Teaching: A Job or a Profession? The Perceptions of Educators

Researchers designed a study to investigate educators’ perceptions about whether teaching is a job or a profession. A survey was developed to investigate factors such as individual definitions of a job and a profession, years of experience teaching, grade level or category of education, and individual perceptions of a profession. The respondents were 401 upper-level undergraduate preservice teachers and graduate students who were professional educators. Data collected showed many aspects of individuals’ perceptions of teaching including control of teaching and working situations, ethics, and personal perceptions of being a professional. Based on the findings from the study, researchers concluded that educators believe teaching is a profession.     

Teaching the history of colonization and decolonization in France: A shared history or to each their own?

Strongly influenced by the paradigm of republican universalism, education policy in France favours an approach that largely relativizes, or even denies, the dimension of cultural diversity. The content of the secondary school history curriculum reveals this phenomenon. In the 2007?C2008 school year, 185 students in the final 2?years of secondary school in Amiens completed questionnaires about the importance their schools place on the history of colonization and decolonization. The analysis showed how the respondents?? relationship to this historical topic was linked to the degree of their own experience of migration. Although today??s classes are pluralistic, schools?? failure to take into account the diversity of the population??a legacy of history??diminishes students?? ability to think in terms of ??otherness?? and, as a result, to imagine a common history shared by the various populations living in France.     

“On the Nature of Institutional Research” Revisited: Plus ça Change… ?

In reconsidering the three “tiers of institutional intelligence” needed for effective institutional research practice he first offered 20 years ago (Terenzini in Res Higher Educ 34:1–10, 1993), Terenzini suggests that those forms of intelligence retain their overall relevance today, but that they also require some important redefinition. The major changes deal with adapting to the dramatic transformations in information technologies and analytical power; greater awareness and responsiveness to the changing state, national, and international educational and political scenes; the need for more extensive familiarity with the research literature, and subtler and more savvy political skills.     

Directing the Teaching and Learning Research Programme: or ‘Trying to Fly a Glider Made Of Jelly’

ABSTRACT

TLRP's generic phase (1999–2009) is believed to have been the largest ever UK investment in educational research. This paper describes the critique from which TLRP emerged, its strategic positioning and the roles of successive directors and their teams in its development. The paper offers an early stock take of TLRP's achievements from the perspective of the last Programme Director. The efficacy of the form of the Programme, once likened to ‘a glider made of jelly’, is discussed.     

Prosection or Dissection: Which is Best for Teaching the Anatomy of the Hand and Foot?

Due to the current trend of decreasing contact hours and less emphasis being given to the basic science courses in the pre-clinical years of medical education, it is essential that new approaches to teaching gross anatomy are investigated to ensure medical students are being adequately exposed to anatomical content. This study retrospectively analyzed practical examination data from four medical gross anatomy classes (N = 569) to ascertain which pedagogical approach, student participation in the dissection process, or interaction with prosected specimens is best for teaching the anatomy of the hand and foot. Data analysis involved the use of propensity score matching, a nonparametric preprocessing statistical approach which ensures accurate representation of the true treatment effect by balancing cohorts prior to statistical analysis. Statistical analysis indicated that those students who were exposed to the anatomy of the hand through interactions with prosected specimens performed 5.6% better (P = 0.012) while for the foot, students who interacted with prosections performed 13.0% better (P < 0.001). Although limited, data from this study suggest that utilizing prosections of the hand and foot seems to be a more advantageous pedagogical approach for teaching these regions than requiring students to dissect them.     

The Media and Educational Testing: In Pursuit of the Truth or in Pursuit of a Good Story?

The measurement community needs to better understand how to interact with the media to effectively disseminate important findings from educational testing efforts. To this end, the current paper will review media coverage of educational testing and related issues and elaborate on areas of concern and opportunities for improved communication between measurement professionals and the media. Common misinterpretations of test results and measurement concepts will be discussed and suggestions for the clearer presentation and explanation of such information will be offered. Also, practical advice and strategies for handling different types of interactions with the media will be provided. The implications of focusing on this topic in the measurement profession and the inherent public value of this focus are highlighted throughout the paper.     

Demystifying and sustaining the resilience of teacher educators: the perspectives of Teaching–Research Officers in China

Asia Pacific Education Review - Responding to increased global research interest in teacher educators’ professional lives, this study explores the resilience of Teaching–Research...     

The Relation Between Language Variation and the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language

Language is a means of communication.Without language,it would beimpossible for people to communicate,and the society would break down.However,language is not a simple,single code used in the same manner byall people in all situations, It is a very complicated social phenomenon. It isthe most characteristically human of all human activities. It enters naturallyand essentially into virtually everything we do, from greeting an acquaintanceto making a trip on the moon.Therefore, a careful study of the languagevariation might help us to understand the relationship betweem language andsociety better.     

Why is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning such a hard sell?

Advocates have difficulty convincing colleagues Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a worthwhile use of time and resources. This article highlights problems impeding SoTL. First, scholarship of teaching gets used as a synonym for other activities. Second, Boyer’s definition was conceptually confused. Third, SoTL is difficult to operationalize. Fourth, much discourse concerning SoTL is anti‐intellectual and located in a narrow neoliberalism. Fifth, there is uncritical over‐reliance on peer review as the mechanism for measuring scholarship. Each impediment makes SoTL a hard sell – particularly in research‐intensive universities. Taken together, they constitute a formidable problem for SoTL advocates and contain incendiary implications for promotion candidates and committees.     

Discovering the Power of Individual-Based Modelling in Teaching and Learning: The Study of a Predator–Prey System

The general aim is to promote the use of individual-based models (biological agent-based models) in teaching and learning contexts in life sciences and to make their progressive incorporation into academic curricula easier, complementing other existing modelling strategies more frequently used in the classroom. Modelling activities for the study of a predator–prey system for a mathematics classroom in the first year of an undergraduate program in biosystems engineering have been designed and implemented. These activities were designed to put two modelling approaches side by side, an individual-based model and a set of ordinary differential equations. In order to organize and display this, a system with wolves and sheep in a confined domain was considered and studied. With the teaching material elaborated and a computer to perform the numerical resolutions involved and the corresponding individual-based simulations, the students answered questions and completed exercises to achieve the learning goals set. Students’ responses regarding the modelling of biological systems and these two distinct methodologies applied to the study of a predator–prey system were collected via questionnaires, open-ended queries and face-to-face dialogues. Taking into account the positive responses of the students when they were doing these activities, it was clear that using a discrete individual-based model to deal with a predator–prey system jointly with a set of ordinary differential equations enriches the understanding of the modelling process, adds new insights and opens novel perspectives of what can be done with computational models versus other models. The complementary views given by the two modelling approaches were very well assessed by students.     

The Bachelor of Arts: slipping into the twilight or facing a new dawn?

Undergraduate students have historically engaged with the humanities and social sciences through the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree programme. Recent experiences suggest that the relevance and the value of the degree to the modern world is now being challenged: populist press questions the value of the humanities to the modern knowledge economy; public funding for teaching in the social sciences and humanities in higher education has been slashed in the UK and elsewhere; humanities and social sciences schools and departments in the USA, New Zealand and Canada rationalised and restructured; BA programmes in some Australian universities closed. All seems to suggest that the sun is setting on the BA. This paper argues that, in Australia at least, these actions have been made on the basis of a flawed understanding of contemporary BA programmes. It asserts that the contemporary BA is a very different creature to that of even the recent past. The paper offers a new definition of the contemporary Australian BA degree programme developed as a result of a comparative historical analysis research study across 39 Australian institutions. It extends an argument that perhaps the time is right for a re-examination of what is meant by ‘BA’ – before we declare the degree a relic of the past.     

The Advantages and the Application of the CAI Courseware in English Teaching

By the end of last century,the computer has been more and more widely used in our delay life.Computer has come to pervade every aspect of our lives--including education.This article talks about the advantages of the Computer-Assisting Instruction courseware(CAI courseware)during the college English teaching.It can be used to optimize the English teaching model,teachers' teaching and students' study during the class.It also talks about the methods of using CAI courseware in college English teaching:teachers should know students' condition and use the CAI courseware ingeniously and timely.When the teachers design the CAI courseware,they should select the materials suitably.Furthermore,it predicts that the CAI courseware will have good prospects in the college English teaching.     

Research Subjects,Participants or Co-researchers? Extending the Involvement of Students in Art and Design Research

Art education has a range of purposes. Art is said to support students to explore, interpret, ask critical questions, communicate and realise ideas, experiment, take risks, collaborate, tell stories and/or engage in social and political actions. In this paper, we consider whether educational researchers have the same capacious view of students’ potential and capacities for involvement. We bring the results of a Rapid Evidence Review (RER) of the benefits of arts education into conversation with the literatures on student voice and participation. We outline the ways in which student voice and participation are discussed, then move to the results of the RER. We conclude with a discussion of the opportunities for art education researchers to develop research practices that are inclusive of students.     

Tracking the Truth or Selling One's Soul? Reflections on the Ethics of a Piece of Commissioned Research

This paper takes as its starting point a decision to accept a particular commission for a piece of educational research which is subject to contractual restrictions. In the light of recent debate on the contentious politics and ethics of contractual research, it then addresses the problem of what might constitute an ethical defence, or critique, of such research and such contracts.     

Current Developments in Research on the Teaching of Grammar

With the rise of communicative methodology in the late 1970s, the role of grammar instruction in second language learning was downplayed, and it was even suggested that teaching grammar was not only unhelpful but might actually be detrimental. However, recent research has demonstrated the need for formal instruction for learners to attain high levels of accuracy. This has led to a resurgence of grammar teaching, and its role in second language acquisition has become the focus of much current investigation. In this     

Current Developments in Research on the Teaching of Grammar

There are a number of studies that have investigated the effects of textual enhancement on drawing the learner＇s attention to grammar, and the method has been described as the least explicit and the least intrusive method of focus on form （Doughty ＆ Varela, 1998）. It involves highlighting certain features of input that might go unnoticed under normal circumstances by typographically manipulating them through boldfacing, italicizing, underlining, or capitalizing. The assumption is that such manipulations enhance the perceptual saliency of the target structures, and this, hence, increases their chance of being notieed. A related technique is the provision of numerous instances of target linguistic forms in the input, called an inputflood （Trahey ＆ While, 1993）. Again, the assumption is that frequent exposure to target items enhances their saliency and hence results in noticing the forms （ Schmidt, 1990; Sharwood Smith, 1993）. Whereas studies by Doughty （1991） and Fotos （1994） reported positive results in terms of awareness of target structures and proficiency gains resulting from textually enhanced structures,     

Which One Is More Effective in Teaching the Phases of the Moon and Eclipses: Hands-On or Computer Simulation?

Research in Science Education - The aim of this study is to comparatively investigate the effects of hands-on models (HMs) and computer simulations (CSs) on teaching the phases and eclipses of the...