Project R.A.C.E.

Abstract

Learning by doing may not be the most effective strategy for teaching environmental problem-solving skills. A survey of Michigan educators indicates that of the teaching strategies listed, case studies and talking about what others do to solve environmental problems are the most important. The implications of building familiarity with environmental issues and solutions from a variety of examples are discussed, and an explanation for the reported low success of classroom action projects is presented.     

A Window into the Rural Classroom: interactive television and problem‐based activity in Australian pre‐service teacher education

ABSTRACT

This project incorporated live broadcasts of teaching from small, multi‐graded, rural schools into university lecture halls where pre‐service teacher education students in the last semester of their programmes were able to observe ‘best practice’ in a learning context that they would eventually be responsible for during their final practicum session. Interactive observation sessions were immediately followed with opportunities for students to discuss various aspects of planning, classroom organisation and teaching strategies appropriate to multi‐graded contexts with the remote classroom teacher. These ‘reverse distance education’ sessions followed an intensive lecture and tutorial series centring upon topics relevant to teaching in small rural communities. Tutorial activities placed student teachers in small rural school scenarios containing everyday ‘problems’ requiring diagnosis and the generation and analysis of solutions. At the conclusion of scenario discussions, students had networked, collaborated with colleagues and applied current research findings in generating viable solutions and considered school community reactions to these proposed solutions.

The incorporation of interactive video technology with these problem situations consolidated the concept and skill development of student teachers and increased both their real time involvement in their chosen professions, and their access to best practice. This dual focus upon a problem solving approach to teaching immersed the student teacher in situations derived from real school environments, and so encouraged a collegial and open approach to teaching. Extensive evaluations revealed that pre‐service teachers were more thoroughly prepared for rural teaching experiences, displayed competence in effective multigrade teaching skills, and exhibited control during involvement     

Teaching patrol officer problem solutions in academic criminal justice courses

This article describes the need for college and university courses teaching proven problem solutions for police patrol officers. It is argued that it is unreasonable and unnecessary to expect patrol officers to routinely develop new problem solutions, and that they should rather be expected to know and use proven solutions. This paper reports findings of a survey of students in a university which offers such a course. The rated importance of specific course subjects and the number of classes needed to cover subjects are also reported. The mean rating, on a 0-to-4 scale, of the value of such a course to students planning to work in patrol was 3.77.     

Transforming teaching challenges into learning opportunities: interdisciplinary reflective collaboration

ABSTRACT

Teaching in higher education poses unique sets of challenges, especially for academics in the engineering, built sciences and information science education disciplines. This article focuses on how reflective collaboration can support academics in their quest to find unique solutions to challenges in different academic contexts. A reflective collaboration framework was applied during a three-year interpretive research process at an Engineering, Information Technology and Built Environment Faculty in a residential research intensive university in South Africa. Interdisciplinary reflective collaboration was found to bring richness and depth into investigations of complex teaching challenges. This framework provides a structure to support the transformation of teaching challenges into learning opportunities through the promotion of dialogue, critique and reflection between engineering and education academics.     

A collegial quality development process for identifying and addressing barriers to improving teaching

ABSTRACT

Challenges to ensuring teaching quality in higher education give ongoing impetus to invest in teaching quality improvement. While a significant body of literature has recognised challenges faced by academics seeking to improve teaching practices, processes for developing constructive responses to identified barriers have attracted less attention. A synthesis of literature on barriers to improvement of teaching is presented and used as a framework to assist an identification of barriers. This article reports on a national Australian trial of a collegial quality development process aimed at supporting academics to both identify and surmount barriers to improving teaching quality. Evidence of the nature and extent of barriers to improving teaching was collated from data provided by 28 academics across five Australian universities. Adopting a thematic analysis approach, a broad range of perceived barriers were identified, largely consistent with barrier categories defined in the extant literature internationally. Findings reveal that, with the support of peers, participants were able to implement effective solutions to their identified barriers to improving teaching quality. This article provides a synthesis of current barriers to improve teaching and offers a collegial quality development process as a strategy to overcome these barriers.     

Ecological science fieldwork and secondary school biology in England: does a more secure future lie in Geography?

Abstract

Fieldwork has always been an important component in the teaching of ecology in England’s secondary schools where it has been delivered almost exclusively as part of the biology curriculum for nearly 70 years. However, historical evidence shows that both the quantity and quality of ecology fieldwork has been declining in recent decades at a time when the scope, complexity and interdisciplinarity of ecological science has been growing. This paper presents evidence of a continuing decline in ecology fieldwork over the past 15 years, discusses some possible causes and reviews solutions to reverse the trend. In particular, it argues that teaching scientific ecology through geography fieldwork could overcome several of the fundamental obstacles encountered in biology education. Trends in biology and geography fieldwork are compared. These show that the risks to ecology in forging a strong relationship, and increased dependency, with geography teaching are likely to be outweighed by reciprocal benefits.     

Practical Exploration of Undergraduate Classroom Teaching Reform: a Case Study of Shanxi Normal University

Abstract

Exploring classroom teaching reform centered on student development is a fundamental requirement for deepening education and teaching reform in undergraduate education worldwide. Shanxi Normal University places the reform of classroom teaching reform at the center of their efforts to raise the quality of undergraduate education. The implementation of the classroom teaching reforms at Shanxi Normal University has been focused on finding solutions to practical teaching problems. The new approaches to teaching and learning satisfy the requirements of both student development and societal development while addressing key problems in university education and teaching reform. In this article, the authors explain the rationale for focusing on classroom teaching reform, and describe how the classroom teaching reforms were promoted at Shanxi Normal University as well as how the quality of student training has been improved. Our goal in implementing reforms to classroom teaching has been to not only improve education and teaching vitality at Shanxi Normal University, but also provide lessons and experience to stimulate classroom teaching reform at other universities.     

What motivates higher education educators to innovate? Exploring competence,autonomy, and relatedness – and connections with wellbeing

ABSTRACT

Background: High quality tertiary teaching is important for maximising the impact of tertiary education for students, employers and society, as well as for institutional reputation and accountability. Varied interpretations exist regarding what counts as ‘innovative’ tertiary teaching.

Purpose: This study sought to explore the deeper drivers of motivations of tertiary educators to initiate and implement teaching innovations.

Method: Drawing from the data from semi-structured interviews from a wider study into innovative teaching in a tertiary education institution in Aotearoa New Zealand, we analysed the rationale of 13 expert tertiary educators for teaching in novel ways. The framework for analysis was based on Self-Determination Theory: data were analysed in relation to three basic psychological needs known to impact on motivation and wellbeing – competence, autonomy and relatedness.

Findings: Our analysis suggests that tertiary educator motivation to innovate in their teaching is related to feelings of all three needs. Findings suggest that innovative pedagogical change was linked to educators’ need for feelings of competence in relation to subject area content, pedagogy and developing student competence. Enhancing autonomy for the educators themselves, or for their students, was also an important factor motivating innovative practice. Developing relatedness between students, between themselves and students, and between students and society were reported as motivations for innovative teaching. Some teaching innovations were motivated by the educator’s desire for greater personal or student wellbeing.

Conclusions Educators’ motivations for being innovative in their tertiary pedagogical practice encompassed content, pedagogical, personal and social dimensions. None reported that their innovation was motivated by institutional policy or expectations. The reported challenges to innovative teaching practice, including institutional structures and processes, lack of access to specific technologies, and the time needed to develop and implement changed practice, indicate that educators must be strongly committed to making change in their practice to sustain the effort required.     

Exploring the pedagogical features of integrating essential competencies of scientific inquiry in classroom teaching

ABSTRACT

Background: As inquiry-based instruction is not universally implemented in science classrooms, it is crucial to introduce instructional strategies through the use of contextualized learning activities to allow students with different background knowledge and abilities to learn the essential competencies of scientific inquiry and promote their emotional perception and engagement.

Purpose: This study explores how essential scientific competencies of inquiry can be integrated into classroom teaching practices and investigates both typical and gifted secondary students’ emotional perception and engagement in learning activities.

Sample: A case teacher along with 226 typical and 18 gifted students from a suburban secondary school at Taiwan participated in this study.

Design and methods: After attending twelve 3-hour professional development workshops that focused on scientific inquiry teaching, the case teacher voluntarily developed and elaborated her own teaching activities through the discussions and feedback that she received from workshop participants and science educators. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through activity worksheet, questionnaire, video camera, and tape recorders. Frequency distribution, Mann-Whitney U test, and discourse analysis were used for data analyses.

Results: Case teacher’s teaching activities provide contextual investigations that allow students to practice making hypotheses, planning investigations, and presenting and evaluating findings. Students’ learning outcomes reveal that typical students can engage in inquiry-based learning with positive emotional perception as well as gifted students regardless of their ability level. Both gifted and typical students’ positive emotional perception of and active engagement in learning provide fresh insight into feasible instructions for teachers who are interested in inquiry-based teaching but have little available time to implement such instructions into their classrooms.

Conclusions: The results of our work begin to address the critical issues of inquiry-based teaching by providing an exemplary teaching unit encompassing essential scientific competencies     

Environmental philosophies underlying the teaching of environmental education: a case study in India

Abstract

This study consists of two interdependent parts. First we categorise the environmental philosophies prevalent amongst environmentalists in India by comparing the way the environmental crisis is understood and what its causes and solutions are thought to be. In the second part, we use this categorisation for a case study of three high school science teachers in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Our aim is to find out what environmental philosophies underlay their teaching. In order to do this, we collected data by interviewing the teachers, observing their classrooms, and studying their textbooks. We then looked through our data for indications of the environmental philosophies found in part 1. Although the interviews showed some signs of Gandhian, Appropriate Technology, Eco-marxist, and other philosophies, in the classrooms the teachers adhered mainly to Ecological Modernisation and Eco-capitalist philosophies, and rarely expressed their own opinions. Despite progressive policy statements, the teaching was mainly textbook based, neglecting to consider systemic causes or solutions. One of the most significant findings was the prevalence of an idealist faith in a ‘Balance of Nature’ which was trusted to rectify upsets caused by human immorality.     

Teaching of biological inheritance and evolution of living beings in secondary school

The purpose of this investigation is to examine some solutions to the problems involved in the learning and teaching of biological inheritance and the evolution of living beings at the secondary school level. For this, we implemented a teaching programme which takes into account a constructivist approach to learning and analysed the progress in students' knowledge at different times (pre-test, post-test and retention test). Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results show that the programme instilled a knowledge close to what might be considered adequate for this educational level. As a follow up, we propose certain disciplinary criteria for selecting and sequencing the content to be taught and discuss the educational circumstances which favour the construction of student knowledge on these topics.     

The crisis in academic statistics: an exploration

Abstract

At present, statistics as an academic career is not only experiencing an identity crisis, but is also fighting for survival as a vital and vibrant career choice. Good financial benefits, as well as the increasing demand for applied statisticians, have opened up very attractive career opportunities for statistics graduates, while at the same time eroding the viability of pursuing statistics as an academic teaching profession. As a result, the number of students wishing to teach statistics at universities is dwindling, and the number of vacancies in statistics departments at higher education institutions has increased. This article explores some of the reasons for the above, as well as the impact of the crisis on academic statistics. The article considers possible solutions – like opening the discourse on the future of academic statistics, taking students’ experiences seriously, the Africanisation of the curriculum, the effective use of technologies, ongoing research, and adequate financial reward.     

Criticality and connoisseurship in arts education: pedagogy,practice and ‘Pinterest©’

ABSTRACT

In time-poor and pressured teaching environments, some classroom teachers look for immediate and simple solutions to resourcing their arts teaching. Online platforms, such as Pinterest, seem to offer ready-made answers for these teachers, however, a lack of criticality can underscore the unexamined ‘advantages’ of such accessible resources. Accessibility and lack of confidence for time poor teachers are two key issues in understanding why teachers prefer online platforms for the sourcing of arts teaching resources rather than curriculum documents written for them by ‘curriculum experts’. Critically competent curriculum decisions require informed knowing about value and how the decision impacts on practice and student learning and in this way criticality and connoisseurship are important capabilities that constantly need to be strengthened in a digitally mediated world. Combined in an arts context and drawing on interviews with 16 classroom teachers, criticality and connoisseurship are two key concepts used to highlight the systemic issues of context, value and pedagogy that impact on teacher’s practice. Suggestions for increasing teachers’ criticality and connoisseurship are explored as important pathways for improving arts learning for young people.     

Children's Constructions of Knowledge for Fraction Division After Solving Realistic Problems

Abstract

The authors examined the thinking of children who had the opportunity to construct personal knowledge about division of fractions. The authors based this study on a teaching experiment design and used relevant contexts/situations to foster students' development of knowledge. Participants were a group of mixed-ability, 5th-grade mathematics students. They used pictures, symbols, and words to resolve situations and communicate their solutions. The authors analyzed the solutions to describe the students' constructions of division-of-fractions concepts and procedures. All strategies that the students used represented some manifestation of conceptual knowledge about addition and subtraction of fractions and a definition of division. Some students developed formal symbolic procedures, and others developed pictorial procedures; none invented an invert-and-multiply procedure. Through the window of constructivism, this study allowed the authors to glimpse children's constructions of knowledge and provided alternatives to the traditional view of the expected procedure (invert and multiply) that children should learn for division of fractions.     

Quantum Yang-Baxter equation and constant R -matrix over Grassmann algebra

Constant solutions to Yang-Baxter equation are investigated over Grassmann algebra for the case of 6-vertexR-matrix. The general classification of all possible solutions over Grassmann algebra and particular cases with 2,3,4 generators are studied. As distinct from the standard case, whenR-matrix over number field can have a maximum 5 nonvanishing elements, we obtain over Grassmann algebra a set of new full 6-vertex solutions. The solutions leading to regularR-matrices which appear in weak Hopf algebras are considered.     

Girls and science education in Mauritius: a study of science class practices and their effects on girls

Background: The population of Mauritius consists of 52% females and scientific literacy is seen to be of vital importance for all young people if they are to be sufficiently equipped to meet the challenges of a fast changing world. Previous research shows, however, that science is not popular among girls. This paper explores one of many reasons why few girls opt for science subjects after compulsory schooling.

Purpose: This study investigated the approaches to teaching in four science classrooms in Mauritius, with particular emphases on the preferences of girls as they learn science.

Sample: A total of 20 student interviews and 16 teacher interviews were conducted in four schools in Mauritius. The four mixed-faith schools comprised two all-girl schools (one state, one fee-paying), and two mixed-sex schools (one state, one fee-paying), within urban, suburban and rural situations.

Design and method: 80 non-participant lessons were observed, of which 60 were science lessons while the remaining 20 non-science lessons were in economics, accounts and commerce. Group interviews with five pupils in each of the four schools were conducted and 16 individual interviews with teachers in the four schools gave an insight into the pedagogic approaches used for the teaching and learning of science.

Results: Transmissive approaches to teaching, giving little opportunity for collaborative or activity-based learning, were found to be the most important factors in alienating the girls from science.

Conclusions: There need to be radical changes in approaches to teaching to retain young girls’ interest in the sciences.     

Petro-pedagogy: fossil fuel interests and the obstruction of climate justice in public education

Abstract

The corporate control of energy production and the reach of fossil capital into civil and political society can be understood as a regime of obstruction that is preventing necessary action on climate change and blocking a just energy transition. In addition to overt forms of economic power and influence, hegemonic power is central to the fossil fuel industry’s regime of obstruction. Based on 29 interviews and an analysis of third-party teaching resources, this article shows how teaching practices and resources work to centre, legitimize, and entrench a set of beliefs relating to climate change, energy, and environmentalism that align with the interests of fossil fuel industry actors in Saskatchewan, Canada. We argue that these pedagogical practices promote student subjectivities consistent with neoliberal environmentalism centred on individual actions designed to insulate fossil fuel industries from criticism and dissuade young people from questioning or understanding the role of corporate power in the climate crisis. Furthermore, this petro-pedagogy intends to restrict the imagination of possible climate solutions to individual acts of conservation that fail to challenge the structural growth of fossil fuel consumption. This paper advances these teaching practices and resources as a ‘pedagogical arm’ of the regime of obstruction.     

Tailored for China: did it work? Reflections on an intensive study abroad programme for Chinese student teachers

ABSTRACT

This study examines how a cohort of 32 Chinese student teachers experience a 3-week Intensive Study Abroad Programme in Canada, which focused on facilitating understanding of teaching and learning from an international perspective. Research findings underscore the effectiveness of a context responsive approach to cross-cultural teaching and learning that places emphasis upon modelling and deliberate explication of teaching practice, experiential learning and dialogic reflection.     

Expert novice similarities and instruction using analogies

Evidence is presented indicating that spontaneously generated analogies can play a significant role in expert problem solving. Since not all analogies are valid, it is important for the subject to have a way to evaluate their validity. In particular, this paper focuses on an evaluation strategy called bridging that has been observed in solutions to both science and mathematics problems. Spontaneous analogies have also been documented in the problem solving of students. The shared natural use of analogies for unfamiliar problems is an expert‐novice similarity.

Some of the strategies observed in experts were incorporated in a teaching technique for dealing with students’ preconceptions in mechanics. Students taught via these units achieved large gain differences over control groups. Thus non‐deductive reasoning strategies used by experts can give us valuable clues concerning instructional strategies for science students. This complements the prior focus in the literature on expert novice differences with a focus on expert novice similarities.