Educational Stories: Engaging teachers in educational theory

A common complaint among those involved in teaching the educational foundations is the reluctance of many trainee teachers to engage in issues of educational theory. This is particularly apparent with those trainees who are more concerned with managing classrooms of children than grappling with what are often abstract and difficult ideas. This paper considers the current use of educational stories as a pedagogical strategy in teacher training, and a story that has been used in this way is presented. It is argued that teachers of the educational foundations disciplines can, via stories, appeal to the opposing tensions and schemata in students’ own minds, and this engagement can be enhanced when students are confronted with broader educational debates, perspectives and proposals. Stories provide abstract concepts with a necessary tension, they suggest a way of entering the theoretical via the concrete and they show students the personal relevance of certain debates, which may have previously appeared remote and obscure. The end result is that students are challenged to make decisions about matters of fundamental importance such as the kinds of teachers they will be and about the ethical commitment they will make to teaching.     

Stories about creative teaching and productive learning

The article is based on an empirical, interview‐based research project investigating resources and barriers to creative teaching within three Danish primary and secondary schools. The analysis shows how project‐oriented teaching does seem to represent a creativity oasis for both teachers and pupils. Furthermore, the work identifies a distinction between an art‐based and a problem‐solving approach to creativity, and it is suggested that teachers help pupils to work with the various different opportunities for creative learning represented by different subjects in school. Furthermore, a dilemma is pinpointed between the demand that teachers conform to centrally defined test systems, and the challenges facing our societies in relation to bringing up pupils and students who dare to take risks, challenge the existing order and create something new.     

A Qualitative Examination of Teacher-Student Power-Sharing in Chinese Classrooms: A Study in Hong Kong

This article explores the dynamics of power-sharing between teacher and students in learning and teaching situations, and describes the theoretical bases, implementation, and results of an empirical study in three elementary schools in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. Findings from 58 class observations and interviews with 50 students, 25 teachers, and three school principals suggest that teachers can empower students by acknowledging their right to and responsibility for learning and by sharing power with students. Power-sharing classroom practice requires the dual efforts of teachers and students, and can be facilitated by the teachers’ interactive teaching mode, students’ cooperation and willingness to engage in learning, and school policy and culture, etc. In the power-sharing classrooms, teachers played the role of facilitators and students played as collaborators. In this article, theoretical implications for understanding power-sharing and critical pedagogy are discussed. The empirical evidence from this Hong Kong study contributes to an understanding of teacher-initiated power-sharing in the Chinese context, and the practice of critical pedagogy in classrooms.     

大学教师批评话语应遵循礼貌原则

课堂上,师生之间的语言交流更是应该遵照礼貌原则,为双方保全面子。教师在批评学生的错误行为时,就会对学生的消极面子造成威胁。因此,教师需要充分认识到他们的心理特点,遵循礼貌原则,维护其消极面子。这样不仅可以纠正学生的错误,又可以维护学生的面子,维系良好的师生关系。     

A case for critical literacy analysis of the advertising texts of menstruation: responding to missed opportunities

When Agnew found the same, largely negative, dominant discourses of menstruation present in classroom lessons that researchers have been identifying for over 30 years, she sought different approaches to menstruation education. In this article the authors highlight the power of the media to (re)construct dominant discourses of menstruation and the potential for teachers to use the texts of the media to make explicit constructions of menstruation. We present two excerpts from New Zealand research, which illustrate missed opportunities for teachers and students to deconstruct dominant discourses of menstruation using advertising texts. These extracts suggest that students may be more engaged if teachers work with the texts of advertising to discuss menstruation. We propose critical literacy as a powerful resource teachers and students can develop to analyse advertising texts in order to open up spaces for alternative discourses of menstruation to emerge.     

Stories and Affect in Teacher Education

This article argues that affect has been neglected in education and that this neglect reduces the engagement of both students and teachers in their studies. One remedy, it is argued, is to increase the use of stories in teacher education. Stories, judiciously chosen, can increase interest, add to cultural literacy, enhance human relations, and help to connect studies to the great existential questions.     

Writing Stories to Enhance Scientific Literacy

In response to international concerns about scientific literacy and students’ waning interest in school science, this study investigated the effects of a science‐writing project about the socioscientific issue (SSI) of biosecurity on the development of students’ scientific literacy. Students generated two BioStories each that merged scientific information with the narrative storylines in the project. The study was conducted in two phases. In the exploratory phase, a qualitative case study of a sixth‐grade class involving classroom observations and interviews informed the design of the second, confirmatory phase of the study, which was conducted at a different school. This phase involved a mixed methods approach featuring a quasi‐experimental design with two classes of Australian middle school students (i.e., sixth grade, 11 years of age, n = 55). The results support the argument that writing the sequence of stories helped the students become more familiar with biosecurity issues, develop a deeper understanding of related biological concepts, and improve their interest in science. On the basis of these findings, teachers should be encouraged to engage their students in the practice of writing about SSI in a way that integrates scientific information into narrative storylines. Extending the practice to older students and exploring additional issues related to writing about SSI are recommended for further research.     

We agree on what we see: Teacher and student perceptions of formative assessment practice

This study examines teacher and student perceptions of formative assessment (FA) activities used by teachers in the classroom. These activities are divided into five phases that together comprise the FA cycle: (1) clarifying expectations, (2) eliciting responses, (3) analysing and interpreting responses, (4) communicating about responses and (5) adjusting teaching and learning. Reliable questionnaires were used to measure the perceptions of 96 teachers and 1,095 students with regard to FA practice. Paired t-tests indicated no differences between the perceptions of teachers and students, except for with regard to clarifying expectations. Teachers used FA activities primarily to clarify expectations and elicit student responses, and they were least likely to apply them to adjust teaching and learning. The results suggest that the framework of the FA cycle could be used as an analytical lens for the reliable evaluation of the FA activities of teachers.     

Pro Bono Publico

Abstract

The dynamics of classroom authority are not always simple. Students come to school to increase their knowledge, and teachers presumably know more about their subject than do their students, but learning is not exclusively a one-way downward flow of information. Teachers learn from students and students often learn best when teachers do not exert their authority, at least in the conventional sense. Instructors who provoke thinking encourage students to encounter their own moments of illumination. This article presents the idea that learning through active resistance makes the information that students discover more valuable to them. Examples from the author's own classroom experiences are provided.     

Using Problem-Centered Learning for Teaching Collaboration in a General Methods Course

Beginning secondary school teachers need support. Although no panacea is available for assuring successful classroom practice, the authors provide suggestions resulting from thirty plus years experience as classroom teachers, school administrators, and university professors. These suggestions focus on classroom management, and they include helping students become academically engaged, organizing instruction to accommodate students' strengths and needs, and motivating students to be interactive during instructional activities. Becoming an effective teacher, however, is a unique journey, and classroom management is only one important factor that can make the journey more successful for both students and teachers.     

初中语文阅读教学中批判性思维的培养策略

批判性思维在语文阅读教学中,对学生创新精神和创造能力的培养起到关键性作用。在阅读教学中培养批判性思维,将批判性思维运用到阅读教学中,并且提供批判性思维的培育方法显得尤为关键。在教学中,我们要结合初中语文阅读教学、批判性思维及初中生思维特点。找到它们的连结点。     

高校英语教师批判式阅读教学的态度与意识调查研究

批判式阅读是一种以培养学生综合语言能力为核心的教学方法。通过对河北省5所高校100余名英语教师的问卷调查和访谈发现：高校英语教师对批判式阅读教学理论和教学策略的认知有待进一步深化;在教学实践过程中仍需要进一步转变教学观念,在拓展学生语言知识的同时兼顾学生批判性思维能力及评析能力的培养。     

The limits of critical pedagogy: teaching about structural obstacles to students who overcame them

This article focuses on efforts to critically analyze the social reproductive functions of schooling with a group of pre-service teachers in the US–Mexico border region, and on students’ reactions to these efforts. The students – all female, predominantly Mexican-American – had experienced both educational discrimination and academic success, and heavily invested in the dominant view of schooling as a meritocracy where individual talent and motivation regularly overcome structural obstacles. We argue that the students’ ideologies and experiences of class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and language predisposed them to resist analysis of systemic inequalities in schools; we also examine the implications of this resistance for their future success as teachers. We conclude with recommendations for balancing structural pessimism and strategic optimism in the classroom, and for bringing students’ personal and social histories to bear on the contradictions between schooling’s promise of social mobility and its tendency to reproduce social inequality.     

Sharpening a tool for teaching: the zone of proximal development

Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) provides an important understanding of learning, but its implications for teachers are often unclear or limited and could be further explored. We use conceptual analysis to sharpen the ZPD as a teaching tool, illustrated with examples from teaching critical thinking in zoology. Our conclusions are the following: teachers should assign tasks that students cannot do on their own, but which they can do with assistance; they should provide just enough assistance so that students learn to complete the tasks independently and, finally, teachers can increase learning gains by providing learning environments that enable students to do harder tasks than would otherwise be possible and by assigning the hardest tasks students can do with assistance. This analysis provides a sharp and useful tool for supporting learning across all curriculum areas.     

道德教育中的故事法

故事法在我国道德教育实践中一直具有重要的地位。故事法可以从亚里士多德、赫尔的德性论伦理学中寻找支撑,这种伦理立场也决定了在故事法之外还应辅以其他德育方法。从故事法的作用机制看,学生对道德故事的理解有一个主动的意义建构过程,需要经历多个心理环节。为此,在运用故事法时,教育者应认识到学生在提取故事主题等方面的主动性,明确故事发挥作用的主要环节,借助高质量的儿童故事、良好的师生关系,发挥故事法的效用。     

教师批评语分析研究

针对现实中频繁出现的师生矛盾,以课堂上教师与学生的会话分析模式和合作原则、礼貌原则为理论基础,借鉴刘焕辉先生在其著作《言语交际学》中提出的言语交际的基本规律,结合教师批评语在使用过程中独有的特点,总结出教师批评语的基本原则和使用策略。     

成为批判反思型教师:内涵及其途径——托马斯大学Stephen D.Brookfield教授访谈

斯蒂芬.D.布鲁克菲尔德(Stephen D.Brookfield)教授从批判理论的传统出发来探讨教师的反思。他将反思看作教师不断学习、探究自己教学的方式。当教师开展批判性反思时,他们实际上是对自己作为成人学习者有更清晰的意识;通过反思,教师持续地了解自身,了解他们与同事的关系,了解他们如何对学生施加影响。批判反思型教师不断质疑自己带到教学中的前提假设,尤其是课堂中的权力关系及其相互转换;确保课堂中的权力和权威被负责任地使用从而有助于支持学生的学习,而不是被误用或滥用而使学生感到不公或无益,或者是被胁迫或压制。他提出,每一位教师都可以运用从学生那里收集来的反馈信息、同事的感受、理论学习和对自身经验的反思这四条途径来探查自身的教学假设,寻求教学实践的改善。     

从耗散结构理论视角谈师生关系的建构

现有师生关系忽视本身所具有的耗散结构特性,表现出种种弊端。建构合理的师生关系必须走出封闭,实现交流;建构师生间的非线性的多元关系;把握学生成长的临界点,实现师生关系的和谐发展。     

论批判型教师及其成长

公民社会的建设、学生的健康成长需要教师具备理性的批判精神和能力。具备批判精神和能力的教师就是一种区别于其他类型的“批判型教师”。批判型教师的批判具有社会批判和自我批判两个纬度,批判型教师的成长经历了自发状态、自觉形成以及自由实现三个阶段。     

Incorporating critical thinking in the pedagogical content of a teacher education programme: does it make a difference?

Recent educational policies, national reports, and voluminous literature stress that critical thinking (CT) is an essential skill in any stage of schooling for producing critical thinkers and ensuring better learning. The importance of teaching CT has been raised in teacher education programmes because students are supposed to teach this skill in schools in the future. This study therefore assesses the effects of a CT-based pedagogical course on student teachers’ content knowledge and CT disposition. A pre-test–post-test experimental study was carried out in a vocational pre-service teacher education programme in Turkey. Although the students who were exposed to CT-based instruction showed better progress in both academic achievement and CT disposition than in traditional instruction, this result was not statistically significant according to the Mixed Factorial ANOVA and ANCOVA results.