What do upper-elementary and middle school teachers know about the processes of text comprehension?

Reading and Writing - Teachers’ knowledge of reading comprehension processes is underresearched relative to teachers’ knowledge of word identification and phonological awareness. In...     

Correction to: What do teacher educators know about English spelling?

Reading and Writing -     

What do upper secondary school teachers want to know from research on the use of ICT and how does this inform a research design?

This study investigates what teachers taking part in a longitudinal research project on the use of ICT for teaching and learning in three upper secondary schools in Sweden want to learn more about. At the beginning of the project eighty-four teachers were invited to respond to a questionnaire relating to what teachers wanted to learn more about during their participation in a research project, both for themselves, their colleagues and their students. The questionnaire consisted of Likert-scale and open-ended questions. Sixty teachers responded, thereby yielding a response rate of 71%. In focus in this paper is a qualitative content analysis of the open-ended questions. The analysis revealed six desired areas of learning: (a) technological aspects, (b) how to use ICT for teaching and learning, (c) the Learning Management System (LMS), (d) safety and plagiarism, (e) best practice and (f) collaboration and professional development. The aspects of knowledge addressed in these themes were analysed and discussed in relation to the TPACK model. A conclusion that can be drawn from the analysis is that the teachers inquired different forms of knowledge and that interpretation of ‘technological pedagogical content knowledge’ only emerged in one of the themes. This study then informed the research design in multiple ways, the two most apparent being a survey of students acknowledging teachers’ expressed research interests and the design and implementation of a formative intervention group interview.     

What do the public know about anatomy? Anatomy education to the public and the implications

Public knowledge of the anatomical “self” is lacking and evidence points towards a growing need for anatomy education to the wider public. The public were offered the opportunity to learn human anatomy and complete an anatomical knowledge survey afterwards. Sixty‐three participants volunteered to attempt to place 20 anatomical structures on a blank human body template. Responses were scored independently and then collated. A mixed effects logistic model was used to examine any associations with participants’ as a random effect and all other factors as fixed effects. Results showed a statistically significant quadratic trend with age. Participants in health‐related employment scored significantly higher than those not in health‐related employment. There was a significant interaction between gender and organ type with males scoring higher than females in identifying muscles, but not in identifying internal organs. The current study demonstrates the general public's eagerness to learn anatomy despite their limited knowledge of the human body, and the need for widening participation. Furthermore, it raises an awareness of the anatomical literacy needs of the general public, especially in school children and young adults. Furthermore, it emphasizes the value of health literacy as a focus in undergraduate medical education. Anatomy literacy appears to be neglected, and this experience provides an example of a possible mode of public engagement in anatomy. Anat Sci Educ 11: 117–123. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

The hyperkinetic child: What do teachers know?

School personnel are involved in the diagnosis and treatment of hyperkinetic children in many important ways: (a) schools identify and refer the hyper-kinetic child to the physician, who then relies on behavioral reports provided by teachers and parents in making a formal diagnosis and in evaluating treatment; and (b) more recently, schools have begun to administer behavioral intervention programs which may well be as effective as drug treatment in reducing the off-task classroom behavior of many hyperkinetic children. There are many hyperactive children in classrooms who are not referred for medical evaluation and treatment. A group of teacher-identified hyperactive boys was rated significantly higher on the Hyperkinesis Index of the Conners Teacher's Questionnaire than a group of non-hyperactive classmate control boys, but the mean Hyperkinesis Index scores of teacher-identified hyper-actives and clinic-diagnosed hyperkinetics did not differ from each other. The teacher-identified hyperactive boys were observed to be off-task 33% of the time in their classrooms, and the clinic-diagnosed hyperkinetic boys were off-task a comparable 37% of the time. It was suggested that if school personnel use their expertise to identify hyperactive children in the classroom and begin behavioral intervention programs at the earliest possible time, medical referral and treatment will be unnecessary for many children.     

What do teachers know about dyslexia? It’s complicated!

Reading and Writing - In recent years, many states have passed laws requiring dyslexia training for teachers. Research suggests teachers hold both scientifically-based conceptions as well as...     

Estimating the relation between health and education: What do we know and what do we need to know?

The empirical link between education and health is firmly established. Numerous studies document that higher levels of education are positively associated with longer life and better health throughout the lifespan.But measuring the causal links between education and health is a more challenging task. Aside from the typical econometric concerns about measurement error, functional form, and sampling properties, measuring the causal impact of education on health is confounded by the likely causal effect of health on education, and vice versa. Concerns about ‘missing’ variables that affect both the accumulation of human capital and the health capital - such as measures of individual discount rates - also make causality difficult to measure.Despite the difficulties, there has been a marked surge over the last decade in the number of empirical studies attempting to estimate the causal links between education and health. This survey reviews recent empirical evidence on the topic. Following the bifurcation in the literature, we split the survey into two pieces. First, we review the evidence of the effect of education on health. The vast majority of work in this area focuses on schooling up through college and its effect on adult health, including longevity. Second, we review the evidence of the effect of health on education, including health shocks in the womb and their effects on educational attainment. Rather than attempting a comprehensive review, our focus is to highlight relatively recent research.     

How do elementary school teachers learn coding and robotics? A case study of mediations and conflicts

Education and Information Technologies - In this qualitative case study, we examined in-service elementary school teachers’ learning of coding and robotics in a blended professional learning...     

What is science in preschool and what do teachers have to know to empower children?

In this article we problematize the purpose of teaching science in preschool and the competences preschool teachers need in order to conduct science activities in the classroom. The empirical data were collected through an action research project with five preschool and primary school teachers (K-6). In the first section of this paper we use one situation, a floating–sinking experiment, as an illustration of how two different epistemological perspectives generate different foci on which kind of science teaching competences can be fruitful in preschool settings. In the first perspective, the central goal of science teaching is the development of the children’s conceptual understanding. With this perspective, we found that the science activities with children were unsuccessful, because their thoughts about concepts did not develop as expected, the situation even enhanced a “misconception” concerning density. Moreover, the teacher was unsuccessful in supporting the children’s conceptual learning. The second perspective uses a feminist approach that scrutinizes science, where we investigate if the floating–sinking activity contributes to a feeling of participation in a scientific context for the children and if so how the teacher promotes this inclusion. This second perspective showed that the children’s scientific proficiency benefited from the situation; they had a positive experience with density which was reinforced by the teacher. The children discovered that they had power over their own learning by using an experimental approach. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that there are competences other than subject matter knowledge that are also important when preschool teachers engage children in scientific activities. Through process-oriented work with the teacher group, we identified four concrete skills: paying attention to and using children’s previous experiences; capturing unexpected things that happen at the moment they occur; asking questions that challenge the children and that stimulate further investigation; creating a situated presence, that is, “remaining” in the situation and listening to the children and their explanations. We discuss possible ways to move preschool teachers away from their feelings of inadequacy and poor self-confidence in teaching science by reinforcing this kind of pedagogical content knowledge.     

Students’ and teachers’ monitoring and regulation of students’ text comprehension: Effects of comprehension cue availability

For regulation of text learning to be effective, students need to accurately monitor their text comprehension. Similarly, to provide adaptive instruction, teachers need to accurately monitor and regulate students’ text comprehension. Performing generative activities prior to monitoring has been suggested to provide students with diagnostic cues, improving monitoring accuracy; an open question is whether this would also help teachers. We investigated whether two generative activities, diagram completion and diagram drawing, improved secondary education students’ (n = 248) monitoring and regulation accuracy of text comprehension (Experiment 1) and whether viewing students’ diagrams improved teachers’ (N = 18) monitoring and regulation of students’ text comprehension (Experiment 2). Students’ monitoring and teachers’ regulation accuracy was higher in the diagramming conditions than in the no-diagramming condition. Students and teachers used diagnostic cues when judging students’ text comprehension: Improving students’ monitoring and teachers’ regulation of students’ text comprehension relies on improving accessibility of diagnostic cues.     

What does the teacher do?: Constructivist pedagogies and prospective teachers’ beliefs about the role of a teacher

The constructivist pedagogies that are increasingly part of teacher education course work and expectations emerge from an intellectual world where knowledge is seen as created rather than received, mediated by discourse rather than transferred by teacher talk, explored and transformed rather than remembered as a uniform set of positivistic ideas. Increasingly, teacher educators ask new teachers to learn how to elicit and then use students’ existing ideas as a basis for helping them construct new, more reasoned, more accurate or more disciplined understandings. While the role a teacher plays in developing or shaping students’ thinking via constructivist pedagogies is obvious to teacher educators who advocate such strategies, the case of Taylor, a prospective English teacher, suggests that the role a teacher plays when using these strategies may not be at all clear to prospective teachers. Rather than understanding constructivist pedagogies as techniques for thinking with learners, for teaching them, Tayor saw these strategies as ends in themselves. Faced with models of constructivist pedagogies, Taylor concluded that the teacher's role ends when she has activated learners, invited them to talk, successfully engaged their participation. This article describes how she reached this conclusion and explores the ways in which constructivist pedagogies can lead prospective teachers to project a thin vision of their role as a teacher.     

The dimensions of prospective elementary and middle school teachers’ problem posing for integer addition and subtraction

Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education - Elementary and middle school prospective teachers participated in semi-structured problem posing for integer addition and subtraction. The prospective...     

‘Sensible girls’ and ‘silly boys’: what do teachers need to know about gender?

Much to the consternation of many feminist researchers, teacher education programs have become largely silent about gender and the influence of gender discourses on teaching and learning. Stereotypical views of males and females can dominate teachers’ views of boys and girls, and they can be seen as essentially different—as binary opposites. This has implications for identity construction of children as they take up or resist the identity positions made available to them by the teacher. In this paper, the intersection of gender with culture/ethnicity is examined in the context of identity construction. Classroom-based data are considered in relation to a ‘sensible girls/silly boys’ binary, and the teacher’s positioning of a Chinese heritage boy and Korean heritage girl in a New Zealand primary classroom. We suggest that the teacher’s discursive practices based on unexamined assumptions, limited the identity positions available to the children in relation to gender and culture. We argue that teacher education has an important role to play in preparing teachers with a critical orientation towards dominant gender discourses, and an understanding of the intersection of gender with other discourses, such as culture and ethnicity.     

What do preservice teachers want to learn about puberty and sexuality education? An Australian perspective

The processes of puberty are now commonly observed in primary school-aged students. Schools, therefore, need to address puberty and sexuality education for students’ health, well-being, safety and pastoral care. Similarly, preservice teacher education needs to address future primary school teachers’ unfamiliarity and lack of confidence with these issues and topics, and develop appropriate and normative learning and teaching practices to benefit students of all ages. This paper explores the types of sexuality education content and pedagogies student-teachers prefer to learn about, and be assessed on, in a dedicated sexuality education course in their preservice Bachelor of Education (Primary) degree. A mixed-method design collected quantitative preference ratings and qualitative responses revealing that student-teachers prefer content about the social, developmental and psychological aspects of primary school children’s puberty and sexuality. Student-teachers also prefer school counsellors and school nurses as guest speakers, learning pedagogies in tutorial or small groups and assessments through case studies by oneself or small groups. This Australian evidence may be useful to designers of preservice health and sexuality education courses, who aim to assist primary school student-teachers become more competent, confident and professionally trained in puberty and sexuality education.     

Chinese upper elementary school mathematics teachers�� attitudes towards the place and value of problematic word problems in mathematics education

Word problems play a crucial role in mathematics education. However, the authenticity of word problems is quite controversial. In terms of the necessity of realistic considerations to be taken into account in the solution process, word problems have been classified into two categories: standard word problems (S-items) and problematic word problems (P-items). S-items refer to those problems involving the straightforward application of one or more arithmetical operations with the given numbers, whereas P-items call for the use of real-world knowledge and real-life experience in the problem-solving process. This study aims to explore how Chinese upper elementary school mathematics teachers think of the place and value of P-items in the elementary mathematics curriculum.     

Content-area reading comprehension and teachers’ use of instructional time: effects on middle school students’ social studies knowledge

Reading and Writing - We examined the influence of teachers’ use of instructional time on students’ learning within the context of a randomized controlled trial investigating the...     

Expository text comprehension in secondary school: for which readers does knowledge of connectives contribute the most?

The present study examined whether knowledge of connectives contributes uniquely to expository text comprehension above and beyond reading fluency, general vocabulary knowledge and metacognitive knowledge. Furthermore, it was examined whether this contribution differs for readers with different language backgrounds or readers who vary in reading fluency, general vocabulary knowledge or metacognitive knowledge levels. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that knowledge of connectives explained individual differences in eighth graders' text comprehension (n = 171) on top of the variance accounted for by the control variables. Moreover, the contribution of knowledge of connectives to text comprehension depended on a reader's level of metacognitive knowledge: more metacognitive knowledge resulted in a larger association between knowledge of connectives and text comprehension. Reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge and language background did not interact with knowledge of connectives. Findings are interpreted in the context of the strategic use of connectives during expository text reading.

What is already known about this topic?

• Connectives (words such as moreover, because and although) help the reader in establishing coherence between text parts.
• In primary school, for fifth graders, knowledge of connectives has been shown to be uniquely related to English text comprehension controlling for reading fluency and general vocabulary knowledge.
• For fifth graders, the relationship between knowledge of connectives and English text comprehension was higher for English‐only students than for their peers who learned English as a second language.

What this paper adds:

• The present study found that knowledge of connectives also has a unique relation with Dutch expository text comprehension for eighth graders above and beyond reading fluency, general vocabulary knowledge and metacognitive knowledge (about text structure and reading and writing strategies).
• The relationship between knowledge of connectives and text comprehension was not moderated by reading fluency, general vocabulary knowledge and language background (monolingual versus bilingual Dutch).
• Metacognitive knowledge did impact the relationship between knowledge of connectives and text comprehension: the higher the metacognitive knowledge, the higher the association between knowledge of connectives and text comprehension.

Implications for theory, policy or practice

• Secondary school readers are assumed to benefit from knowing connectives because these words are frequent in expository texts and signal relationships that students may often not infer without the help of these devices (i.e., with the use of background knowledge). This seems to apply in particular for expository texts that are intended to convey new information and relationships to students (see also Singer & O'Connell, 2003 ).
• We found a significant interaction between knowledge of connectives and metacognitive knowledge, which seems to indicate that knowing more connectives does not help much in improving expository text comprehension when metacognitive knowledge about text structure and reading strategies is low. This result suggests that it may be wise to couple instruction on the meaning of connectives with instruction about the structure of expository texts and ways to strategically deal with these texts.
• More specifically, besides instruction on the meaning of connectives, we advise teachers in secondary school to get students to understand the importance of connectives as markers of local and global coherence in texts, and to teach them how to strategically use connectives during reading.