How are Developmentally Appropriate or Traditional Teaching Practices Related to the Mathematics Achievement of General and Special Education Students?

Recently, developmentally appropriate practices have been distinguished from traditional practices and have been advocated as one way to reform primary general education classrooms. Relatively little research has examined the efficacy of developmentally appropriate versus traditional practices. In particular, concerns have been raised about the effectiveness of this approach for students with disabilities. This study examined the relationship between primary teachers' implementation of developmentally appropriate and traditional teaching methods and the mathematics achievement of general and special education students. Observations, interviews and questionnaires were used to measure the mathematics teaching practices used with general and special education students. Because developmentally appropriate and traditional teaching practices are often characterized in terms of a continuum, principal components methods were used to generate continuous composite variables that described teacher presentation, materials, grouping, and curriculum. The outcome measure was a curriculum- based measure of mathematics achievement. Principal components results showed that the composite variables most clearly associated with the developmentally appropriate v. traditional continuum were not related to mathematics achievement. Instead, consistent with previous research, achievement was associated with a reported measure of instruction that emphasized mathematical processing and strategy instruction. Further, a reported "laissez faire" method that emphasized individual student choice and treated special education students like general education students was negatively related to achievement, as was placement in special education class.     

Unravelling Quality in Higher Education: What Say the Students?

Abstract

The extant literature on quality assurance in higher education points to a dearth of empirical studies on students’ conceptions of quality in higher education. This interpretivist article reports on a study that explored the conceptions of quality in higher education by final year undergraduate students in six academic disciplines at Makerere University, Uganda. Data for the article was collected from 50 final year students in eight discipline-specific focus group discussions and was analysed using thematic analysis. Four conceptions of quality in higher education were evident from the participants’ responses, namely: quality as transformation (value-added); quality as fitness for purpose; quality as excellence; and quality as consistency/ perfection (zero-errors). Nevertheless, transformation and fitness for purpose featured as the dominant conceptions of quality in higher education and these conceptions of quality did not take place in a vacuum. The students rationalised transformation and fitness for purpose by what they perceived the purpose of higher education to be. The multiple and yet competing purposes of higher education occasioned the two definitions of quality in higher education. Therefore, consensus on the meaning of quality can be hastened by arriving at a common purpose of higher education in a given society rather than engaging with the notions of quality themselves. This thinking presupposes the idea that the purpose of higher education varies across time and space and the definition of quality in higher education should be responsive to the prevailing purpose(s) of higher education in a given society.     

How to Develop the Students’ Interest in English Teaching

It is the key for teachers how to develop the students’ interest because interest is the best teacher.This paper discusses how to develop the students’ interest.     

Teaching of Listening Comprehension to Chinese College Students

1.ContextEnglish is now the most popular learnedforeign language in China.But generally speaking,English teaching in all levels of Chinese schoolsis still very test centered.The real ability oflanguage usage or the communicative ability inlanguage studies is comparatively neglected.Thatleads to a great dissatisfaction due to the obviousdeficiency of Chinese students’language ability.I have taught listening comprehension to firstyear college students in Nanchang University forseveral years.…     

Counselor Education Students’ Exposure to Trauma Cases

In the past two decades there has been an increase in the number of studies that have examined the psychological effects on counselors who provide counseling to clients with trauma experiences. However, little is known about the experiences of counselor trainees who provide counseling to their clients seeking counseling because of trauma. This qualitative study explored the experience of eight doctoral students in a counseling program who completed their master’s-level training in the United States. Three themes emerged from the inductive data analysis process, namely: (1) immediate reactions, (2) information processing, and (3) post-exposure development. Implications for counselors, counselor educators, and clinical supervisors are examined and recommendations to enhance counseling and supervision services are offered.     

Using Socioscientific Issues to Enhance Students’ Emotional Competence

The premise of our study is that emotional competence (EC) serves as a foundational contributor to the achievement of science education goals in the context of socioscientific issues (SSIs). EC is a set of abilities necessary to accomplish adaptive goals in emotionally arousing situations. We contend that the development of EC is conducive to learning and character development in the SSI context. Therefore, we set out to develop and implement an EC intervention SSI program (called EC-SSI) and to verify the program’s effect on students’ EC, and “character and values.” We developed a nine-lesson program using two SSI scenarios: the Coltan mining problem and a designer baby dilemma. We collected data using questionnaires and student worksheets from 26 tenth graders and applied a mixed method approach to data gathering and analysis. We found that the program significantly improved students’ EC and “character and values.” From these results, we conclude that instructional strategies to improve students’ EC can be applied in SSI instruction and can positively affect student’s empathy and emotion regulation. We suggested that SSIs can provide an appropriate context for the improvement of students’ EC in science education and educators consider EC training integration at appropriate stages of science learning. We also recommend follow-up research to examine how students’ EC development impacts their SSI decision-making.

     

Education in Sustainable Development: How Can Science Education Contribute to the Vulnerability Perception?

Education for human development within the constraints of sustainability is problematic for schools. On one hand, it is a political idea that continues to evolve with successive compromises between social groups with differing or even conflicting interests. ESD is therefore inherently ‘non-disciplinary’ and cannot be the basis of a single school subject if we wish to keep the creativity that results from the dynamics at work. On the other hand, SD leads us to think collectively about solutions that ensure a future of our choosing that preserves the biological capacity of the planet and to reduce our vulnerability. The sciences thus have a key role: their ability to question the world and to model the consequences of collective and individual choices. But there is a risk of technocratic drift and SD leads us to think about society’s values and aims. A new link is established between sciences and humanities with a democratic model in sight. This paper presents what is possible out of the prospective scenarios method within general and compulsory education by seeking, through an empirical approach, to determine its feasibility, its contributions, its limits, and to locate the place of science education in the elaboration of the perception of “vulnerability”. Both primary and secondary schools are concerned.     

What Mathematics Education May Prepare Students for the Society of the Future?

This paper attempts to engage the field in a discussion about what mathematics is needed for students to engage in society, especially with an increase in technology and digitalization. In this respect, mathematics holds a special place in STEM as machines do most of the calculations that students are taught in K-12. We raise questions about what mathematical proficiency means in today’s world and what shifts need to be made in both content and pedagogy to prepare students for 21st Century Skills and mathematical reasoning.     

Education: From telos to technique?

A preoccupation with technology has helped bury the philosophical question: What is the point of education? I attempt to answer this question. Various answers to the question are surveyed and it is shown that they depend upon different conceptions of the self. For example, the devotional‐self of the 12th century (which was about becoming master of the self) gave way to the liberal‐self (which was to facilitate social change). Education can only be satisfactorily justified, I argue, by appeal to transcendent values such as mastery of the self, which is incipient in liberal education.