explored how Saudi Arabian pre-service science teachers’ (PST) use of social media (SM) creates scientific dialogue.Design and method: Data were collected via (a) in-depth interviews with eight science PSTs completing their practice teaching during a field experience course (2017 academic year at a Saudi Arabia Eastern province university), (b) focus groups with 21 female science students being taught by the PSTs, and (c) an analysis of SM artifacts (i.e. PST’s students’ Tweets and Snapchat comments about their SM-based science homework).Results: Findings from content analyses indicate that the PSTs overwhelmingly perceived SM-based science teaching as providing their students with opportunities to pose critical questions, improve science learning, and engage in scientific dialogue and argumentation. Students welcomed the SM-based science learning, saying it excited them, made them want to learn science and helped with collaborative science learning. The majority (87%) of PST’s students expressed an interest in using SM to engage with science concepts. Also, findings affirmed that social media serve as mediating agents for reaching students in their learning Zone of Proximal Development; that is, SM-scaffolded science learning. The findings are considered in terms of further pre-service science teacher education and Saudi-based educational research.     

论主体式对话教学构建

人类正步入对话的时代,对话教学是时代精神在教学领域的回应。教育中不存在旁观者,对话教学的前提即是参与。教育作为培养人的活动,其本身也就要求参与。教学活动的本身就是各主体间的相互对话活动。对对话教学基本问题的探讨无疑会推进对话教学最终有效的展开,笔者试图从四个维度对对话教学展开探讨,进一步揭开其神秘的面纱,窥其摄人心魄的芳容。     

“Love, love, and more love for children”: exploring preservice teachers’ understandings of caring

The development of an ethic of care is seen as a central concern of teacher education, however little attention has been paid to the preconceived conceptions of caring held by preservice teachers. In this article we share the results of a recent study of a group of preservice elementary teachers in which we examined the understandings of the relationship of caring and teaching brought by these novices to their first field placement experiences. Rather than seeing our students’ partial and limited understandings as problematic, we argue that the student teachers’ preconceptions can be an ideal starting point for productive, educative dialogue about caring and elementary school teaching practice.     

论大学生思想政治课对话教学

对话教学是新课程改革中突显的一种新的教学形态和教育理念,它强调主体间交互式的对话、理解与体验、意义创生和回归生活,它对我国大学生思想政治课具有一定的适切性,也是当前改进大学生思想政治课的现实需求。在具体的推行过程中,要对教学中的“对话”有比较清醒、全面、正确的认识,要建立平等、开放、发展的师生关系,教学模式要由单一走向多元。     

对话教学中的教师倾听

在我国当前的对话教学实践中,许多教师因为不愿敞开自己去倾听学生,导致对话教学退变为"问答教学"。教师倾听是对话教学的应有之义,对话教学中的教师倾听并非是一种教学技术或方法,而是一种实践智慧。教师倾听智慧的生成并非易事,它需要教师的前见反思、敏感性、换位思考以及倾心投入等。