Teaching evaluation: antecedents of teachers’ perceived usefulness of follow-up sessions and perceived stress related to the evaluation process

This study examines teaching evaluation based on student feedback which is intended to contribute to teachers’ professional development. Although studies have highlighted that teaching evaluation is a potential source of professional development and that follow-up sessions are crucial to this benefit, little attention has been paid to the usefulness of follow-up sessions as perceived by the teachers involved. Based on 217 teacher responses and analysis done with Structural Equation Modelling, this article provides additional insight into teaching evaluation by investigating possible antecedents for teachers’ perceived usefulness of follow-up sessions and for evaluation-related stress. Our results indicate that the perceived developmental purposes of teaching evaluation, recognition of the person conducting follow-up sessions and perceived clear communication from leaders are positively related to teachers’ perceived usefulness of follow-up sessions. Higher levels of perceived control purposes are related to higher levels of reported stress among the evaluated teachers.     

The gains and the pitfalls of reification — The case of algebra

Algebraic symbols do not speak for themselves. What one actually sees in them depends on the requirements of the problem to which they are applied. Not less important, it depends on what one is able to perceive and prepared to notice. It is this last statement which becomes the leading theme of this article. The main focus is on the versatility and adaptability of student's algebraic knowledge.The analysis is carried out within the framework of the theory of reification according to which there is an inherent process-object duality in the majority of mathematical concepts. It is the basic tenet of our theory that the operational (process-oriented) conception emerges first and that the mathematical objects (structural conceptions) develop afterward through reification of the processes. There is much evidence showing that reification is difficult to achieve.The nature and the growth of algebraic thinking is first analyzed from an epistemological perspective supported by historical observations. Eventually, its development is presented as a sequence of ever more advanced transitions from operational to structural outlook. This model is subsequently applied to the individual learning. The focus is on two crucial transitions: from the purely operational algebra to the structural algebra of a fixed value (of an unknown) and then from here to the functional algebra (of a variable). The special difficulties experienced by the learner at both these junctions are illustrated with much empirical data coming from a broad range of sources.     

Teachers’ perceptions of the curricula of the Soviet and post-Soviet eras: A case study of Estonian pre-school teachers

Broadening the role of teachers in curriculum development was among the fundamental objectives of educational reforms in the formerly communist Eastern Europe in the 1990s. The research done so far, however, calls into question the degree to which teachers perceive the relevant changes in curriculum and their new role. This article first describes the context of curricular changes in Eastern Europe and Estonia after the fall of communism. It then analyses Estonian pre-school teachers’ perceptions of national pre-school curricula utilized in two different eras: the late Soviet period and the period from 1999 to date in a sovereign Estonia. Data were gathered via semi-structured interviews. Thirty-one experienced teachers participated in the study. It was concluded that teachers generally apprehend the broadened meaning of the concept of curriculum and their augmented role as reflective curriculum makers and theorists. However, differences emerge between teachers’ perceptions of their new role and their readiness to adopt it. Regarding the reported generality and indefiniteness of the new national curriculum, teachers need more assistance for implementing the autonomy and self-responsibility imposed on them by the curriculum. A balance between self-responsibility and professional advice should be sought by both curriculum makers and teacher educators.     

The impact of academic self‐concept,expectations and the choice of learning strategy on academic achievement: the case of business students

This study provides evidence of the impact of two critical self‐regulation components – academic self‐concept and outcome expectations – on the selection of learning strategies conducive to academic achievement in undergraduate business education. Self‐concept theory is the framework for the analysis of students’ motivations and learning behaviors. Path analysis suggests that high academic self‐concept favors engagement in complex cognitive effort, deep learning strategies and self‐reflection, as well as in the adoption of strategic learning approaches alone. However, the composite effect of deep learning through strategic approaches has the most impact on student’s academic performance. High academic expectations favor students’ selection of deep learning more than strategic approaches. Clearly, the use of surface approaches to learning is not conducive to academic achievement. Overall, these findings suggest that high students’ academic self‐concepts and unambiguous outcome expectations encourage critical thinking and reflective approaches to learning. Implications for the design of educational models and curriculum in business undergraduate education are discussed.     

The end result of Education Reformation—education evaluation system

A Chinese famous thinker, scientist Qian Xuesen,proposed a thought-provoking question: why couldn't our schoolalways cultivate outstanding talents? This problem points out themisunderstanding of China's education, and the educators carryout plans and reformations again to solve the problem. However,no matter how education reform, we should go back to, that is,the evaluation system of education. Only a reasonable evaluationsystem can make education reformation play its real role.     

Pulling together: keeping track of pedagogy,design and evaluation through the development of scenarios—a case study

This case study describes the multipurpose use of scenarios in a large multinational research project (MOBIlearn) whose aims are to design and develop a pedagogically sound mobile learning environment. Maintaining effective communication and design focus in large consortia is a well‐known problem (see Carroll, 2000 Carrol JM (2000) Making use: scenario‐based design of human‐computer interactions Cambridge MA MIT Press  [Google Scholar]), and we describe the role of scenarios in addressing this. Scenarios were initially used to simply envision the future system in order to inform design, but as the project progressed, the role of the scenarios grew to encompass (i) relating system design and implementation to pedagogy by providing a common frame of reference for developers and pedagogic experts; (ii) through a process of refinement, defining the evaluation strategy for the user trials; and (iii) allowing us to keep the user at the heart of the development project. Thus, scenarios helped to resolve the difficulty identified by Taylor (2004 Taylor J (2004) A task‐centred approach to evaluating a mobile learning environment for pedagogic soundness in: J. Attewell & C. Savill‐Smith (Eds) Learning with mobile devices London Learning and Skills Development Agency 167 171  [Google Scholar]) of how to bring together the relatively high level issues of pedagogic evaluation and the more technical user‐centred system evaluation. The development of a first‐aid training scenario is used as an illustrative example.     

The power of emotions: Can enjoyment and boredom explain the impact of individual preconditions and teaching methods on interest and performance in mathematics?

We investigated students’ emotions as intervening variables between teaching methods, motivational and performance prerequisites, and outcomes. 144 students from German schools were assigned to two conditions. In one condition, students were prompted to develop multiple solutions for modelling problems that were missing information. In the other condition, students had to find one solution for modelling problems that were not missing information. Students’ interest and performance were measured before and after the 5-lesson teaching unit, and students’ enjoyment and boredom were measured during the teaching unit. The path analyses revealed: (1) Students who developed more solutions enjoyed their mathematics lessons more and were less bored than students in the other condition; (2) Enjoyment affected students’ interest and performance at posttest and mediated the effects of prompting them to find multiple solutions on interest at posttest; (3) Students’ enjoyment during learning mediated the effects of prior interest on interest at posttest.     

Life cycle assessment in the environmental impact evaluation of urban development—a case study of land readjustment project,Hyogo District, Japan

BACKGROUNDLifeCycleAssessment (LCA)includesanattempttoevaluatetheenvironmentalaspectsofaproductoraserviceincradle to gravefashion .ThefirststudyonLCAwasperformedbytheU .S .MidwestResearchInstituteforCoca ColaCompanyin 1 969(U .S .EnvironmentalProtec tionA…     

The gown and the korowai: Māori doctoral students and the spatial organisation of academic knowledge

This paper draws on 38 student interviews carried out in the course of the team research project ‘Teaching and Learning in the Supervision of Māori Doctoral Students’. Māori doctoral thesis work takes place in the intersections between the Māori (tribal) world of identifications and obligations, the organisational and epistemological configurations of academia and the bureaucratic requirements of funding or employing bureaucracies. To explore how students accommodate cultural, academic and bureaucratic demands, we develop analytical tools combining three intellectual traditions: Māori educational theory, Bernstein’s sociology of the academy and Lefebvre’s conceptual trilogy of perceived, conceived and lived space. The paper falls into six parts. Section 1 is an overview of the research and is followed in Section 2 by identification of intersecting ‘locations’ in which Māori students’ theses are produced. In Section 3, Henri Lefebvre’s spatial analysis highlights connections between students’ multiple allegiances and affinities. Drawing on Bernstein, Section 4 relates the theses to the organisation of ‘Western’ academic disciplines. Section 5 addresses students’ cultural locations beyond the reach of ‘Western’ disciplines. We conclude with implications for supervision.     

The impact of multilevel factors on technology integration: the case of Taiwanese grade 1–9 teachers and schools

Technology integration is influenced by many factors related to the teacher and the school environment. While many studies have examined factors that influence teachers’ use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at the teacher level, a growing number of studies have suggested that it is beneficial to examine those factors using multilevel modeling. Multilevel analysis can separate the impact of teachers from the school environment and provide insight into the influence of those factors at each level. This study uses multilevel modeling to analyze data from 3,652 grade 1–9 teachers in 289 schools in Taiwan. The results of this multilevel analysis found both teacher-level and school-level factors contributing to the integration of ICT in the teaching process. Among teacher level factors, teachers’ beliefs and hours of training in the previous year predicted ICT integration proficiency well. Among school level factors, training hours and teachers’ perceived school support are the most important factors that impact ICT integration. School support is not only a significant factor at the school level but also a strong predictor at the teacher level. In addition, important school level variables included access to Internet connectivity, availability of projectors, and stability of computers. These results highlight the importance of individual teachers and the role schools play in ICT integration.     

Development research of a teachers’ educational performance support system: the practices of design, development, and evaluation

This study adopted design and development research methodology (Richey & Klein, Design and development research: Methods, strategies, and issues, 2007) to systematically investigate the process of applying instructional design principles, human–computer interaction, and software engineering to a performance support system (PSS) for behavior management in a classroom. The purpose was to examine how a proposed instructional design framework based on Ausubel’s (The psychology of meaningful verbal learning, 1963) advance organizer theoretical approach could be used to address inherent problems of technically driven PSSs. Development data were collected from a six-phase participatory rapid prototyping process using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Findings indicated that (a) the advance organizer concept combined with a matrix design metaphor provided an effective way to illustrate conceptual connections and relations among PSS modules and their elaborated information, (b) the system served as a reference to support participants for exchanging ideas with other teachers as well as with parents of students, and (c) the rapid prototyping process established parameters that helped the project team maintain a focus on users and collect data useful for advancing to a higher phase of system development. Potential drawbacks pertaining to the proposed design strategies and their possible corrective actions are also reported and discussed.     

Principal evaluation – linking individual and building-level progress: making the connections and embracing the tensions

The article examines the tensions one superintendent in the USA experienced as he evaluated principals in a high-stakes environment that had undergone numerous transformations at the central office. Using qualitative methods, primarily, shadowing techniques, observations and debriefing, the following tensions emerged and were examined in light of the work of the superintendent evaluating principal performance: (1) discrepancies between principal performance when compared to performance data, (2) length of time in the principalship compared to results, (3) finding the right balance between student achievement data and other indicators of principal performance, (4) what types of achievement data are important and when these data are made available, (5) credence paid to complaints about structural changes implemented by the principal, (6) balancing the principal self-evaluation rating scores with the final evaluator scores and (7) accounting for personal factors such as relationship to principals and knowledge about principal capabilities. Each of these tensions contributes to the difficulty a superintendent may feel when conducting the principal evaluation process.     

The effects of feedback on achievement,interest and self-evaluation: the role of feedback’s perceived usefulness

The impact of two types of written feedback (process-oriented, grade-oriented) on changes in mathematics achievement, interest and self-evaluation was compared – with a particular focus on the mediating role of feedback’s perceived usefulness. Participants, 146 ninth graders (aged 14 to 17?years), were assigned to either a process-oriented or a grade-oriented experimental feedback condition. They worked on mathematics tests, received feedback on their test results and completed surveys measuring feedback’s perceived usefulness, interest and self-evaluation. Results of path analysis showed that process-oriented feedback was perceived as more useful than grade-oriented feedback and that feedback’s perceived usefulness had a positive effect on changes in achievement and interest. Consistent with this, process-oriented feedback had a greater positive indirect effect than grade-oriented feedback on changes in mathematics achievement and interest via its perceived usefulness. There were no such effects on changes in self-evaluation. Potential explanations for these findings, educational implications and possible directions for future research are discussed.     

The Bologna process and its impact on higher education at Russia’s margins: the case of Kaliningrad

Embracing the Russian Federation since 2003, the Bologna process is no longer exclusively confined to western European countries. As early as 1999, Vladimir Putin declared the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, wedged between Lithuania and Poland, as a potential pilot region for intensified cooperation between Russia and the EU on a number of policy areas, including higher education. In this paper, we study whether the Bologna process has served to underpin these ambitions. With a view to the EU, we will ask to what extent the European Union has proffered a model or directly influenced the path for transformation of Kaliningrad’s higher education system. We argue that a number of Kaliningrad-based actors in higher education have recognized the salience of European models and the need to work closely with partners from the EU, while Moscow only allows for marginal discretion in terms of Kaliningrad’s higher educational policy.

The design of learning spaces matters: perceived impact of the deskless school on learning and teaching

Learning Environments Research - This exploratory case study examined the kinds of activity that a ‘deskless school” (i.e., flexible physical school spaces) engenders among pupils and...     

Integrating the big-fish-little-pond effect,the basking-in-reflected-glory effect,and the internal/external frame of reference model predicting students’ individual and collective academic self-concepts

The present research is the first to integrate three major theories of academic self-concept formation into one framework: the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), the basking-in-reflected-glory effect (BIRGE), and the internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model. For separating the BFLPE and the BIRGE, we introduced students’ collective self-concepts, defined as their perceptions of domain-specific abilities of their group (e.g., their class). We tested our newly developed model, predicting students’ math and verbal self-concepts, in the field (N = 2,001 students from 110 classes) and in the laboratory (N = 315 students in groups of three). In both studies, we found support for (1) the BFLPE (i.e., negative effects of group-average achievements on individual self-concepts within domains), (2) the BIRGE (i.e., positive effects of collective self-concepts on individual self-concepts within domains), and (3) the I/E model (i.e., positive/negative effects of individual achievements on individual self-concepts within/between domains). Moreover, for the first time, we have largely replicated the I/E model relations for predicting students’ collective self-concepts by their group-average achievements. Interestingly, the BIRGE exceeded the BFLPE in both studies. This finding demonstrates the high suitability of collective self-concepts for operationalizing the BIRGE. Overall, our findings substantially enhance our knowledge of the cognitive processes involved in students’ self-concept formation.     

Estimate of students’ workload and the impact of the evaluation system on students’ dedication to studying a subject in first-year engineering courses

In order to adapt current subjects to the ECTS credits system, it is necessary to estimate how much time a student has to invest in learning a subject. The Polytechnic Engineering School of the University of the Basque Country has made an initial study to investigate this matter in several subjects. A weekly questionnaire design was used for all the students in the class, supplemented, when necessary, by an individual interview, with student collaboration. The results indicate that the study rhythm and the number of hours are strongly conditioned by the evaluation system.