Teaching and Learning about Force with a Representational Focus: Pedagogy and Teacher Change

A large body of research in the conceptual change tradition has shown the difficulty of learning fundamental science concepts, yet conceptual change schemes have failed to convincingly demonstrate improvements in supporting significant student learning. Recent work in cognitive science has challenged this purely conceptual view of learning, emphasising the role of language, and the importance of personal and contextual aspects of understanding science. The research described in this paper is designed around the notion that learning involves the recognition and development of students’ representational resources. In particular, we argue that conceptual difficulties with the concept of force are fundamentally representational in nature. This paper describes a classroom sequence in force that focuses on representations and their negotiation, and reports on the effectiveness of this perspective in guiding teaching, and in providing insight into student learning. Classroom sequences involving three teachers were videotaped using a combined focus on the teacher and groups of students. Video analysis software was used to capture the variety of representations used, and sequences of representational negotiation. Stimulated recall interviews were conducted with teachers and students. The paper reports on the nature of the pedagogies developed as part of this representational focus, its effectiveness in supporting student learning, and on the pedagogical and epistemological challenges negotiated by teachers in implementing this approach.     

Connections as a Focus for Model-Building Learning in Engineering

Learning to create and use models of real-world situations is an important goal for under-graduate engineers. Engineers today use computer models to explore design problems and test solutions before actually building anything. Learning to create and use models of real-world sit-uations is a challenging task. Most efforts to teach modeling are essentially a means of teach-ing students programming, which is recognized as difficult. In the approach described in this paper, we sought to simplify the task as much as possible away from programming, while still requiring students to learn to use the mathematical models necessary to understand a given sit-uation. We worked in the domain of Chemical Engineering with a tool called DEVICE (Dynamic Environment for Visualization in Chemical Engineering). What we found through an iterative development effort is that emphasizing connections between the real world and the mathematical model led to learning and transfer benefits.     

学生与学习:学习型词典的聚焦点——兼论《学生成语词典》的编纂实践

成语是既成的短语,是历史的产物,是认识的结晶,是汉语言和汉文化的精华.要编写好一部学习型成语词典,必须要始终关注“学生”与“学习”这两个聚焦点.郭骏主编的《学生成语词典》就是一部“为学生”“为学习”而编写的学习型词典.该词典重在提供知识信息,将词典打造成以知识型、信息型为主的文本,释义、溯源、结构分析项构成可供教学用的语料库;同时以现代词典学理论审视,为学习型词典的顶层设计提供了参考.     

Teaching and Learning as a Way of Life

This essay seeks to show that teaching and learning are to be properly understood, not as an undertaking carried out on the will of a higher power or party, but as a way of life with an integrity of its own, arising from its own integral purposes. The essay thus seeks to provide an understanding of educational practice and of educational thought that contrasts in key respects with Alasdair MacIntyre's understanding, though also with a some notable parallels. A largely forgotten 'Socrates of Athens' is identified as furnishing the original inspiration for the understanding of education explored in the essay. Some influential modern (and postmodern) negations of this understanding are then reviewed. Arising from its investigation of teaching and learning as a singular kind of relationship, the essay concludes with a brief sketch of some virtues that might constitute the way of life in question, in its more active and its more reflective moments.     

以学为中心:现代远程教学模式探讨

建构一种能够充分体现学生学习主体作用的新型教学结构，是当前高校教学改革的主要目标之一。这种教学结构的改革必将导致教学模式、教学内容、教学手段和教学方法的全面改革，并与现代远程教育诸种教学模式相契合。     

Learning to Mentor as Learning a Second Language of Teaching

This paper describes and interprets the process by which two novice mentors of English teachers, who are experienced high school teachers of English, learnt to construe their new role by articulating differences and similarities between their practice as teachers of children and as mentors of teachers. The evolving competencies that the focal mentors attributed to their learning are interpreted through the metaphor of 'learning to mentor as learning a second language of teaching'; an organising framework that emerged from the findings of a qualitative case study that investigated the learning process experienced by two veteran teachers of English in their passage from teaching English to school children to becoming mentors of teachers of English (Orland, 1997). The study suggests that although the passage from being a teacher of children to becoming a teacher of teachers is shaped by strong emotional and motivational dispositions, it is also a highly conscious and gradual process of developing communicative competencies, whereby the mentor learns to redefine his/her context of teaching in order to make sense of his/her new context of mentoring. At an operational level the study indicates that there is a definite need to prepare teachers for this passage by providing opportunities to voice and articulate these connections in teacher education programmes.     

对外汉语教学应以词汇教学为中心

本文强调了对外汉语教学应以词汇教学为中心的观点,并从汉语词汇自身的特点出发论述了“以词汇教学为中心“的理论依据.文章共4部分:如何理解“以词汇教学为中心“,汉语词汇集语音、语义、语法、语用和文化于一体,汉语的虚词是词汇、语法的教学重点,汉语的构词特征与词汇教学.     

小议二语习得中的学习策略与外语教学

学习策略是近年国外应用语言学家广泛研究的课题之一,特别是在成功语言学习者使用策略研究方面取得了一定的成果。主要从成功者学习策略的分类,使用策略的特点、影响因素、策略培训等方面评析这一领域已取得的成果。为适应我国外语教育的特点,我国教育工作者应在此基础上结合具体实际,开展具有中国特色的学习策略研究,进行外语教学改革。     

论挑战性学习目标及其制定策略

挑战性学习目标是,每个学生的学习目标都在自己的"最近发展区"内,都是对自己已有水平的挑战与跨越。有效教学与优质教学要求教师在课堂教学中制定出对每个学生都具有挑战性的学习目标。挑战性学习目标的基本制定策略是:在了解学生认知准备水平与学习兴趣的基础上,先多后少,从粗到细,预设、调整与动态生成相结合。     

From Lifelong Learning to Lifelong Teaching: Teaching as a call to style

This paper offers the viewpoint that franchised Further Education-based degree courses should be continued and expanded, since these colleges are less likely to intimidate adult (potential) students. A modified American '2 + 2' learning scenario (2 years in FE college followed by 2 years concluding the degree in a university) is discussed.     

一种以实验教学为中心的非传统模式

提出一种高校工作模式:建设高水平的研究型实验室,发展演示型实验,以实验教学为中心,建立完善的实验教学体系,指导型实验规范化,部分实验室向学生全天开放,转变实验教学价值观和评价机制等。     

如何提高留学生叙事短文的写作能力

写作训练对提高留学生的汉语应用能力有非常重要的作用。写作教学是目前对外汉语教学中的薄弱环节,文章试图对叙事短文写作教学中的一些教学原则进行整理分析,希望能为汉语写作教学工作提供参考。     

Distance Learning as a Tool for Poverty Reduction and Economic Development: A Focus on China and Mexico

This paper uses case studies to focus on distance learning in developing countries as an enabler for economic development and poverty reduction. To provide perspective, we first review the history of telecottages, local technology-equipped facilities to foster community-based learning, which have evolved into “telecenters” or “Community Learning Centers” (CLCs). Second, we describe extensive site visits to CLCs in impoverished portions of China and Mexico, the centers operated by premier universities in each respective country. These CLCs constitute the core of new emerging systems of distance education, and their newness poses challenges and opportunities, which are discussed. Finally, we offer 12 points to develop further the concept and reality of distance learning in support of economic development.     

如何提高留学生叙事短文的写作能力

写作训练对提高留学生的汉语应用能力有非常重要的作用。写作教学是目前对外汉语教学中的薄弱环节,文章试图对叙事短文写作教学中的一些教学原则进行整理分析,希望能为汉语写作教学工作提供参考。     

Theory and Practice in Mathematics Teaching Development: Critical Inquiry as a Mode of Learning in Teaching

In this paper I address the challenge of developing theory in relation to the practices of mathematics teaching and its development. I do this by exploring a notion of ‘teaching as learning in practice’ through overt use of ‘inquiry’ in mathematics learning, mathematics teaching and the development of practices of teaching in communities involving teachers and educators. The roles and goals of mathematics teachers and educators in such communities are both distinct and deeply intertwined. I see an aim of inquiry in teaching to be the ‘critical alignment’ (Wenger, 1998) of teaching within the communities in which teaching takes place. Inquiry ‘as a tool’ and inquiry ‘as a way of being’ are important concepts in reflexive developmental processes in which inquiry practice leads to better understandings and development of theory.     

Theory and Practice in Mathematics Teaching Development: Critical Inquiry as a Mode of Learning in Teaching

In this paper I address the challenge of developing theory in relation to the practices of mathematics teaching and its development. I do this by exploring a notion of ‘teaching as learning in practice’ through overt use of ‘inquiry’ in mathematics learning, mathematics teaching and the development of practices of teaching in communities involving teachers and educators. The roles and goals of mathematics teachers and educators in such communities are both distinct and deeply intertwined. I see an aim of inquiry in teaching to be the ‘critical alignment’ (Wenger, 1998) of teaching within the communities in which teaching takes place. Inquiry ‘as a tool’ and inquiry ‘as a way of being’ are important concepts in reflexive developmental processes in which inquiry practice leads to better understandings and development of theory.     

Introduction: Science Teaching Cases as Learning Opportunities

Research in Science Education -     

Keeping the Focus on the Child: Supporting and Reporting on Teaching and Learning With a Classroom-Based Performance Assessment System

Abstract

This article describes the findings of studies conducted on a large-scale, classroom-based performance assessment of literacy for the early grades designed to provide information that is useful for reporting, as well as teaching. Technical studies found the assessment to be a promising instrument that is reliable and valid. Follow-up studies of the assessment's use point to its positive impact on teachers' practice and on school and district policies. The studies' findings suggest that classroom-based performance assessment can be a viable accountability, as well as instructional, tool, capturing a range of students' abilities in a range of formats, and that use of such an assessment has the potential to enhance teachers' knowledge about literacy and their abilities to effectively support students' learning.