Teachers’ understanding of racial inequity predicts their perceptions of students’ behaviors

Teachers’ racialized interpretations of students’ behaviors likely lead to the racial disparities found in discipline across all education levels (Skiba et al., 2011). To explore how four types of teachers’ racial inequity beliefs (i.e., post-racial, American Dream, cultural deficit, schooling inequity) may be associated with teachers’ racialized interpretations of Black and White boys’ behaviors (i.e., hostility, emotionality, behavioral stability, and seriousness), a sample of 228 teachers in the United States filled out the Racism and Inequity Beliefs (RIB) Questionnaire and observed videotapes of six boys potentially misbehaving in school. Teachers’ cultural deficit beliefs uniquely predicted teachers’ negative perceptions of Black boys’ behaviors, with little to no impact on their perceptions of White boys’ behaviors. Specifically, teachers holding more cultural deficit beliefs perceived the Black boys’ behaviors as relatively more hostile, more representative of a behavioral pattern, and more serious compared to teachers who held fewer cultural deficit beliefs, and compared to their judgments of White boys’ behaviors. American Dream beliefs were also uniquely associated with assessments of Black boys’ behavior as more serious, without impact on White boys’ behavior. These results suggest the application of inequitable judgments of boys’ behaviors based on teachers’ racial inequity beliefs and boys’ identifiable race.     

Architecture students’ perceptions of their learning environment and their academic performance

Scholars have agreed that the way in which students perceive their learning environments influences their academic performance. Empirical studies that focus on architecture students, however, have been very scarce. This is the gap that an attempt is filled in this study. A questionnaire survey of 273 students in a school of architecture in Nigeria provided data for this pilot study. The perceptions of the students were best defined by the involvement of the students in their studies, the perceived support, and conduciveness of the learning environment. The students’ perceptions of their learning environment varied with their years of study, age and gender. Their perceptions of inflexibility of schedule, positive assessment, and fairness influenced the overall grades of students. The results suggests which aspects of learning environment that can be manipulated by architectural educators to improve the performance of their students. The study of the learning environment of architecture students still appears to be relatively unexplored. The value of this study therefore lies in its exploration of the perceptions of the learning environment from the point of view of students.     

College students’ perceptions of studying abroad and their readiness

This study aims to determine what college students believe is essential on studying abroad and investigates which programs they prefer for outbound study. The trend of globalization and expansion of higher education have resulted in changes for studying abroad programs in numerous Asian countries. In particular, the overprovided undergraduate and graduate education system in Taiwan raises questions on how college students perceive such outbound study. This paper collected survey data from 219 college students at 2 universities in Taiwan to analyze their opinions and levels of readiness on studying abroad programs. This study applied fuzzy methods to transform the data and interpret the results, and the findings showed that gender and college major influence student perceptions on the importance of studying abroad, as well as their readiness to study abroad. Typically, women exhibit more preparedness for studying abroad than their male counterparts. Following the expansion of higher education in Taiwan, more students are considering studying abroad programs for short-term stay in foreign countries. According to the patterns of perception, this study built fuzzy models to explain the consistency of importance and levels of readiness on studying abroad. The results reveal that fuzzy statistics can be used for proper interpretation of the factors influencing students to study abroad and their readiness.     

Broadening communication yet holding back: Teachers’ perceptions of their relationship with students in the SNS-era

Teacher-student relationship is vital for students’ academic, emotional and social development, as well as for teachers’ professional and personal development. This quantitative study examines teacher-student communication and relationship on Facebook among secondary school teachers (N = 180). We examined teachers’ attitudes towards: a) a policy that bans teacher-student Facebook connections; b) using Facebook for learning. Overall, teachers were interested in broadening communication channels with students, in order to empower learning and interpersonal relationship. However, teachers also maintain traditional teacher-student differentiation; they approve using Facebook for learning and disagree with a banning policy, but also prefer using a professional profile for interacting with their students. Data regarding teachers’ perceptions of relationship with their students and SNS-mediated communication present issues regarding means of communication, attitudes towards the policy of banning SNS, standpoints on using Facebook for learning, and preferred profile for communicating with students. We discuss these issues in light of academic, pedagogical, and inter-personal implications.     

Mixed emotions: teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with students

This paper describes the conceptual framework, methodology, and some results from a project on the Emotions of Teaching and Educational Change. It introduces the concepts of emotional intelligence, emotional labor, emotional understanding and emotional geographies. Drawing on interviews with 53 teachers in 15 schools, the paper then describes key differences in the emotional geographies of elementary and secondary teaching. Elementary teaching is characterized by physical and professional closeness which creates greater emotional intensity; but in ambivalent conditions of classroom power, where intensity is sometimes negative. Secondary teaching is characterized by greater professional and physical distance leading teachers to treat emotions as intrusions in the classroom. This distance, the paper argues, threatens the basic forms of emotional understanding on which high-quality teaching and learning depend.     

Teachers’ estimates of their students’ motivation and engagement: being in synch with students

Being aware of, monitoring and responding constructively to students’ signals of motivation and to students’ signals of engagement represent two important teaching skills. We hypothesised, however, that teachers would better estimate their students’ engagement than they would estimate their students’ motivation. To test this hypothesis, Korean high-school teachers rated three aspects of motivation and four aspects of engagement for each student in their class, while students completed questionnaires to provide referent self-reports of these same aspects of their motivation and engagement. Multi-level analyses showed that, after statistically controlling for the potentially confounding information of student achievement, teachers’ engagement estimates corresponded significantly to their students’ self-reports while their motivation estimate did not. These findings validate teachers’ skill in inferring their students’ classroom engagement and lead to the recommendation that teachers monitor classroom engagement to be in synch with their students during instruction.     

Teachers’ assessments of students’ learning of mathematics

This paper reports a study of the classroom assessment practices of 12 sixth form college mathematics teachers in Malta. It explores the extent to which these teachers are knowledgeable about their students’ learning of mathematics and the implications that this has for their classroom practices. It reveals that these teachers’ knowledge of their students’ understanding of certain mathematical concepts is fairly limited. It then goes on to discuss this phenomenon in terms of a process that can hinder rather than promote learning. The research illuminates the position of teachers who appear to lack certain detailed information about their students which, it can be argued, could inform more effective teaching strategies. The paper concludes by exploring possible implications for similar situations where learning could be enhanced by more effective classroom assessment strategies and their use to inform future teaching and learning activities.     

Teachers’ perceptions of student evaluations of teaching

Evaluation of teaching in higher education has drawn much attention due to the need for greater accountability and improvement in student learning. Our review of literature on Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) surveys suggests that considerable controversy and criticism have surrounded its use, fairness, and validity. Yet, many universities in Hong Kong are depending primarily on student feedback in SET surveys to provide evidence for their improvement of teaching and learning, and for their decisions made on teachers' pay-rise and tenure. If universities are to continue to use SET surveys as the main source of mechanism for measuring teaching effectiveness, teachers will have to understand and be aware of its purposes. But how much do we know about teachers' perceptions of teaching and learning and, consequently, their opinions of using SET surveys as the primary standardized evaluation mechanism of teaching for promotion and tenure and for teaching effectiveness?     

Teachers’ perceptions of bullying among youth

A series of 48 vignettes of bullying was constructed by crossing (a) four kinds of social contact (physical aggression, verbal aggression, relational aggression, and non-aggression) with (b) male and female bullies, (c) male and female and victims, and (d) reaction of the victim (aggressive, passive, and no reaction). Teachers rated vignettes for seriousness. Physical aggression was perceived as more serious than any other kind of bullying, and vignettes that depicted female bullies and male victims were perceived as least serious across all kinds of bullying. Results are discussed in terms of applied implications for teachers in school settings and directions for future research.     

Teachers’ differing perceptions of classroom disturbances

Background: Efficient classroom management and adequate discipline are major issues for teachers in schools worldwide, with the guiding of students’ behaviour as one of the primary challenges. Teachers’ knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour play central roles in the appropriate handling of classroom disturbances.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how practising teachers perceive classroom disturbances and to compare their views to those presented in the literature. By clarifying typical perceptions, this research is intended to give individual teachers tools to develop their insights by comparing their perceptions with those of other teachers.

Sample: The empirical material was collected by interviewing 14 home economics teachers in Finland. Home economics is a school subject that involves individual and group work as well as theoretical and practical work. In Finland, home economics is a compulsory subject for students aged 13–15 years, which are challenging ages in regard to classroom management.

Design and methods: The empirical research was completed via deep, qualitative theme interviews for data gathering and phenomenography for analysis.

Results: The analysis identified five dimensions in which interviewees expressed varying views of classroom disturbances: who or what disturbs, whose work is disturbed, why students disturb, who is responsible and how to prevent classroom disturbances. Based on the various perceptions within each dimension, the main perceptions for understanding classroom disturbances can be condensed into four categories: unavoidable nuisance, deficient resources, the matter of atmosphere and educational task.

Conclusions: Teachers who wish to develop their classroom management skills may use these findings as tools to compare their perceptions with those of other teachers. This knowledge may also be useful for developing teacher education.     

Identifying exemplary science teachers through students’ perceptions of their learning environment

The purpose of this study was to examine students’ psychosocial perceptions of their science classroom learning environment in order to identify exemplary teachers. This mixed-method study used the valid and reliable What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) questionnaire with over 3,000 middle school students in 150 classrooms in Australia. Exemplary teachers were defined as those whose students’ perceptions were more than one standard deviation above the mean for three of the five scales of Student Cohesiveness, Teacher Support, Involvement, Task Orientation and Equity. The reliability of the WIHIC scales ranged from 0.75 to 0.87. Eta² showed that the WIHIC was able to distinguish between the perceptions of the students in the classroom. The construct validity of the WIHIC for identifying these exemplary teachers was confirmed through interviews with students and these views are reported in the article.     

Teachers’ perceptions of assessments of their mathematical knowledge in a professional development course

The purpose of the project reported in this article was to evaluate how assessing teachers’ mathematical knowledge within a professional development course impacted from the teachers’ perspective their learning and their experience with the course. The professional development course consisted of a 2-week summer institute and the content focus was geometry. We had decided to assess the mathematical learning of the teachers during this professional development course for various accountability reasons, but were concerned about possible negative by-products of this decision on the teachers and their participation. Thus, we worked to design assessment in ways that we hoped would minimize negative impacts and maintain a supportive learning environment. In addition, we undertook this evaluation to examine the impacts of the assessment, which included homework, quizzes, various projects, and an examination for program evaluation. Seventeen grade 5–9 teachers enrolled in the course participated in the study by completing written reflections and by describing their experiences in interviews. We learned that while our original intent was “to do no harm,” the teachers reported that their learning was enhanced by the assessment. The article concludes by describing the various properties of the assessments that the teachers identified as contributing to their learning of the geometry content, many of which align with current recommendations for assessing and evaluating grade K-16 mathematics students.

Teachers’ perceptions of school climate as an indicator of their beliefs of effective teaching

The ability to express oneself clearly in both a mother tongue and a foreign language is a foundation principle of the new national curriculum in Estonia. Therefore, research was conducted to determine whether there was a possible relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ perceptions of effective teaching and the contextual evaluation of the school. The aim of this article is to describe the relationship between the perceptions of school climate and effective teaching among EFL teachers. The study revealed that EFL teachers’ perceptions of the school climate correlate to some extent with their perceptions of effective teaching practices, with some differences between teachers of Estonian-language schools compared with those of Russian-language schools. The research also highlighted that senior management should place more emphasis on creating a cooperative school climate for developing a learner-centred teaching approach as one of the foundation principles of the new national curriculum.     

Teachers’ perceptions of students’ additional support needs: in the eye of the beholder?

Nowadays, teachers are regarded as key players in the process of identifying and catering to students’ additional support needs within mainstream primary classrooms. However, teachers’ professional judgements regarding students with special needs have been found to be contextually influenced (e.g. by school context, student population, level of achievement). It is unclear whether teachers’ perceptions of their students’ actual support needs are also influenced by their personal and professional characteristics. Hence, a better understanding of the value of teachers’ perceptions regarding students’ needs is needed. Therefore, this study explored perceptions of 109 Dutch mainstream primary teachers regarding four dimensions of students’ additional support. It addressed whether these teacher-perceived students’ needs are affected by teachers’ years of experience, level of training, personality traits and self-efficacy beliefs. It was found that teachers’ perceptions of students’ needs were relatively unbiased by their personal and professional characteristics.     

Israeli college students’ perceptions of internationalisation

In the last two decades, higher education institutions have invested significant resources to internationalise, due to economic, political, academic and cultural pressures. Students play a dual role in this process: as customers, selecting institutions based on respective reputations (including the international dimension) and as outputs of institutional internationalisation processes aiming to produce internationally oriented graduates. Universities aspire towards integration of international, global and intercultural dimensions as main aims of higher education, reflecting the upsurging prominence of cosmopolitan capital among their future graduates. Indeed, cosmopolitanism is increasingly considered desirable on individual and institutional levels. Using data from a student survey (n = 1650) gathered at seven geographically and otherwise diverse colleges in Israel, this paper investigates Israeli college students’ perceptions of internationalisation and estimation of their institutions’ internationalisation activities. Parents’ education, previous experiences abroad, proficiency in English and institutional efforts to internationalise were found to positively impact students’ perceptions of on-campus internationalisation initiatives and characteristics. Such differences were also found to relate to the university’s general status and context. This paper presents the findings of the survey and discusses possible implications for policy and practice at institutional and national levels.     

Teachers adapt their instruction according to students’ academic performance

This study examined the extent to which a student’s academic performance in first grade contributes to the active instruction given by a teacher to a particular student. To investigate this, 105 first graders were tested in mathematics and reading in the fall and spring of their first school year. At the same time points, their teachers filled in a questionnaire on five successive days on the active instruction they have given a particular student. The results showed that the poorer the performance in reading a student showed in fall, the more active instruction teachers reported giving a student in spring. Moreover, the poorer the performance in mathematics a student showed in fall, the more active instruction less-experienced teachers reported giving that particular student in spring. The giving of active instruction by less-experienced teachers also contributed to an increase in children’s subsequent performance in mathematics.     

Teachers’ perceptions of the inclusion of marginalised groups

This paper is based on the concept of inclusion as a process of recognising and minimising the barriers to learning and participation of all children, with teachers as the key players in implementing inclusion in practice. There are two key questions: (1) How do teachers rank different groups of marginalised children? (2) How do teachers see their own role, the role of the marginalised and other children, and their parents in the inclusion process? The groups included in the research were children with special needs, migrants from former Yugoslavia, Roma/Gypsies and children from poor families. In the latter group, it also looked at their counterparts, the children of wealthy parents. Research carried out on a representative sample of primary school teachers in Slovenia showed that children with special needs are among all surveyed groups of children those seen as the most helpless. For these children, teachers are also most likely to lower learning and discipline standards, while at the same time feeling the least qualified to teach them and seeing them also as having the lowest abilities. In the teachers’ opinion, parents of other children have the greatest reservations when their child associates with a Roma/Gypsy child, and teachers also put the least trust in Roma/Gypsy parents.     

Identifying exemplary science teachers through their students’ perceptions of the assessment process

This paper reports on part of a large‐scale study aimed at examining students’ perceptions of assessment. This paper will report on a study utilising mixed methodology in 150 Australian middle school classrooms. The purpose of the study described in this paper was to use the Students’ Perceptions of Assessment Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (SPAQ) to identify and describe exemplary science teachers. With a sample of over 3000 science students, the reliability of the SPAQ scales ranged from 0.62 to 0.82. The exemplary teachers were identified as those whose students’ perceptions were more than one standard deviation above the mean on three of the five scales of Congruence with planned learning, Transparency, Authenticity, Student consultation, and Diversity. The construct validity of the SPAQ to identify these exemplary teachers was confirmed through interviews with students and these views are reported in the article.