Teachers’ views about pupil diversity in the primary school classroom

The present study explores Greek primary school teachers’ perceptions and views on pupil diversity in the classroom environment. A large-scale survey was carried out in order to examine teachers’ perceptions about pupil diversity and to identify personal and/or educational characteristics that can influence or predict these perceptions. The outcomes of the study reveal that Greek primary school teachers view diversity as a challenge more than as a barrier in teaching and learning, they can recognise at a high level the key elements of differentiated instruction as part of managing pupil diversity in their class and hold a negative-to-neutral stance on traditional curriculum implementation practices. The most influential factors and predictors of these perceptions and views are also presented and discussed.     

Investigation of Preservice Teachers' Classroom Assessment Practices During Student Teaching

Abstract

Teachers' evaluation of pupil learning should be consistent with identified learning outcomes at the intended level of performance. To the extent that curriculum and assessment are aligned, the validity of inferences about pupil knowledge is strengthened. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the assessment practices of preservice teachers who have successfully completed coursework in educational measurement. Three hundred and nine lesson plans from 65 preservice (student) teachers were reviewed. The authors found that, during student teaching, preservice teachers do not follow many of the assessment practices recommended in their coursework. Perhaps implementations of recommended classroom assessment practices seem to depend on more than possessing the requisite knowledge.     

留学生医学课程目标教学的评价

以新疆医科大学国际教育学院巴基斯坦留学生作为主要研究对象,对留学生专业英语教学以及相关课程目标教学的现状,以问卷调查的方式进行了分析。得出研究结论,课程目标越明确,课堂学习越主动,课堂教学和问题式教学法实施的目的性越强。     

借鉴新课程标准 创新课堂教学

根据中学新课程标准的精神,新课程的根本目的在于培养学生的创新能力和创新精神,而这种目的的实现,主要是通过课堂创新教学来完成的,这一点是非常值得我们高职院校借鉴的。课堂创新教学是我们培养高职学生创新能力和创新精神的主阵地,是通过教师的创新来培养学生的创新能力和创新精神。只有教师的创新,才会有课堂的创新;只有课堂的创新,才会有学生思维的创新。从变革教法和改进学法两个方面讨论如何培养学生的创新能力和创新精神。     

Social interaction and language use in Irish infant classrooms in the context of the revised Irish Primary School Curriculum (1999)

This article concerns the gap between government intention and classroom outcome. The author examines the treatment of spoken language in the Revised Irish Curriculum, which came into effect in 1999. He finds much to be commended in the recognition of its central role in learning. He then examines the implementation of this curriculum with children of 5 to 6 years, in fifteen Senior Infant classrooms. Extensive observations and interviews lead him to the view that pupil talk is still seen by most of the teachers observed as a distraction from the essential business of education, namely listening, reading and writing. The interviews revealed that these teachers did not seem to understand the important role of dialogue and discussion in developing learning or recognize the need to promote sustematically opportunities for oral interactions. He concludes that educational change cannot be achieved simply by producing new curriculum statements.     

Managing the paradox of control: the case of ground-up implementation of active learning in Singapore’s primary schools

The Singaporean education system has recently shifted emphasis from being highly centralised and standardised towards one that aims to promote innovation and autonomy at the school level. Yet, the concomitant move towards a more decentralised and flexible curriculum enacted and controlled at the local level has not been straightforward. Consequently, Hargreaves, Shirley, and Ng have described five paradoxes of educational and social change that characterise Singapore’s continued performance in academic achievement. One of these paradoxes is the paradox of control: How could the Ministry of Education (MOE) release classroom decision making and curriculum development to teachers and schools, while maintaining overall control across the system? They respond that the MOE maintains a fine balance characterised as bottom-up innovation with top-down support that requires further investigation. In this paper, we illustrate the implementation of an active learning curriculum in four primary schools to illustrate this approach of ‘top-down support for bottom-up’ curricular innovation in schools. In Singapore, the ‘Teach Less, Learn More’ movement has ignited school-based development of innovative curricula to bring about active learning, with the intention of developing pupil attributes such as creativity, collaboration, and self-confidence. Our case study explores how practitioners implement a curriculum that is meant to nurture a more emancipatory spirit in students that builds up their confidence and collaboration through active learning. A key premise is that such a curriculum requires practitioners’ autonomy to interpret the goals and desired outcomes and to plan their pupils’ learning experiences.     

Formative assessment: translating high-level curriculum principles into classroom practice

The curriculum is the totality of experiences which are planned for young learners through their education, wherever they are being educated. It determines the ethos of the school as a learning community, curriculum subjects and areas, interdisciplinary learning, and opportunities to attain personal and learning goals. An effective curriculum, which meets the needs of the twenty-first century learner improves numeracy and literacy, promotes health and well-being, and supports the social and technical skills required for learning, life and work (lifelong learning). Relatively recent developments in the policy frameworks of numerous nations have seen the implementation of an interactive style of teaching and learning called formative assessment. Formative classroom assessment is a potentially powerful instructional process because the practice of sharing assessment information that supports learning is embedded into the instructional process by design. This article uses a range of sources, including policy and framework documentation relating to the development and implementation of a curriculum which drives interactive assessment practices designed to make evidence of learning visible as assessment data with potentially lifelong effects. The purpose of this article is to delineate a ‘formative curriculum’ designed to drive classroom practices that create responsible citizens, confident individuals, effective contributors, and successful learners.     

Pedagogical renewal: Improving the quality of classroom interaction in Nigerian primary schools

This study reports on an investigation of classroom interaction and discourse practices in Nigerian primary schools. Its purpose was to identify key issues affecting patterns of teacher–pupil interaction and discourse as research suggests managing the quality of classroom interaction will play a central role in improving the quality of teaching and learning, particularly in contexts where learning resources and teacher training are limited. The study was based on the interaction and discourse analysis of video recordings of 42 lessons and 59 teacher questionnaires from 10 States, drawn mainly from the north of Nigeria. The findings revealed the prevalence of teacher explanation, recitation and rote in the classroom discourse with little attention being paid to securing pupil understanding. The wider implications of the findings for improving the quality of classroom interaction in Nigerian primary schools through more effective school-based training are considered.     

Changing classroom practice at Key Stage 2: the impact of New Labour’s national strategies

The article examines the impact of New Labour policies—particularly the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies and the subsequent Primary National Strategy—on classroom practice at Key Stage 2 in England. Evidence is drawn from fieldwork conducted in 2003–2005 from a sample of 50 schools, replicating a study conducted a decade previously in the same schools. The data base consists mainly of 188 transcribed in‐depth teacher interviews and fieldnotes from observation of 51 lessons. By comparison with other research studies on primary classroom practice from the 1970s through to the mid‐1990s, our study suggests that there have been more changes in the last five years in teaching styles and in classroom organisation throughout the whole curriculum at KS2 than in the previous two decades. Such changes include a dramatic increase in whole‐class teaching, the use of learning objectives shared with pupils and changes in pupil seating arrangements. Through compliance with centrally imposed changes in pedagogy, teachers’ experiences have led them to change some of their professional values concerning desirable pedagogy. The article concludes by considering some of the implications of our evidence for theories of educational change and of teacher professionalism.     

Establishing Children's Learning as the Criterion for Teacher Effectiveness

The purpose of teachers, teaching, and the curriculum in schools is to promote learning. Attempts to clarify teacher effectiveness in relation to pupil learning where they exist in past literature have been notably ambiguous. Rather global measures by headteachers, college tutors and inspectors have been used instead, or dimensions have been extracted from detailed observations of classroom interaction. Reasons for recent concern with evaluation of the applicability of the teacher's training, method or lesson content to his task are advanced, and it is argued that once the dimensions of children's learning that are to be the specific responsibility of the school are defined, criteria for successful learning could be evolved by teachers along each dimension. Assessment and interpretations would, however, need to involve wide considerations of the concepts of learning, behaviour, interest, motivation etc., and this, although an enormous task, must be done.     

Curriculum augmentation: An application and evaluation of the process

This study was designed to test the feasibility and appropriateness of curriculum augmentation, the process of further developing and strengthening available curricular materials along specified dimensions. The curriculum selected for augmentation in this study was an elementary school social studies unit entitled A House of Ancient Greece, developed in the MATCH Project of the Boston Children's Museum. Following a preliminary analysis, it was decided to augment A House of Ancient Greece by producing a modified Teacher's Guide (containing affective and cognitive learning objectives stated in terms of pupil performance expectations and suggested pupil assessment procedures), an audio tape to supplement the kit materials, and a teacher education component.In addition to briefly outlining how the augmentation of this curriculum was accomplished, the paper describes a field study which was conducted in order to assess the effectiveness of the augmentation. The data of the field study, conducted in schools in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, support the following conclusions: (1) contrasting versions of the Guide appeared to produce no significant differences in classroom behavior, (2) the classroom performance of workshop-trained teachers appears to have been superior to those not so trained, (3) a high proportion of teachers preferred the augmented Guide over the commercial version, (4) A House of Ancient Greece showed itself to be an exceptionally fine curriculum, apparently eliciting classroom performance well above the norm, as well as great enthusiasm on the part of teachers, pupils, and parents.The research reported in this paper was conducted while the author was affiliated with the Eastern Regional Institute for Education (ERIE), located in Syracuse, N.Y., and the assistance of former ERIE Staff Associates Richard Andrulis and Charles W. Wallace in conducting the field study described herein is gratefully acknowledged.     

鼓励创新:新课程课堂教学改革的核心

鼓励创新是我国新课程课堂教学改革的核心。对于教师而言,课堂教学是一个不断通过创新而实现自我生命价值的过程,创新精神和创新能力是教师能否形成独特教学风格的关键因素;对于学生而言,课堂教学是一个在教师引导下进行自主发现、探究和不断创新的过程。因此,课堂教学应积极引导学生实现学习方式的转变,从被动接受走向自主发现和探究,鼓励学生发表不同的观点和见解,允许进行不同的“解读”,倡导“创读”。在此基础上,实现培养学生的创新精神和创新能力的目标。     

Presuming Competence

This study discusses my attempt to improve educational experiences of fifth-grade students living in public housing. The context of a social justice-oriented classroom is revealed through reconstruction of my thought processes while teaching and learning with students. The narrative portrayal that emerges demonstrates the impact our theorizing together had on our growth, outlook, and learning in an effort to make substantive change in the community. Although this curriculum was not explicitly grounded in a service-learning framework, the processes, activities, and results of the classroom typify the potential and possibilities of a justice- and service-oriented elementary classroom. Reflections of classroom occurrences and struggles I engaged in privately and with students are conveyed through vignettes of the change-focused, integrated curriculum based on students' priority concerns—particularly the attempt to replace their dilapidated school. The role of theorizing with students and curriculum realizing democratic principles in a poor neighborhood is depicted.     

大学生课堂效率低下的原因及改进策略

目前我国高等院校本科学生普遍存在着课堂效率低下的状况,大学生上课不投入、不认真听课、不看书,甚至逃课等,经调查发现主要原因是学生缺乏对课程的兴趣,缺少学习动机,教师在课堂教学中缺乏生动性,课程设置缺乏针对性,学校对于教师以及学生的考核方法过于单一等。改变这种状态需要增加课堂教学的生动性、丰富性、参与性,以市场为导向设置专业与课程,引导学生改变上课态度,提高学生学习水平与效能,并完善大学生的学习评价方法与制度。     

促进学生学习和发展的课堂评价——2011课堂评价国际研讨会会议综述

课堂评价作为一种典型的形成性评价,与学校的教学和学生的学习有着紧密的关系,当前在我国教育领域内却备受冷落。本次国际研讨会从课堂评价、课程标准与外部考试一致性;课堂评价设计和实施的理论和技术;学习进展、学生发展与课堂评价系统的设计;课堂评价与教师专业发展;促进学习的课堂评价:学校经验报告等五个方面进行了深入研讨,以期引起教育领域内对课堂评价的关注,提升课堂评价的研究质量,促进学生学习和发展。     

School‐based restructuring and curriculum change: teachers’ and students’ contrasting perspectives

Abstract

This article is set within the context of a school‐based change initiative, where we studied a number of teachers and students in order to understand the ways in which they understood and experienced the complexities of the change process, and to add their voices to the ongoing discussions around restructuring and school‐based change. We found that although there were some commonalties between how teachers and students experienced the changes being implemented, there were also some profound differences between the curriculum as planned by teachers and the curriculum as experienced by students. For the teachers, the themes of caring for students’ lives, recasting themselves as classroom practitioners and of working as collaborative colleagues were identified; for students, the themes were those of getting used to the place, and of re‐establishing their preferred way of working in this new setting. In our discussion and analysis of these themes we look at the implications for future school‐based change initiatives, and at some of the complexities and difficulties which present themselves as schools take on increased authority and responsibility for self‐management and for the creation of improved learning environments for students and teachers. We suggest that future change efforts should give more importance to the perspectives of teachers and students, and to the interactive and programmatic exchanges of teachers and students. We suggest also that changed school structures should originate in a focus on the improvement of teaching and learning, and on the facilitation of teachers’ and students’ collaborative efforts to create a curriculum for the classroom and a learning community which is both enabling and transformative for both.     

Walking around the curriculum tree: An analysis of a third/fourth-grade mathematics lesson

This study, part of a narrative classroom inquiry into the teaching and learning of mathematics in a Canadian elementary classroom, emerges from the three years I was a participant-observer in Janine O'Neil's 3rd/4th-grade classroom at Bay Street Community School. Drawing on the curriculum commonplaces of teacher, social milieu, subject matter, and learner, I portray the various viewpoints and interests that shape curriculum of a 3rd/4th-grade lesson. In the process of engaging the various perspectives of the curriculum commonplaces, a challenge to formalistic thinking in and about education develops, which has implications in this time of standardization and central government influences on education.     

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.     

The alignment between the fourth grade Lebanese science curriculum and classroom assessments

The purpose of this study was to investigate the alignment between the fourth-grade summative classroom assessments and the ‘Matter and Energy’ unit in the Lebanese science curriculum using: content and cognitive levels. Summative assessments were collected from a sample of 17 schools. The alignment between the classroom assessments and the Lebanese science curriculum were examined using three instruments: Curriculum Coding Sheet, Items Coding Sheet, and Item Analysis Sheet. The curricular learning objectives were used for matching the test items to the learning objectives in terms of content. Findings showed moderate content alignment; further analysis revealed that public schools had higher content alignment, and they covered a wider range of topics. In terms of cognitive level, there was a low alignment between the assessments collected and the curriculum; however, there were items that had higher cognitive level. Recommendations for curriculum developers and future research are discussed in light of these findings.