Engaging the ‘maximal’ intentions of the citizenship curriculum: one teacher's story

Exploring how the transformative intentions within the mandated citizenship curriculum framework for English schools demand a particular kind of citizenship teacher – one who ‘acts against the grain’ of the inequities and injustices of the social world – this paper presents Mr C's story. Mr C is a secondary teacher at an Upper School located north of London. The paper considers the significance of his philosophies and knowledge in enabling practice aimed at developing students' socially inclusive but critical understandings of diversity and difference. Mr C's well‐defined personal philosophies about justice and the ‘common good’ and his capacity to translate these philosophies into practice are presented as central to mobilising the transformative or ‘maximal’ intentions of the citizenship curriculum. In highlighting the complexities and sophistication in Mr C's approach, however, the issues presented in this paper further strengthen the critique regarding the curriculum's depoliticised approach. While Mr C draws on the curriculum as a political device to support equity goals, it cannot be assumed that citizenship teachers more generally will have the requisite philosophies and knowledge necessary to do so.     

Reification of instructional materials as part of the process of developing problem‐based practices in mathematics education

This teacher development study closely examined a teacher's practice for the purpose of understanding how she selected and implemented instructional materials, and correspondingly how these processes changed as she developed her problem‐based practice throughout a school year. Data sources included over 20 hours of planning and analysis meetings with the teacher and 27 video‐taped lessons with discussions before and after each lesson. Through qualitative analysis we examined the data for: students' cognitive demand for curricular materials the teacher selected and implemented; teacher's beliefs and practices for students' engagement in mathematical thinking; and teacher's and students' communication about mathematics during instruction. We found that the teacher shifted her views and use of instructional materials as she changed her practice towards more problem‐based approaches. The teacher moved from closely following her traditional, district‐adopted textbook to selecting problem‐based tasks from outside resources to build a curriculum. Simultaneously, she changed her practice to focus more on students' engagement in mathematical thinking and their communication about mathematics as part of learning. During this shift in practice, the teacher began to reify instructional materials, viewing them as instruments of her practice to meet students' needs. The process of shifting her views was gradual over the school year and involved substantial analysis and reflection on practice from the teacher. Implications include that teachers and teacher educators may need to devote more attention and support for teachers to use instructional materials to support instruction, rather than materials to prescribe instruction. This use of instructional materials may be an important part of transforming practice overall.     

Memories of a fledgling teacher: a beginning teacher's autobiography

By evoking the concept of memory pictures, the author recalls her early years as a teacher. Rather than calling herself a beginning teacher, she characterizes herself as a fledgling teacher to capture the insecurity associated with the first years of teaching. This experience is narrated through five memory pictures: (1) the new school's many rooms; (2) the staff‐room as an arena for curriculum interpretation; (3) the reading road; (4) solving mathematical problems in the classroom; and (5) the assembly hall. These five memory pictures are related to theories of learning, teacher education, visions for child‐centred education and the author's current practice as a teacher educator.     

教师教学行为的现状分析与变革路径——以研究性学习指导教师为例

教师的教学行为对课程实施效果和课堂教学质量起着至为关键的作用。调查表明,研究性学习指导教师的教学行为呈现出多元和复杂的特征。多数教师认同新课程倡导的教学方式和学习方式,但在实践中要践行这种理念会遭遇很多困境,教师教学行为与课程改革的要求有一定的差距。变革教师教学行为的有效路径和策略包括引导教师从学生发展的角度认识教育的价值,提升教师变革动力;建构具有共同的价值观和教育理想的学校文化;重建合作开放的教师专业文化;构建基于人格和谐发展的课程评价体系;建立动态互惠的院校合作伙伴关系;以教师专业发展理论为指导改进教师培训模式,提升教师的课程实施能力等。     

Schools as Clinics: Learning About Practice in Practice

The Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut is committed to the intentionality of interweaving course work and practice in its 5-year teacher preparation program, the Integrated Bachelor's and Master's program. It offers a wide range of field experiences to teacher candidates. Teacher candidates enter the program at the beginning of their junior year and complete the program after they finish their 5th-year postgraduate master's degree studies. This article describes the program requirements and experiences. In essence, it intends to provide an illustration of the interwoven teacher education curriculum as promoted by Darling-Hammond and other scholars.     

英国U-S职前教师教育课程开发的经验与启示——以牛津大学PGCE教师教育课程为例

英国为提高基础教育质量,积极推动各大学在U-S模式下开发职前教师教育课程。英国职前教师教育课程开发注重大学与中小学之间的合作,不断适应合格教师知识与能力要求,并制订理论知识与实践知识相统一的"平衡性"课程计划。英国职前教师教育课程开发给予我们很好的启示:一是大学应与中小学校紧密合作;二是应适应中小学教师补给的实际需求;三是应体现职前教师知识与能力的新要求;四是应体现理论知识与实践知识的"平衡性"。     

Trust versus control: the impact of school leadership on teacher reflection

As teacher educators have worked to encourage teachers to become more reflective, they have noted the important role that school context plays in supporting or constraining reflection in action. This study describes one kindergarten teacher's experiences in two contrasting school contexts. The study documents the leadership styles, school organizational structures and resources, faculty‐administration communication processes, and curriculum decision‐making practices that promoted or hindered the teacher's ability to reflect. Data analysis revealed striking contrasts between the two schools. These differences had an impact on the curriculum provided by the teacher, her ability and willingness to accept responsibility for her professional decisions, and her self‐confidence and job satisfaction. The study concludes with suggestions for teacher educators interested in helping their graduates find and maintain contexts supportive of reflective practice.     

Early Childhood Teachers' Curriculum Beliefs: Are They Consistent With Observed Classroom Practices?

Research Findings: This study examined the consistency between early childhood teachers' self-reported curriculum beliefs and observations of their actual interactive behaviors with children in classrooms. Also tested was the hypothesized moderation by teacher and classroom characteristics of the association between beliefs and practices. A total of 58 preschool teachers completed a survey describing their professional backgrounds and curriculum beliefs. Their classroom practices were observed using a newly developed instrument that documented teacher interactions with children. Most teachers in this sample strongly endorsed child-initiated learning beliefs, although their beliefs about teacher-directed learning varied considerably. The most frequently observed teacher behaviors in the classroom were giving directions to children, responding to children's initiations, and engaging in non-interactive classroom management activities. Overall, teachers' curriculum beliefs and observed classroom practices were weakly correlated. However, there were moderation effects. Stronger congruence between teacher-directed learning beliefs and observed teaching behaviors was found among teachers who had more professional training and more years of teaching experience. Practice or Policy: These results support the importance of early childhood teacher professional development. They suggest that teacher preparation and professional development programs should focus on the intellectual transformation between teacher knowledge and teacher practice, promoting both aspects of development.     

English language teaching curriculum in Iran: planning and practice

The present study investigates English language teaching (ELT) curriculum planning in Iran's Ministry of Education and its implementation by teachers. We studied programme evaluation; needs analysis; the ELT-specific documents; communication channels between planning and practice levels; teacher evaluation and student assessment; interpretation and re-examination of national policies within the Ministry; and the criteria set for ELT material development. Instrumentation included: curriculum documents; interviews with Ministry officials, material developers and headteachers; and teacher questionnaires. Results attested to the lack of any ELT-specific document for material development and absence of research-based needs assessment as the foundation of the programmes. Also, there are no pre-defined linguistic and professional criteria for evaluating teachers, and planning for students' assessment is limited to a set of general guidelines. Moreover, there is neither a programme evaluation nor an ELT evaluation model and national-level policies are not re-examined at planning level. Results also indicate that politico-ideological beliefs of material developers are as important as their expertise and communication channels between planning and practice levels are of a top-down nature. It is argued that the gap between planning and practice results from a highly centralised policymaking process in which local policymakers (i.e. teachers) are not involved.     

Fostering Second Graders' Scientific Explanations: A Beginning Elementary Teacher's Knowledge,Beliefs, and Practice

Teaching science as explanation is fundamental to reform efforts but is challenging for teachers—especially new elementary teachers, for whom the complexities of teaching are compounded by high demands and little classroom experience. Despite these challenges, few studies have characterized the knowledge, beliefs, and instructional practices that support or hinder teachers from engaging their students in building explanations. To address this gap, this study describes the understandings, purposes, goals, practices, and struggles of one third-year elementary teacher with regard to fostering students' explanation construction. Analyses showed that the teacher had multiple understandings of scientific explanations, believed that fostering students' explanations was important for both teachers and students, and enacted instructional practices that provided opportunities for students to develop explanations. However, she did not consistently take up explanation as a goal in her practice, in part because she did not see explanation construction as a strategy for facilitating the development of students' content knowledge or as an educational goal in its own right. These findings inform the field's understanding of teacher knowledge and practice with regard to one crucial scientific practice and have implications for research on teachers and inquiry-oriented science teaching, science teacher education, and curriculum materials development.     

The influence of the Creative Learning Assessment (CLA) on children's learning and teachers' teaching

This paper describes the development and use of the Creative Learning Assessment (CLA) as a means of evidencing, supporting and promoting children's creative learning in arts‐based contexts. The research team at the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) worked with a group of teachers in inner‐city Lambeth primary schools to develop an assessment system to record the impact of a creative curriculum on children's achievement and to enable schools to justify a broad‐based provision. The Assessing Learning and Communication in Creative Learning Contexts project, funded by CfBT Education Trust (CfBT), aimed to offer teachers a view of creative learning development and a framework for teacher assessment. It set out to provide a close focus on the learner and a valuable source of information for curriculum planning. This article discusses the effect of working with the CLA on children's learning and on teachers' practice through a case study of one project school, and the implications for schools and classrooms from the perspectives of the researcher and the teacher.     

Methodological advances in educational effectiveness research

This paper describes a series of events observed in an English primary school over the period 1991‐1994. The events are taken as typical examples of school response to an externally¹ imposed innovation, namely, the assessment of pupils against the progressive learning scale in the national curriculum.² The patterns of events occurring in the school are tabulated together with the responses of teaching staff to the change events. The purpose is to inform teacher understanding of the significance of some events in the school's response to change. The claim is that focused reflective practice through reference to change events and types of teacher response are an important contribution to teacher understanding of the meaning of their ‘learning organization’. This practice heightens teachers’ collective awareness of the foci for change within their organization and establishes a vehicle for empowered teacher voice.

     

Curriculum Development as Continuing Teacher Education

Four years ago the German Education Council presented its recommendations for "the promotion of close links between curriculum development and practice" (1974). Although, on the one hand, these recommendations could be regarded as a reflex reaction to the partly negative experience of the first phase of curriculum development linked to the names of Robinsohn and Blankertz, on the other, the Education Council's recommendations did point up prospects for a new innovational strategy, whose central feature was teacher participation in curriculum development and the linking of continuing teacher education to such curriculum development. The discussion on educational policy gave rise to a series of projects that tested a number of versions of this strategy for innovation.     

新课程背景下教师教育课程设置的探讨

虽然在基础教育新课程改革的实践过程中,教师培养取得了一定成绩,但目前教师教育课程设置仍然不能满足新课程改革对教师培养的要求。为适应新课程改革对教师提出的新要求,高师教师教育课程设置应不断地变革:一是要确定以教师专业发展为基础的课程标准;二是要立足于区域发展实际,调整课程比例,优化课程内容;三是要面向基础教育改革实际,注重教育实践体验;四是要努力实现教师教育课程与中小学的无缝对接。     

Mathematics Standards,Cultural Styles,and Learning Preferences: The Plight and the Promise of African American Students

The 2007 film Freedom Writers portrays the real-life experiences of Erin Gruwell, a teacher at an inner-city high school in Long Beach, California. This article discusses the educational theories underpinning Gruwell's pedagogical practice, as seen in Freedom Writers, and identifies four themes—rewriting curriculum, treating students as creators of knowledge, creating classroom community, and teaching as self-realization—that make Gruwell's teaching successful.     

A Case Study of Cross‐curricular Practice through Partnership

This paper is concerned with a curriculum development project, framed around the cross‐curricular themes as suggested by the NCC guidelines (1991‐a‐f). It is structured as a teacher partnership experience involving close collaboration between university tutors, student teachers and practising teachers in a local school. From the university's perspective, the curriculum development project grew out of the review and evaluation of the education courses which forms 50% of the four year BA/BSc Hons (Education) degree offered for students preparing to be secondary school teachers. From the school's perspective it offered an opportunity to develop a more formal incorporation of cross‐ curriculum themes into the subject curriculum. The paper discusses the project from three perspectives: the university tutors’, the school teachers’ and the students’, describing professional tutoring partnership in practice.     

Is there room for multidimensional learning in a standardized curriculum?

This article presents the results of a study that interpreted views of curriculum and practice of teacher education faculty at a public institution of higher learning in the USA. It offers information about the ongoing challenges of affecting a balanced approach to teacher education at colleges and universities in a standardized learning setting. Participants' responses indicated professors perceive curriculum and standardization differently than instructors. Professors are more likely to describe the curriculum they teach ideologically whereas instructors described course content or paraphrased course titles. Further, professors were more likely to question whether they were meeting the needs of students and the impact of the standardization of curriculum. These findings raise many questions about the intellectual integrity of teacher preparation programs that are increasingly standardized and increasingly reliant on instructors rather than tenured faculty to teach program courses.     

Negotiating calendar time: ‘Best practices’ and teacher sense-making in a public pre-Kindergarten classroom

Within the United States, publicly funded pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) is a borderland of teacher practice - somewhere between early childhood and Elementary approaches to pedagogy. For pre-K teachers, this can mean negotiating many different, and oftcompeting conceptions of what curriculum and practice should look like in order to support the learning of four-year-olds. This paper explores the practice of calendar time and how one pre-K teacher, Wanda, identified and negotiated competing conceptions of calendar time as 'best practice' in her school, district and in a professional development program. The findings of this paper raise questions about how teacher educators and researchers should be supporting pre-K teacher practice and sense-making in the face of conflicting policies and expectations for pre-K.     

地方师范大学教师教育课程渐进变革与反思——以教师实践性知识为视角的个案分析

随着传统师范教育向教师教育的转型,构建新型的教师教育课程是摆在地方师范大学面前的一个重大课题。Q师范大学在教师教育课程上进行了多次改革后,课程体系结构趋于优化,课程模块初具特色,教育实践得以强化。以教师实践性知识为分析视角,通过对课程认识、课程体系、课程内容和课程实施四个方面的反思,提出基于教师实践性知识的教师教育课程发展的基本思路。