Teaching manuals and the blackboard: accessing historical classroom practices

The blackboard, a useful teaching tool in nineteenth-century England, was transformed into a teaching necessity in the decades follwing 1870, when the Education Acts made school free and mandatory for all children. The resulting huge population of schoolchildren inspired the development of teaching techniques appropriate for large-group learning. Many of these techniques relied on the blackboard as a reusable demonstration space visible to the entire class at once, unlike a book or slate. To share these new practices among teachers, particularly the novice teachers recruited to serve the increased school population, dozens of teaching manuals were published around the turn of the twentieth century. These manuals’ instructions for how to teach reading, writing, arithmetic and nature study to elementary school students offer historians a rare glimpse into teachers’ and students’ school experiences by suggesting how the blackboard shaped classroom practices in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England.     

应用板书板图提高数学课堂效率的策略

板书板图是数学课堂教学的重要组成部分,也是数学教师不可缺少的一项重要技能.本文主要探讨了板书板图的作用,并针对数学课堂的现状,提出了应用板书板图提高数学课堂效率的策略。     

对课堂教学“麦当劳化”的反思

在复杂理论的视域下,课堂教学是多维、交错的系统.是创造性的活动.而传统课堂教学的"麦当劳化"现象则严重违背了复杂理论的现点,视课堂为一个"效率至上"、 "可计算性"、"可预测性"、与"可控制性"的场域.反思课堂教学的"麦当劳化"现象.预示生成性课堂对复杂理论的呼唤.复杂理论视域下的教师应具备整体性思维意识、敏感意识、策略意识、资源意识与反思意识.     

Moral Education through the 3 Rs: Rights,respect and responsibility

We report an empirical assessment of suggestions that education in the appreciation of rights may be an effective agent of moral education. A children's rights curriculum was developed that was incorporated into the existing health and social studies curricula in Grade 8 classes (age 13-15) at five different schools over a 6-month period. The curriculum was designed to teach adolescents about their rights and responsibilities under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in an egalitarian and student-centred manner. Assessment of the impact of the rights curriculum showed that, when compared with their peers who did not receive the rights curriculum, the adolescents who did indicated higher levels of self-esteem, perceived peer and teacher support and increased rights-respecting attitudes.     

Empowerment and relationships: A classroom model to enhance student motivation

This project focused on the goal of establishing a classroom model of motivation in which the source of student motivation is based on internal mechanisms or structures, along with the establishment of greater self-regulatory opportunities for students, and which results in greater student empowerment and motivation. One-hundred current elementary and secondary teachers and 100 university preservice teacher education students completed a 40-item Likert-type questionnaire that focused on four classroom dimensions of affirmation, rejection, student empowerment and teacher control. The results of this project suggested that, although veteran and preservice teachers agreed on the need for teacher control in the classroom, there was less agreement about their perceptions of the need to create a classroom environment of positive affirmation and student empowerment. Implications for future research and the need for creating an affirming, empowering, motivational classroom environment are discussed in light of the limitations for teachers and schools to encourage these constructs associated with recent federal legislative policies.     

Homelessness in the elementary school classroom: social and emotional consequences

This study examined elementary school teachers’ experiences working with homeless students. Specifically, we focused on the psychosocial impacts of homelessness on students and their teachers. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 teachers who worked at designated public schools for family homeless shelters. A prominent theme that emerged from teachers’ accounts was how the instability tied to homelessness affected students’ behavioral, social, and emotional adjustment in the classroom (e.g. externalizing problems, difficulty developing peer relationships, and withdrawn behavior). Teachers’ own social and emotional competencies (e.g. fostering positive teacher–student relationships, and perspective taking) influenced the manner in which they responded to their students’ needs. Findings suggest that critical components may be lacking articulation in the McKinney-Vento Act’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program such as guidelines for teacher responsibilities, supports for teachers, and an emphasis not only on children’s academic but also social and emotional needs.     

The use of music to teach life skills to students with emotional disabilities in the classroom

This article discusses the teaching of life skills to urban American youths who are highly fascinated with the hip-hop culture--songs, raps, miming, lyrics, dressing and musical rhythms, especially individuals with emotional disabilities in the public schools. This is an instructional curriculum strategy to encourage positive and active participation of these students, promote perfect school attendance, encourage good behaviors, deal with anger management and motivate committed learning in the classroom. The instructors＇ understanding of students＇ culture, learning needs and styles, and using such background knowledge to educate them become imperative in this setting. These urge for innovative and leadership projects in the author＇s special education classroom necessitated the application of hip-hop music to teach life skills, reading and other functional skills in the classroom. The outcome was positive and rewarding to both the teachers and students. There are recommendations for interested teachers to devise creative teaching methods, differentiated instruction and appropriate classroom management practices to attain student achievement.     

Explaining calibration accuracy in classroom contexts: the effects of incentives, reflection, and explanatory style

A 2 × 2 quasi-experimental design was used to investigate the impact of extrinsic incentives and reflection on students’ calibration of exam performance. We further examined the relationships among attributional style, performance, and calibration judgments. Participants were 137 college students enrolled in an educational psychology course. Results differed as a function of exam performance. Higher-performing students were very accurate in their calibration and did not show significant improvements across a semester-length course. Attributional style did not significantly contribute to their calibration judgments. Lower-performing students, however, were less accurate in their calibration, and students in the incentives condition showed significant increases in calibration. Beyond exam scores, attributional style constructs were significant predictors of calibration judgments for these students. The constructs targeting study and social variables accounted for most of the additional explained variance. The qualitative data also revealed differences by performance level in open-ended explanations for calibration judgments.     

Emotions and emotional energy in the science classroom: a discussion of measurement

Cultural Studies of Science Education - In this commentary, I consider different theoretical and methodological aspects of Davis and Bellocchi’s study. I begin by identifying definitions of...     

Relationships between emotional climate and the fluency of classroom interactions

This study examined emotional climate in relation to the teaching and learning of grade 7 science. A multi-method and multi-theoretic approach used sociocultural frameworks as a foundation for interpretive research, conversation analysis, prosody analysis, and studies of nonverbal conduct. Emotional climate varied continuously throughout a lesson. Dialogues occurred and afforded learning when interactions between the teacher and students were fluent and included humour and collective effervescence. Emotional climate was negatively valenced when the teacher and/or students endeavoured to establish and maintain power by restricting others’ participation to spectator roles. The teacher’s endeavours to maintain and establish control over students were potentially detrimental to teaching and learning, teachers and learners. This type of teaching gradually evolved into a form we referred to as cranky teaching, whereby the teacher and her students showed signs of frustration and the enacted teaching and learning roles lacked fluency. The methods we pioneered in the present study might be helpful for other teachers who wish to participate in research on their classes to ascertain what works and should be strengthened, and identify practices and rituals that are deleterious and in need of change.     

The Bologna process and the search for excellence: between rhetoric and reality,the emotional reactions of teachers

ABSTRACT

There has been an overall change in higher education towards the achievement of outstanding patterns of quality and excellence that assure competitiveness at a global scale. Teachers feel the pressure of official regulations for achieving quality and excellence, based on questionable concepts of quality that do not take into account the experience and beliefs of teachers and lead to emotional states that may promote or hinder adjustment to changes.

The present study used a categorical content analysis to capture the emotions that twelve university teachers associate with the changes experienced and with the pursuit of quality emphasized in Portugal by the Bologna Process. The results show that participants revealed mixed emotions regarding change. Students elicit mostly positive emotions, whereas bureaucracy, marketization and career changes generate negative emotions that impede the quest for quality, although in a minority of participants they prompt resilience that stimulates engagement in quality.     

Social and emotional learning in the classroom: promoting mental health and academic success

Numerous studies conducted in different countries have focused on empirical research and literature reviews on prevalence, consequences, and strategies relative to cyberbullying; however, there is a lack of research regarding cyberbullying from a cross-cultural perspective. This article reviews recent research on cyberbullying and presents information on prevention and intervention from an international perspective.     

Working on What Works: working with teachers to improve classroom behaviour and relationships

The Working on What Works (WOWW) approach, which is based upon Solution-focused Brief Therapy, was implemented in a mainstream primary classroom over a 10-week period. The focus was on improving behaviour and relationships in class. Results demonstrated an improvement in teacher ratings for targets set by the class teacher compared with baseline. Pupils also set, and rated themselves on class targets. Observation of pupils, and their class-ratings, demonstrated a positive impact for these targets. Longer term follow-up suggested that this positive impact was maintained. It is concluded that WOWW had a positive impact on behaviour and relationships within this classroom.     

Understanding classroom feedback practices: A study of New Zealand student experiences,perceptions, and emotional responses

While feedback is a key factor for improving student learning, little is known about how students understand and experience feedback within the classroom. This study analysed 193 New Zealand primary and secondary students’ survey responses alongside drawings of their understandings and experiences of feedback to examine how they experience, understand, and respond to feedback. It found that despite New Zealand’s strong commitment to student-centred Assessment for Learning practices, the majority of students still drew, selected, and endorsed teacher-led feedback practices, with pictures dominated by written comments or grades. However, they generally depicted and described this feedback as positive and constructive, suggesting that negative emotional responses to evaluative comments and grades may be lessened if students perceive such feedback will help them improve.     

The relationships of communicator style, personality-based learning style, and classroom community among online graduate students

This study examined the relationships among communicator style, personality-based learning style, and sense of classroom community among 72 graduate students enrolled in online doctoral coursework. Findings suggested that communicator style patterns were related to learning styles and to classroom community. Moreover, the results of a canonical correlation suggested that friendly and open communicator styles were significantly related to feelings of being connected and the precise communicator style was related to both feelings of connectedness and to feelings that membership in the online learning community fostered educational goal attainment. No significant relationships were found between learning styles and classroom community.     

Social and emotional pedagogies: critiquing the new orthodoxy of emotion in classroom behaviour management

This paper examines new structured attempts to address and manage emotions in the classroom. Critical analysis focuses on the broad emotional literacy agenda operating within schools, and more specifically the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) programme. Data are drawn on from an ethnographic study located in Behaviour Support Units in three mainstream, inner‐city comprehensives to highlight the gap between the ‘rational emotionality’ being promoted and the fraught, and often uncontainable, emotions that drive everyday school life. It is also argued that the therapeutic model underpinning SEAL activities in schools risks individualising and thereby misinterpreting socially and culturally embedded difference, pathologising particular pupils in the process.