Control as Care: How Teachers in “No Excuses” Charter Schools Position Their Students and Themselves

Abstract

This qualitative study focuses on how early career charter school teachers (n?=?20) in schools utilizing a “no excuses” discipline approach describe their interactions with students. Using positioning theory as an analytic tool, we explore how teachers engage the language of no excuses discipline and associated behaviors to position their students as passive beings unaware of “what is best for them” and potential deviants needing oversight. In this way, relationships were largely described as focused on control and compliance. The findings raise questions about how no excuses systems shape teachers’ understandings of care for their students as well as how teacher-student relationships develop.     

Do Science Teachers Distinguish Between Their own Learning and the Learning of Their Students?

Learning beliefs influence learning and teaching. For this reason, teachers and teacher educators need to be aware of them. To support students’ knowledge construction, teachers must develop appropriate learning and teaching beliefs. Teachers appear to have difficulties when analysing students’ learning. This seems to be due to the inability to differentiate the beliefs about their students’ learning from those about their own learning. Both types of beliefs seem to be intertwined. This study focuses on whether pre-service teachers’ beliefs about their own learning are identical to those about their students’ learning. Using a sample of pre-service teachers, we measured general beliefs about “constructivist” and “transmissive” learning and science-specific beliefs about “connectivity” and “taking pre-concepts into account”. We also analysed the development of these four beliefs during teacher professionalisation by comparing beginning and advanced pre-service teachers. Our results show that although pre-service teachers make the distinction between their own learning and the learning of their students for the general tenets of constructivist and transmissive learning, there is no significant difference for science-specific beliefs. The beliefs pre-service teachers hold about their students’ science learning remain closely tied to their own.     

Model-Based Knowing: How Do Students Ground Their Understanding About Climate Systems in Agent-Based Computer Models?

This paper gives a grounded cognition account of model-based learning of complex scientific knowledge related to socio-scientific issues, such as climate change. It draws on the results from a study of high school students learning about the carbon cycle through computational agent-based models and investigates two questions: First, how do students ground their understanding about the phenomenon when they learn and solve problems with computer models? Second, what are common sources of mistakes in students’ reasoning with computer models? Results show that students ground their understanding in computer models in five ways: direct observation, straight abstraction, generalisation, conceptualisation, and extension. Students also incorporate into their reasoning their knowledge and experiences that extend beyond phenomena represented in the models, such as attitudes about unsustainable carbon emission rates, human agency, external events, and the nature of computational models. The most common difficulties of the students relate to seeing the modelled scientific phenomenon and connecting results from the observations with other experiences and understandings about the phenomenon in the outside world. An important contribution of this study is the constructed coding scheme for establishing different ways of grounding, which helps to understand some challenges that students encounter when they learn about complex phenomena with agent-based computer models.

     

Do Counselor Education Programs Promote Wellness in Their Students?

It is widely accepted that counselor impairment presents a problem in the counseling profession (M. E. Young & G. W. Lambie, 2007). Wellness as a unifying philosophy in counselor education may be a way to prevent impairment and burnout in students and professionals. Although counselor educators strive to promote a wellness philosophy in students, their efforts may be largely unsuccessful. This study examines the influence of counselor education programs on counselor wellness by investigating broad trends in levels of wellness among students at 3 points in their training and offers insights into the influence of wellness in the training of today's counselors.     

Teachers’ Role in College English Teaching for Students Majored in Arts and Sports

With a view to keeping up with the new developments of the reform of college English teaching at present,college English teaching for students majored in arts and sports is also appealing to be improved further.And to deepen the teaching reform,teachers,who are the mobile one of the most important factors in English teaching,should follow the principles of providing different guidance for students majored in arts and sports and instructing them in accordance with their aptitude to meet the specific needs of individualized teaching.Thus they have to change their roles and can gain the inspiration from the following contents.     

How do Teachers and Textbook Writers Model Scientific Ideas for Students?

Ten experienced science teachers were interviewed about their understandings of the analogical models they use to explain science to their students. The aim was to investigate the notion that teaching pedagogy is influenced by the textbooks commonly used in class. A previously developed typology of analogical models was used to classify each teacher's repertoire of models and the models found in the prescribed science textbooks. The classifications of teacher and textbook models were then compared to identify patterns, similarities and differences. In their interviews, eight of the 10 teachers volunteered that they regularly used models in their lessons. The claimed model use was least for chemistry teachers and highest for physics teachers. Textbook analysis showed that chemistry textbooks used the most models and physics textbooks the least with biology in between. Five teachers saw a need to negotiate with their students the shared and unshared attributes of teaching models and two consistently discussed the limitations of their models. Vignettes and extracts are used throughout the paper to explain how teachers and textbooks use and discuss models.     

New Curricular Material for Science Classes: How Do Students Evaluate It?

Living in an unpredictable and ever changing society demands from its’ citizens the development of complex competencies that challenges school, education and curriculum. PARSEL, a pan-European Project related to science education, emerges as a contribution to curricular development as it proposes a set of teaching-learning materials (modules) in order to make science classes more popular and relevant in the eyes of the students and as such to increase their interest with school science. The goal of this study was to understand how students evaluate those innovative modules. This paper presents data concerning 134 secondary students, collected through interviews, questionnaires and written documents. A quantitative analysis of the data collected through questionnaires was complemented by a qualitative analysis of the data collected by interviews and written documents. Results show that understanding the relationship between science and daily life, participating in practical activities based on problem solving and developing critical thinking and reasoning were the issues most valued by students.     

How to Motivate Students in Their English Learning

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How Students Verify Conjectures: Teachers’ Expectations

Eight teachers were interviewed concerning how students verify conjectures. The study is a sequel to a previous study, “How Students Verify Conjectures” [Bergqvist, T. (2000). How students verify conjectures. Research reports in Mathematics Education 3]. Teachers’ expectations of students’ reasoning and performance are examined, and also how they wish students would work. The results indicate that the teachers tend to underestimate the students’ reasoning levels and that they believe that only a small group of students in each class can use higher level reasoning in mathematics.     

Problem-Based Learning: What and How Do Students Learn?

Problem-based approaches to learning have a long history of advocating experience-based education. Psychological research and theory suggests that by having students learn through the experience of solving problems, they can learn both content and thinking strategies. Problem-based learning (PBL) is an instructional method in which students learn through facilitated problem solving. In PBL, student learning centers on a complex problem that does not have a single correct answer. Students work in collaborative groups to identify what they need to learn in order to solve a problem. They engage in self-directed learning (SDL) and then apply their new knowledge to the problem and reflect on what they learned and the effectiveness of the strategies employed. The teacher acts to facilitate the learning process rather than to provide knowledge. The goals of PBL include helping students develop 1) flexible knowledge, 2) effective problem-solving skills, 3) SDL skills, 4) effective collaboration skills, and 5) intrinsic motivation. This article discusses the nature of learning in PBL and examines the empirical evidence supporting it. There is considerable research on the first 3 goals of PBL but little on the last 2. Moreover, minimal research has been conducted outside medical and gifted education. Understanding how these goals are achieved with less skilled learners is an important part of a research agenda for PBL. The evidence suggests that PBL is an instructional approach that offers the potential to help students develop flexible understanding and lifelong learning skills.     

What Do Teacher Mentors Tell Student Teachers About Pupil Learning in Infant Schools?

Abstract

Recent emphases on experiential classroom learning in the induction into expertise of student teachers may over‐estimate the learning support that class based practitioners offer students. Current understandings of teachers' thinking and planning suggest that expert practitioners may not be best placed to provide student teachers with frameworks for understanding what Shulman (1987) categorises as general pedagogical knowledge. Data from a sample of 11 UK infant school teacher mentors in the form of 5 hours of taped planning and evaluatory conversations with 20 students have been content analysed. Teacher‐talk related to explanations of how pupils learn forms the focus of the paper. Implications for mentor training and school‐university partnerships are drawn from the analysis of the data. Finally the need to confront the language difference that obtains between schools and universities in order to develop the theoretical base of teacher education is asserted.     

How Do People in Shanghai Spend Their Weekends and Holidays?

学口语就是学习怎样用英文表达自己的观点。由于中文与英文的表述习惯不同,因而我们在用英文表达自己的观点时不免会带有某些中文表达法的痕迹,这是自然的,避免不了的。不过,我们在平时的学习和训练中却仍需去留意,并通过不断地模仿一些现成的说法,纠正自己想当然的表达法从而在表达上尽量做到准确得     

Teachers’ Role in Students’ Learning at a Project-Based STEM High School: Implications for Teacher Education

International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education - This study explored how teachers engage and support students at a project-based STEM high school to identify key elements defining...     

What Jim Crow’s Teachers Could Do: Educational Capital and Teachers’ Work in Under-resourced Schools

This article explains how Jim Crow’s teachers—former teachers of legally segregated schools for blacks—prepared and motivated disadvantaged students in spite of funding and resource deprivation. According to the author, black teachers fashioned situated pedagogies for the acquisition of educational capital that could be used in exchange for jobs, rights, and social power. Findings reveal three strategies of opportunity which provide some clues to how urban teachers today can educate poor children of color in under-resourced schools, such as generating materials and supplies, situating curriculum and instruction, and mobilizing human resources. The analysis draws upon 44 oral history interviews with former teachers in the coastal plains of North Carolina, as well as secondary historical sources.     

The Role of Parents in the Achievement of Turkish-Speaking Students in British Schools： Why They Fail in Supporting Their Children？

In this paper, the role of parents in supporting their children＇s progress, as a factor affecting Turkish-speaking children＇s achievement, has been explored. It is a fact that Turkish-speaking pupils, when compared with other ethnic groups, such as Bangladeshi and Somali, struggle, underachieve, and still continue performing low in the British education system. The Turkish community has been resident in the United Kingdom （UK） for over 70 years with the current estimated population of 450,000. However, the community is invisible in the society; their diverse needs are not known; and there are limited research and government reports. The relevant data and research findings indicate that there are various factors for the underachievement of the Turkish-speaking pupils. This study shows the degree of importance of parental participation for Turkish-speaking parents in supporting their children＇s achievement. As a result, lack of parental involvement is one of the important factors in achievement; and a majority of parents stated that they could not involve in their children＇s learning because a number of reasons evaluated in the paper.     

How ESL Teachers’ Sociocultural Identities Mediate Their Teacher Role Identities in a Diverse Urban School Setting

English-as-a-second language (ESL) teachers’ sociocultural identities and teacher role identities are posited to be deeply rooted in their personal histories. Yet, this being the case, how ESL teachers interpret, negotiate and construct their identities in the pedagogical process remains underexplored. This study is an exploration of the influences of teachers’ social, linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds on the conception of their roles as ESL educators. Fifty-seven teachers from inner-city high schools in Los Angeles responded to a questionnaire and interviews and provided self-written perspectives on how their personal histories mediated their pedagogical practices. Results indicated that the ESL teachers’ sociocultural identities significantly shape their pedagogical practices. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Teaching Approaches of Beginning Teachers for Jewish Studies in Israeli Mamlachti Schools: A Case Study of a Jewish Education Teachers’ Training Program for Outstanding Students

This article presents findings from a longitudinal qualitative study that examined teaching approaches of neophyte teachers in Israel during their 4-year exclusive teachers’ training program for teaching Jewish subjects and first two years of teaching. The program wanted to promote change in secular pupils’ attitudes toward Jewish subjects. We found a high incidence of teaching using positivistic approaches of knowledge transmission and the teachers adopted a particular teaching approach early into their training program that they continue to employ. Can teaching oriented in the transmission of central cultural value knowledge, with pupils as passive receptacles, create a meaningful encounter?