Learning by Exploration in Mathematics Courses: a programme for student teachers

In order to adapt teacher education to new demands in mathematics classrooms, it is necessary to change the courses in mathematics at the university. Teachers’ beliefs about mathematics, learning and teaching has great impact on their teaching. At the University of Göteborg, a co‐operative project has been conducted in order to design a programme based on problem solving in courses taken by prospective Comprehensive School teachers (grade 4‐‐9). The main purpose of the project has been to make student teachers more reflective about mathematics as such, about learning and teaching. Another purpose of the project has been to use a teaching method in a university course‐‐a method which could be applied in a school classroom. The student teachers have worked co‐operatively in small groups of 3‐4 students and the educators role has been that of a facilitator. A preliminary evaluation indicates that student teachers have developed an insight into the complexity of learning and teaching, even though there are variations in this respect. However they still have difficulties in applying the method to teaching mathematics at school.     

How Competency‐based Training has Changed the Role of Teachers in the Vocational Education and Training Sector in Australia

Most formal vocational education and training (VET) in Australia is now competency‐based. When competency‐based training (CBT) first became government VET policy in the early 1990s, there was heated and acrimonious debate about its desirability. During the last few years, debate about CBT has all but disappeared, and VET teachers and trainers have been struggling with the implementation of CBT with, often, little support, and certainly with little interest from the VET research community. A research project examined, in late 1996, the effects of CBT on teaching and learning. A number of creative responses to CBT were discovered, with a major effect of the change to CBT appearing to be an impetus for teachers to re‐examine what they do with their students. Despite changes in teaching methods, CBT nevertheless allows teachers to exercise their skills, although the skills needed are in some respects different from pre‐CBT teaching. This paper reports on the project findings, and looks at the changes in teachers’ activities and roles using definitions of teaching propounded by Fenstermacher, and Miller and Sellar.     

Manipulating and diversifying the levels of difficulty and task‐sophistication of one and the same laboratory exercise

Summaries

English.

The major national curriculum development projects in the UK were produced between 1963 and 1973. Although funded by two differentnational organizations, there has been considerable co‐operation and overlap of project staff and ideas resulting in a continuousrefinement of the centre‐periphery model used. By the end of the 10‐year period the model's defects had become clear and the continuing national projects considered it essential to request additional funds for further dissemination and after‐care. Subsequent projects have mostly been based on a local curriculum development model involving practising teachers to a much greater extent both in the curriculum development process and in the preparation of materials.

It has become apparent that there is no single measure on which a project can be called successful or on which it can be determined that a project has ‘taken root’. Projects can fulfil their proposers’ wildest hopes and yet achieve little uptake; or, they can take root in the sense of having a considerable impact on science education in general whilst being substantially used by only a minority of the target group of teachers. The thesis of this article is that whilst dissemination and after‐care are essential, they are not sufficient to ensure uptake. Of prime importance isthe general attitude to curriculum development; the relevance of theprojects materials and ideas to the problems teachers face in schools; the extent to which they offer teachers fulfilment without requiring a complete re‐evaluation of their perspective to education and the cost in terms of equipment, materials and manpower.     

Achieving standards in urban systemic reform: An example of a sixth grade project‐based science curriculum

A challenge for urban systemic reform initiatives in science education has been to achieve local, state, and national standards for teaching and learning. We have collaborated with teachers in the Detroit Public School System to design project‐based curriculum materials that contextualize the learning of science in meaningful real‐world problems, engage students in science inquiry, and use learning technologies. We present a sixth grade project‐based science unit in which students explored the driving question “How Do Machines Help Me Build Big Things?” and address the science learning goals of balanced and unbalanced forces, simple and complex machines, and mechanical advantage. Twenty‐four teachers and over 2500 students in Detroit participated in enactments of this project over 4 years. Student learning outcomes were determined for the three learning goals and inquiry process skills using pre‐ and postachievement tests. Achievement outcomes as measured by the pre/posttest show significant and consistently high learning gains, even as participation in the project increased to include greater numbers of teachers and students in successive enactments, and leadership of the professional development support for this project transitioned from university researchers to district teacher leaders. These results illustrate that materials which contextualize learning and support student inquiry as part of an urban systemic reform effort can promote learning of important and meaningful science content aligned with standards. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 669–692, 2004     

Students as ‘catalysts’ in the classroom: the impact of co‐teaching between science student teachers and primary classroom teachers on children's enjoyment and learning of science

This study is an investigation of the impact of collaborative teaching by student‐teachers and classroom teachers on children’s enjoyment and learning of science. The paper describes findings from a project in which undergraduate science specialist student‐teachers were placed in primary schools where they ‘co‐taught’ investigative science and technology with primary teachers. Almost six months after the student placement, a survey of children’s attitudes to school science revealed that these children enjoyed science lessons more and showed fewer gender or age differences in their attitudes to science than children who had not been involved in the project. The authors discuss how this model of collaborative planning, teaching and evaluation can both enhance teacher education and improve children’s experience of science.     

University‐community engagement: exploring service‐learning options within the practicum

Since 1999, pre‐service teachers undertaking the Bachelor of Teaching (Secondary) Program at the University of Western Sydney have participated in an alternate practicum called Professional Experience 3 (PE3). This practicum encourages students to engage in broader educational settings within local communities. Increasingly, a number of service‐learning opportunities have been developed, most notably, senior student tutoring programs and the involvement of students in the Plan‐It Youth project in conjunction with the Department of Education and Training (DET) and the South‐western Sydney Institute of TAFE. A focus of these programs has been to address the issues related to students at risk of leaving school early within the local South‐western Sydney community.

In this paper we discuss the benefits of these programs to the university, pre‐service‐teachers, school students and school communities, and the broader local community. Specifically, we examine service learning as a conduit for the development and maintenance of meaningful symbiotic relationships between the university and the educational community, and pre‐service teachers and the local community. Finally, we look towards the future and highlight the challenges and opportunities for service‐learning programs within the practicum.     

Using Microcomputers in the Classroom

Drawing upon their practical experience as teachers and as teacher trainers, the authors describe development work done in a school for children with severe learning handicap. The project in question focused upon the communication and learning needs of a boy with athetoid cerebral palsy. Over a period of time, both the computer hardware (mainly communication devices) and software programmes were developed which have made an incalculable contribution to the boy's contact with his teachers and his fellow‐pupils. The work done has already been adapted and made available for other pupils.     

Producing Video‐based Resource Material for Teacher Training in Zimbabwe

The Zimbabwe Science Teacher Training project (ZeSTT) has, since 1979, been running at the Science Education Centre of the University of Zimbabwe, producing learning resource materials for teacher‐trainers in Zimbabwean Colleges of Education. Multi‐media packages, video programmes and printed materials have been produced, not only in science but in an increasing number of other subject areas. The paper describes the evolution of techniques of recording videotaped material of teachers in action during typical lessons in local schools, for editing into complete programmes or as study excerpts.     

SOAP in practice: learning outcomes of a cross‐institutional innovation project conducted by teachers,student teachers,and teacher educators

This paper reports on a case study investigating learning outcomes at the individual and organisational level of a cross‐institutional innovation project based on the SOAP approach. SOAP integrates Schooling of teachers, Organisational development of schools, Action‐ and development‐oriented research, and Professional development of teachers. The innovation project was aimed at combining teachers, student teachers, and teacher educators in an alliance to design and develop new competence‐based vocational educational arrangements for pupils. An inductive qualitative analysis of 37 semi‐structured interviews among the participants revealed seven main categories of individual learning outcomes: attitudes, project design and management, collaboration, action theory, teaching practice, educational principles, and developments within secondary vocational education. Three main categories of organisational learning outcomes were identified: institution‐level learning, project‐level learning, and combining institution‐level and project‐level learning. A tension was identified between the participants’ individual interests in learning and personal development, and the need for organisational learning aimed at improving organisational processes.     

Information and communication technologies: transforming views of literacies in early childhood settings

This paper reports on an early childhood technology project that has been conducted in Australia since 2000. The background to the project is that IBM extended their international KidSmart Early Learning program to the Asia‐Pacific region. A partnership with the Australian National Schools Network was formed to implement the program in Australia. This organisation took responsibility for identification of early childhood centres (preschool and day care) serving low socio‐economic status communities across Australia (approximately 100 centres per year), the design and facilitation of professional development for teachers and research and evaluation in conjunction with the program. Whilst this was a national project, this paper deals only with the research conducted in Western Australia with the first round of centres involved in the project. The paper highlights themes emerging from teacher action research based in early childhood centres. The pedagogical considerations, challenges and dilemmas emerging from teachers' use of ICT in early childhood settings are also discussed.     

Developing a play‐based communication assessment through collaborative action research with teachers in northern Canadian indigenous communities

With the goal of developing culturally appropriate approaches for assessing and supporting children's language use, teachers of 4‐to 6‐year‐old children in northern Canadian rural and Indigenous communities are involved in a 6‐year collaborative action research project. Teachers video record children's interactions during dramatic and construction play and then meet with university researchers to carry out inductive analyses of ways in which children use language to achieve social purposes. From these analyses, a Play‐based Communication Assessment has been created. Examples from two teachers' classrooms in one Indigenous community are used to show how play contexts and the still‐evolving play‐based communication assessment provide opportunities for teachers to recognise and build upon the linguistic and cultural resources that children bring to classrooms. Through the play‐based assessment and action research processes, teachers have come to recognise the richness of children's language when they are engaged in play and have gained understandings of their community's culture. Teachers and researchers are exploring ways to capture children's non‐verbal communication abilities through this assessment approach.     

Influencing Educational Practice through Performance Indicators

ABSTRACT

School effectiveness research has provided us with the knowledge and techniques to produce fair performance indicators. But under what circumstances do performance indicators have the most influence? For ten years the A Level Information System (ALIS) has been feeding back quantitative summaries of educational performance to schools, department by department, in an effort to improve educational provision. During that time the feedback has regularly been accompanied by dissemination meetings at which the measures and methodology have been explained and discussed. This paper reports a survey and two experiments conducted within the framework of ALIS which were designed to gauge the relative importance of a range of factors on the impact of performance indicators on teachers from 70 schools and colleges. It compares the attitudes towards and the use of the system by: Heads of departments and members of the department; teachers from different curriculum areas; teachers with varying lengths of involvement with ALIS; teachers who had attended in‐service; and teachers of varying experience. The conclusions are linked to theories of change, cybernetics and a view of education which places researchers and other experts in a co‐investigator role with respect to teachers. The paper also argues that experimentation within school effectiveness research becomes a real possibility once credible monitoring systems have been established.     

Troubling teacher identity: preparing mathematics teachers to teach for diversity

This paper reports on an action research project designed to explore the complexities of pre‐service mathematics teacher resistance to social justice issues. Research on equity and mathematics education has indicated that such resistance seems particularly strong for mathematics teachers. Twelve pre‐service mathematics teachers participated in a course‐based research project to explore this issue. Participants completed a classroom discourse analysis and a self‐study narrative as part of their secondary mathematics methods course. The findings suggest that attention to issues of identity construction within school mathematics can be successfully embedded in methods courses in order to better prepare mathematics teachers to teach for diversity.     

Towards a Pedagogy of Short Story Writing

The article reports on a small‐scale short story writing project. It details the development of the project and shares the emerging findings. The aim of the project was to enhance the quality of students' writing while developing teachers' practice in the teaching of short story writing. The project team comprised the author and four secondary teachers of English. The approach to story writing outlined here was influenced by the example of gaming, where players immerse themselves in a secondary world, confront situations which demand problem‐solving skills, progress through a number of stages, and find satisfaction in completing the game. The project explored the link between talking and thinking and the value given to putting forward tentative ideas, raising questions and solving problems in a collective manner, in a whole‐class teaching situation. The teachers used guided classroom talk to explore each stage in the composition of a story. They challenged students into better ways of thinking or more elaborate forms of explanation. The teachers asked ‘what if’ questions to open up possibilities for the young writers. The teachers also had to judge when best to seize the moment and move the students towards writing. A key issue for the project was to explore the extent to which the structured approach helped to liberate the imagination of the students and improve the quality of their writing.     

Girls’ Groups as a Component of Anti‐sexist Practice—one primary school's experience

The gender project I have been involved in was a practical response to theoretical concerns regarding the impact of the hidden curriculum and sex stereotyping in primary schools. The aim of the project was primarily to improve the level of achievement of the girls. Equally important was a desire to broaden curriculum experience into non‐stereotypical areas for both boys and girls. Unlike similar projects, Preston School's single sex groups were monitored throughout their duration. Consequently there are substantially more data on the attitudes of teachers, girls and boys towards gender than are normally available for such projects. This article constitutes an attempt by one of the teachers involved to evaluate the efficacy of Preston School's initiative within a theoretical framework that explores the wider issues of gendered subjectivity, male sexism and female self‐depreciation.     

Developing professionally: examining the value of an external agent to the professional growth of teachers experimenting with mobile digital technologies

This article presents and discusses findings related to the relationship between a university researcher acting as the external agent and three self-selected teachers involved in a professional learning and research project. The role of an external agent in supporting teachers’ professional development is of interest because it has not always been a role that has benefited teachers. The focus centres on how these three teachers viewed this role at the end of a two-year partnership. The wider project is centred on developing these teachers’ proficiency and knowledge of the value of iPads to both their own professional growth and classroom practices as well as their students’ learning. Some digital aspects of the project have already been addressed by Wright and colleagues, but not the perceptions of teachers regarding what value they put on the external agent role. Bevins and Price’s conception of school/university partnerships inspired this focus on wondering about the impact of the researcher acting as an external agent intersecting with teachers’ professional lives as we tracked their progress in using the iPads.     

Learning to design and implement educational web sites within pre‐service training: a project‐based learning environment and its impact on student teachers

This paper reports on a project‐based learning (PBL) environment targeted towards introducing student teachers to the design and development of educational web sites. The participants were 46 student teachers who constructed 16 web sites for primary school. A survey of their views, before and after the projects, and an evaluation of the web sites created by them were conducted with a view to assessing their responses to the learning environment, its impact on them, as well as the challenges faced during web site creation. The results showed that the PBL approach has been motivational and effective regarding the acquisition of web site design and development skills. The participants demystified the process of educational web site creation and became more interested in and self‐confident about it, although they encountered certain difficulties in image processing, file management and design of navigational structures.     

Long‐term effects of a programme for teacher training

Abstract

The long‐term effects of a three‐week training programme for new teachers have been studied. A questionnaire was sent to all those who participated in the years 1988‐1992. The directors of study of ten departments were also interviewed. The teachers, who were mainly graduate students, say the training has been of use to them by increasing their self confidence, leading to a deeper understanding of the teaching/learning process or providing new teaching skills. All directors of study report positive effects in the teachers. Six consider there have been spreading effects within the department. Teachers and directors of study agree that the priority given to research over teaching is a major obstacle for anyone who wishes to invest time and energy in teaching. A conclusion is that the teachers who took part in the training programme acquired skills and attitudes of use to them in their work. Some suggestions are made on how to improve the programme. However, the most important change to improve teaching would be to alter the relative value of teaching and research.     

Growing Talent for Inclusion: using an appreciative inquiry approach into investigating classroom dynamics

This paper reports on an Appreciative Inquiry project called ‘Growing Talent for Inclusion’ which has been running since 2002. The project grew out the authors’ work in a Local Authority Support Service assisting schools to meet the needs of pupils with a range of additional educational needs. Faced with a large number of individual referrals, many relating to the emotional, social and behavioural needs of pupils, it was considered that an eco – systemic approach was required and that a priority was to support pupils and teachers in developing more effective and satisfying interpersonal relationships in the classroom. ‘Growing Talent for Inclusion’ uses Appreciative Inquiry to investigate a management change process which has been used within large organisations and communities but less commonly at classroom level. It is a type of action research which is solution not problem focused and therefore lends itself well to a research focus of improving classroom dynamics. The paper introduces a 4‐D Cycle of Appreciative Inquiry: discovery, dream, design and deliver, as advocated by Cooperrider and Srivastva, 1987, which guides the identification, acknowledgment and amplification of skills pertinent to improving social dynamics within the classroom and discusses the methodological issues which arise from this collaborative, participative form of inquiry. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods has been used to identify and track the development of attributes for improving working relationships in four different primary and secondary classrooms in three schools. 76 pupils and four teachers have been involved in the project since its inception in 2002 with classes in a further three primary schools using the approach during the academic year 2005–2006. Findings from the project show an increase in the number of pupils with whom other pupils are happy to work, a reduction in the number of pupils identified as socially excluded at the beginning of the project and enhanced capacity of the group in terms of the talents identified for growth. Feedback from staff and students also suggests that the process of noticing and acknowledging strengths has contributed to improvements in working relationships.     

Evidence‐based practice and teacher action‐research: a reflection on the nature and direction of ‘change’

This study was conceived as an opportunity to reflect on the place of action‐research in the contested landscape of educational change in the UK where increasing emphasis has been put on the use of evidence to drive reform. In the context of a government‐sponsored project in Scotland, this study looked at the impact of a scholarship initiative supporting classroom teachers to undertake action‐research projects on a topic of their own choice with the assistance of a mentor. Data collected from interviews with teachers and analysis of teacher action‐research reports pointed to a multi‐faceted concept of practice unfolding from individual inquiry and dialogical conversations with colleagues and university mentors. The study argues for further analysis of the use of action‐research as a means to develop teachers’ knowledge and to recover the value of collective and creative engagements in education to guide reform.