An Investigation of Science Teaching Practices in Indonesian Rural Secondary Schools

This study reports on teaching practices in science classrooms of Indonesian lower secondary schools in rural areas. Using six schools from three districts in the province of Kalimantan Selatan as the sample, this study found that most teaching practices in science classrooms in rural schools were teacher-centred with students copying notes. However, the study also found unique teaching practices of an exemplary science teacher whose teaching style can be described as both student-centred and teacher-centred, with students encouraged to be active learners. Four features of exemplary teaching practices were identified: The teacher managed the classroom effectively; used a variety of questioning techniques; employed various teaching approaches instead of traditional methods; and created a favourable learning environment. Data from classroom observations, interviews with teachers, and students responses to a questionnaire were used to compare the exemplary teacher and his colleagues. This study identified internal factors that may affect teaching practices such as a teachers content knowledge and beliefs about teaching. Compared to the other teachers, the exemplary teacher possessed more content knowledge and had a relatively stronger belief in his ability to teach.     

Children’s academic and social-emotional competencies and the quality of classroom interactions in high-needs urban elementary schools

Teachers are often viewed as being primarily responsible for the quality of their classroom environment and teaching practices. Yet, the aggregate skills and competencies of children within classrooms may affect teachers’ ability to engage in emotionally and instructionally supportive interactions and maintain an organized classroom. The objectives of this study were to (1) identify common types of classrooms based on children’s academic and social-emotional competencies, and (2) examine the relation between classroom compositional profiles and the observed quality of classroom interactions across three domains, while accounting for the quality of interactions in teachers’ classrooms assessed during the prior school year. Participants included 117 third-grade teachers and their 1803 children from 53 urban public elementary schools, in the United States, composed of mostly Black and Latinx children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds. Data were collected as part of a randomized-controlled trial of a social-emotional learning intervention and included assessments of children’s English language arts test scores, social competence, aggressive behaviors, depression, and anxiety, and the observed quality of classroom-level emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support. Latent profile analysis revealed three distinct profiles: (1) academically and behaviorally high-risk classrooms (9%), (2) academically and emotionally at-risk classrooms (48%), and (3) academically and behaviorally low-risk classrooms (43%). Classrooms in the high-risk profile had significantly lower levels of emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support, while accounting for teachers’ prior year interactional quality and a set of key teacher and classroom demographic and compositional covariates. Implications for teacher accountability and school tracking practices within high-needs urban public schools are discussed.     

Assessing the productivity of schools through two “what works” inputs, <Emphasis Type="Italic">teacher quality</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">teacher effectiveness</Emphasis>

This paper is a critique of the school education productivity evaluation and two research constructs germane to it, teacher quality and teacher effectiveness. The paper will argue that policy inceptions of teacher quality and teacher effectiveness proxy for the productive capacity of schools and more broadly, school systems. Student achievement scores as determined by high stakes testing are the school education outputs of policy significance in current times while inputs thought to matter are increasingly tapered towards the particular characteristics of classroom teachers, specifically their quality (usually credentials) and effectiveness (teaching behaviours). The paper finds that attributing school system success largely to teachers and their work, especially in terms of their classroom teaching practice(s), distorts the school education policy agenda so that evaluations of school productivity purely serve accountability purposes.     

“I Could Not Believe That Would Happen”: Challenges and Opportunities in a Critical,Project-Based Clinical Experience

As part of a youth summer program—a partnership between a large Southeastern university and the local school district—middle-school-aged youth, preservice teachers, and doctoral candidates interested in arts-based literacy practices spent their mornings in June 2016 engaging in activities that both explored and expanded thinking around their communities, schools, and families. Whereas the youth were enrolled in a monthlong creative arts and tentative unschooling experiment that ran roughly the length of a typical school day, university faculty and graduate students were engaged in a course on the application of youth participatory action research (YPAR). This article is an examination of the experience of preservice teachers, through an analysis of their reflections on events within the course, to suggest ways forward through the promises and perils of project-based, clinical preservice teaching experiences. In our exploration of the experiences of focal preservice teachers when engaged with youth coresearchers in a monthlong YPAR project, we found the work to have been filled with contradictions, unexpected shifts, and moments of great understanding, community affiliation, and suffering.     

Social,Moral and Religious Attitudes of Secondary School Students

In Australian schools, "inclusion" is a term that is used to challenge a previously narrow focus on students with disabilities and their integration within and distribution amongst "mainstream" schools and classrooms. Nevertheless, this article argues that, as a concept, "inclusion" requires further broadening and deepening, particularly in arenas of practice, if it is to serve the interests of all students. Informed by notions of recognitive justice, the paper advocates rethinking inclusion to accommodate student differences in more socially just ways - emphasising students' contributions rather than their disabilities - and what this means for the organisation of classrooms and schools. Within the article, research data are focused primarily on students with learning disabilities and draw on twenty semi-structured interviews conducted with parents and teachers across six Australian state primary and secondary schools. Three sets of conditions are proposed as necessary for inclusive classroom and school processes: specifically, those that promote self-identity and respect, self expression and development and selfdetermination and decision-making.     

Teaching practices in kindergarten and first grade: different strokes for different folks

This study assessed the nature of instruction in 314 kindergarten and first-grade classrooms from 155 schools in 48 school districts in three states. The schools served a relatively high proportion of low-income children and children of color. Despite the restricted range in student populations served, qualities of the schools and observed classroom instruction were associated with the demographics of the student body. Schools serving relatively high proportions of low-income children and children of color were rated by teachers to have more negative social climates. Teachers in these schools emphasized basic skills more and engaged in more didactic teaching and less constructivist teaching practices. At the classroom level, teaching approaches were predicted by teachers’ goals, the ethnic composition of their classroom, and the degree to which teachers perceived the families of the children in their classroom to have challenges associated with poverty. Didactic teaching was particularly common in classrooms with a high proportion of African–American students and in which teachers believed poverty-related problems inhibited parent involvement in their children's education; constructivist teaching was high in classrooms with a high proportion of Caucasian children.     

Thirty-six things to do with a poem

At the 1980 conference of the National Association for the Teaching of English at Warwick University, a group of teachers considered the classroom teaching of literature. It seemed to the group that poetry was rarely popular with pupils in the schools that they knew, and that a checklist of ideas for teaching poetry might be helpful. The list is introduced here by the group's leaders, Geoff Fox and Brain Merrick. Specific contributions were also made by Graham Baldwin, Barbara Bleiman, Roz Charlish, Dave Klemm, Colin Padgett, and Andrew Stibbs.Geoff Fox and Brian Merrick have both taught in secondary schools and now work in the School of Education of Exeter University. They divide their time between teaching literature and method to student teachers and working alongside teachers in schools and on courses.     

Kuwaiti Science Teachers’ Beliefs and Intentions Regarding the Use of Inquiry-Based Instruction

To improve the quality of education, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Education has encouraged schools to implement inquiry-based instruction. This study identifies psychosocial factors that predict teachers’ intention to use inquiry-based instruction in their science classrooms. An adapted model of Ajzen’s (1985) theory of planned behaviour—the Science Adoption Model—was used to study Kuwaiti science teachers’ beliefs. Four hundred and ninety-six teachers from all the government primary schools in Kuwait completed a questionnaire. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to statistically examine the relationships among the constructs of the model. It was found that teachers’ attitudes towards using inquiry-based instruction significantly predicted their capacity to create and deliver inquiry-based lessons. Although Kuwaiti science teachers held positive beliefs about the implementation of inquiry-based instruction, many factors limited their use of this approach in their science classroom. One clear implication from this study is that educators need to overtly consider teachers’ beliefs as inquiry-based instruction reform is implemented.     

Interfaculty differences in classroom teaching behaviors and their relationship to student instructional ratings

This study tested for differences between instructors in three college faculties in the frequency with which they exhibited various classroom teaching behaviors, and in the correlation of these behaviors with perceived teaching effectiveness. Trained observers assessed the frequency of 95 classroom teaching behaviors shown by 124 teachers in the arts and humanities, the social science, and the natural science faculties. Teaching effectiveness was measured by formal end-of-term student ratings averaged over a three-year period. Behaviors reflecting interpersonal orientation occurred more frequently in arts and social science teachers than in natural science teachers, whereas behaviors reflecting task orientation occurred more frequently in natural and social science teachers than in arts teachers. However, the pattern of correlations between teaching behaviors and overall effectiveness ratings was quite similar in all three faculties. Results are discussed in terms of understanding, evaluating, and improving college teaching.     

Moving Fiercely Linear Preservice Teachers into the Joys of Integrating Art in the Classroom: An Artist Residency in a University Early Childhood and Special Education Program

How can artist residencies for preservice teachers plant seeds for future classrooms? Teacher educators and a teaching artist describe a two-tiered residency in an early childhood and special education program that transformed preservice teachers' attitudes toward visual art and arts integration. Findings are based on teaching artist and instructor reflections as well as a qualitative analysis of student journal entries. Preservice teachers who had no prior art training and were resistant toward abstract painting began to enjoy it and appreciate the value of art for children's learning. They came to recognize visual art as a tool to support social development and children with special needs, understood the importance of process in children's art experiences, and considered ways to integrate art throughout the curriculum. We urge teacher educators and teaching artists to incorporate artist residencies into teacher education programs to prepare future teachers to integrate the arts into the classrooms of tomorrow.     

Enhancing literacy practices in science classrooms through a professional development program for Canadian minority-language teachers

Literacy in the Science Classroom Project was a three-year professional development (PD) program supporting minority-language secondary teachers’ use of effective language-based instructional strategies for teaching science. Our primary objective was to determine how teacher beliefs and practices changed over time and how these were enacted in different classrooms. We also wanted to identify the challenges and enablers to implementing these literacy strategies and practices at the classroom, school, and district levels. Data collection involved both qualitative and quantitative methodologies: student questionnaires; interviews with teachers, principals, and mentor; and focus groups with students. The findings suggest that the program had an impact on beliefs and practices commensurate with the workshop participation of individual teachers. These language-enhanced teacher practices also had a positive impact on the use of talking, reading and writing by students in the science classroom. Finally, continuing PD support may be needed in certain jurisdictions for strengthening minority-language programs given the high teacher mobility in content-area classrooms evident in this study.     

Evaluation of a K–5 Mathematics Program Which Integrates Children’s Literature: Classroom Environment and Attitudes

This article describes a one-year study of 120 fifth grade students whose teachers participated in a program entitled Project SMILE (Science and Mathematics Integrated with Literary Experiences). The purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which the classroom implementation of Project SMILE positively influenced the classroom environment and student attitudes toward reading, writing and mathematics. This was accomplished by, first, facilitating a series of professional development workshops with the teachers and, subsequently, asking these teachers to use the strategies with their students in their elementary school classrooms. The research represents one of the relatively few studies that have employed learning environment dimensions as criteria of effectiveness in the evaluation of educational innovations. Methodologically, our study supported previous research that successfully combined qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection. The learning environment and attitude scales exhibited satisfactory internal consistency reliability and discriminant validity and, additionally, the actual form of most learning environment scales was capable of differentiating between the perceptions of students in different classrooms. The implementation of SMILE was found to have a positive impact on the students of the teachers who participated in the inservice program in that students attitudes to mathematics and reading improved and there was congruence between students actual and preferred classroom environment on the scales of satisfaction and difficulty. As well, prior research was replicated in that students satisfaction was greater in classrooms with a more positive learning environment, especially in terms of student cohesiveness. Finally, qualitative data-gathering methods were used to construct a case study of the mathematics classes of a teacher who attended the SMILE professional development. This case study supported and illuminated the results from the questionnaire survey concerning the effectiveness of Project SMILE in terms of student attitudes and classroom environment.     

Inclusive practices at the teacher and class level: the experts’ view

One concern for teachers and schools is how to implement inclusion. This paper examines its implementation at the teacher and class level in Styria, (a state in Austria). To do so, a qualitative study with expert interviews was conducted. Twenty-five experts from seven schools and four Centres for Inclusion and Special Education were interviewed. This paper highlights four areas: (1) teachers’ attitudes; (2) co-teaching; (3) individualised instruction; and (4) classroom composition. The results showed that for the inclusion process to be successful, positive attitudes towards inclusion of children with special educational needs are critical. Furthermore, negative attitudes towards inclusion can change if resources and support systems are available. Like every change process, high reliability is necessary to promote inclusion. The special education teacher was seen as an important resource, thus meaningful cooperation between the general and special education teacher was considered as a first step in implementing inclusive education. The use of differentiated teaching methods, along with individual initiatives, were other indispensable practices. According to the experts, these differentiated teaching instructions are implemented better in heterogeneous classrooms, meaning that a classroom composition that corresponds to the normal heterogeneity of the student population is seen as an essential part of teaching.     

Carnival in the Curriculum

This article focuses on a carnival in the curriculum project designed to revitalise the arts in the experience of students in Higher Education preparing to become primary school teachers. It argues the relevance of a combined arts or trans‐disciplinary artform in the remit of a visual arts education journal and explores carnival as a complex, inclusive, multifaceted and multidimensional cultural practice with deep historical and social roots. It locates carnival within theory and the debate about the arts in schools in the UK from the early 1980s. Drawing on the analysis of interviews with students and teachers in carnival project schools, issues and themes such as student involvement, creativity, artists in schools, and cross‐curricular learning are explored, concluding that carnival in the curriculum provides an opportunity for agency within the regulated official curriculum.     

Handwriting automaticity and writing instruction in Australian kindergarten: an exploratory study

Accumulating evidence indicates handwriting automaticity is related to the development of effective writing skills. The present study examined the levels of handwriting automaticity of Australian children at the end of kindergarten and the amount and type of writing instruction they experienced before entering first grade. The current study involved 177 kindergarten children enrolled in 23 classrooms from seven government-funded primary schools in Western Australia. Individual child level data (e.g., handwriting automaticity and word-reading skills) were collected and teachers were asked to complete a survey assessing the amount of time and types of writing activities developed in their classrooms (e.g., teaching basic skills and teaching writing processes). Hierarchical linear models were conducted to examine total variance attributable to child and classroom levels. Results showed a total variance of approximately 20% in children’s handwriting automaticity attributable to differences among classrooms when gender and word-reading skills were controlled for. Large variability was noted in the amount and type of writing instruction reported by a subset of participating teachers. Handwriting automaticity was associated with the teaching of revising strategies but not with the teaching of handwriting. Implications for writing development and writing instruction are discussed.     

Teacher–Student Interactions in Korean High School Science Classrooms

This paper provides a preliminary picture of teacher–student interaction in Korean senior high schools. In order to do this, the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) was translated into Korean and administered to 439 students (99 science-independent stream students, 195 science-oriented stream students and 145 humanities stream students). Based on the results from this survey, interviews with some students and teachers were also carried out and three science classrooms were also observed. It was found that the teacher–student interactions in Korean senior high school science classrooms reflect the general image of the youth-elder relationship in society as well as the senior high school's unique nature – portraying a scene of directing teachers and obeying students. It was also found that students experience unique interactions in their science classrooms with their particular teachers. It was considered that this difference comes from the overlapping of a teacher's personal characteristics with the nature of a stream (e.g., curriculum, expectation towards the students in that stream). This article reports part of a larger study conducted with Korean senior high school students and teachers. The aim of the main study was to investigate three different aspects of the high school science classroom environments in Korea, namely, the degree of implementation of constructivism, the pattern of teacher–student interactions, and the learning environment in laboratory classes. Based on the realisation that teacher–student interactions have not been systematically dealt with especially at the senior high school level in Korea, this article pays particularly attention to this aspect. The intention was also to provide useful insights for improving the current situation in senior high school science classrooms in Korea.     

Writing instruction in first grade: an observational study

As schools work to meet the ambitious Common Core State Standards in writing in the US, instructional approaches are likely to be examined (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). However, there is little research on the current state of instruction. This study was designed to provide a comprehensive analysis of first-grade writing instruction across 13 schools in one state in the US. Daylong observations were conducted four times during the year in 50 first-grade classrooms. Using a time-sampled, observational protocol, observers coded multiple dimensions of instruction, including grouping, instructional focus, teacher instructional activity, and student writing activity. Results revealed that writing was taught for less than 30 min a day on average, and instruction in skills or process writing was common. Most instruction was organized in whole-class settings with teachers either presenting information or asking students questions. Variability in the amount and focus of writing instruction and in student writing activity was examined at the classroom and school levels. A small number of classrooms and schools were identified with distinctive patterns in their approach to instruction and writing activity. Several moderate relationships were found between the writing instructional focus and the nature of student writing. These findings suggest that first-grade writing instruction is inconsistent across classrooms and schools and point to instructional implications for teachers and schools in the US.     

Education Assistant Support in Inclusive Western Australian Classrooms: Trialling a Screening Tool in an Australian Context

Education assistants (EAs) who support students with disability in general education classrooms often find themselves in difficult situations. Caught in the firing line between their personal sense of duty, expectations of the classroom teachers, and the challenges that inclusion presents, their roles as primary support agents are anything but clear. In the following article the authors describe the findings from a modification of screening tool on the over-utilisation of paraprofessionals. The 16-item electronic survey focused on factors associated with EA support, conducted in a variety of Western Australian schools. The findings revealed that school community members such as EAs, classroom teachers, administrators and parents observed aspects of EA support that appear counter-productive towards more inclusive pedagogy.     

Internet Resources for Middle School Science: Golden Opportunity or “Silicon Snake Oil”?

This study examines the experiences of six teachers at three schools in learning about and beginning to implement or enhance project-based learning in their middle school science classrooms using a variety of resources available through the Internet. Data were gathered over a one-year period ending in March, 1996. As a result of their experience, teachers became aware of the possibilities and the problems created by both the nearly unlimited quantity of information available on the Internet and the limited quality and relevance of much of that information. Positive and negative experiences described by teachers and the variety of issues and concerns which they reflect are compared and contrasted, including: unreliability of network connections; potential availability to students of inappropriate resources; consistency of classroom organization structures necessary to facilitate Internet access with normally preferred teaching methods; the dependence of the efficiency and motivational value of project-based units on students' appreciation of the nature and power of the technology; conflict between curriculum space devoted to teaching about technology and that devoted to substantively using the technology to teach about science and related subjects; the on call convenience of the Internet; the up-to-date nature of much of the scientific information available on the Internet; Internet-based information (versus textbook information) as authoritative yet not impersonal.     

Teaching students with Down syndrome in regular classrooms in Ghana: views of secondary school mathematics teachers

ABSTRACT

The recent development of making secondary school education free in Ghana has raised concerns about the level of preparedness of teachers to teach students with diverse needs in one classroom. Significantly, mathematics is one of the core areas that the Ghanaian government has prioritised, and it has institutionalised mechanisms to encourage participation by many students. Accordingly, this qualitative study aimed to document the level of preparedness of mathematics teachers to support the teaching of students with Down syndrome in secondary school classrooms. Twenty-seven mathematics teachers from 14 schools, made up of 18 males and nine females, took part in the study. We found that participants were in favour of implementation of inclusive education. However, regarding the prospect of teaching students with Down syndrome, most of the participants thought that the regular secondary school classroom is not a suitable environment for these students to access education, especially due to a number of challenges. The need for the government to support schools with appropriate teaching materials and facilities is discussed extensively.