Use of comics to enhance students’ learning for the development of the twenty-first century competencies in the mathematics classroom

Abstract

This paper discusses the use of comics in teaching mathematics in the secondary mathematics classroom. We explicate how the use of comics in teaching mathematics can prepare students for the twenty-first century competencies. We developed an alternative teaching package using comics for two lower secondary mathematics topics. This alternative teaching package consists of (1) several sets of comic strips expounding all related mathematical concepts in a lively way; (2) tiered practice questions for learning reinforcement; and (3) a set of proposed lesson outlines with suggestions on how to use the comics for mathematics teaching. We also report how one of the teachers in our study used this teaching package in her mathematics lessons. Her lessons were video-recorded and 11 students were interviewed to help us understand how the mathematics comics lessons were enacted and the students’ perception of comics as instruction. We identified instances in which the teacher tweaked the provided resource to further enhance student learning and incorporated elements of the twenty-first century competencies during her lessons. Through selected student interviews, we also identified instances in which students commented on their gain from the new approach from the perspective of the twenty-first century competencies.     

Never Again: The Impact of Learning About the Holocaust on Civic Outcomes

Abstract

Preparing students to be effective citizens is a longstanding goal of public education. Historical content provides illustrative opportunities for civic learning. Teaching about the Holocaust exemplifies this approach. Employing an experimental research design with 865 secondary school students, we analyze effects on civic outcomes from learning about the Holocaust through a school-sponsored trip to a Holocaust museum. We find that lessons about the Holocaust increase students’ support for civil liberties and deepen historical content knowledge, but decrease religious tolerance. High school students and those from college-educated households drive increases in support for civil liberties, and these students are more likely to donate to human rights causes as a result of the intervention. Middle school students and those from less-educated households drive the negative religious tolerance effect. These findings suggest that history lessons can produce meaningful impacts on civic educational outcomes. However, a stronger educational foundation that comes with engaging with challenging political issues may be a vital prerequisite to avoid undesirable consequences.     

How Students Study for Three Types of Objective Tests

Abstract

Fifth grade social studies students of various verbal ability levels were presented lessons with a high degree of structure or a low degree of structure. Structure was defined in terms of the frequency with which concepts were repeated from one sentence to the next. After the lessons students were tested for comprehension of the material covered and then they rated the lessons in terms of perceived effectiveness. Students presented the high structure lessons achieved significantly higher and rated the lessons higher. These findings are discussed in relation to previous research on structure.     

What factors influence students’ real-time motivation and engagement? An experience sampling study of high school students using mobile technology

Abstract

Using mobile technology and experience sampling in junior high school, real-time motivation and engagement were explored at four-levels: between lessons (up to 2 lessons per day; Level 1), between days (5 days per week; L2), between weeks (4 weeks; L3), and between students (113 students; L4). Findings for a ‘random effects’ model revealed substantial variance between students (M?=?67%), followed by variance between lessons (M?=?29%), with little variance between days and between weeks (M?=?2%). In a ‘fixed and random effects’ model, we explored the roles of prior general academic motivation and engagement as well as ability and socio-demographics. Findings revealed that prior general academic motivation and engagement played a significant role in students’ real-time motivation and engagement in mathematics and English and reduced between-student variance by about half. Gender (females), ability (high), and socioeconomic status (high) were also associated with higher real-time motivation and engagement.     

25 Hours in Family: How Family Internships Can Help School Leaders Transform from Within

This article describes the ways in which a 25-hour internship with families who have children with disabilities impacted four doctoral students in educational leadership. We discuss the lessons we learned as a result of our experiences and provide insight into the structural components of the internship experience that were critical to enhancing our professional development. Key lessons include: (1) the realization that disability is a socially-constructed term that does not describe the talents, feelings, and aspirations of individuals with disabilities; (2) increased knowledge and strategies about how school leaders can provide support to families by listening to their hopes, dreams, and challenges; and (3) the critical need to include families in decision-making processes to ensure that the family perspective is represented. Important structural components of the internship experience included spending time with families in their homes and communities for extended periods of time. Implications for the preparation of educational leaders are discussed.     

Multilingual students’ use of translanguaging in science classrooms

ABSTRACT

This study describes multilingual students’ authentic use of their first and second languages in a translanguaging science classroom, from a sociocultural perspective. The study is ethnographic, and has followed some lessons each month in a translanguaging science classroom at a primary school for three years. The observed lessons were documented by four video cameras and four audio recorders, while field notes and different types of students’ texts and other teaching materials were also collected. In order investigate how language operates, and to realise the meaning semantically, we analysed the students’ use of both first and second language to tie paradigmatic relations, and how they move in linguistic loops between languages and discourses. The results illustrate the ways in which a translanguaging science classroom constitutes a resource in joint negotiations of the scientific content and its related language for multilingual students, and benefits the students’ ability to relate and contextualise the science content to prior experience. The creation of translanguaging science classrooms, in which students’ experiences and diverse cultural and linguistic resources interweave with school science, and in which multilingual students are enabled and encouraged to use all available language resources, has important implications for science education.     

Innovative Arts Programs Require Innovative Partnerships: A Case Study of STEAM Partnering between an Art Gallery and a Natural History Museum

ABSTRACT

The arts animate learning because they are inherently experiential and because of their potential to develop creative and critical thinking skills in students. These same skills are valued in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, but the arts have not been consistently included in STEM lessons. We transformed our STEM programming into STEAM programming (STEM plus arts) by creating an innovative partnership between two informal learning environments, the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery and the Garth and Jerri Frehner Museum of Natural History at Southern Utah University. The partnership resulted in a STEAM learning program that integrated art and science for K-12 students. We incorporated an art exhibition, a hands-on lesson in art, and an immersive lesson in science that culminated in a student project that merged concepts from both art and science. Through programs each fall from 2012 through 2014, we helped over 6,000 students from southern Utah use concepts from art to deepen their understanding of caterpillar defenses, fish ecomorphology, and pollinator biology.     

Talents and type IIIs: The effects of the talents unlimited model on creative productivity in gifted youngsters

This study examined a set of lessons that integrate the Talents Unlimited Model (TU; C. L. Schlichter, 1986) with the 10 steps of completing a Type III activity (J. S. Renzulli & S. M. Reis, 1985) to determine the effects of these lessons on the quality of students’ creative products and on the number of students who completed their products. Treatment group students showed a statistically significant difference in finishing their independent or small‐group projects, as opposed to students in the control group. In addition, treatment group students’ products were of significantly higher quality as measured by the Student Product Assessment Form (SPAF; S. M. Reis, 1981) than products completed by students in the control group.     

Engaging students in learning science through promoting creative reasoning

ABSTRACT

Student engagement in learning science is both a desirable goal and a long-standing teacher challenge. Moving beyond engagement understood as transient topic interest, we argue that cognitive engagement entails sustained interaction in the processes of how knowledge claims are generated, judged, and shared in this subject. In this paper, we particularly focus on the initial claim-building aspect of this reasoning as a crucial phase in student engagement. In reviewing the literature on student reasoning and argumentation, we note that the well-established frameworks for claim-judging are not matched by accounts of creative reasoning in claim-building. We develop an exploratory framework to characterise and enact this reasoning to enhance engagement. We then apply this framework to interpret two lessons by two science teachers where they aimed to develop students’ reasoning capabilities to support learning.     

Alternative Assessment Portfolios for Students with Intellectual Disabilities: A Case Study

Abstract

Twenty‐eight classroom teachers identified students in their rooms who were low achievers, at‐risk learners; low achievers, not at risk; average achievers; and special education students. We videotaped these students during reading lessons conducted by their teachers. Using a stimulated recall procedure, we interviewed teachers and asked them to report their thought processes during instruction, especially those that pertained to the target children. We found that teachers reported significantly more negative thoughts about at‐risk learners' than about average achievers' attending behavior and ability‐performance. Furthermore, at‐risk learners received a greater number of comments focused on the need to monitor their performance. Special education students received significantly more positive and negative comments about attending than did average achievers. In addition, they received more miscellaneous positive comments than did low, not at‐risk, and average achievers. Finally, teachers reported making more classroom modifications for this group than for average students. Implications for prereferral classroom interventions are discussed.     

Investigating university students’ adoption of video lessons

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to examine the undergraduate students’ adoption of video lessons. The data were collected from 313 undergraduate students from Education, Health Sciences, and Letters Faculties within a large university in Turkey using a questionnaire with six constructs: ease of use, usefulness, enjoyment, intention, computer self-efficacy and relative advantage. The Technology Acceptance Model and Diffusion of Innovation Theory were used as the research framework for the study, and the data were analysed by Structural Equation Modeling. The results showed that ease of use and computer self-efficacy had a significant influence on usefulness of video lessons. Computer self-efficacy had a significant influence on ease of use regarding video lessons and usefulness of a video lesson had a significant influence on relative advantage. In addition, relative advantage and enjoyment had a significant effect on student intention to use a video lesson. Interestingly, it was found that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and computer self-efficacy had no effect on the intention to use video lessons. Consequently, five constructs account for 38% of the variance intention to use video lessons. The research model was found to have a good fit.     

Preservice special educators’ perceptions of collaboration and co-teaching during university fieldwork: implications for personnel preparation

Abstract

Special education teachers today must demonstrate effective skills in collaboration and often engage in co-teaching with general education colleagues to meet the needs of students with disabilities. In this study, we describe a university-based early fieldwork in which university students seeking teaching licensure in special education taught children from the local urban community, thus developing their collaboration and co-teaching skills under the supervision of university faculty. Although citing challenges such as time constraints and overcoming personality differences, the majority of these preservice special educators reported growth in their teaching skills as the main outcome of this fieldwork in co-planning and co-instructing lessons to meet the diverse learning needs of children from the local community. These preservice special educators’ perceptions of this co-teaching fieldwork experience highlight the importance of special education teacher preparation programs that explicitly train students in collaboration and co-teaching skills.     

The Institute for Educational Technology (IET) at the University of Surrey

This paper first takes a brief look at the school system and the teaching of biology in Germany. Then a research project is described which is aimed at improving methods of teaching biology. Within the framework of this project, several teaching models are examined and their effectiveness, in both cognitive and affective terms, analysed. This research project includes empirical studies in which more than 2000 school students have been involved. The results of four of these studies will be looked at in detail. The following models were studied and compared: Lab work completed by students compared with lab work demonstrated by the teacher and with pencil and paper lessons. Classroom instruction on the identification of plants compared with outdoor instruction. Lessons using living invertebrates compared with lessons using models, slides and pictures. The effect on the attitudes of students towards AIDS infected children and on their knowledge about AIDS after lessons showing films on the subject compared with lessons on the same subject with no films.     

Addressing Barriers to Technology Diffusion

ABSTRACT

In this paper we present a model for overcoming the significant barriers encountered by a small teacher education program in its effort to integrate technology within its curriculum. At the University of New England, teacher education faculty have succeeded in overcoming these impediments by collaborating with faculty in other programs of the institution. The model illustrates lessons learned over a period of four years as we moved from our initial ‘one step at a time’ plan to the current strategy. This successful model details our efforts to garner administrative and financial support, acquire hardware and software, provide opportunities for training and education, and develop technology rich learning experiences for our students.     

Direct and Extended Vocabulary Instruction in Kindergarten: Investigating Transfer Effects

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of an 18-week program of direct and extended vocabulary instruction with kindergarten students on both proximal measures of target word knowledge and transfer measures of generalized language and literacy. A second purpose was to examine whether treatment effects would be moderated by initial receptive vocabulary knowledge measured at pretest. In a quasi-experimental design, 80 kindergarten students from schools serving large at-risk populations were taught the meanings of 54 vocabulary words within interactive story read alouds over 36 half-hour instructional lessons (2 lessons per week over 18 weeks). An additional 44 students served as a no-treatment control. Findings indicated that students who received vocabulary instruction outperformed controls on a measure of target word knowledge as well as measures of generalized receptive vocabulary and listening comprehension. In addition, initial receptive vocabulary was strongly related to posttest performance on all measures. Implications are discussed in relation to supporting vocabulary development in the early grades within a multitier framework of instruction and intervention.     

Lessons Our BSW Students Taught Us About Teaching Social Work in a Reservation Community

ABSTRACT

American Indians and Alaska Natives are underrepresented as social work students, social work educators, and within the profession in general. In addition, many historical and socioeconomic factors have contributed to disproportionality in higher education attainment between these students and those within other ethnic groups. Compounding the challenges, many students in reservation communities lack access to programs that provide social work degrees. Faculty based in a small university in the upper Midwest delivered a BSW program to students in a tribal community over a 3-year period and share pedagogical lessons learned from their students and the literature.     

Students’ Perceptions of Religion and Science,and How They Relate: the Effects of a Classroom Intervention

Abstract

In England, both Religious Education (RE) and science are mandatory parts of the school curriculum throughout the 5-16 age range. Nevertheless, there remain concerns that, as in many countries, students do not have a good understanding about the scope of each subject nor about how the two subjects relate. This article reports on a study that involved an intervention of six lessons in RE and six in science that were intended to help 13-15?year-old students develop a better appreciation for the relationship(s) between science and religion and a less reductionist understanding of biology. Our focus here is on the understandings that students have about the relationship between science and religion. The intervention was successful in improving the understandings of almost half of the students interviewed, but in these interviews we still found many instances where students showed misunderstandings of the nature of both religious and scientific knowledge. We argue that RE needs to attend to questions regarding the nature of knowledge if students are to develop better understandings of the scope of religions and how they arrive at their knowledge claims.     

Mentoring Student Participation in Undergraduate Research: A Case Study of Twists and Turns from Two Perspectives

Abstract

Undergraduate research experiences provide excellent examples of high-impact practices. They rely on inquiry-based learning to provide important capstone experiences for the students. However, they are time-intensive for mentor faculty. In an attempt to scale up our faculty’s ability to offer such experiences, we combined a number of projects into one class: the Biomathematics Workshop. This article chronicles the experiences of one student from that class interspersed with comments from his mentor. Our goal is to illustrate some of the twists and turns in his journey and the unexpected but valuable lessons the student (and the mentoring team) learned.     

The influence of textbooks on teachers’ knowledge of chemical bonding representations relative to students’ difficulties understanding

Background: Textbooks are integral tools for teachers’ lessons. Several researchers observed that school teachers rely heavily on textbooks as informational sources when planning lessons. Moreover, textbooks are an important resource for developing students’ knowledge as they contain various representations that influence students’ learning. However, several studies report that students have difficulties understanding models in general, and chemical bonding models in particular, and that students’ difficulties understanding chemical bonding are partly due to the way it is taught by teachers and presented in textbooks.

Purpose: This article aims to delineate the influence of textbooks on teachers’ selection and use of representations when teaching chemical bonding models and to show how this might cause students’ difficulties understanding.

Sample: Ten chemistry teachers from seven upper secondary schools located in Central Sweden volunteered to participate in this study.

Design and methods: Data from multiple sources were collected and analysed, including interviews with the 10 upper secondary school teachers, the teachers’ lesson plans, and the contents of the textbooks used by the teachers.

Results: The results revealed strong coherence between how chemical bonding models are presented in textbooks and by teachers, and thus depict that textbooks influence teachers’ selection and use of representations for their lessons. As discussed in the literature review, several of the selected representations were associated with alternative conceptions of, and difficulties understanding, chemical bonding among students.

Conclusions: The study highlights the need for filling the gap between research and teaching practices, focusing particularly on how representations of chemical bonding can lead to students’ difficulties understanding. The gap may be filled by developing teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge regarding chemical bonding and scientific models in general.