Panacea or nostrum? Open Educational Resources and the recontextualisation of pedagogy

Open Educational Resources (OERs) have become a global educational phenomenon because of claims that they are a panacea for issues of access and quality. However, little consideration has been given to the social significance of this digital platform, particularly for teachers and students in low-income countries. This article draws on Bernstein’s (2000) notion of recontextualisation to investigate the influence of structuring conditions on pedagogy within OERs. The findings of this research demonstrate how wider economic agendas have influenced the recontextualisation of pedagogy within OERs to de-centre learning from the pedagogic relationship.     

The perception problem: a comparison of teachers’ self-perceptions and students’ perceptions of instructional quality

Teachers’ self-perceptions and their students’ perceptions of the three basic dimensions of instructional quality were compared based on a sample of 171 classes and their teachers in German secondary education. Low to moderate correlations (r = .35 to .50) were found between the two perspectives. Differences in perceptions vary across teachers based on favorable and less favorable students’ assessments. Results from latent profile analyses based on perception combinations of teachers and their classes hint at four differential profiles, reflecting to a large extent patterns of under- and overestimation of people’s own competence identified in previous research. Significant differences in gender among individuals assigned to the four profiles could be found. Implications of identifying the divergence between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of instructional quality for reflective practice are discussed.

     

Socialization of new teachers: Does induction matter?

The present paper focuses on new teachers’ satisfaction with their first year of teaching from the perspective of socialization. The relationship between satisfaction with socialization and teacher background, school environment, placement, and induction variables was examined. Data were collected from 243 Israeli beginning teachers by means of questionnaire. Results indicated that satisfaction during the induction year was moderately high. Hierarchical regression analysis showed five significant predictor variables: ecological support from mentor, help from the principal, assistance from other colleagues, workload, and having already completed teaching training. Support from mentors and school colleagues had the greatest impact on new teachers’ assimilation.     

Comparing two constructs for describing and analyzing teachers’ diagnostic processes

Different constructs describe and analyze teachers’ diagnostic processes, in which situation-specific diagnostic skills are utilized to solve challenging situations of teaching and learning in class. This study compares two constructs—professional vision and diagnostic activities—with regard to their suitability for coding and analyzing data collected from interviews using think-aloud protocols with five in-service teachers, who worked in the video-based assessment tool DiKoBi Assess. For data collection, teachers watched a videotaped classroom situation on the biology-specific challenges level of students’ cognitive activities and creation of situational interest that both count as important subject-specific dimensions of instructional quality. Interviews using think-aloud protocols were transcribed and coded with distinct category systems for each construct. Analysis of coded data showed that both constructs covered several aspects of the diagnostic process. A crosstabulation of the coded data revealed that the combination of both constructs was best suited to describe and analyze the diagnostic process.     

Do parents’ and teachers’ views of children’s educational resilience matter?

This study set out to examine parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of children’s educational resilience. As expected, the parents attributed greater levels of educational resilience to their children than did the teachers. However, both the parents and teachers assessed the sixth graders’ educational resilience as higher than that of the third graders. The results suggest that perceptions of educational resilience may represent a different dimension from views relating to children’s achievement in school.     

Does training matter? Comparing the behaviour management strategies of pre-service teachers in a four-year program and those in a one-year program

Survey-based research was conducted with Australian pre-service teachers to identify the classroom management strategies that they would employ, their confidence in employing them, and the effectiveness of the strategies. Furthermore, the study aimed to identify significant differences in these variables between pre-service teachers in the final year of a four-year teacher training course and pre-service teachers undertaking a one-year, stand-alone teaching program. The results of this study indicate that the most frequently reported strategies by all the Australian pre-service primary teachers surveyed were rewards and initial corrections. The pre-service teachers were selective in the type of corrective strategies they would employ, with a preference for relatively less intrusive reactive strategies. All of the pre-service teachers here found rewards and preventative strategies to be the most effective. The only significant differences found between the four-year trained and one-year trained pre-service teachers were around preventative strategies. Specifically, four-year trained pre-service teachers employ preventative strategies significantly more often than pre-service teachers in the one-year teaching course. Similarly, four-year trained pre-service teachers are significantly more confident in using preventative strategies than those in the one-year course. The implications of the results for teacher education programs are considered.     

Students’ and teachers’ perspectives about quality of engineering education in Portugal

Quality in higher education is a subject of increasing importance. This idea can be supported by looking at different sources, namely, the scientific literature, national and transnational governments’ policies, such as those emerging from the Bologna Process. Also, the internationalisation of higher education and, within it, students’ and staff mobility among institutions, has brought to the agenda the quality issue, particularly with regard to the teaching and learning process. Several authors argue that the meaning of quality depends on who defines it. This article focuses on a study that looks at how teachers and students in higher education institutions, in Portugal and in the domain of Engineering, see the quality issue. Data was collected through interviews to teachers (six) and students (38) in two different Portuguese institutions. The results indicate that, although teachers and students refer to the same dimensions that influence quality, they have different perspectives about their importance. From the point of view of the authors, this discrepancy requires some pedagogical actions in the context where the study was developed and, also, further research to see if the same tendency exists in different settings.     

Educational software for improving learning aspects of Newton’s Third Law for student teachers

In this paper, we present the design, development, implementation and evaluation of educational software “Newton-3”, aiming at the learning of Newton’s Third Law by student-teachers who are not Physics majors. We describe the theoretical issues of our teaching approach and the various software tasks that we designed in order to promote students’ understanding. Specifically, the software is designed for the teaching of gravitational and electrostatic interactions between two distant bodies at rest. It is a web-based application and runs on a simple web browser with Macromedia Flash plug-in installed. The development of software and its integration into teaching–learning sequence is based on three main characteristics: the range of contexts in which the concept of force interaction applies, in the specification of the concept, and in an appropriate teaching learning environment (IDRF). We trialled the software on two groups of 8 primary school and 8 pre-school student-teachers, for 3 teaching periods, in the School of Education of our University. The research results indicate that the implementation was effective as the majority of the teacher-students improved their own knowledge concerning the existence and representation of gravitational and electrostatic interactions. An interesting result reveals that student-teachers have difficulty in perceiving the equality of magnitudes of action and reaction forces. This problem seems to be overcome after the teaching of the Inverse square law.     

New teachers’ perspectives of informal mentoring: quality of mentoring and contributors

As an individual socialization initiative, informal mentoring has often been lauded as an effective tool to provide spontaneous and immediate social–emotional and career-related assistance to new teachers. Little is known about how informal mentoring is perpetuated in workplace. Through the conceptual lens of dynamic process theory of mentoring, we seek to illuminate the interactional patterns of informal mentoring as manifested through its contributors and quality. The findings of our study reveal that social interaction, time, organizational contexts, and individual characteristics mediate the process of informal mentoring. Further, informal mentoring is limited primarily to seeking information and is low in frequency of interaction and follow-up activities. Finally, we discuss a number of practical and theoretical implications related to informal mentoring, including the advantage of a hybrid model of mentoring and the addition of social interactions as a mediating factor of the dynamic process theory of mentoring.     

What matters for rural teachers and communities? Educational challenges in rural Turkey

This research aims to unearth the educational challenges experienced by teachers and communities in rural Turkey. The research employs Nancy Fraser’s three dimensional justice approach – distribution, recognition and participation – to frame these challenges and to argue that rural challenges go beyond economic rationalities and concerns of infrastructure and resources. The study draws its data from 29 in-depth interviews with 20 teachers working in 16 different villages; 9 interviews with community members; and 2 focus group interviews, 1 with rural dwelling women and the other with rural dwelling men. The findings point out four significant difficulties that impede community and educational development: scarcity of resources; insufficient understanding of social, cultural and economic contexts that constrain educational attempts; lack of collaboration between teacher and communities; and irrelevant education. The study concludes by scrutinising how these difficulties interact with one another and result in marginalisation or casting out of rural lives.     

Educational tracking and sense of futility: a matter of stigma consciousness?

During the past decade, both qualitative and quantitative research have documented strong feelings of fatalism amongst pupils enrolled in technical and vocational tracks in secondary education. Whereas those feelings have been shown to predict decreased school involvement and school misconduct, relatively little is known about their exact origins. In this paper, we explore to what extent they should be considered a stigma consciousness caused by the demeaning impact of perceived contempt to which pupils from technical and vocational tracks are exposed. Data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study from Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, N: 1967) were used to explore the distribution and consequences of perceived contempt with regard to one’s choice of study. About 20% of the pupils enrolled in technical and vocational education reported that some people looked down on them due to their studies. Moreover, even after taking into account different ability measures and social background characteristics, a strong direct relationship remained between perceived contempt and feelings of futility. In the conclusion, we elaborate on the implications of our findings.     

The quality agenda: governance and regulation of preschool teachers’ work

The increased regulation of teachers’ work is a global phenomenon across education sectors. In Australia the governance of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) embeds international priorities for quality improvement in educational programmes. The implementation of a National Quality Framework (NQF) for the assessment of ECEC services has mobilised the production of a suite of regulatory texts. The regulation of teachers’ work is legitimised through the discourse of quality embedded in policy guidelines. Drawing on interview data from preschool teachers, this paper employs institutional ethnography (IE) to investigate teachers’ accounts of producing a Quality Improvement Plan. As teachers operationalise the expectations of quality assurance in the NQF, their work is oriented to gathering evidence of an approved quality of practice. The findings indicate a shift in professional focus to increased documentation of ‘quality of practice’, goal setting and evidence of the collaborative construction of Quality Improvement Plans.     

Does educational expertise matter for PVCs education? A UK study of PVCs’ educational background and skills

Pro-Vice-Chancellors (PVCs) form the second-tier leadership of UK higher education institutions. However, their role and position remain under-theorised and under-researched. The present article explores the extent to which a PVC Education role requires core expertise in education or generic managerial skills. Using a mixed-methods approach, we first establish the disciplinary backgrounds of PVCs Education in Russell Group (RG) and post-1992 institutions. Fewer than one in five PVCs Education have a disciplinary background or additional formal training in education. Second, we conducted 24 semi-structured interviews with PVCs Education, Heads of Education Departments and Heads of Learning and Teaching units. These interviews suggest the PVC Education role requires managerial skills, usually acquired in previous headships, as well as academic credibility and knowledge of institutional processes rather than particular expertise in education. In sum, generic managerial skills rather than educational expertise are paramount for understanding the profile of PVCs Education in UK universities.     

Observations and student perceptions of the quality of preservice teachers’ teaching behaviour: construct representation and predictive quality

Observations and student perceptions are recognised as important tools for examining teaching behaviour, but little is known about whether both perspectives share similar construct representations and how both perspectives link with student academic outcomes. The present study compared the construct representation of preservice teachers’ teaching behaviour as perceived by trained teacher observers and students. It also examined the predictive power of both measures of teaching behaviour for student academic engagement. The theoretical framework of teaching behaviour used in this study is based on evidence-based research derived from empirical teacher effectiveness research. The study was part of a national project that included 2164 students and 108 teachers in The Netherlands. Results suggest that, although observations and student perceptions of teaching behaviour shared similar theoretical considerations, the construct representations seemed to differ to some extent. Furthermore, although both perspectives are significant predictors of student academic engagement, student perceptions appeared to be more predictive of their perceived academic engagement than observations. Implications for research on learning environments and teacher education are discussed.     

Making learning effective – quantity and quality of pre-service teachers’ feedback

ABSTRACT

Feedback is an essential formative assessment practice that has the potential to influence student learning and achievement positively. Providing effective feedback, however, is a challenging task for teachers. Especially beginning teachers struggle with the provision of information that supports students in developing and improving their competences. Learning to provide feedback thus is an important aspect of teacher education. The present exploratory study investigates pre-service chemistry teachers’ practices regarding the judgement of students’ level of achievement and the provision of feedback in the context of the control-of-variables strategy. A sample of N?=?40 bachelor and master students at Kiel University judged students’ written artefacts and provided feedback with the aim to support students in their progression towards the learning goals. The quality of the feedback was coded with respect to its correct judgement of the students’ current levels of achievement and the support it provided regarding next steps in learning. The results show that only a few of the pre-service teachers could correctly judge students’ current levels of achievement and provide feedback that is expected to be effective. Overall, the findings indicate a need for more research in this field and a need for the implementation of formative assessment practices as a topic in pre-service teacher education.     

Does the reputation of a faculty member’s graduate programme and institution matter for labour market outcomes?

For a future faculty member the choice of which graduate programme and institution to attend is considered to have important implications for securing academic employment, developing skills to succeed in academia, and yielding positive returns on investment of time and money in education. Yet does it matter where a faculty member attends graduate school – and if so, is it the reputation of the programme or the institution that matters most for his or her labour market outcomes? In this study, we used nationally representative data from the U.S. to estimate the relationship between a faculty member’s graduate programme and institution and their institution of first academic employment, research productivity, and salary. Our findings suggest that the reputation of one’s graduate department may factor more heavily than reputation of institution in the type and level of institution at which he or she is first employed, while graduate institution reputation has notable marginal, positive benefits associated with research productivity and salary. We discuss implications for the influence of graduate education on academic careers.     

Educational psychologists’ constructions of sexuality and the implications for practice

Despite an underlying inclusion agenda, sexuality equality remains a low priority in education. Review of literature suggests the marginalization of sexual minority young people (SMYP) in schools. This study explores educational psychologists’ (EPs’) constructions of sexuality and the implications for practice. Discursive psychology was used to analyse semi-structured interview data from seven EPs. Multiple and context-dependent constructions of sexuality emerged from the study. The research suggested that participants oriented to the need to maintain a non-prejudiced position and managed tensions of accountability using rhetorical strategies and interpretive repertoires. Conclusions centre on the need for reflexive practice to challenge taken for granted assumptions regarding sexuality in education and psychology communities.