大学英语课堂教师话语策略的研究

通过对三位优秀骨干教师的大学英语教学进行课堂观察并对其话语进行分析,表明在语言学习课堂中教师话语策略表现在控制语言量、延长等待时间、提问中参阅式问题增多、注意语句类型的使用以及让学生享有充分的引发话轮的权利等方面,以上教师话语策略的运用可以为学生提供更多课堂交际的机会,使语言学习变得轻松、有效。     

The Educational Forces Inventory

The Educational Forces Inventory (EFI) is a technique for assessing the constellation of forces in the teacher’s social-psychological field. Thereby, important stress points for teachers are identified and their work in the classroom is facilitated. The EFI charts the relative influence of each of 13 forces that are important factors in the educational settting. Teachers are asked to characterize each force along two dimensions: the amount of influence it exerts upon the classroom process, and the degree to which this influence is positive or negative. Several hundred teachers and teaching assistants in Follow Through classrooms throughout the country participated in a field test of the instrument, with concurrent administration of the Purdue Teacher Opinionaire (PTO), an established measure of teacher morale. The high rate of return and correct completion on the EFI indicated that it is a practical technique. In addition, the data indicated validity for the instrument in three important respects: (1) the pattern-of-importance ratings correspond to independently assessed patterns of physical and social distance; (2) the positive/negative ratings for particular forces correlated substantially with corresponding subscores of the PTO; and (3) the pattern of responses reflected aspects of internal consistency. Some ways of utilizing EFI data are discussed: how to plot and interpret two-dimensional force fields, and how to use them in program implementation, especially to facilitate the work of the teacher in the classroom.     

Teaching Inquiry With a Lens Toward Curiosity

Abstract

This paper links educational psychology research about curiosity to teacher moves that are effective in an inquiry-based mathematics classroom. Three vignettes will show explicit teacher moves (staging disagreement, intriguing anecdotes, and creating a safe space) for different audiences (math majors, mathematics for liberal arts students, and future elementary school teachers) and tie them to particular studies about curiosity. The goal is to deepen our thinking about inquiry-based teaching by considering curiosity as one of the starting points of inquiry. Educational psychologists have found ample evidence that curiosity improves learning. We claim that curiosity and inquiry are deeply connected in a curiosity–inquiry cycle and become most active in a classroom that exhibits a culture of asking questions.     

Taking a Second Look: Expert and Novice Differences when Observing the Same Classroom Teaching Segment a Second Time

Expert and beginning principals viewed a classroom teaching episode of a seventh grade mathematics classroom for teacher supervision purposes. After the first viewing participants were asked questions about classroom management and instruction, about the skills of the teacher, and about recommendations they would make for improvement. After a second viewing, similar questions were asked. Differences between groups were found in their understanding of classroom teaching and their abilities to evaluate and make recommendations for the improvement of teaching. This study indicates that important differences will occur in the supervision experience for teachers depending on whether an expert or novice principal supervises them. Findings from this study have implications for the development of preservice and inservice training programs and induction experiences for new principals.     

Consultation outcome as a result of in-service resource teacher training

The effects of learning disabilities teacher training for consultation with classroom teachers were investigated. Twelve learning disabilities resource teachers and 60 elementary school classroom teachers within one school system served as subjects. Four learning disabilities resource teachers received communication skills training, and four resource teachers received conceptual assumptions training. In addition, four resource teachers served as a control group for the study. Each resource teacher conducted three 20- to 30-minute conferences with each of five elementary school teachers. Following the third conference, information was collected concerning: (a) classroom teacher ratings of satisfaction with services, (b) joint ratings of the child's progress toward goals set during the first conferences, (c) the percentage of recommendations implemented, and (d) classroom teacher ratings of joint responsibility, and of resource teacher respect, empathy, and congruence. There were three findings in this study. First, no differences resulting from either type of training were found at posttest for classroom teacher respect, resource teacher congruence, joint responsibility, or joint ratings of the child's progress. Second, training resource teachers in communication skills resulted in significantly higher classroom teacher ratings of resource teacher empathy. Finally, significant differences due to resource teacher experiences prior to this study were noted with classroom teacher ratings of the child's progress, and the number of recommendations implemented.     

Power Dynamics and Questioning in Elementary Science Classrooms

We describe the dynamic discourse interactions between a teacher and her students in a third-grade science classroom. We focused on how the teacher and students initiate, prompt, respond, and provide feedback; use questioning and power strategies; and how questions are associated with power dynamics. We relate the consequences of teacher use of power to the engagement of student with subject matter. Two classroom sessions were observed and teacher?Cstudent interactions audio recorded. Data were transcribed and a method was developed for analyzing teacher-student interactions, power dynamics, and types of questions asked. Results revealed that teacher talk was twice as frequent as students?? talk; questions were primarily closed-ended and task-oriented; and students asked few questions. The teacher exercised power by keeping activities organized and conventional, and utilizing subject matter. The developed methods showed us the complexity of question and power dynamics in classroom discourse and have implications for professional development and research.     

Using student ratings to measure quality of teaching in six European countries

This paper argues for the value of using student ratings to measure quality of teaching. An international study to test the validity of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness was conducted. At classroom level, the model consists of eight factors relating to teacher behaviour: orientation, structuring, questioning, teaching modelling, application, management of time, teacher role in making classroom a learning environment and assessment. In each participating country (i.e. Belgium/Flanders, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Ireland and Slovenia), a sample of at least 50 primary schools was used and all grade 4 students (n?=?9967) were asked to complete a questionnaire concerning the eight factors of the dynamic model. Structural equation modelling techniques were used to test the construct validity of the questionnaire. Both across- and within-country analyses revealed that student ratings are reliable and valid for measuring the functioning of the teacher factors of the dynamic model. Implications for teacher education are drawn.     

Teacher as Conceptual Artist

Teachers in arts education frequently struggle with their professional identity. When asked, arts teachers often answer that they believe that their main responsibility is education at the expense of understanding themselves as artists. The Mexican‐American artist and teacher Jorge Lucero questions whether an occupation as teacher necessarily impedes a creative practice. The finding that both progressive pedagogy and conceptual art share certain characteristics forms the basis for his concept of ‘teacher as conceptual artist’. In short, Lucero proposes that a teacher’s practice, in and beyond the classroom, simultaneously can be his or her creative practice. This qualitative intervention study explored whether or not the concept of teacher as conceptual artist holds the possibility to narrow down the gap between teacher and artist identities. The intervention consisted of a three‐day project led by Lucero in which nine arts teacher students were familiarised with modes of operation as a conceptual artist. In the three following months, these students implemented lessons in primary and secondary education based on those modes. Prior to the project, ‘elicitation‐interviews’ were used to explore how students perceived their professional identity and at the end of project semi‐structured interviews were conducted. The findings suggest that through the modes of operation as a conceptual artist, students who mainly identified as an artist were able to integrate a teacher identity in their artist identity, but the modes of operation also gave students who withheld their artist identity from the classroom an opportunity to live their artist identity in the classroom.     

The use of motor activity learning in the development of science concepts with slow learning fifth grade children

This study compared the motor activity technique of learning, using physical education activities, with traditional ways of developing science concepts with fifth grade slow learning children. Two groups of ten children each were equated on the basis of pretest scores. Both groups were taught by the same classroom teacher. One group was taught through motor activity learning and the other by traditional procedures. Both groups were retested after a two-week teaching period, and again after a three-month extended interval. The difference in the posttest scores favored the motor activity learning group, p < .01 (t = 4.33, df 9). The difference in the extended interval test also favored the same group, p < .001 (t = 6.37, df9). Using the differences in test scores as criteria for learning, the children in the motor activity learning group learned and retained significantly more than those in the traditional group.     

The Validity of Teacher Ratings of Adolescents' Social Skills

The validity of teacher ratings of adolescents' social skills was examined in a follow-up study of a cohort sample of 395 students from seventh to ninth grade. The internal consistency of the teacher ratings on Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) was examined at two points in time, and the multidimensionality of the SSRS was confirmed through factor analyses. The findings indicated multi-informant consistency in ratings: teacher ratings consistently covaried with teacher ratings of problem behaviour in the classroom and academic competence, sociometric nominations by peer students, and grade point average in selected school subjects. Teacher ratings also produced construct-relevant group differences, with students referred to psychosocial and educational helping services receiving significantly lower ratings than their nonreferred peers.     

Silent pedagogy and rethinking classroom practice: structuring teaching through silence rather than talk

Classroom observations are an important source of information about teaching and about the practice of particular teachers. The paper considers the value placed on talk as opposed to silence in this context and suggests that a cultural bias towards talk means that silence is commonly perceived negatively. The paper is based on a qualitative research study involving interviews with 25 teacher participants. These participants identify different types of silence and report how they use various silences in the classroom, suggesting that many different types of silence may be used productively in teaching and learning. The paper provides examples of questions that might be asked when observing teachers' uses of silence rather than talk. It concludes by proposing that classroom observations should take into account the complex skills of ‘silent pedagogy’ where the teacher makes conscious decisions to abstain from intervention based on continuous sensitive readings of the learning environment.     

General education teacher judgments of their low‐performing students' short‐term reading progress

This study investigated the accuracy of classroom teachers' judgments of the reading progress of their low‐performing students. Participants were 36 second grade teachers and students in their lowest reading groups (n = 150). Student progress was monitored weekly using reading‐curriculum‐based measurement (R‐CBM) procedures. After 6 weeks, teachers were asked to rate their students' progress. Expert judges later reviewed the teachers' R‐CBM graphs and rated the individual and group progress based on the graphs. Teacher ratings did not correlate with expert ratings or the R‐CBM slope estimates. Expert ratings correlated highly with slope estimates. Teachers' estimates of progress were significantly higher than expert judges' ratings, indicating that teachers may overestimate student progress. Implications for practice and future research are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Relationship of teachers’ ratings of kindergarteners’ 21st century skills and student performance

This study investigated the relationship of kindergarten teachers’ ratings of their students’ 21st century skills (college readiness skills) with students’ behavioral and academic performance. Teachers rated the frequency that their students (n = 579) demonstrated persistence, curiosity, affective, and cognitive (e.g., critical thinking) behaviors within their classrooms via the Human Behavior Rating Scale: Brief (HBRS: Brief, a teacher rating scale. The relationship of the HBRS: Brief teachers’ ratings was compared with data the school annually collected (behavioral ratings, academic performance, student office discipline referrals [ODRs], and absences). Hierarchical linear modeling indicated that teachers’ ratings of students’ persistence and cognition behaviors were significantly associated with students’ academic performance. Teachers’ persistence, curiosity, and externalizing affect ratings were predictive of behavioral ratings and teachers’ externalizing affect ratings were significantly associated with ODRs. The results support the efficacy of investigating teacher perceptions of students’ 21st century skills with kindergarteners.     

试论课堂教学中的设疑法

课堂教学中的设疑法体现出教师对课堂教学的一种处理手法。通过设疑,可突出重点和突破难点,活跃课堂气氛。     

Assessing individualized instruction in the classroom: Comparing teacher,student, and observer perspectives

In this article, we address the measurement of individualized instruction in the context of regular classroom instruction. Our study assessed instructional practices geared towards individualization in German third grade reading lessons by combining self-report data from 621 students, from their teachers (n = 57), and live observations. We then investigated the reliability of these different approaches to measuring individualization as well as the agreement between them. All three approaches yielded reliable indicators of individualized practices, but not all of them corresponded with each other. We found considerable agreement between students and observers, but neither agreed with teachers' self-reports. Upon closer examination, we found that students’ ratings only correlated with teacher ratings that were provided close to the timepoint of interest. This correlation increased when teacher measures were corrected for response tendencies. We conclude with some recommendations for future studies that aim to measure individualized instruction in the classroom.     

Teacher knowledge and discourse control: Quantitative evidence from novice biology teachers' classrooms

This article describes the effects of science teacher subject-matter knowledge on classroom discourse at the level of individual utterances. It details one of three parallel analyses conducted in a year-long study of language in the classrooms of four new biology teachers. The conceptual framework of the study predicts that when teaching unfamiliar subject matter, teachers use a variety of discourse strategies to constrain student talk to a narrowly circumscribed topic domain. This article includes the results of an utterance-by-utterance analysis of teacher and student talk in a 30-lesson sample of science instruction. Data are broken down by classroom activity (e.g., lecture, laboratory, group work) for several measures, including mean duration of utterances, domination of the speaking floor by the teacher, frequency of teacher questioning, cognitive level of teacher questions, and student verbal participation. When teaching unfamiliar topics, the four teachers in this study tended to talk more often and for longer periods of time, ask questions frequently, and rely heavily on low cognitive level questions. The rate of student questions to the teacher varied with classroom activity. In common classroom communicative settings, student questions were less common when the teacher was teaching unfamiliar subject matter. The implications of these findings include a suggestion that teacher knowledge may be an important unconsidered variable in research on the cognitive level of questions and teacher wait-time.     

关于英语精读课教师提问与学生反馈的研究--以中国地质大学（北京）外语系为例

本研究采用定性和定量相结合的方法,通过对中国地质大学（北京）英语专业某班进行课堂录音和学生访谈,从课堂提问分类、学生对不同类型提问的应答参与度以及不同类型提问对学生语言输出的影响这三个方面,对英语精读课教师提问与学生反馈的状况进行了研究。基于研究结果,笔者提出了一些提高课堂提问效果的建议。