A qualitative literature review of educational games in the classroom: the teacher’s pedagogical activities

The interest towards research on learning games is continuously growing, however, the integration of games in teaching is still a somewhat unexplored area of study. In this qualitative literature review, we were interested in the pedagogical foundations that underpin empirical studies and especially in the teacher’s role/activities regarding the use of games in education. The data collection method was based on the systematic literature review models. The data consisted of 35 articles that were coded by using interpretive approach. The results indicate that the teacher’s role was pedagogically active in 21 articles. The teacher’s pedagogical activities became evident in various game-based learning processes: in planning, in orientation, during the gaming, and after the game-play sessions.     

‘Doing identity’ in the Botswana classroom: negotiating gendered institutional identities

Drawing on post-structural and post-colonial conceptions of gender, this paper explores multiple student masculinities and femininities in the classrooms of four junior secondary schools in Botswana. These gendered identities, it is argued, are negotiated within broader institutional constraints that have been socio-historically produced. Such constraints include the colonial legacy of heavily authoritarian (and inherently gendered) teacher-student relations, which in turn are sustained (and resisted) through the practice of English as the medium of instruction, and a punitive disciplinary regime, which has corporal punishment at its core. Three similar gender performances are identified for both girls and boys: ‘good classroom students’, ‘classroom rebels’, and ‘docile bodies’, though these are discursively produced and interpreted differently, against the norms of masculinity and femininity, and within a pervasive and stereotypical binary gender ideology.     

What’s in a name: dimensions of social learning in teacher groups

Induced by a literature review, this paper presents a framework of dimensions and indicators highlighting the underpinning aspects and values of social learning within teacher groups. Notions of social networks, communities of practice and learning teams were taken as the main perspectives to influence this social learning framework. The review exercise resulted in four dimensions: (1) practice, (2) domain and value creation, (3) collective identity and (4) organization. The indicators corresponding to these dimensions serve as the foundation for understanding social learning in practice. The framework of dimensions and indicators can be of assistance for researchers as well as teacher groups that aim to assess their views on social learning and analyse whether these views fit the learning goals of the group or that adjustments are required. In this way, learning processes within groups of teachers can be improved.     

A language teacher’s agency in the development of her professional identities: A narrative case study

This narrative case study examined how a Hispanic language teacher invested agency while developing professional identities in different contexts. A recursive analysis of interviews and journal entries indicated that the participant’s English language learning experience, the discrimination and marginalization in the work environments, and the knowledge gained through graduate studies all shaped her agency and professional identities development. The findings highlight the complex links among and significant roles of ethnic and racial background, past experience, and power differentials in shaping the dynamic nature of teacher agency and identities.     

From LSA to teacher: the value of classroom experience in shaping a ‘teacher’ identity

Routes into teacher training have expanded in recent years, accompanied by a growing interest in schools ‘growing their own’ teachers from amongst support staff. However, little attention has been paid to their transition to the role of teacher. This article investigates influences on identity development and the extent to which personal values are reconciled with professional demands and socially constructed facets of educational practice. Participants were nine staff in one secondary school for pupils with moderate learning difficulties who had undertaken the transition from LSA (learning support assistant) to teacher. Qualitative data were obtained through an online survey and focus group discussion. Findings show that extensive opportunities to experiment with provisional and possible selves, immersion in educational discourse, classroom agency and staff collaboration engender a ‘teacher’ self-concept and positive motivations for LSA career development, and that self-esteem and self-efficacy are strengthened by how an individual’s values align with those of the setting in which they work. Findings may inform school leaders as to the value of training teachers ‘in-house’ and support career development decisions of LSAs, a pathway of potential significance given the current pressures on teacher recruitment and retention.     

Third and fourth grade teacher’s classroom practices in writing: a national survey

A random sample of teachers in grades 3 and 4 (N = 157) from across the United States were surveyed about their use of evidence-based writing practices, preparation to teach writing, and beliefs about writing. Teachers’ beliefs included their efficacy to teach writing, their orientations to teach writing, their attitude about teaching writing, and their attitudes about their own writing. The teachers’ responses raised some concerns about the quality of writing instruction third- and fourth-grade students receive, as teachers reported spending only 15 min a day teaching writing and students spend only 25 min a day at school writing. While teachers indicated they used a variety of evidence based writing practices in their classroom, a majority of these were applied infrequently. Further, three out of every four teachers reported that their college teacher preparation programs provided no or minimal instruction on how to teach writing. They further rated their preparation to teach writing lower than their preparation to teach reading, math, science, or social studies. On a more positive note, a majority of teachers asked students to write multiple paragraph texts relatively frequently (4 times a month or more often) and complete at least one narrative, informative, and persuasive writing assignment monthly. Teachers were also generally positive about teaching writing, their efficacy to teach writing, and their beliefs about their own writing. Finally, efficacy to teach writing and philosophical orientations to teaching writing each made a unique contribution to predicting teachers’ use of evidence based practices, whereas teacher preparation did the same for reported time spent teaching writing and reported time students wrote at school and home.     

The impact of the social environment on the student teacher’s agency

This paper explores the agency of student teachers during the Post/Professional Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) year at a Higher Education Institution in England. It presents part of the findings of a year-long investigation into the reflective practice of student teachers during the PGCE year. The multi-method study includes surveying student teachers (n = 101) and longitudinal interviews with student teachers (n = 6). One of the aims of the study was to investigate the impact of the social environment on the student teacher. The research analysis found that the complex environment the student teachers exist in can be both supportive and constraining.     

Dispositions in the field: viewing mathematics teacher education through the lens of Bourdieu’s social field theory

Mathematics teacher educators are confronted with numerous challenges and complexities as they work to inspire prospective teachers to embrace inquiry-based pedagogies. The research study described in this paper asks what a teacher educator and faculty advisor can learn from prospective secondary mathematics teachers as they construct (and are constructed by) official pedagogical discourses embedded in mathematics classrooms. Drawing on the theoretical constructs of Bourdieu, I present several pervasive discourses, or dispositions, as storied by prospective mathematics teachers. These discourses highlight prospective teachers’ negotiations of conflicting habitus-field fits during their teacher education field experience. The reflections put forth in this paper offer insights into the roles of mathematics teacher educators and teacher education programs in general.     

Developing identities in the workplace: students’ experiences of distance early childhood teacher education

In Aotearoa New Zealand, many early childhood teachers gain their teaching qualification via distance study while working in an early childhood centre. Early childhood teachers work in a team environment, and it is important to understand more about how distance students negotiate changes in their workplace practice as their professional knowledge develops. This article draws on a study that explores students’ experiences of distance teacher education as a process of changing participation in the workplace. Distance study supported increasingly confident participation as students saw more meaning in their daily work. The students’ identities and their workplace cultures and practices influenced what students paid attention to and the decisions they made when negotiating changes within their teams. Their experiences suggest that strengthening students’ relational agency at work is a useful focus for distance early childhood teacher education programmes.     

Enhancing students’ mathematical reasoning in the classroom: teacher actions facilitating generalization and justification

A proof is a connected sequence of assertions that includes a set of accepted statements, forms of reasoning and modes of representing arguments. Assuming reasoning to be central to proving and aiming to develop knowledge about how teacher actions may promote students’ mathematical reasoning, we conduct design research where whole-class mathematical discussions triggered by exploratory tasks play a key role. We take mathematical reasoning as making justified inferences and we consider generalizing and justifying central reasoning processes. Regarding teacher actions, we consider inviting, informing/suggesting, supporting/guiding and challenging actions can be identified in whole-class discussions. This paper presents design principles for an intervention geared to tackle such reasoning processes and focuses on a whole-class discussion on a grade 7 lesson about linear equations and functions. Data analysis concerns teacher actions in relation to design principles and to the sought mathematical reasoning processes. The conclusions highlight teacher actions that lead students to generalize and justify. Generalizations may arise from a central challenging action or from several guiding actions. Regarding justifications, a main challenging action seems to be essential, while follow-up guiding actions may promote a further development of this reasoning process. Thus, this paper provides a set of design principles and a characterization of teacher actions which enhance students’ mathematical reasoning processes such as generalization and justification.     

Inside a beginning immigrant science teacher’s classroom: an ethnographic study

Teaching is a highly personal endeavor shaped by ‘funds of knowledge’ and beliefs about teaching, learning, and students. This case study examines how one Asian immigrant teacher’s personal expectations and beliefs influenced his expectations of students and the teaching and instructional strategies he employed. His expectations of students’ behavior and their failure to conform to his expectations influenced him to utilize more traditional, didactic instructional practices and responses to classroom management dilemmas. It is generally assumed that immigrant and minority students will benefit from exposure to teachers from similar backgrounds, and that ethnically diverse teachers can better prepare minority students for the multicultural workplace and global economy. This study focuses on the role a teacher’s background and experiences play in development of their beliefs about teaching and learning, their expectations of students, and the instructional decisions they make regarding teaching and learning. This study suggests that teachers draw on their personal histories and cultural understandings to create classroom practices which are molded by microcosms of personal ‘funds of knowledge’ and beliefs about teaching and learning. In contrast to conventional wisdom and unquestioned myths, this study emphasizes the importance of knowing that teachers’ cultural backgrounds do not necessarily qualify them to provide the most appropriate instructional environment for students from similar cultural backgrounds. This study suggests that all teachers need to learn to recognize and negotiate the unique social elements culturally diverse students bring to the classroom.     

Students’ use of power in the classroom: An investigation of student power,teacher power,and teacher immediacy

The purposes of this study were to examine: (1) students’ use of power to gain compliance from instructors, (2) the association between students’ use of power and their instructors’ power, and (3) students’ use of power and the nonverbal immediacy of the instructor. The results revealed that even though students did not feel they had a great amount of influence with their instructors, they used a variety of behavior alteration techniques (BATs) to gain compliance from them. Specifically, students reported using prosocial strategies most frequently and antisocial techniques least frequently. The results also revealed a positive association between students’ overall sense of power and their perception of their teachers’ power. Instructors’ use of reward power was also related to students’ use of prosocial BATs. Conversely, instructors’ use of coercive power was associated with students’ antisocial BATs. Finally, students tended to use expert power more with nonverbally immediate teachers than nonimmediate teachers. Students’ use of BATs did not depend upon the nonverbal immediacy of the instructor. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.     

‘Just a Minute ...’—managing interruptions in the junior school classroom

This study uses a continuum to exemplify the range of interruptions experienced by teachers in junior schools. Further clarification is supplied by the matrix, showing sources and types of interruptions.

Reasons for the transformation of ‘interruptions’ into ‘disruptions’ are also discussed, substantiated where possible by selection from the available literature. Further illustrative material is taken from interviews with 12 head teachers and 13 class teachers. Non‐participant observations of 16 of these teachers, working in 11 schools, over a period of six months, provide the data about actual interruptions.

Analyses of these data provide information about the types and frequency of interruptions and evidence of how teachers manage them. Teachers’ ‘coping strategies’ are thus identified and ways of minimising interruptions are examined. The differences between ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive’ class management are considered and the effects of both upon teachers’ effectiveness is debated.     

Towards the real-time evaluation of collaborative activities: Integration of an automatic rater of collaboration quality in the classroom from the teacher’s perspective

This paper presents the integration of a real time evaluation method of collaboration quality in a monitoring application that supports teachers in class orchestration. The method is implemented as an automatic rater of collaboration quality and studied in a real time scenario of use. We argue that automatic and semi-automatic methods which provide assessments of collaboration quality or detect disorders and anomalies in collaborative activities should be further used to assist class monitoring. To that end, we study the routine of teachers when they monitor computer-supported collaborative activities with respect to the size of the classroom and the support of an automatic rater. We focus on the way the rater affects their task and how it can be further used to empower the practice of teachers.     

Emotional identification with teacher identities in student teachers’ narrative interaction

The paper suggests that narrative interaction in student teacher peer groups is an important context for emotional identification with culturally available teacher identities. It addresses issues pointed out as problematic in research on teacher identity formation: focus on the individual and the underestimation of context. A positioning analysis of narrative interaction in a conversation between two student teachers depicts the ways in which they express and negotiate feelings related to out loud reading. The results show that this approach can be a complement to the extensive body of knowledge on the place of emotions in teacher identity formation as it shows how emotions are negotiated among student teachers in a way that challenges the predominant focus on individual students’ expressions of emotions.     

Computing in the curriculum: Challenges and strategies from a teacher’s perspective

Computing is being introduced into the curriculum in many countries. Teachers’ perspectives enable us to discover what challenges this presents, and also the strategies teachers claim to be using successfully in teaching the subject across primary and secondary education. The study described in this paper was carried out in the UK in 2014 where teachers were preparing for the mandatory inclusion of Computing into the curriculum. A survey was conducted of over 300 teachers who were currently teaching Computing to elicit their perspectives on challenges and strategies. From the analysis of the data, extrinsic and intrinsic challenges were identified for both teachers and students. In addition, a variety of pedagogical strategies were recommended by teachers from their own practice. In categorising approaches taken by teaching to support students five key themes emerged: unplugged type activities, contextualisation of tasks, collaborative learning, developing computational thinking, and scaffolding programming tasks. Further investigation could support whether these strategies can alleviate the challenges of teaching and learning of Computing for students and teachers. In particular developing student resilience in Computing is seen as a challenge while not many strategies are suggested. The results of this study will be useful for teachers who are new to the teaching of Computing.