Multi-racial schooling: parents' and teachers' views

The Framework for Teaching of the National Literacy Strategy (DfEE 1998) includes a set of teaching strategies for classroom implementation. This paper reports on a longitudinal study of the development of children as writers, set in two primary classrooms. In terms of their teaching strategies the two teachers studied were similar in many respects. Both used a writing process approach, based on Graves' (1983) guidance, that conformed to the requirements of the National Curriculum Programme of Study for writing. However, significant differences were found in the two sets of children in terms of their achievements as writers and their attitudes to writing. These were linked to differences in the two classroom cultures, and in the teachers' perceptions of their role. The conclusion is drawn that the implementation of a prescribed set of teaching strategies cannot ensure that children develop into effective and enthusiastic writers.     

Recognising and managing pupils with mental health difficulties: teachers' views and experiences on working with educational psychologists in schools

The role and future directions of the educational psychology services are being re‐examined and there is a drive to build a more integrated system of services for children and young people that incorporates education, health and social care. This qualitative study examines teacher’s perspectives on their professional involvement with educational psychology services. The results indicate that while it was clear that educational psychologists are highly valued by teachers, there are a number of issues that teachers believe constrain service provision. We suggest that greater cross‐system consultation is needed in order to more closely examine how the roles of professionals working in education, health and social care services impact on each other.     

Reading difficulties in Albanian

Albanian is an Indo-European language with a shallow orthography, in which there is an absolute correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. We aimed to know reading strategies used by Albanian disabled children during word and pseudoword reading. A pool of 114 Kosovar reading disabled children matched with 150 normal readers aged 6 to 11?years old were tested. They had to read 120 stimuli varied in lexicality, frequency, and length. The results in terms of reading accuracy as well as in reading times show that both groups were affected by lexicality and length effects. In both groups, length and lexicality effects were significantly modulated by school year being greater in early grades and later diminish in length and just the opposite in lexicality. However, the reading difficulties group was less accurate and slower than the control group across all school grades. Analyses of the error patterns showed that phonological errors, when the letter replacement leading to new nonwords, are the most common error type in both groups, although as grade rises, visual errors and lexicalizations increased more in the control group than the reading difficulties group. These findings suggest that Albanian normal children use both routes (lexical and sublexical) from the beginning of reading despite of the complete regularity of Albanian, while children with reading difficulties start using sublexical reading and the lexical reading takes more time to acquire, but finally both routes are functional.     

Learning intentions and success criteria: learners' and teachers' views

It is generally accepted that Assessment for Learning (AfL) strategies are effective in teaching and learning. Approaches within this framework include the use of formative feedback, self and peer assessment and setting and discussion of learning intentions (LIs) and success criteria (SC). There has been a great deal of research into AfL strategies, but perhaps less into the way that the use of LIs and SC are actually perceived by teachers and their pupils. The purpose of the research described in this paper was to investigate teachers’ and pupils’ perceptions of AfL strategies, focusing specifically on LIs and SC within lessons. Findings showed that while both cohorts agreed on the usefulness of LIs and SC, in practice they were rarely discussed in class. Teachers displayed a variety of understandings regarding their purpose, and some learners, while appreciating their value for revision purposes, also expressed frustration at the tokenistic way in which they were implemented. The results of this study could be helpful in informing the wider education community about how LIs and SC are viewed by teachers and learners with a view to ensure understandings are consistent with research and policy through focused professional development courses.     

Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics: some student teachers' views

ABSTRACT

This investigation examines the views of pedagogical content knowledge of 12 student teachers of mathematics drawn from three different training groups. Attitudes towards and understandings of pedagogical content knowledge were elicited using six Likert‐item statements whilst information on students' learning was obtained through open‐ended questioning. Differences between groups were apparent only in tendencies to give extreme responses and to adopt outlying positions. These differences may be attributable to differences in values or prior knowledge and to training parallels with the social construction of mathematical meaning. Indications of the acquisition of pedagogical content knowledge appeared in all training groups and seemed to be linked to a hierarchical view of mathematics; possible limitations for student learning are implied. Students' views also highlight the importance of reflection upon subject matter knowledge and awareness of learning processes when transforming mathematical ideas for teaching purposes. It is suggested that the role of prior learning is worthy of further investigation.     

Science teachers' views and practices in planning for teaching

This article studies the views and practices of a group of secondary school science teachers toward lesson planning. The two main questions posed are: “What do teachers do when they prepare their lessons?” and “What do teachers think of their own planning?” We describe the decisions made by the teachers, the things they take into account, what they give most importance to, the time spent, the source of their knowledge, and how they evaluate the results. The information was obtained by structured personal interviews, which were compared with reports written by the teachers. Our findings led us to reflect on ways in which lesson planning may be introduced into training programs. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 493–513, 1999     

Reading comprehension difficulties in children

This paper reports two studies investigating the nature of comprehension deficits in a group of 7–8 year old children whose decoding skills are normal, but whose reading comprehension skills are poor. The performance of these poor comprehenders was compared to two control groups, Chronological-Age controls and Comprehension-Age controls. The first study examined whether these comprehension difficulties are specific to reading. On two measures of listening comprehension the poor comprehenders were found to perform at a significantly lower level than Chronological-Age controls. However, they did not differ from a group of younger children matched for reading comprehension skills. This indicates that the observed comprehension difficulties are not restricted to reading, but rather represent a general comprehension limitation. The second study investigated whether these comprehension difficulties can be explained in terms of a memory deficit. The short-term and working memory skills of these three groups were examined. The poor comprehenders did not differ from their Chronological-Age controls on either of these tasks. In conclusion, it is argued that working memory processes are not a major causal factor in the creation of the comprehension difficulties identified in the present group of poor comprehenders.     

Learning for professional life: Student teachers' and graduated teachers' views of learning,responsibility and collaboration

The focus of this study is on how final-semester students and newly-graduated teachers experience the formal objectives of teacher education, with a particular view of the concepts of learning, responsibility and collaboration. The ways of experiencing these concepts varied from conceptions in which only one dimension is discerned from in the student teachers group to conceptions in which several dimensions of the phenomena are discerned in the graduate teachers group.     

Children's Misconceptions in Primary Science: A Survey of teachers' views

The study examines the effects of Piagetian‐like tasks' characteristics on the performance of these tasks by different age group students. The tasks were taken from a developed and validated test (Shemesh, 1983) which measures students' reasoning skills in six cognitive operations: conservation, proportions, control of variables, probability, combinations and correlations. Subjects were seventh, ninth and twelfth grade students, enrolled in two urban schools. Three different 3X2 factorial research design experiments, with three levels of students age and two versions of the test in each experiment, were set up for this study. Experiment 1 tested the effect of the method of task presentation (video‐taped demonstrations versus paper‐and‐pencil tasks with illustrations). Experiment 2 tested the effect of questionnaire format (multiple‐choice versus short essay questions) and experiment 3 tested the effect of the numerical content (integer ratio like 1:2, 1:3 versus noninteger ratio like 2:3, 3:5) on different age group students' responses.     

Students' and teachers' explanations of chemical equilibrium

Specializations: cognitive processes in science learning and teaching.     

Teachers' Prestige in Spain: probing the public's and the teachers' contrary views

We use the results of a public opinion survey we carried out in 2012 on a sample of the Spanish adult population to offer a plausible explanation of one of the main conundrums of primary and secondary school teachers' prestige, not only in Spain, i.e. that, contrary to public discourse and to teachers' perceptions, this prestige has not fallen in the last decades, but has remained middle to high. The estimates of teachers' prestige made by the public are the same (roughly, around 70 in a 0 to 100 scale) as those that were measured in the early 1990s. However, a clear majority of the public believes that teachers' prestige has fallen in the last decades, reiterating a cliché that is widespread in the Spanish public sphere, especially among teachers. We hypothesise that the perception of the falling prestige is much more a matter of a public space dominated by the media than of a public space that is more confined to everyday experiences and to the citizens' basic values. We support our hypothesis with pieces of empirical evidence related, on the one hand, to the association of that perception with media consumption variables in our survey, and, on the other, to media (negative) treatment of teachers' prestige. In our argument, we are also helped by a literature that is not usually dealt with in studies of teachers' prestige: that of media influence in the formation of public opinions regarding other people's opinions.     

Professors' and teachers' views of competencies necessary for mainstreaming

College professors' and classroom teachers' views of competencies necessary for mainstreaming were compared for II categories of competencies (75 competencies in all). The results indicate that teachers attach more importance to the set of competencies than do professors; there were significant differences between the two groups on approximately one-third of the items. In all cases, the teachers thought the competency was more important than did the professors. Means of the II categories were rankordered for both groups. Differences in rank were nonexistent or slight for most of the items. The three items on which there was a four-point difference in rank were: goalsetting and curriculum development (viewed as more important by the professors), and communication and assessing students' needs (viewed as more important by the teachers).     

择“善”而读：大学生专业与兴趣阅读探微

“阅读”是世纪之交西方图书馆学的主流研究领域,在我国却一直处于边缘化。高校图书馆通过开展阅读辅导服务,推广专业与经典阅读的方法和具体措施,促使其形成主动发展的智力背景和情感商数,并在“大阅读观”的指导下,逐渐感悟读书与人生相关联的意义,具备成年后参与社会的能力。     

Parents' and teachers' views of the child's academic potential

Parents (N = 97) and their child's class‐teachers were instructed to rate the child's potential for improvement in mathematics and Finnish. The results showed that there was a moderate correlation between the parents' and teachers' ratings. The parents rated their child's potential more optimistically than the teachers did. Views of malleability may be seen as a potentially important factor in defining the child's educability.     

Reading comprehension: assisting children with learning difficulties

Abstract

In critiquing our paper on “The literacy performance of ex-Reading Recovery students between two and four years following participation in the program: Is this intervention effective for students with early reading difficulties?”, Schwartz argues that we have engaged in pursuing political and ideological agendas as part of our ongoing attacks on the Reading Recovery program. We reject his claims and argue that if we are ideological, it is related to our commitment to the use of rigorous scientific research to examine claims made in favor of the Reading Recovery program. We also argue that Reading Recovery was adopted in New Zealand largely for political reasons rather than on the basis of carefully controlled research. We stand by our interpretation of various studies in New Zealand that call into question the effectiveness of Reading Recovery in terms of the stated goals for the program.     

Turkish classroom teachers' views on school readiness: a phenomenological study

In a democratic education system, it is important to provide equal opportunity to every child. Both educators and researchers acknowledge a gap between students who attend school ready to learn and those who do not. School readiness prepares students for this learning. The purpose of the study was to ascertain Turkish classroom teachers’ expectations of first-grade students in terms of school readiness. To achieve this goal, Turkish classroom teachers’ views on school readiness were collected. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with nine Turkish classroom teachers. Data were analysed using phenomenological study techniques. Seven major themes were derived from the data analysis: health screening, fine motor skills, self-confidence, self-expression, willingness to learn, toilet habits and negative transfer. Implications are discussed and recommendations are made for future studies.     

The effect of portfolios on students' learning: student teachers' views

This study reports on student teachers' views of portfolios as a learning tool when they are combined with a weekly test conducted at the end of each lesson to help student teachers self‐evaluate. Student teachers' written reflections during the process provided data for the study. Analysis of the data showed that a majority of student teachers initially felt that compiling a portfolio would be time‐consuming and an extra burden added to their already busy schedule. However, later on they all found that the process was a useful learning experience. Moreover, the portfolio process – especially combining self‐reflection with weekly tests – encouraged students to study regularly, increased retention and made learning more enjoyable. Suggestions for the successful portfolio implementation include the following: guiding students both at the beginning of and during the process, providing continuous and prompt feedback during the process and making self‐reflection – especially guided by reflection prompts – an essential part of the process.     

Reading and spelling difficulties in high school students: Causes and consequences

Basic skills in reading and spelling and supporting metalinguistic abilities were assessed in ninth and tenth grade students in two school settings. Students attending a private high school for the learning disabled comprised one group and the other comprised low to middle range students from a public high school. Both the LD students and the regular high school students displayed deficiencies in spelling and in decoding, a factor in reading difficulty that is commonly supposed to dwindle in importance after the elementary school years. Treating the overlapping groups as a single sample, multiple regression analysis was used to investigate the contribution of nonword decoding skill and phonological and morphological awareness to spelling ability. The analysis revealed that decoding was the major component, predicting about half of the variance in spelling. The effect of phonological awareness was largely hidden by its high correlation with decoding, but was a significant predictor of spelling in its own right. Morphological awareness predicted spelling skill when the words to be spelled were morphologically complex. An additional study showed that differences in decoding and spelling ability were associated with differences in comprehension after controlling for reading experience and vocabulary. Even among experienced readers individual differences in comprehension of text reflect efficiency of phonological processing at the word level.