搭建全方位写话训练平台的教学尝试

写话训练是培养低段学生写作能力的重要手段。通过课堂教学平台的适度延伸,课外学习平台的积极引导和家庭生活平台的亲近生活,可以达到激发学生的写话兴趣,帮助学生积累相应的素材和启发学生抒发对生活、学习的情怀的目的。同时,也进一步拓宽写话训练思路,全面提高学生的写话能力。     

Cueing Metacognition to Improve Researching and Essay Writing in a Final Year High School Biology Class

This paper reports on degrees of awareness and use of specific metacognitive strategies by 16 students in a final-year high school biology class in New Zealand. The aims of the intervention were to broaden students' thinking about bioethical issues associated with cancer and to enhance students' use of metacognition. Cues and prompts were used in this unit of work to help students use metacognitive strategies since students did not generally use metacognitive strategies spontaneously. Scaffolding was mediated through the teacher modelling, questioning, cueing or prompting students to evaluate their learning. The research reported here illustrates how teachers can cue students to be more self-directed in their learning. Three case studies illustrate how learning strategies were used differentially. Most students were aware of strategies that could help them to learn more effectively. It was found that those students who were not only aware of but also used strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their work, produced essays of higher quality.     

The role of metacognitive skills in developing critical thinking

The study investigated the influence of metacognition on critical thinking skills. It is hypothesized in the study that critical thinking occurs when individuals use their underlying metacognitive skills and strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. The Metacognitive Assessment Inventory (MAI) by Schraw and Dennison (Contemporary Educational Psychology 19:460–475, 1994), which measures regulation of cognition and knowledge of cognition, and the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA) with the factors inference, recognition of assumptions, deduction, interpretations, and evaluation of arguments were administered to 240 college students from different universities in the National Capital Region in the Philippines. The Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) was used to determine the effect of metacognition on critical thinking as latent variables. Two models were tested: (1) In the first model, metacognition is composed of two factors while (2) in the second model, metacognition has eight factors as they affect critical thinking. The results indicated that in both models, metacognition has a significant path to critical thinking, p?<?.05. The analysis also showed that for both metacognition and critical thinking, all underlying factors are significant. The second model had a better goodness of fit as compared with the first as shown by the RMSEA value and other fit indices.     

Socially mediated metacognition and learning to write

Writing can be viewed as a recursive process involving both cognitive and metacognitive processes. Task, environment, individual cognition and affective processes all impact on producing written text. Recent research on the development of metacognition in young children has highlighted social constructivist and socio-cultural factors. Metacognition is seen as facilitated through collaborative tasks and through talk. This study investigated the peer construction of metacognition in 5-7-year-old children engaged on collaborative writing tasks. Six year 1 and year 2 classes were involved in the project (n = 172). 25 h of video observation data, teacher and researcher reflections and structured field notes were analysed qualitatively using ATLAS ti software. The written texts produced in these sessions were analysed using a qualitative content analysis, looking specifically for evidence of the process of text construction and metacognition. The findings provide evidence of young children's ability to engage in metacognitive talk and to use metacognition intentionally in the co-construction of written texts. The relationships between children and their talk partners mediated the effect of pre-determined ability in literacy. Teachers’ direct questioning aimed at reflection on the writing process did not always support metacognitive dialogues. Drawing on recent models of metacognition and writing the paper highlights the role of social factors in developing metacognition and illustrates the ways in which young children negotiate task demands during shared writing tasks.     

Parents’ Metacognitive Knowledge: Influences on Parent–Child Interactions in a Science Museum Setting

Despite science learning in settings such as science museums being recognized as important and given increasing attention in science education circles, the investigation of parents’ and their children’s metacognition in such settings is still in its infancy. This is despite an individual’s metacognition being acknowledged as an important influence on their learning within and across contexts. This research investigated parents’ metacognitive procedural and conditional knowledge, a key element of their metacognition, related to (a) what they knew about how they and their children thought and learned, and (b) whether this metacognitive knowledge influenced their interactions with their children during their interaction with a moderately complex simulation in a science museum. Parents reported metacognitive procedural and conditional knowledge regarding their own and their children’s thinking and learning processes. Further, parents were aware that this metacognitive knowledge influenced their interactions with their children, seeing this as appropriate pedagogical action for them within the context of the particular exhibit and its task requirements at the science museum, and for the child involved. These findings have implications for exhibit and activity development within science museum settings.     

‘I Wish We Could Make Books All Day!’ An Observational Study of Kindergarten Children During Writing Workshop

With the adoption of the Common Core Standards and a renewed emphasis on critical and higher-order thinking skills, exploring the relationship among writing development, self-efficacy beliefs, perseverance, and effort has become essential. The nature of writing workshop not only lends itself to differentiation among students but also provides opportunities to explore authentic texts and tasks. The purpose of this qualitative, multicase study was to explore the development of kindergarten writers within a writing workshop. Research questions focused on writer identity, writing self-efficacy, and growth as kindergarten writers. The participants, two female and one male, were randomly chosen for this study and attended an all-day, 3-days per-week kindergarten program at a public school in the upper Midwest. Student writing interviews, videotaped student–teacher conferences, and student written work served as data sources. The writing workshop framework provided a learning environment that was conducive to the formation of the three children’s writing identities. As students engaged in writing mini-lessons, text inquiries, writing, and sharing writing with peers, student writing stamina and engagement increased. Students utilized techniques and strategies of published writers. Students adopted these qualities in their views of themselves as writers. Suggestions for future research included exploring writing self-efficacy in relation to everyday kindergarten experiences, allowing for sharing and feedback, and addressing the ways in which writing workshop might provide for authentic and rigorous instruction and tasks in kindergarten classrooms.     

Teachers use of writing to support students’ learning in middle school: A national survey in the United States

A random sample of middle school teachers (grades 6–9) from across the United States was surveyed about their use of writing to support students’ learning. The selection process was stratified so there were an equal number of English language arts, social studies, and science teachers. More than one-half of the teachers reported applying 15 or more writing to learn strategies at least once a month or more often. The most commonly used writing to learn strategies were writing short answers to questions, note taking for reading, note taking while listening, and completing worksheets. While teachers reported using a variety of writing to learn strategies, most of them indicated they received minimal or no formal preparation in college on how to use writing to learn strategies to support student learning, less than one-half of teachers directly taught students how to use the writing to learn strategies commonly assigned, and the most commonly used writing to learn strategies did not require students to think deeply about the material they were learning. We further found that teachers’ reported use of writing to learn strategies was related to their preparedness and the composition of their classroom in terms of above and below average writers, English Language Learners, and students with disabilities.     

Helping Children to Develop as Writers: Supporting,Showing, Responding

How can we help children develop as writers once they have begun to master the complexities of the writing system and begun to understand how they can compose their own texts? Colin Peacock proposes some answers to these questions on the basis of a small-scale research project in one school. Key issues which emerged were the need to develop motivation, to give children opportunities to write, to respond to their difficulties and to show them what counted as success.     

What do children think as they plan their writing?

This study followed from a previous investigation into the impact of guidance given in writing tasks when six hundred eleven year olds completed writing tasks with varying content and structural support. The aim was to find if the support facilitated better writing and if the nature of the support had differing effects. The findings suggested that the support provided in the stimuli did not significantly affect performance. A qualitative study investigated the reasons why the support did not have a significant effect and explored the factors which affected children as they faced a writing task. ‘Think aloud’ strategies were used to encourage them to verbalise their thoughts as they planned a piece of writing from a given stimulus. The children were then interviewed according to a semi‐structured interview schedule and their planning sheets were also considered.     

Writing through time: longitudinal studies of the effects of new technology on writing

This paper contributes to the discussion about the effects of new technology on writing by assessing whether or not people's writing styles and ways of thinking change when new technologies are introduced. The writing styles of the three authors, prolific writers in their own fields, were assessed by comparing materials written by each author over a thirty-year period. During this time there were, for each author, great changes in the ways that they used new technology to help them to write. Nonetheless, the results indicated that, although the writing styles of each author differed from each other, their individual styles were remarkably consistent over time. These results thus suggest that although the new technologies may change the ways that individual writers work, they do not alter the styles of their resulting products.     

Teacher practices for teaching writing in Greek primary schools

Developing writing skills is a central part of the education curriculum in many countries, yet numerous children have difficulties in producing written texts. To our knowledge there is no systematic study examining the ways in which Greek teachers adapt their writing instruction strategies to accommodate the children’s needs. The aim of the present study was to identify the approaches teachers employ while teaching writing in Greek primary schools and to examine the nature and frequency of these different aspects of teaching writing. We replicated and extended the Dockrell et al. (Read Writ Interdiscip J 29(3):409–434, 2016) study, using the Not so Simple View of Writing framework. One hundred and three teachers responded to an online questionnaire, which consisted of questions regarding their academic qualifications and their specific teaching practices. The majority of the sample felt prepared and enjoyed teaching writing. However, almost all of the teachers found teaching writing challenging and half of them reported that supporting struggling writers was difficult for them. Overall, teachers reported more work at word level, occurring almost weekly, than at text level. Differences between Grade levels they taught were also evident for specific domains of writing. Recommendations for future research and implications for educational practice are discussed.

     

Bilingual Chinese/English first‐graders developing metacognition about writing

This study investigates metacognitive development of 16 bilingual Chinese/English first‐graders. The researcher analysed the metacognitive utterances produced by the children while they were engaged in the writing task of composing dictated stories. The results suggest that the young bilinguals demonstrated metacognitive abilities and were able to employ metacognitive knowledge during their writing attempts. There is also indication that metacognition is closely connected to these children's ability to compose stories and the qualities of their stories.     

Prior experience shapes metacognitive judgments at the category level: the role of testing and category difficulty

Most metacognition research has focused on aggregate judgments of overall performance or item-level judgments about performance on particular questions. However, metacognitive judgments at the category level, which have not been as extensively explored, also play a role in students’ study strategies, for example, when students determine what topics to study for an exam. We investigated whether category learning judgments (CLJs) were sensitive to differences in the difficulty of general knowledge categories. After either studying or being tested on facts from several categories (e.g., Shakespeare, Astronomy), participants estimated the likelihood that they could correctly answer new questions from those categories on a later test (i.e., they made CLJs). Results of two studies showed that CLJs were sensitive to differences in category difficulty. Further, participants gave lower or more conservative CLJs when they took an initial test as compared to studying questions from the categories. Results are discussed in terms of the value and relevance of CLJs both in educational settings and in theories of metacognition.     

The Change in Mathematics Teachers' Perceptions of Critical Thinking after 15 Years of Educational Reform in Jordan

ABSTRACT. This study investigates how mathematics secondary schools' teachers in \hbox{Jordan} perceive critical thinking and compares teachers' perceptions before and after educational reform. Data were collected from 12 schools twice: in 1988 and in 2004 by interviewing 47 Mathematics teachers. The interview included questions related to teachers' understanding of critical thinking, its role and importance in learning Mathematics, and instructional strategies that could help improve students' critical thinking skills. Results found no improvement in secondary Mathematics teachers' perceptions of critical thinking despite 15 years of educational reform. The majority of Mathematics teachers seemed not to have a clear and adequate understanding of critical thinking. Though most of the teachers claimed they have to teach critical thinking, more than half of them could not suggest any learning situation that could help in fostering critical thinking in Mathematics classes. Also most of the teachers claimed that critical thinking would help students in learning Mathematics; yet less than half were able to give a convincing justification for that. A small percentage of the secondary Mathematics teachers believed they can help all students to foster their critical thinking. It is thus recommended that the concept of critical thinking be transferred from the realm of rhetoric to the field of practice. The paper ends with some recommendations related to the Mathematics teachers training programs in view of the results of this study.     

Across the great divide: bridging the gap between understanding of toddlers' and older children's thinking

Research on very young children's cognitive development differs greatly from research on cognitive development in older children. The differences include the questions that are asked, the methods that are used to address them, the measures that are employed to provide relevant evidence, and the level of detail at which children's knowledge is represented. The research approaches are so different that they create an impression that infants' and toddlers' thinking differs qualitatively from that of preschoolers and older children. This impression, however, may reflect differences in research approaches rather than differences in children's thinking. In the present study, we attempted to bridge this gap by applying to toddlers a type of process analysis that has proved fruitful in studies of older children. Overlapping waves theory, trial-by-trial strategy assessments, and microgenetic methods were used to analyze 1.5- and 2.5-year-olds' problem solving and learning. The results demonstrated that changes in toddlers' strategies could be assessed reliably on a trial-by-trial basis, that the changes followed the basic form predicted by the overlapping waves model, and that analyses of toddlers' strategies could tell us a great deal about both qualitative and quantitative aspects of their learning. A componential analysis of learning that previously had been applied to older children also proved useful for understanding toddlers' learning. The analysis specified that cognitive change frequently involves five components: acquisition of new strategies; strengthening of the strategies in their original context; improved mapping of strategies onto novel problems; increasingly refined choices among variants of the strategies; and increasingly skillful execution of the strategies. Independent measures of these components indicated that strategic development in toddlers involves improvements in all five components. Analyses of individual differences in learning showed that the effects of distal variables, such as age and sex, could be partially explained in terms of their influence on mastery of the components, but that the distal variables exercised additional direct effects as well. The process of learning in toddlers closely resembled that of older children in other ways as well. Like older children, toddlers use multiple strategies over the course of learning; their choices among strategies are quite adaptive from early on; their choices become progressively more adaptive as they gain experience with the task; they switch strategies not only from trial to trial but within a single trial; their transfer of learning from one problem to the next is primarily influenced by structural relations between problems but also is influenced by superficial features; they show utilization deficiencies early in learning that they gradually overcome; and they show individual differences in learning that fall into a few qualitatively distinct categories. Perhaps most striking, the 1.5- and 2.5-year-olds emerged as active learners, who continued to work out the lessons of previous instruction in the absence of further instruction. That is, they integrated the lessons of their own problem-solving efforts with the previous instruction in ways that magnified the initial effects of the instruction. Overall, the findings indicated that the gap can be bridged; that theories, methods, measures, and representations of knowledge typically used with older children can improve our understanding of toddlers' problem solving and learning as well.     

数学写作的价值及若干教学建议

数学写作是一种价值有待挖掘的学习形式,可以帮助学生建构知识和提高＂元认知＂水平,还有助于学生形成良好的认知情感及发展学生的创造性思维和批判性思维.在写作教学中,教师要注意让学生明确写作目的,要掌握循序渐进的培养方法以及一些必要的教学策略.     

Fostering metacognitive awareness among teachers: Implications for the Nigerian school system

Abstract

This article focused on the concept of metacognition. Some theoretical models of metacognition were discussed to provide a general framework to understand the relationship between the different aspects or components of this phenomenon. The study also looked at five metacognitive strategies that enhance learning in schools, namely: (1) graphic organizers; (2) metacognitive scaffolding; (3) reciprocal teaching; (4) explicit instruction; and (5) collaborative learning. The work also briefly highlighted the problems of metacognitive strategies used in Nigerian schools. We noted that all learners do not engage spontaneously in metacognitive thinking unless they are explicitly encouraged to do so through carefully designed instructional activities. The study therefore recommended effective practice of scaffolded instruction on metacognitive strategies use in Nigerian schools and other countries in the world.     

Examining Teachers’ Instructional Moves Aimed at Developing Students’ Ideas and Questions in Learner-Centered Science Classrooms

Prior research has shown that orchestrating scientific discourse in classrooms is difficult and takes a great deal of effort on the part of teachers. In this study, we examined teachers?? instructional moves to elicit and develop students?? ideas and questions as they orchestrated discourse with their fifth grade students during a learner-centered environmental biology unit. The unit materials included features meant to support teachers in eliciting and working with students?? ideas and questions as a source for student-led investigations. We present three contrasting cases of teachers to highlight evidence that shows teachers?? differing strategies for eliciting students?? ideas and questions, and for developing their ideas, questions and questioning skills. Results from our cross case analysis provide insight into the ways in which teachers?? enactments enabled them to work with students?? ideas and questions to help advance learning. Consistent with other studies, we found that teachers could readily elicit ideas and questions but experienced challenges in helping students develop them. Findings suggest a need for more specified supports, such as specific discourse strategies, to help teachers attend to student thinking. We explore implications for curricular tools and discuss a need for more examples of effective discourse moves for use by teachers in orchestrating scientific discourse.     

Improving Design Understandings and Skills through Enhanced Metacognition: Reflective Design Journals

The main aim of this study was to investigate and discover whether going through the process of reflection by keeping reflective design journals (RDJ) enhances architecture students’ metacognition and whether this enhanced metacognition improves their design understandings and skills. The study was a mixed‐methods design and utilised content analysis method to identify the metacognitive actions of the participants. The study also investigated participants’ attitudes towards RDJs and their views regarding the effect of enhanced metacognition on their design understandings and skills. Twenty college students registered to an undergraduate course offered by the department of Architecture participated in the research. The findings of the study revealed that by writing in their RDJs, participants were able to progressively enhance their metacognitive skills and performed several metacognitive actions by using the four main metacognitive strategies: awareness, organisation and planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The results also disclosed that participants found RDJ keeping exceptionally effective and stated that their enhanced metacognition improved their design understanding and abilities.