小学信息技术课堂中培养学生信息素养和综合能力

作为新世纪的学生,必须掌握信息技术能力才能在学习和发展上符合现代教育的标准。本文基于小学信息技术课堂中培养学生信息素养和综合能力的策略进行探究,首先分析了信息技术课程与信息素养,然后分析了其实施策略,从建立学生的信息意识、创新教学模式,激活课堂、积极创设实践活动、加强对学生的信息道德培养四方面进行阐述。     

Using Harry Potter to teach literacy: different approaches

The ubiquity of the Harry Potter phenomenon offers an opportunity to examine the different ways educators use popular books to teach reading. This study analyses a number of journal articles that address the Harry Potter novels as tools for the classroom. These articles show a great diversity of approaches. Government testing of discrete, assessable skills can dominate contemporary discussions of literacy, and the Harry Potter books are sometimes used to address these targets. Other educators use Harry Potter to teach children about multimedia technologies. Most often, educators who embrace the Harry Potter novels affirm the value of reading for pleasure. This view often also promotes reading as a route to the critical literacy goal of social inclusion and the psychological development of the child. Taken together, these uses of Harry Potter present a confused picture, with no clear agreement on what good reading is or how it should be taught.     

Social capital and home literacy engagement: case studies of low-SES single mothers' access to literacy resources

Drawing on the theory of social capital, this paper explores how difference in mothers' social networks might impact on low‐SES' children's literacy development at home. A cross‐case analysis of the influence of two low‐SES single‐mothers' social networks on their children's home literacy practices suggests that difference in mother's social capital has a disparate impact on their access to literacy resources, their home literacy engagement with their children, and their interaction/connection with school teachers and contributes to their children's differential school literacy achievement. The findings suggest that for low‐SES children to achieve school success, parents must be able to access resources that support their ability to engage in literacy activities that align with those valued in the school. Therefore, there is a need for schools and teachers to provide not only services that allow more networking opportunities but also support to understand school‐literacy practices and expectations for low‐SES families, especially single‐parents who might be more socially isolated.     

Assessment for learning: using programmatic assessment requirements as an opportunity to develop information literacy and data skills in undergraduate students

Departments and programmes in higher education are required to participate in an increasing number of programme, course and student assessments. These assessment requirements are also opportunities to develop student skills related to scientific literacy and research, if students are included in the process of developing, administering and interpreting these assessments. This paper describes a course designed to build student research skills through incorporating undergraduate students into the process of programme review for a psychology department, a comprehensive assessment required of this department every five years. This course proved to be an effective way to engage students, as students developed and administered assessment surveys, analysed and interpreted results, and prepared both a professional report for the department as well as a research presentation. The paper discusses recommended course activities, and shows how this opportunity can benefit students and faculty in a myriad of ways.     

Information literacy for first-year students: an embedded curriculum approach

The ability to access, evaluate and synthesise high-quality research material is the backbone of critical thinking in academic and professional contexts for Engineers and Industrial Designers. This is the premise upon which teaching and library staff developed Information Literacy (IL) components in Engineering & Industrial Design Practice—a first-year unit of study in the School of Engineering at the University of Western Sydney. This paper documents the IL teaching and learning experience and evaluates and reflects upon how effective it was at helping students navigate their first tertiary level research tasks. It concludes that library sessions and assessment tasks were effective in introducing IL skills in concurrent development of critical thinking, based on feedback from library sessions, an online IL test, and assessment results.     

Making sense of carbon footprints: how carbon literacy and quantitative literacy affects information gathering and decision-making

Abstract

Popular media often reports on the carbon footprint of certain activities, items or people. We were curious to explore how people make sense of these news pieces, and specifically, whether and how carbon literacy (CL) and quantitative literacy (QL) influences their reasoning. We interviewed and surveyed students of various backgrounds using simulated news pieces of three carbon footprints: that of Facebook, that of the US dairy industry, and that of the US chocolate industry. We found that being highly carbon or quantitatively literate influenced participants’ reaction – but only while they were gathering information about the prompts. The effect of literacies disappeared when they were asked to decide whether the carbon footprint was worrisome or which they would tackle first as a policy-maker. We describe and categorize the strategies students used to make sense of carbon footprints, and link the frequency of using particular strategies to their carbon and quantitative literacy. Implications for future research and environmental education are discussed.     

Women,literacy and health: comparing health and education sectoral approaches in Nepal

Functional adult literacy interventions have been regarded for many decades by policy makers as an effective way of imparting health knowledge. Supported by research on the statistical relationships between women’s literacy rates and health indicators, this dominant policy discourse is based on assumptions that non-literate women lack understanding and confidence, and that formal programmes and institutions constitute the main sites of learning. Proposing a broader conceptualisation of literacy as a social practice and of health as connected with social justice, this article draws on policy analysis and the authors’ earlier research in Nepal to re-examine the relationship between gender, literacy and health. By comparing health and literacy approaches used within the education and health sectors and taking account of new and indigenous informal learning practices, the article points to ways of investigating the complex interaction of factors that influence inequalities in gender and health at community level.     

Researching literacy in context: using video analysis to explore school literacies

This article addresses how methodological approaches relying on video can be included in literacy research to capture changing literacies. In addition to arguing why literacy is best studied in context, we provide empirical examples of how small, head‐mounted video cameras have been used in two different research projects that share a common aim: understanding the complex ways in which literacy is a part of school practices. The complexity of literacy practices taking place in classrooms, where students draw on a number of texts for a variety of purposes and different literacy discourses co‐exist in the same setting, poses a serious challenge for those who wish to study literacy in educational settings. The methodology presented in this article is our attempt to meet this challenge. Our approach relies on using video equipment in innovative ways to capture multiple perspectives, involving research participants in the data collection process and the early stages of analysis, and analysing video data with digital coding software. These methods are combined to obtain a more systematic and detailed insight into the contexts in which literacy takes place.     

信息化环境下幼儿教师信息素养现状及培养策略研究

21世纪教育的信息化进程得到了快速发展,因此各阶段教师的信息素养也成为社会关注的焦点。幼儿作为祖国的未来和希望,学前教学的信息化至关重要,而且信息素养也是当前衡量新时代幼儿教师的重要标准。文中对信息素养的概念做了简单的论述,并分析了现阶段幼儿教师信息素养缺失的原因,从多个角度提出了相应的培养策略,以期为提高幼儿教师信息素养起到一些借鉴性的意义。     

Discourse analysis in classrooms: approaches to language and literacy research

This study reports the results of an innovative assignment in which preservice teachers’ mental representations were examined through drawing floor plans of an “ideal middle-level mathematics classroom.” The 41 middle-level mathematics preservice teachers created two floor plans, one at the beginning of the semester and the other for the course final. An essay was also submitted describing how the final floor plan addressed the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics principle of Teaching. Participants designed and described floor plans that encouraged the use of inquiry and hands-on activities and technology as instructional strategies, focused on student learning styles and individual needs, established a comfortable, organized and safe learning environment, demonstrated flexibility in grouping strategies, and encouraged communication between peers and with the teacher. The essays also suggest that the preservice teachers’ emerging teacher identity was influenced by professional experiences such as field placements and peer lessons.     

Race and class silences in teacher education: resisting strategy-based approaches to literacy methods instruction

This article draws on qualitative and practitioner research methodologies to unpack one critical incident from an undergraduate literacy methods course in which possessing complex understandings of endemic poverty proved central to assessing student achievement. In particular, we use an example of a comprehension lesson based on the children’s book Leah’s Pony as a key example through which to consider the dangers inherent in teaching pre-service teachers to adopt strategies that seem universal and innocuous, like answering comprehension questions or filling in worksheets, outside of broader critiques of social class, racism, poverty and student positioning in schools.     

Worlds have collided and modes have merged: classroom evidence of changed literacy practices

Debates continue in public and in educational policy forums about the ‘basics’ of literacy while many have not recognised that these basics may never be the same again. Rapid changes in digital communication provide facilities for reading and writing to be combined with various and often quite complex aspects of music, photography and film. At the same time, educational policy and national testing requirements are still principally focused on the reading and writing of print‐based texts. This paper examines evidence from classroom research to analyse the nature of multimodal literacy, the literacy that is needed in contemporary times for reading, viewing, responding to and producing multimodal and digital texts. Examples of students' engagement in multimodal literacy are presented to demonstrate how classroom literacy practices can incorporate the practices of talking, listening, reading and writing together with processing the modes of written text, image, sound and movement in print and digital texts.     

Effective behavior management in preschool classrooms and children's task orientation: Enhancing emergent literacy and language development

This study investigated the relations among preschool teachers’ behavior management, children's task orientation, and children's emergent literacy and language development, as well as the extent to which task orientation moderated the relation between teachers’ behavior management and children's emergent literacy and language development. Participants included 398 children and 67 preschool teachers from preschool programs serving an at-risk population. Teachers’ behavior management was observationally assessed and children's task orientation was measured via teacher-report. Children's language and emergent literacy skills were directly assessed in the fall and in the spring of the preschool year. Hierarchical linear models were used to predict children's residualized gain in emergent literacy and language (i.e., Spring scores with Fall scores as covariates) from their task orientation and their teachers’ behavior management. Task orientation and behavior management each positively predicted children's emergent literacy development, but not language development. There was a significant interaction between teachers’ behavior management and children's task orientation in predicting children's language development, such that high scores on both variables were associated with the most optimal language outcomes. Implications for research and early education are discussed.     

Young learners: teachers' conceptualisation and practice of literacy in Australian preschool contexts

This paper examines how literacy is defined and enacted by teachers in early childhood programmes pointing to the differing ways views of early literacy impact practice. It is argued here that early literacy development during the years before school is dependent on children's experiences of having literacy activities modelled around them and the ways in which adults include them in their everyday literacy interactions. Early childhood teachers reveal differing understandings of early literacy during the years before formal school and this impacts their decisions concerning literacy activities and practice within their preschool rooms. Three early childhood teachers are presented here, through video clips and video-stimulated interviews around their literacy activities with preschool children. They demonstrate a range of practice which is shown to depend on their views of young children's literacy development. These vignettes have implications for further professional discussion and learning.     

Using web-based collaborative forecasting to enhance information literacy and disciplinary knowledge

This paper outlines how an existing collaborative forecasting tool called a prediction market (PM) can be integrated into an educational context to enhance information literacy skills and cognitive disciplinary knowledge. The paper makes a number of original contributions. First, it describes how this tool can be packaged as a pedagogical intervention which can be used in a range of contexts across multiple disciplines. This is illustrated by a case study, which describes the addition of a PM assignment to an undergraduate module. Second, using both quantitative and qualitative data, the paper empirically investigates the impact of PM participation on engagement in information search and cognitive disciplinary knowledge. Our results show that participant's behaviors are altered by the intervention, and that students actively search for information related to the forecasting problems presented. We also demonstrate that students' disciplinary knowledge is enhanced by the intervention.     

课程改革呼唤进一步增强中小学教师信息素养

信息时代的到来,特别是新一轮基础教育课程改革的实施,对中小学教师的信息素养提出了新的要求。广大中小学教师只有进一步提高自身的信息素养,才能够适应教育改革和形势发展的需要。     

The construct of media and information literacy in Singapore education system: global trends and local policies

This paper discusses the representation of information literacy and media literacy in the Singapore education discourse as part of its twenty-first century competencies framework. Through examining the conceptual definitions, purposes/aims, and means of these two significant twenty-first century competencies in the global context and the Singapore education policy, the authors argue that despite both information literacy and media literacy have been widely recognized as crucial skills in the knowledge-based economy, they are perceived as separate concepts, given differentiated emphasis, and implemented using similar approaches by various governmental and educational agencies in Singapore. To facilitate the acquisition of these critical competencies, this paper argues that an overarching framework featuring the seamless integration of information and media literacy in school curricula and public education needs to be in place to clarify conceptual concerns and guide its practical implementation.     

Family literacy as a third space between home and school: some case studies of practice

In this article, the relationship between literacy practices and spatiality is explored in the context of family literacy. The article draws on fieldwork in family literacy classrooms as part of two evaluations in Croydon and Derbyshire of family learning provision. Methods of evaluation included classroom observations in rural and suburban locations. In addition, teachers and parents were interviewed. In this instance, family learning included literacy and language activities with parents and children in school and nursery settings. These were learning spaces where parents and children collaborated on joint projects including book making, storytelling, the making of visual artefacts and reading and writing activities. The research revealed how family literacy classrooms could be understood as ‘third spaces’, between home and school, offering parents and children discursive opportunities drawing on both domains.     

The impact of interventions to prevent truancy: A review of the research literature

It is well established that truancy has a negative impact on pupils’ educational careers. Much more discussion is needed concerning the strategies and interventions that effectively help to remedy truancy. Therefore, this article provides an integrative review of interventions to prevent truancy. Sixteen empirical studies that reported on the effectiveness of an intervention were coded according to the research design, participants, effect size, and outcomes. In addition, attention was paid to implementation fidelity and the theoretical frameworks that underpinned each intervention. The results indicate truant students benefit in particular from interventions that are derived from the school bonding perspective. In the conclusion we elaborate on the implications of our findings and discuss recommendations for practice, policy, and research.     

Inequitable variations: a review of research in technology,literacy studies and special education

This essay presents the results of a review of research published in the last 10 years on the uses of what we term ‘productive’ digital technologies in special education contexts. There is little overlap between research on productive technologies such as digital storytelling in mainstream contexts and research on technology use to support literacy learning in special education classrooms. Analysis centred on theoretical frameworks, research methods, educational contexts and technologies used with children and youth labelled with special needs. The initial sample of refereed journal articles (n = 1,132) was reduced to 14 studies for review. Results suggest large variations in the knowledge base about why, how, when and to what effects productive technologies might be used with children labelled with special needs. The essay presents further areas for theorising and research in the juncture of these separate fields to address the inequitable variations and social justice issues engendered by current research and practice.