A long-term experiment to investigate the relationships between high school students’ perceptions of mobile learning and peer interaction and higher-order thinking tendencies

In this study, a one-year program was conducted to investigate the relationships between students’ perceptions of mobile learning and their tendencies of peer interaction and higher-order thinking in issue-based mobile learning activities. To achieve the research objective, a survey consisting of eight scales, namely, usability, continuity, adaptive content, collaboration, communication, problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity, was developed. A total of 658 students from 38 high schools in Taiwan filled in the questionnaire after experiencing issue-based mobile learning activities. From the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, it was found that the questionnaire had high reliability and validity. The structural equation model further revealed that the provision of adaptive content in the mobile learning had positive impacts on the students’ tendency to interact with peers (i.e., collaboration and communication), which further affected their tendency to engage in higher-order thinking (i.e., problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity). The findings of this study provide a good reference for researchers and school teachers who intend to promote mobile learning in school settings.     

Teaching controversial issues in the secondary school science classroom

A sample of fourteen secondary school biology teachers chosen from twelve schools were interviewed. The purpose was to determine their views on how controversial issues in science might be handled in the secondary school science classroom and whether the issues of surrogacy and human embryo experimentation were suitable controversial issues for discussion in schools. In general, teachers indicated that controversial issues deserve a more prominent place in the science curriculum because they have the potential to foster thinking, learning, and interest in science. The issues of surrogacy and human embryo experimentation were seen as appropriate contexts for learning, provided that teachers were well informed and sensitive to both the students and to the school environment. Specializations: controversial issues in human reproductive biology, teacher education.     

Spirit of the game: Empowering students as designers in schools?

The aim of this paper and the one which follows is to explore how the potential of computer games may be taken up in schools to support learning engagement among students. It is not the intention of the papers to dismiss existing classroom practices or overlook accounts of innovative practices in schools; the papers' aim is to provide educators who are interested in exploring the use of computer games in schools with information and ideas about how these games may be effectively used to engage students in their learning. This paper questions whether the empowerment of students to create games for one another based on the school curriculum may address the insignificance of computer games in the sociocultural setting of the school. Both papers have been commissioned by Microsoft (Asia‐Pacific) under the Partners‐In‐Learning Initiative. Under this initiative, Microsoft establishes partnerships with ministries of education, national and local government bodies, and other stakeholders to empower students and teachers to realize their full potential, mediated by information and communication technologies.     

The impact of collaborative video analysis by practitioners and researchers upon pedagogical thinking and practice: a follow‐up study

The ‘T‐MEDIA’ project analysed and documented how teachers exploit the use of projection technologies – data projectors and interactive whiteboards (IWBs) – to support learning in secondary‐school subject lessons. The research involved collaboration between university researchers and four pairs of UK teachers (of English, mathematics, science and history) in an intensive process of systematically analysing video recordings of classroom activity and other data in depth. Our goals were to assist teachers in articulating the pedagogical rationale underlying their practice, and uniquely, to engage them in theory building about strategic technology use. This paper reports on a follow‐up study carried out one year after the collaborative analyses in order to assess the subsequent impacts of the process of critical reflection. The eight teachers were questioned using a semi‐structured interview technique that allowed us to elicit structured and personalised accounts of impact on pedagogical thinking and practice and the supporting or constraining factors. The findings suggest that for at least some, the sociocultural theory introduced and reformulated during the analyses provided a powerful analytical lens upon emerging practices, including those not incorporating technology. All of the participants reported lasting effects upon their own thinking and, except where external constraints operated, on teaching practices. The approaches developed during T‐MEDIA had additionally been disseminated to and adapted by other subject colleagues. The study illustrates how collaborative analysis of lesson videos can be used to engage teachers in deep reflection, critique and debate. This approach supports the development of an analytical scrutiny of classroom teaching and offers a significant professional development opportunity. In particular, under conditions of sensitive support, teachers will readily accommodate theoretical constructs into specific areas of professional thinking and practice.     

School building design for feeding programmes and community outreach: Insights from Ghana and South Africa

This article investigates how school building design can support primary school feeding programmes in low- and middle-income countries. Furthermore it argues for schools to become community “development hubs”; incorporating both local access to education and also to programmes for nutrition, ICT, health education and other services, outside of school hours. It reviews the literature on school feeding programmes. Data from field research on schools in Ghana and South Africa is used to identify the key design issues for schools delivering feeding programmes. It considers how national education policies can affect school planning and building priorities. The article concludes by calling for the evolution of a new school design model, in which the school site becomes a “development hub”, supporting children” education, associated support activities including school feeding, and importantly also, integrated community development outreach activities.     

Multimodal composition and assessment: a sociocultural perspective

In this article, we examine how assessment is enacted and negotiated in a school project that involves multimodal composition. The case is a project on advertisement in which lower secondary students collaboratively composed multimodal commercials about various products and topics. The theoretical framework is based on sociocultural perspectives on learning and assessment, and video data of classroom interaction are subjected to detailed analysis. The findings document the consequences of decoupling production and assessment practices. The analysis show that written texts and multimodal texts have different statuses in the project because of how they are assessed and that this has consequences for students’ participation as learners. In addition, the analysis shows how students position themselves differently towards resources that are intended to help them in summative assessment situations. We discuss issues that teachers may reflect upon when planning and executing multimodal composition in schools.     

Learning and Teaching With Loss: Meeting the Needs of Refugee Children Through Narrative Inquiry

Providing refugee students with a safe and welcoming classroom environment is critical for school success but largely dependent on teachers’ knowledge, values, practices, and attitudes. This qualitative study juxtaposes the experience of one refugee students’ experience in the school system and one beginning teachers’ experience in working with and meeting the psychosocial and educational needs of refugee students in the classroom. Using narrative inquiry, from the perspective of a refugee student and a beginning teacher, this study identifies themes and key issues related to teaching refugee students. These experiences are compared to the current literature on refugee education to highlight the beliefs and values that teachers bring to their practice. Findings reveal that there are gaps in beginning teachers’ knowledge about who refugees are, their experiences, and how best to support them in the classroom. Some teachers also held negative attitudes and perspective of refugee students and failed to develop a nuanced perspective of diversity and multiculturalism. This study also shows how narrative inquiry, in the formal of a personal history account, can be used as tool to surface, challenge, and overcome negative stereotypes, biases, and assertions that prevent teachers from effectively supporting their students.     

Laptops meet schools,one‐one draw: m‐learning for secondary students with literacy difficulties

Mobile technology‐enhanced literacy initiatives have become a focus of efforts to support learning for students with literacy difficulties. The Laptops Initiative for Post‐Primary Students with Dyslexia or other Reading/Writing Difficulties offers insights into and addresses questions about ICT policy making regarding m‐learning technologies for students with literacy difficulties. Thirty‐one schools participated in this initiative. Adopting an intepretive perspective, research and data analysis centred on four school case studies and involved classroom observations, teacher, student and principal interviews as well as a survey of teachers in other participating schools. Findings are presented under three headings: laptop deployment models (fixed, floating and fostered), constraints and supports for teacher and student agency, and technology‐enhanced literacy pedagogy. We conclude by noting the increasing appeal of m‐learning to support literacy and how schools mediate access to laptops and associated literacy learning.     

小学课堂教学中的问题设计与呈现

小学课堂教学中,教师总会呈现一些问题,它们一般以提问、作业、质疑、讨论的形式出现在课堂教学活动中。课堂呈现的这些问题一般都是教师事先设计好了的,它的出现有助于学习者学习的成功。     

No name,no game: Challenges to use of collaborative digital textbooks

Collaborative digital textbooks – comprehensive materials covering entire curriculums – are developing from being books in pdf format to becoming collaborative digital environments where teachers and students can communicate, engage in feedback and discussions, share and manipulate materials, test knowledge, and monitor results. This study investigates how these digital environments are used in school practice: How are the collaborative tools used to improve learning? Thirteen seventh- and eighth-grade classes, 370 students and 30 teachers in five Swedish secondary schools, were investigated over 1,5 years by means of questionnaires, classroom observations and interviews with teachers and students. Here, questionnaire results are presented, while observations and interviews serve to provide contextual insights. Collaborative tools were very little used; often teachers and students were not even aware of their existence. Most use was individual, students were left alone with the digital material. Students read or listened to the text and did not actively engage in learning by e.g. making notes or marking text. Most teachers did not use the material actively to help students understand and learn, most did not even check student results on automated tests. We conclude that the teachers have not incorporated the new, collaborative design of the digital textbook into their thinking regarding tools for teaching and learning and still regard it as a static book. This suggests that making full use of digital tools requires new ways of thinking of teaching, and that it takes more than providing digital tools to achieve this end.     

Developing teachers’ capacities in assessment through career-long professional learning

Abstract

In a context of increasing demand for quality and equity in education and a sharp focus on accountability, classroom teachers are also expected to support and improve learning outcomes for pupils in response to their individual needs. This paper explores three issues: how teachers understand assessment in relation to their students’ learning, the curriculum and their pedagogical choices; how teachers’ capacity to use assessment to improve students’ learning can be developed through career-long professional learning (CLPL); and how teachers’ learning can be implemented and sustained in schools, both locally and nationally. In considering these issues, recent thinking about learning and assessment and CLPL are considered alongside empirical evidence from the development and implementation of assessment processes and approaches to professional development in Scotland. The paper emphasises the importance of a dynamic framework of CLPL that recognises the individuality of teachers’ learning needs and the consequent need for tailored professional learning opportunities with different combinations of support and challenge at school, local and national levels.     

Teachers’ views on effective classroom management: a mixed-methods investigation in Western Australian high schools

Teachers’ views about teaching, learning and school experiences are important considerations in education. As the central participants in classroom interactions, students and teachers naturally have strong views about what it takes to manage learning and surrounding behaviours effectively. With this in mind and because we believe that ignoring the thinking of either of these stakeholders would be to the detriment of teaching and teacher education, we focused on hearing and understanding teachers’ voices about teaching, learning and classroom management. Our aim was to further clarify teachers’ perspectives on how educators create quality learning environments as well as gathering their views of various disciplinary interventions, their perceptions of challenging students and their sense of efficacy for classroom management in order to inform both policy and practice in teacher education. A survey was conducted with 50 secondary school teachers to capture their views on their classroom experiences. Follow up interviews with teachers identified by students as effective in their classroom management provided consistent reports that effective classroom managers build positive relationships with their students, manage their classrooms by establishing clear boundaries and high expectations, and engage students in their learning.

     

“You’re Trying to Know Me”: Students from Nondominant Groups Respond to Teacher Personalism

Urban school districts have increasingly enacted policies of personalism, such as converting large schools into smaller schools. Such policies ask teachers to develop supportive, individual relationships with students as a presumed lever for student achievement. Research on student?Cteacher relationships generally supports policies of personalism. Much of this literature also considers these relationships?? sociocultural dimensions, and so leads to questions about how low-income youth and youth of color might respond to teacher efforts to develop closer relationships with them. This qualitative study, conducted over 1?year with 34 youth at 3 small, urban high schools, explores how youth from nondominant groups responded to teacher personalism. Data show that teacher practices consistent with culturally-responsive pedagogy and relational trust literature do promote student?Cteacher relationships. However, tensions arose when participants perceived that teacher personalism threatened their privacy or agency. Sociocultural and institutional contexts contributed to these tensions, as participants navigated personalism amidst experiences that constrained their trust in schools. A staged model of student?Cteacher relationships integrates these findings and extends current thinking about culturally-responsive personalism. These findings inform implications for teacher practice and policies of personalism.     

Who’s asking the questions in classrooms? Exploring teacher practice and student engagement in generating engaging and intellectually challenging questions

Student engagement that leads to enhanced learning outcomes involves three interdependent facets: behaviour, emotion and cognition. As such, learning activities that encourage deep learning and the intellectual challenging of minds should provide opportunities for reasoning and critical and creative thinking. An approach that resonates strongly with student engagement involves fostering student voice in the classroom, and the generation and utilization of students’ questions is one means of achieving this. Implicit in this approach is the need for both teachers and students to pose questions that engage and intellectually challenge thinking. In this pilot case study, eight volunteer teachers from one school chose to investigate their own practice by either focusing on their own questioning skills to foster student engagement in the classroom or, on how they could support their students to generate intellectually challenging questions that lead to increasing student voice, engagement and deeper learning in the classroom. Key findings were that who does the questioning is not an either-or dichotomy, and that significant pedagogical shifting requires a long-term focus. This shift is influenced by teachers’ commitment to using questioning as a pedagogical approach for enhancing student learning.     

The use of assessment in the development of higher-order thinking skills

Abstract

In an increasingly complex and specialised society, it is imperative that individuals think critically and creatively. This kind of thinking is also required to achieve the critical outcomes as stated in the Revised National Curriculum Statement for South Africa. It seems, however, that higher-order thinking is unlikely to occur unless learners are engaged in activities that deliberately promote this kind of thinking. They should also be guided on how to engage in these complex thinking tasks. The aim of this article is to reflect on the use of assessment to promote learners' higher-order thinking skills. The role of assessment has implications for the nature of teacher training programmes. If lecturers model the way assessment can be done to develop higher-order thinking skills, it is hoped that teachers will have little difficulty in adapting it to their unique classroom situations. Examples from language modules of an in-service teacher training programme are used to show how assessment can be implemented to help learners develop higher-order thinking skills within the framework of outcomes-based education and the Revised National Curriculum Statement.     

Data use for equity?: How data practices incite deficit thinking in schools

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how the organizational aspects of data use influence deficit thinking in schools. Participants included 52 educators (i.e., teachers, instructional facilitators, and leaders) from eight schools within seven Arkansas school districts. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Analysis of data led to the identification of three themes: shifting the focus from instruction to accountability measures; viewing students as numbers, not people; and, creating an unsafe professional environment. These themes demonstrate how organizations framed data use and implemented specific data practices which prompted teachers to engage in deficit thinking. These themes contribute to our understanding of how deficit thinking is fueled by specific data practices established at the local level and can be used by school leaders to enact data practices which support the development of more equitable schools.     

Student Teaching Supervision: Roles and Routines

The middle school years are a critical time in the physical, intellectual, and moral growth of young adolescents. This article examines how film can be used to engage students in moral-dilemma discussions to promote critical thinking and character development. The authors argue that the use of film in the classroom can challenge students to expand and analyze their own values and beliefs by examining moral dilemmas in popular films. In addition, the article provides readers with a filmography of useful character education-related films for the middle school classroom. The primary focus of this article is to provide teachers with an engaging and dynamic form of instruction to help middle school students become responsible citizens of character.     

“I Didn't Do Nothin'”: The Discursive Construction of School Suspension

This article examines the issue of school suspension by looking at the sociocultural factors that influence a teacher's decision to remove a student from the classroom. The authors use ethnographic and discourse analytic approaches to study how disciplinary moments are constructed by teachers and students in an urban high school in the Midwest. The analysis of classroom observations, videotaped lessons, and interviews from a longitudinal study at this multiethnic high school shows that suspensions frequently occur in the absence of any physical violence or blatant verbal abuse. Rather, suspensions are often preceded by a complex series of nonviolent events when one disruptive act among many is singled out for action by the teacher. This study has implications for current debates about zero-tolerance policies that disproportionately affect students of color for their misbehavior in school. Our analysis suggests that removing a student from class is a highly contextualized decision based on subtle race and gender relations that cannot be adequately addressed in school discipline policies.     

Framing ICT, teachers and learners in Australian school education ICT policy

It is well over 20 years since information and communication technologies (ICT) was first included as part of a future vision for Australia’s schools. Since this time numerous national policies have been developed, which collectively articulate an official discourse in support of a vision for ICT to be embedded in our schools, and routinely used by ‘digital’ learners and ‘competent’ teachers alike. The purpose of this paper is to critique how ICT, teachers and learners are positioned in this vision by an analysis of national school-education ICT policies from 1989 to the present day, including the National Goals of Schooling policies, the Learning in an Online World suite of policies, several Ministerial Statements relating to ICT and the recent A Digital Education Revolution policy. This paper suggests that determinist views of technology and a utopian vision underpin these representations, which creates a flawed, future vision for ICT in school education and its use by teachers and learners.     

Mapping out the ICT integration terrain in the school context: identifying the challenges in an innovative project

This article discusses the research findings from the start-up phase of an innovative information and communication technology (ICT) project focused on ICT integration as a complex process involving many factors such as leadership, school readiness and organisational culture. Known locally as Hermes, the project's core objective was to provide an improved and ‘trouble-free’ ICT infrastructure for schools using thin client technology and a wireless broadband network, which would be managed centrally rather than locally. It was anticipated that this solution would help remove the barriers associated with ICT integration caused by technical issues. Based on an in-depth study of innovation adoption in eight schools involving a survey (n=119 teachers) and interviews (n=60 teachers), the study portrays a picture of the ICT integration patterns prior to and during the Hermes intervention in terms of schools' ICT readiness, leadership and vision. This small scale study can help us understand first- and second-order barriers to ICT integration in schools. In particular, this study informs us about the ecology of schools and ICT-based innovation, innovation scalability and contributes to a critical study of educational technology via a context-rich account of how educational technology is actually being mediated, rather than an idealised account of how technology could be used.