Educating students with mild disabilities in general education classrooms: Minnesota alternatives

This article reports two major data collection efforts conducted during successive years. Study 1 examined the relationship between the school effectiveness variables identified in the Minnesota Educational Effectiveness Project (MEEP), and the attitudes and achievement of students in 31 MEEP schools. Study 2, which focused on 11 of the Study 1 schools, compared the instructional programs provided to students with mild disabilities in three integrated programs in these 11 schools, with those provided by conventional resource "pull-out" programs in three other schools. We not only contrasted program characteristics, but analyzed differences between program characteristics and cognitive and affective outcomes. Results do not provide a strong basis for concluding that general efforts at school improvement will provide the framework for improved outcomes among low-achieving students.     

Knowledge based systems for teaching and learning maths

The main task of an educational system is to generate instructional situations which induce students to learn knowledge and problem solving abilities as applied to a cognitive domain.
To this end, an instructional dialogue must be seen as a process aimed at making student and teacher learn from each other: the student has to learn the subject matter from the teacher, while the teacher has in turn to learn from the student how to regulate instructional interaction. The process relies on different kinds of expert knowledge: experience of the domain, about the actual student, and of teaching methods and objectives. This means that an instructional dialogue cannot be realised without an explicit representation of all the kinds of knowledge involved.
Research has established that Knowledge Based Educational Systems (KBESs) can be the keystone in building effective learning tools, but because of the difficulty in realising a system of this kind, most existing systems are prototypes and are intended only as workbenches for the computational analysis of educational processes.
This paper analyses the main problems which underlie the realisation of such systems, with reference to research into knowledge based systems intended for use with teaching/learning mathematics.     

A case study of how a sample of preservice teachers made sense of incorporating iPads into their instruction with children

The increased use of and demand for technology in early childhood education classrooms and programs creates new challenges for practicing and preservice early educators being asked to employ such technology within their teaching. Early childhood teacher education programs have struggled to meet these demands for teaching their students how to integrate such technology into their instruction with young children. Preservice teachers who do receive such training often fail to develop the skills and/or beliefs required to implement technology effectively into their own classrooms. The study reported on in this article addresses this issue by providing insight into how a sample of early childhood preservice teachers who used iPads and their apps in their coursework and high-stakes early learning field placements made sense of using these devices as teachers. Such findings illuminate instructional opportunities for teacher educators to consider as they seek to assist their students in making sense about how to implement as well as adopt appropriate and effective instructional strategies into their own classrooms.     

Shifting epistemologies during instructional conversations about “good” argumentative writing in a high school English language arts classroom

A widespread instructional practice in the teaching of argumentative writing is the use of writing samples or models during instructional conversations about what counts as “good argumentative writing.” In this article, we focus on a set of lessons in a high school English language arts classroom in order to gain insight into how a teacher’s use of writing samples contributed not only to what counts as “good argumentative writing” in that classroom, but how her instructional conversations with a group of 11th grade students revealed a shift in her “argumentative epistemologies” for teaching literature-related argumentative writing. We examine simultaneously the impact of instructional conversations on the evolution of the socially constructed definitions of good argumentative writing and the teacher’s shifting argumentative epistemologies by tracing the teacher’s socially constructed definitions of good argumentative writing in the instructional conversations around argumentative writing samples as they evolve and change over time. The findings suggest that the interactional construction of “good argumentative writing” in instructional conversations was influenced by the broader instructional context (e.g., a testing regimen), by the teacher’s argumentative epistemologies for what counts as good writing, and by the conversational interaction of teachers and students in classroom lessons.

     

Preparing student teachers to use computers in mathematics classrooms through a long-term pre-service course in Turkey

Recent studies have found short in-service teacher education programs are not providing adequate technology experiences to prepare their participants for teaching mathematics with computers. As an alternative to the short-term courses the author has been teaching a two-term mandatory undergraduate course within a mathematics teacher education program since 1995 to train student teachers and to investigate their perceptions on their preparation to use computers in their own teaching. This article describes issues that emerged from the analysis of this undergraduate course. Data were gathered through questionnaires and students' writings about the course activities. Findings indicated that computer literacy appeared to be an important key factor in utilising the course activities successfully. Students who felt prepared made the link between computer-based mathematical activities and school mathematics, and had more experience of using instructional software during the course than others. Findings of this nature can also assist teacher educators as they incorporate information technology into existing pre-service programs. The implications of these results for the designing and implementing of computer-based undergraduate courses and for further research in this field are discussed.     

Instructional practices of teachers enrolled in educational technology and general education programs

This study investigated classroom practices of 38 teachers enrolled in university masters' degree programs in educational technology and in other areas of education. The classroom practices related to five key concepts associated with educational technology: (a) learner-centered instruction, (b) instructional design, (c) media and technology, (d) assessment, and (e) instructional alignment. Teachers rated their frequency of use of desirable practices in these five areas on a 30-item Likert type survey. In addition, one class of students per teacher rated its own teacher's frequency of use of the practices on 20 items parallel to items on the teacher survey. The mean overall rating across all teachers for the classroom practice items was very close to Often, or 4.0, on the 5-point scale. There were few reported differences between the teachers enrolled in educational technology programs and those enrolled in other education programs. Student ratings indicated less frequent teacher use of the desirable practices on 16 of the 20 common items, with significantly lower student ratings on 8 of these items. However, there was strong teacher-student agreement on several other comparisons.The study reported in this article was conducted as a doctoral dissertation at Arizona State University.     

The effect of using a video clip presenting a contextual story on low-achieving students’ mathematical discourse

The question of how to enhance the learning of low-achieving students in mathematics presents an important challenge to researchers and teachers alike. We investigated whether and how the use of a contextual story presented in a video clip facilitated low-achieving students’ understanding of the meaning of fraction expansion. To this end, we (a) videotaped one group of three such students during a guided interaction session, (b) interviewed students and teachers about their first impressions of the use of the video clip, and (c) conducted pre–post-tests to examine the discourse students choose to employ to discuss expansion. Despite the interviewees’ impression that the use of the video clips makes it easier to remember the story, the analysis of the guided interaction session revealed that the students did not use it spontaneously when asked to explain why a fraction and its expanded form are equivalent. Rather, their explanations revolved around the expansion procedure. It was the tutor’s careful interventions in the discourse, building on the students’ recall of the story, which led to a synergy effect that facilitated the students’ understanding and articulation of the meaning of fraction expansion. This combination proved to be a potentially successful strategy in effectively promoting low-achieving students’ understanding in mathematics, as demonstrated in the students’ discourse and post-test performance. At the same time, our results highlight the delicate scaffolding required to achieve a beneficial effect.     

Introduction to the Special Issue: Effective Practices for Children and Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders

This article focuses on the development and use of alternative reading measures that are performance based (authentic and direct), technically adequate, and help teachers make instructional decisions. Although performance assessments are promulgated as better than many traditional, published measures of achievement, few studies on technical adequacy have been conducted. We present 2 studies that focus on concurrent criterion validity and instructional decision making; the studies are framed as examples of reading measurement within the debate on whole language programs. The first study focuses on the relation of the performance measure of oral reading with several other reading measures; the second study focuses on teacher decision making, using quantitative and qualitative outcomes reflecting individual student change in performance (in reading fluency and prosody) over time. In this article, both studies are described briefly, and the emphasis of discussion is placed on appropriately evaluating programs so that the measures match the interventions (are systemically valid) and support their effec- tiveness for use with individual students.     

Testing the effectiveness of classroom formative assessment in Dutch primary mathematics education

Classroom formative assessment (CFA) is considered to be a fundamental part of effective teaching, as it is presumed to enhance student performance. However, there is only limited empirical evidence to support this notion. In this effect study, a quasi-experiment was conducted to compare 2 conditions. In the treatment condition, 17 teachers implemented a CFA model containing both daily and weekly goal-directed instruction, assessment, and immediate instructional feedback for students who needed additional support. In the control condition, 17 teachers implemented a modification to their usual practice. They assessed their students’ mastery of learning goals on the basis of half-yearly mathematics tests, and prepared weekly pre-teaching sessions for groups of low-achieving students. The posttests showed no significant differences in student performance between the 2 conditions after controlling for student and teacher characteristics. The degree of implementation of the CFA model, however, appeared to be positively related to the 5th-grade students’ performance.     

The Right “Fit”: Exploring Science Teacher Candidates’ Approaches to Natural Selection Within a Clinical Simulation

Teachers and students struggle with the complexities surrounding the evolution of species and the process of natural selection. This article examines how science teacher candidates (STCs) engage in a clinical simulation that foregrounds two common challenges associated with natural selection—students’ understanding of “survival of the fittest” and the variation of species over time. We outline the medical education pedagogy of clinical simulations and its recent diffusion to teacher education. Then, we outline the study that situates each STC in a one-to-one interaction with a standardized student who is struggling to accurately interpret natural selection concepts. In simulation with the standardized student, each STC is challenged to recognize content misconceptions and respond with appropriate instructional strategies and accurate explanations. Findings and implications center on the STCs’ instructional practices in the simulation and the use of clinical learning environments to foster science teacher learning.     

Trust Your Own Observations: Assessment of reader and tutor behaviour in learning to read in English and M # ori

In our previous article, we reported on a research project designed to improve the attending, reading, and writing behaviour of nine older low-achieving children in a special class in an urban primary school. We attempted operational definitions of important reader and tutor behaviours that occur during one-to-one oral reading, and we applied direct observational principles to coding and recording their occurrence from transcribed tapes of children's regular reading with their teacher. This provided data that served to monitor short-term and long-term change in both child and tutor (teacher) behaviour during oral reading interactions. In the present paper, we describe how these direct observational principles have contributed to the development of assessment and tutoring strategies for both adults and peers in the English language Pause Prompt Praise and the M # ori language Tatari Tautoko Tauawhi reading tutoring programs. The assessment strategies generated from observations of reader and tutor interaction around written texts have provided strong support for students learning to read in both English medium and M # ori medium contexts. They have also served as powerful components of successful professional development programs for teachers.     

Toward a Framework for Using Student Mathematical Representations as Formative Assessments

This article explores how students' mathematical representations can be used as formative assessments. We introduce a framework for teaching and learning that integrates representations as instructional and assessment tools, and illustrate these uses of student representations with reference to a study conducted with 250 5th-grade students. This study focused on students' ability to recognize and use a variety of representations of the fraction concept. Finally, we discuss the implications of the framework for teacher knowledge and classroom practice.     

Predicting teachers’ instructional behaviors: The interplay between self-efficacy and intrinsic needs

This study was conducted to extend previous research by examining the specificity of teachers’ intrinsic needs and self-efficacy, and how they interact to predict instructional behaviors. Self-reporting measures were applied to assess teachers’ self-efficacy and intrinsic need satisfaction and students rated the teachers’ instructional behaviors (cognitive activation, teacher–student relationship and classroom management). The latent moderated structural (LMS) equation analyses conducted on data collected from 155 mathematics teachers and 3483 grade 10 students in secondary schools in Germany revealed that separately both self-efficacy and intrinsic needs predicted instructional behaviors. Moreover, a significant interaction effect between intrinsic need satisfaction and self-efficacy emphasized that when need satisfaction is not provided by the school environment, a high level of self-efficacy has a negative effect on the teacher–student relationship. Our findings underline that self-efficacy and intrinsic needs have commonalities when predicting instructional behavior and the importance of addressing the interaction between personal and environmental characteristics within the learning environment. Future research on teachers’ instructional behaviors should take aspects of teacher competence beyond self-efficacy into considerations and should examine how intrinsic need satisfaction can be enhanced.     

A Social-Cognitive Framework for Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions

Teaching and learning are highly social activities. Seminal psychologists such as Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bandura have theorized that social interaction is a key mechanism in the process of learning and development. In particular, the benefits of peer interaction for learning and motivation in classrooms have been broadly demonstrated through empirical studies. Hence, it would be valuable if computer-based environments could support a mechanism for a peer interaction. Though no claim of peer equivalence is made, pedagogical agents as learning companions (PALs)—animated digital characters functioning to simulate human-peer-like interaction—might provide an opportunity to simulate such social interaction in computer-based learning. In this article we ground the instructional potential of PALs in several social-cognitive theories, including distributed cognition, social interaction, and Bandura’s social-cognitive theory. We discuss how specific concepts of the theories might support various instructional functions of PALs, acknowledging concepts that PALs cannot address. Based on the theoretical perspectives, we suggest key constituents for designing PALs that in human-peer interactions have proven significant. Finally, we review the current status of PAL research with respect to these constituents and suggest where further empirical research is necessary.     

Teaching as Designing: Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for Adaptive Teaching

This conceptual article explores teaching as design work, arguing that a critical thing teachers do is design systems that enable their students to learn. Designing occurs when teachers generate new learning activities or modify curricular programs to create coherence for themselves and their students. Nonetheless, few teacher education programs include instruction in learning how to engage in design thinking. Here, designing is explored as a means to help pre-service teachers develop their facility for adaptive teaching practice by incorporating design thinking at an early stage in their teacher education programs. Literature is drawn from traditional design fields to articulate design capacities and to describe design studio pedagogy practices often used in the education of designers. As an illustrative example is presented of such practices were incorporated throughout one 15-week educational psychology course embedded in an undergraduate elementary-education program to support pre-service teachers development of design thinking. The goal was not to prepare students to use particular instructional innovations, but to collaboratively design such innovations themselves.     

ISTE standards in teacher education: A collection of practical examples

Abstract

The innovative integration of technology into teacher education is at a premium. Institutions, large and small, are searching for examples of appropriate, effective, and replicable programs on which to base programmatic decisions. This article provides such a guide. The authors represent four of the first six International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Distinguished Achievement award‐winning programs. This article provides examples of how four highly innovative programs meet the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS?T) for technology integration into the teacher education programs. It provides a collection of practical examples of ways in which teacher education programs can use the NETS'T as a guide for enhancing teacher education curricula on campus and in P‐12 classrooms where teacher education candidates work.     

Studying--the Realistic Bridge Between Instruction and Learning. An Attempt to a Conceptual Whole of the Teaching-Studying- Learning Process

Examining learning is a wide and open topic. If we pay attention to learning as achieving some aims and goals defined before, we need a broader and more precise context, an instructional process. This consists of interaction between a teacher and the students. It is based on particular relationships between the teacher, the student and the content that is studied in the instructional process. The human relationship between the teacher and the students is a pedagogical relation and it is regulated by the pedagogical context. Fundamental to learning is, however, how the student meets the content to be learnt, the didactic relation. This relation is invisible by nature. To organise this relation belongs to the expertise of the teacher. The student learning is supposed to take place in the didactic relation of the instructional process.     

Work-Plan Heroes: Student Strategies in Lower-Secondary Norwegian Classrooms

This article explores how individualized teaching methods, such as the use of work plans, create new student strategies in Norwegian lower secondary classrooms. Work plans, which are frequently set up as instructional tools in Norwegian classrooms, outline different types of tasks and requirements that the students are supposed to do during a specific period of time, normally two or three weeks. The current analyses shed light on what strategies girls and boys use when they approach work plans. Analyses of video observations and interviews with 93 students indicate that while girls tend to complete their plan during the first week or distribute the tasks evenly throughout the period, boys either finish the plan during the first week or postpone their work until the last few days. These findings suggest that the use of work plans might give some students, often low-achieving boys, too much responsibility for their own learning.     

Class Size and Student Achievement: Small Effects of Small Classes

Based on reviews by Glass, Cahen, Smith, and Filby (1982) and the Educational Research Service (1978), Cooper (this issue) concludes that substantial reductions in class size can have important effects on low-achieving students in the early grades. This article critiques these reviews and summarizes the findings of experimental studies that compared the achievement levels of elementary school students in larger classes to classes with no more than 20 students. Even in studies that made such substantial reductions, achievement differences were slight, averaging only 13% of a standard deviation. Not until class size approaches one is there evidence of meaningful effects. Based on this and other evidence, it is suggested that Chapter 1 programs provide one-to-one tutoring in reading rather than providing small-group pullouts or reducing overall class size.