Clinical Experiences in Primary Teacher Education

A programme at Sydney University designed to assist trainee teachers to meet the needs of individual children with difficulties in learning is described. Meeting these needs is defined as: being able to assess the child's learning, select appropriate learning experiences, select resources, manage the behaviour of the child, model appropriate language, explain concepts clearly, set out a suitable programme, maintain records, and write a report on the child's progress. Repeated surveys of trainees and more recently of the children and their classroom teachers indicate that the programme is largely meeting its objectives. Whether students work in the Early Learning Unit, the Language Development Unit, or the Numeracy Unit, it appears that this programme is an effective way of operationalizing the theoretical knowledge acquired during initial teacher education. Further, the programme seems to have had positive effects on the classroom behaviours of the children involved. The programme requires significant staff time, but it is an efficient way of supplying individual attention to children and ensuring that learning takes place. Students rate the provision of close supervision as essential to the success of the programme. The repeated request for more time in a programme such as this suggests that the preparation of teachers would be enhanced if they were able to experience the programme in both mathematics and language development.     

“Depend On,Rely On,Count On”: Economic Subjectivities Aboard <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Polar Express</Emphasis>

Christmas literature and film produced for children is an important, albeit under-researched, site for the production of cultural values and norms. This paper analyses Chris Van Allsburg’s 1985 picture book The Polar Express, the 2004 Warner Brothers feature film of the same title, the film’s official website, and resources for teachers distributed online by Houghton Mifflin, considering how these texts construct childhood subjectivities in economic terms. The argument made is that nostalgic depictions of ordered, middle-class lifestyles, the representation of social class inequalities as immutable structural norms, and signifiers of corporate capitalism, together locate childhood and child subjectivities as inexorably tethered to socio-economic circumstance and experience. Dr. Sue Saltmarsh is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Teacher Education at Charles Sturt University, Australia, where she lectures in Cultural Politics of Education and Qualitative Research Methods. Sue’s recent work concerns the ways that cultural texts and practices construct children and childhood in economic terms, utilising poststructuralist theory as a lens through which to explore the discursive production of economic subjectivities.     

Sociomathematical norms and the regulation of problem solving in classroom microcultures

The perspective of situated learning offers a theoretical framework for understanding the dialectical relations between the social and the individual dimensions of classroom microculture. The purpose of this article is to show how sociomathematical norms constructed during whole-class discussions provide a reference for the elaboration of mathematical practices and for the interactive regulation of learning. Qualitative data regarding the transition from additive to multiplicative problem solving were collected in two third-grade classrooms during an entire school year. The sociomathematical norms constructed in the two classrooms were identified and compared. An in-depth analysis focusing on two interactive episodes in one classroom showed the forms of regulation of learning that emerged in relation to the norm of “effectiveness”. Both episodes demonstrated how the processes of regulation resulting from teacher–student interactions incorporated and orchestrated regulations resulting from peer interactions and thereby contributed to the progression of the students’ problem-solving procedures.     

Mathematics and Slow Learners

A taped method of teaching elementary mathematical concepts to ESN(M) children in the classroom is described by Renée Berrill, lecturer in education, School of Education, Newcastle University     

Researching and developing interdisciplinary teaching: towards a conceptual framework for classroom communication

Calls for teaching and learning that cross subject boundaries have been making themselves heard in recent Higher Education literature in different national contexts. Communication is pivotal in any such learning encounter: it is in the process of negotiating meaning across disciplines that its rewards and challenges lie. And yet, the question of what characterises interdisciplinary classroom communication in the sector is little researched and little understood. How such interaction differs from that in the monodisciplinary university classroom is under-theorised. Adapting Applied Linguistic theory in Intercultural Communicative Competence (Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.) and drawing on a taxonomy of academic disciplines (Becher, T., & Trowler, P. R (2001). Academic tribes and territories.Buckingham: Society for Research in Higher Education/Open University Press.), the article proposes a model of Communicative Competence as a conceptual tool to shape thinking in developing and researching interdisciplinary teaching and learning in the university classroom.     

Empowering Classroom Teachers for the 21st Century: meeting the challenge of advancing children's mathematical development1

In this paper, the specific concerns for literacy and numeracy as we enter a new era are addressed through a discussion of an innovative mathematics early intervention programme, which the author and classroom teachers have developed and applied. ‘Mathematics Intervention ‘ is an innovative programme developed by three classroom teachers to identify, then assist, children in year 1 ‘at risk’ of not coping with the current mathematics curriculum. The programme incorporates assessment tools and learning activities based on recent research about children's early numerical learning. It develops the basic concepts of number upon which children build their understanding of mathematics. All three teachers participated in a professional development course, which developed skills that allow teachers to recognise which children have a problem, to identify the underlying problem and to provide appropriate activities to advance their mathematical development. The course highlights the benefits of clinical interviewing as an assessment tool and promotes various strategies that classroom teachers can use to assist the development of numerical concepts. ‘Mathematics Intervention’ is an example of a programme developed and implemented by classroom teachers using new learning processes designed to empower classroom teachers to meet the challenge of advancing all children's mathematical development.     

Serving students with special needs: Equity and access

Ph.D. A Professor of Educational Psychology, Wang is the founder and current director of the Temple University Center for Research in Human Development and Education (CRHDE) in Philadelphia, which is a broad-based interdisciplinary research and development centre focusing on the human development and education-related fields. Dr. Wang is recognized nationally and internationally for her research on learner differences and classroom learning, student motivation, implementation and evaluation of innovative school programmes responsive to student diversity. She is the author of several books and articles dealing with special needs education and children at risk.     

基于资源的混合式学习的教学设计研究

混合式学习是将传统面对面教学优势和在线学习优势相结合的一种学习模式,它不仅扩大了学习者参与学习的机会,延伸了课堂教学时间,而且支持了学习者的自主学习和个性化学习。但混合式学习的优势并非自然而然产生的,它离不开精心地设计与实施。源于此,文章提出了一种基于资源的混合式学习教学设计过程模式,然后运用此模式对华中师范大学《现代教育技术》实验课的一个专题"多媒体教学设备使用和维护"进行了教学设计,并对其应用效果开展了行动研究,实证表明该模型具有一定的合理性和可行性,能够较好地指导混合式学习实践的开展。     

Figured World of History Learning in a Social Studies Methods Classroom

This paper considers how one teacher educator, Dr. Gomez, took up revisionist history and inquiry in her social studies methods classroom. The concepts of figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998) [Holland, D., Lachicotte, W. Jr., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], and artifacts and mediation (Holland & Cole, 1995; Vygotsky 1978, 1986) [Holland, D., & Cole, M. (1995). Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 26(4), 465–490; Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and language. Boston: The MIT Press] are used to present a case study. The study focuses on the artifacts that made up the figured world of history learning in Dr. Gomez’s social studies methods class and the learner identities afforded by this context. The purpose of this study is two-fold: (a) explore how teacher education classes can recruit primarily white, middle class students into a figured world of history learning that is culturally congruent with urban settings, and (b) demonstrate the application of the figured worlds framework to the study of learning in a teacher preparation program. Cecil Robinson is an assistant professor of educational psychology at The University of Alabama. His research focuses on social studies teaching and learning, technology, democracy, and hope. Address correspondence to Cecil Robinson, Campus Box 870231, Department of Educational Studies in Psychology, Research and Counseling, College of Education, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0231, USA; e-mail: crobinso@bamaed.ua.edu     

Sharing a place-based indigenous methodology and learnings

Abstract

Building on a methodology of Cooperative Inquiry, the outcomes of five interconnected place-based learning projects from Australia are synthesised and elaborated in this paper. The methodology can facilitate the everyday living and sharing of an Earth-based consciousness: one that enriches Transformative Sustainability Education (TSE) through recognising meanings and stories in landscape, and celebrates Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. Indigenous-led environmental education is shown to link with one of the longest continuous environmental education systems in the world and it is contended that because of its ongoing history, environmental education carries a cultural obligation. In Australia, every landscape is Indigenous and storied, and all Australians have an inherent right to learn that joy in place, along with the responsibility to care for it. Teaching and learning a relationship with place as family, is one way that environmental education can lead that campaign. This place-based methodology is a lifetime commitment involving everyday actions for change, a whole-of-education dedication.     

Drama activities as ideational resources for primary‐grade children in urban science classrooms

In this study we explored how dramatic enactments of scientific phenomena and concepts mediate children's learning of scientific meanings along material, social, and representational dimensions. These drama activities were part of two integrated science‐literacy units, Matter and Forest, which we developed and implemented in six urban primary‐school (grades 1st–3rd) classrooms. We examine and discuss the possibilities and challenges that arise as children and teachers engaged in scientific knowing through such experiences. We use Halliday's (1978. Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press) three metafunctions of communicative activity—ideational, interpersonal, and textual—to map out the place of the multimodal drama genre in elementary urban school science classrooms of young children. As the children talked, moved, gestured, and positioned themselves in space, they constructed and shared meanings with their peers and their teachers as they enacted their roles. Through their bodies they negotiated ambiguity and re‐articulated understandings, thus marking this embodied meaning making as a powerful way to engage with science. Furthermore, children's whole bodies became central, explicit tools used to accomplish the goal of representing this imaginary scientific world, as their teachers helped them differentiate it from the real world of the model they were enacting. Their bodies operated on multiple mediated levels: as material objects that moved through space, as social objects that negotiated classroom relationships and rules, and as metaphorical entities that stood for water molecules in different states of matter or for plants, animals, or non‐living entities in a forest food web. Children simultaneously negotiated meanings across all of these levels, and in doing so, acted out improvisational drama as they thought and talked science. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 302–325, 2010     

New teachers learning in rural and regional Australia

This paper reports on a longitudinal ethnographic study of beginning primary school teachers in rural and regional Victoria, Australia. The study uses a conceptual framework of place and workplace learning to ask: How do new teachers learn to do their work and how do they learn about the places and communities in which they begin teaching? In this paper, we focus on data from the first year of the three-year longitudinal study, using a place-based survey and ethnographic interviews. We found that the space of the classroom was the dominant site of learning to become a teacher for the new teachers in this study. This learning was understood through the discourse of classroom management. Analysis of these storylines reveals the ways in which the community and classroom are not separate but intertwined, and the process of learning about their communities began through the children in their classes.     

Monet, Malaguzzi, and the Constructive Conversations of Preschoolers in a Reggio-Inspired Classroom

This study was conducted in a Reggio inspired child care classroom of 4-year olds where the fundamental principles of Reggio Emilia preschools are interpreted for a Canadian context. Qualitative case study methodology was employed to investigate how social interaction plays a role in young children’s learning processes. Drawing on social constructivist views of children’s learning and socialization, children’s discussions and interactions within a preschool learning group were examined. Examination of children’s discourse is valuable not only for understanding individual and group learning experiences but also for illuminating children’s agency and their active roles in their own learning. The study focused on the in-depth study of six children’s activities during a ‘Shades of Pink’ project. As the project, ‘Shades of Pink’ unfolded, the children faced cognitive conflict while they were talking about the details of Monet’s painting, but worked toward building common understandings. In this study, children are considered to be meaning makers and active participants in their own learning processes. In addition, the relationships between children became a context in which the co-construction of theories, interpretations and various understandings of reality took place. Small group work became a basis for creating unity, a space in which thoughts took shape as well as a way to compare interpretations; with the result that new thoughts and meanings were produced.     

The practice of poetry among a group of heroin addicts in India: naturalistic peer learning

As part of an ongoing ethnographic study, this paper aims to consider the practice of poetry, sher-o-shayari, as naturalistic peer learning among a group of heroin addicts in Yamuna Bazaar, New Delhi. By examining meanings given to sher-o-shayari and experiences of participating in the practice, this article makes the claim that the practice of poetry involved three learning processes. First, it entailed ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ during group sessions in which implicit performance rules were created, evolved, and transferred to newcomers. Second, it included ‘meaning negotiation’ in which participants ‘break’ and ‘join’ different lines, images, or themes in group improvisation or individual creation events. Third, it contained ‘reflective learning’, which enabled development of the ‘whole’ person and helped situate the individual in the social world. Such data are important for the creation of ‘organic’ peer education programs that utilize naturalistic peer learning mechanisms.     

The role of visual representations for structuring classroom mathematical activity

It is our presupposition that there is still a need for more research about how classroom practices can exploit the use and power of visualization in mathematics education. The aim of this article is to contribute in this direction, investigating how visual representations can structure geometry activity in the classroom and discussing teaching practices that can facilitate students’ visualization of mathematical objects. We present one illustrative episode that shows how drawings of geometrical figures have a powerful role in structuring and modifying the mathematical activity in the classroom. It was selected from a database that we have been building to investigate the learning of mathematics in public elementary schools in Brazil. The framework of Activity Theory helped in the characterization of the episode as a system of interconnected activities. We discuss the changes and transformations perceived in those activities; and we explore the idea of miniature cycles of learning actions to focus on the mathematical learning that is taking place. We describe the dynamics and the complexity of the ongoing activity in the calculation of areas; and, how drawings form a part, and show their influence, in it. We argue that part of this influence was associated with the contradiction between abstract mathematical ideas and their empirical representations, revealed by the tensions perceived in the activities analysed; and, simultaneously, that we could see as an impelling force for the learning of the rules and norms which regulate the use of visual representations in school mathematics.     

Unraveling the culture of the mathematics classroom: A video-based study in sixth grade

Changing perspectives on mathematics teaching and learning resulted in a new generation of mathematics textbooks, stressing among others the importance of mathematical reasoning and problem-solving skills and their application to real-life situations. The article reports a study that investigates to what extent the reform-based ideas underlying these mathematical textbooks impact the current teaching of mathematics. Two problem-solving lessons were videotaped in 10 sixth-grade classrooms and a coding scheme was developed to analyze these lessons with regard to three aspects of the classroom culture that are assumed to enhance students’ mathematical beliefs and problem-solving competencies: (1) the classroom norms that are established, (2) the instructional techniques and classroom organization forms, and (3) the set of tasks students are confronted with. Two instruments were administered to measure students’ beliefs about learning mathematical word problem solving, and to assess their problem-solving processes and skills. The results indicate that some reform-based aspects seemed to be easier to implement (e.g., a strong focus on heuristic skills, embedding tasks in a realistic context) than others (e.g., the use of group work, an explicit negotiation of appropriate social norms).     

Learning through teaching: Peer-mediated instruction in minimally invasive education

The current paper provides insight into the learning strategies adopted by children working at Minimally Invasive Education (MIE) Learning Stations. Previous research has clearly indicated the attainment of basic computer literacy by groups of young children in the age groups of 7–14 years. This learning takes place due to the emergence and development of group social processes, an aspect crucial for achieving basic computing skills. The paper describes the process of socially shared understanding and learning as being crucial to individual learning. It is to be noted that this approach of socially shared learning does not challenge the analysis of the individual level of processing; it maintains that individual learning is vital in any learning context, but insufficient to build the psychology of learning. MIE research is of the view that young children learn through interaction with others, particularly peers as it provides an important context for social and cognitive learning. For it is in this way that children make sense of their own experience and environment. Hence, schools are not the only privileged sites of learning.     

Interactive group activity: a socially mediated tool for opening an interpretive space in classroom research

An ongoing challenge in classroom research is to understand children’s perspectives on their learning. While learning is highly individual, it is also significantly social and this raises methodological challenges. An Interactive Group Activity (IGA) is one of several data collection strategies used during the action research phase of the Connecting Curriculum, Connecting Learning project (2010–2011) focusing on arts-based curriculum integration. This article concentrates on the IGA tool as a means of uncovering children’s meaning making following an extended period of learning. Of particular note is the use of an arts pedagogical device to introduce the IGA to children, a device that frames the purpose of the task. In effect, the IGA acts as a group assessment device underlining the socially mediated nature of children’s learning. This article describes how the IGA tool evolved, gives its form and structure, argues for its affordances and suggests possibilities for its wider use.