Teacher education as a field of historical research: retrospect and prospect

UK-based teacher educators formed the core membership of the History of Education Society when it was founded in 1967, and they were frequent early contributors to the Society’s journals. Given these origins, one might imagine that the history of teacher education would have featured more prominently in the pages of the first 40 volumes of the journal than it has. This article identifies and discusses examples of research into teacher education that have featured in History of Education since 1972, making connections with the contexts of political, social and educational change. The influence of feminist scholarship is particularly noted and it is argued that work relating to teacher education, which peaked in the 1990s, has both reflected and shaped new methodological approaches to studying the history of education. Notwithstanding the journal’s publication of some important work, it is argued that the theme remains under-researched and, in the period ahead, it is to be hoped that interest can be re-invigorated.     

浅谈中提琴的初级启蒙教育

启蒙教学是中提琴初级教学的基础,音乐教师在中提琴教学中要注重孩子学习兴趣的培养,为孩子营造良好的学习氛围,让孩子在快乐中学习,在学习中成长。与此同时,音乐教师还要加强孩子艺术修养和整体素质的培养,及时了解孩子的思想动态,有计划、有步骤、有目标地制定科学合理的授课方式。除此之外,孩子在中提琴初级学习的启蒙阶段,家长要积极主动配合音乐教师,对孩子给予正确的督促和鼓励。     

An ethnographic action research project: national curriculum,historical learning and a culturally diverse Melbourne primary school

ABSTRACT

This paper uses ethnographic action research to explore how the objectives of the Australian Curriculum Intercultural Understanding can be achieved in a culturally diverse Year 5/6 (ages 10–12) primary school class in Melbourne. It examines whether a history unit on migration, that uses a structured historical inquiry approach, encourages culturally diverse students to develop a more critical and reflexive understanding of multiculturalism. Using Banks’ multicultural framework and Bath’s approach to ethnographic action research, I argue that the oral history component of a Year 5/6 history unit supported students to develop their Intercultural Understanding. I suggest that ethnographic action research is an effective approach for investigating the implementation of new teaching initiatives.     

心态史学及其对教育史学方法论的启示

20世纪80年代以来,教育史学科的方法论问题逐渐被置于议事日程。心态史学法是法国年鉴学派的成果之一,经历了萌芽、降格和方兴未艾三个阶段,开辟了史学研究新领域。心态史学法在具体应用中,聚焦于群体的无意识心态,注重研究的整体性和微观性,从跨学科的研究视角解构问题,并运用一切可用之资料解决问题。教育史作为历史学和教育学的分支学科,在当前全球化视野下,研究心态史学对教育史学大有裨益,有利于拓宽教育史学研究领域的深度和广度,并树立整体的教育史观,强化教育史研究的反思性和问题意识,从而使教育史学在反思的基础上化解“危机”、骎骎日上。     

Perspectives on the standards agenda: exploring the agenda's impact on primary teachers' professional identities

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to investigate teachers' perspectives on the practical implementation of the standards agenda and its impact on their professional identities. Q-methodology was used alongside semi-structured interviews with UK primary school teachers. The study explored the views of 25 teachers in six schools, selected through purposive sampling to give a range of individual and institutional demographics. Teachers in this research commented on the impact the standards agenda has had on parental and societal judgements that affect their identity as professionals. Teachers held differing positions on whether they experienced constraint or flexibility when implementing standards objectives. These differing positions were mainly influenced by whether they taught above or below Year 3. Teachers who found flexibility in the agenda's objectives had less occupational stress and increased ownership of their own actions and the standards agenda. Teachers' positions were complex and changed according to situational influences at a classroom level.     

Promoting science and technology in primary education: a review of integrated curricula

Integrated curricula seem promising for the increase of attention on science and technology in primary education. A clear picture of the advantages and disadvantages of integration efforts could help curriculum innovation. This review has focused on integrated curricula in primary education from 1994 to 2011. The integrated curricula were categorised according to a taxonomy of integration types synthesised from the literature. The characteristics that we deemed important were related to learning outcomes and success/fail factors. A focus group was formed to facilitate the process of analysis and to test tentative conclusions. We concluded that the levels in our taxonomy were linked to (a) student knowledge and skills, the enthusiasm generated among students and teachers, and the teacher commitment that was generated; and (b) the teacher commitment needed, the duration of the innovation effort, the volume and comprehensiveness of required teacher professional development, the necessary teacher support and the effort needed to overcome tensions with standard curricula. Almost all projects were effective in increasing the time spent on science at school. Our model resolves Czerniac’s definition problem of integrating curricula in a productive manner, and it forms a practical basis for decision-making by making clear what is needed and what output can be expected when plans are being formulated to implement integrated education.     

Tracing radical working-class education: praxis and historical representation

Growing collections of social and educational history chronicle the many instances of educational agency that lie outside institutional narratives. Renewing and developing historical understanding, these histories raise important methodological questions surrounding historical representation. Addressing such questions, this paper develops the methodological notion of praxis as a means to trace genealogies of radical working-class educational agency. It is concerned primarily with the possibility of history to create understanding across temporality, and with the place of theory in histories that mobilise conceptual terms of reference, such as class. Reflecting on research undertaken on the temporally and culturally distinct Socialist Sunday Schools and Black Saturday Schools, the discussion begins by considering the academic representation of working-class communities. Following from this, analyses of Marx, Foucault and Ricoeur inform the conceptual development of praxis. The paper concludes by reflecting on the use of community-based testimony in constructing genealogies of radical working-class education.     

重庆边远地区小学英语教师专业素质研究

通过问卷调查发现，重庆市边远地区小学英语教师专业素质现状不容乐观，需要采取进一步措施提高其专业素质。     

教师专业化背景下的中小学师资培训论略

教师专业化和教师教育专业化既是世界性潮流,也是目前我国教育发展的客观要求.高师的培训部门应贯彻可持续发展的继续教育观,强化为教师职业专业化服务的意识;构建培养教师专业结构的培训课程体系;创新以校本培训为主的教师专业化培训模式,为我国基础教育培养出高质量的教师.     

Religion and educational progress: Two historical cases with contemporary relevance

This study comprises accounts of how two western societies achieved legislative provision for mass education in the latter 1800's: England and Wales in 1870, and Nova Scotia in 1864 and 1865. The accounts are used to illuminate the bearing that religion had on those educational reforms and thereby to show better how religion can contribute to educational progress today.In both cases, the society's major religious groups were in sympathy with the principle of universal elementary education supported by taxes. But differences among and within the groups over the religious character and/or the control of the schools did constitute an obstacle to be overcome. Public officials who championed mass education were supportive of the advancement of religion, yet they placed limits on religious expression and control in education in order to achieve a balance of interests. A vision of the promise of mass education and their duty to procure it animated the officials. This vision harmonized with their religious motivation.Today there is an educational challenge equal to that which faced the universalizers in the 19th century: discerning the limits, fiscal and functional, of universalized educational systems so as to optimize their contribution to meeting educational needs, which have assumed crisis proportions. Educational interests and religious interests (along with others) should come together to define and respond to the challenge. Common aspirations, if not immediately apparent, would emerge, as they did in the two historical cases.     

Examining study attrition: Implications for experimental research on professional development

As teacher professional development research includes more experimental designs, new challenges arise. We examine the threat of participant attrition as an example of the types of problems researchers face. Counter-intuitively, higher levels of recruitment effort were related to higher dropout rates among teachers. We also found that teachers left because of changes in teaching assignments, institutional challenges, and personal challenges. Finally, the majority of teachers in urban schools dropped out, while the majority of teachers in rural or suburban schools remained. We conclude with recommendations for future teacher learning experiments.     

Action research and collaborative research: their specific contributions to professional development

The increasing complexity of the teaching profession calls for engaged professionals in their professional development. This article claims that participative types of research contribute differently to professional development. Its intent is to explore the different contributions action research and collaborative research bring. One action research and one collaborative research have been conducted involving school personnel. They have been assessed mid‐course with regard to various components of professional development, including the learning taking place, changes made to professional practices and development of the collective competencies. Group interviews were conducted and each participant produced a written summary. The results show that participants’ individual competencies are strengthened, as well as collective competencies emerging such as the development of a common vocabulary and a shared vision about the school’s mission and mathematics curriculum. Learning is more relational in the action research project, and more connected to knowledge in the collaborative research project. Tensions are also present. They deal with the need to come up with concrete results, the urgency of action, the need to be open to the unknown, a tacit agreement to expose one’s vulnerability to others, the need for interdependence and for accountability. In conclusion, researchers identify their own sources of tensions and recognize that those types of research are important situations of learning.     

Traditional and contemporary approaches to career-long professional learning: a primary physical education journey in Scotland

With career-long professional learning increasingly seen as a significant element of teacher education, this paper proposes that there is a need to acknowledge the complex nature of the professional learning process. The paper explores lessons learnt from over a decade of professional learning efforts by the Developmental Physical Education Group at The University of Edinburgh. With the group's traditional initial continuing professional development efforts having limited impact on teachers' practice, the paper considers how more recent efforts have refocused on a longer term, participative and situated approach that appears to be having significantly more influence on teachers as professional learners.     

Teachers' perceptions of national identity and its intersection with gender: a phenomenological study in a conflict society

The aim of this study is to investigate Greek-Cypriot teachers' perceptions regarding the role that national identity and its intersection with gender play in representations of the past. Drawing on data deriving from forty individual interviews and analysed through the lens of intersectionality theory, it is shown that: although all teachers were able to recognise the role of national identity in representations of the past in the Cyprus conflict, the majority of these teachers were not equally aware of the gender politics in representations of the past. The participants seemed to be willing to take responsibility for the ways in which they represented the national identity, but they were not willing to assume responsibility for their gendered representations; instead, these representations were deemed ‘unconscious’ or a ‘product of tradition’ or the ‘natural order’ and, thus, not within their control. The paper ends with a discussion of how this study informs educational research and teacher professional development, concerning the intersection of national identity and gender in relation to issues of collective memory.     

Teaching about sustainability through inquiry-based science in Irish primary classrooms: the impact of a professional development programme on teacher self-efficacy,competence and pedagogy

Abstract

Research suggests that innovative and engaging professional development is instrumental in supporting teachers in developing their competence and confidence in teaching sustainability. An international initiative was developed to explore whether a competencies-oriented Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) professional development model was transferable across three different international contexts (Ireland, Germany and Mexico). This paper reports on the adaptation of this model within the Irish context, through the development of an innovative professional development programme for primary teachers. Through a mixed-methods approach which gathered data via pre- and post-programme surveys, teachers’ reflective journals and post-programme group interviews, the paper explores Irish primary school teachers’ experiences of, and attitudes towards, teaching sustainability through science education after participation in a professional development programme. The findings suggest that this programme, structured around the existing evidence for effective professional development in science education and ESD, positively influences teachers’ self-efficacy, supports teachers’ critical engagement with sustainability competencies and promotes the development of transformative pedagogies for sustainability through Inquiry-Based Science Education.     

呼唤新体系:小学教育学教材的比较研究

小学教育学教材在小学师资培养和小学教师在职培训中扮演着重要的角色。就目前我国发行量颇大、影响深远的三本小学教育学的教材来看,在体系上存在结构大同小异、与普通教育学教材极其相似、没有从小学教育的实际出发、缺乏明确的价值取向等问题。在新课程改革的背景下,应该重构小学教育学教材的体系,适应小学教育正在发生的巨大变革。在重构中,应该坚持到小学去研究教育学、研究和解决实际问题的原则。     

Multiplicative reasoning: teaching primary pupils in ways that focus on functional relations

This paper examines a problem described as widespread and long-standing in mathematics education: supporting pupils into multiplicative reasoning, a form of reasoning that has been noted as central to large tracts of secondary mathematics and beyond. Also noted, however, is a persistent perception of multiplicative situations only in terms of repeated addition – a perception held not only primary pupils, but also among primary teachers and curriculum developers. The focus of this paper is to synthesize literature on multiplicative reasoning as a conceptual field together with a sociocultural discussion of the role of mediating artifacts in the development of this conceptual field. Bringing MR into the primary classroom can then be achieved, I propose, through a pedagogy oriented toward model-eliciting and teacher appropriation of pupils’ models as pedagogic tools with the subsequent re-appropriation of refined models by pupils. This pedagogy is illustrated through the analysis of two vignettes from a teaching experiment which demonstrate the beginnings of MR as an emergent conceptual field in the classroom. The paper concludes that it is possible to move primary teaching and learning toward understanding the functional aspects of multiplicative reasoning, but that any such moves requires attention to teachers’ pedagogic and content knowledge.     

Identity negotiations in conflict-ridden societies: historical and anthropological perspectives

Abstract

The present paper deals with epistemological and methodological issues as these touch upon the products of educational practices related to the teaching of historical narratives in settings purposely created to facilitate dialogue, inclusion and recognition among children thought to be belonging in clearly differentiated and antagonistic groups in a conflict-ridden area – i.e. Israeli Jews and Palestinians, and Greek and Turkish Cypriots. It offers an overview of the sociopolitical and educational contexts the authors have studied and vignettes of some of the events that captured their attention and led them to critically approach present theorising on peace and multicultural education. It finalises with reflections on the epistemological and methodological issues the authors encountered in their studies.     

The mythology of schooling: the historiography of American and European education in comparative perspective

This essay explores the historiography of American and European education, considering how educational historians communicate powerful messages about the purposes and promises of schooling through their writing. I divide the historiography of American education into four interpretive traditions: traditionalism, radical revisionism, progressive revisionism, and plural revisionism. Each phase of the historiography, I argue, has supported particular myths about the relationship between public schooling and society. European historians have shared many of the interpretive assumptions contained within traditionalist, radical revisionist, and progressive revisionist scholarship, conveying similar myths to their US counterparts. Contemporary histories of European education, however, are distinct from recent histories of the US. In comparing the divergent trajectories of these two historiographies, I conclude by suggesting the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary scholarship in both fields, an assessment derived from a review of the underlying myths conveyed by each history. Recent US scholarship remains committed to narrative and draws attention to the educational experiences of marginalised groups. Scholarship on European education, in contrast, has explicitly embraced theoretical interpretive frameworks while also giving less attention to schooling on the margins. At the same time, many European histories of education have maintained a critical view of schooling, while some recent scholarship within the US has de-emphasised this connection, echoing older interpretive traditions and tacitly reinforcing faith in the ameliorative potential of public education.