Lessons learned in an urban school: Preparing teachers for the educational village

Abstract

The disparities between the education of the rich and poor of this nation will continue to grow until educators are more willing and better prepared to work effectively in a variety of schools operating within a variety of models. Teacher education must prepare new teachers with open minds, willing hearts, and myriad strategies to address the realities, strengths, and critical needs of poor, culturally diverse urban schoolchildren and their families. This article describes an initiative that engages one teacher education program with an innovative urban “full‐service” elementary school in a joint effort to serve children and families and to provide a deeper and broader experience for preservice teachers. Education students complete traditional and nontraditional field work in a full‐service school with an “educational village” mission that extends from preschool to adult education.     

博雅教育的命运及可能的未来:美国大众高等教育的经验

马丁·特罗指出,高等教育的问题——包括提供博雅教育的能力——都内在于经济增长之中。制度的性质随增长而改变,“大众化”意味着对接受高等教育的机会和社会民主化的乐观态度,容易在大学中产生一种结构和文化状况,这与真正严格的、以文本为基础的、以讨论为中心的、写作密集型的博雅教育是对立的。问题的核心在于规模、质量和成本这三者看上去不可调和,也就是如何在规模日益增大的背景下使博雅教育成为可能并具有成本效益。解决当前问题的关键在于有意识的沟通,这种沟通操作性地位于高等教育录取层面。本文提出三种解决方案:对大学的适当信息之制度化,比如大学的目的和功能;在分化的高等教育体系中,将申请人与院校恰当匹配的实践;对在高校中成为一个真正的学生之预期的理解的标准化。     

学习研究新学科创建的辉煌历程——学习科学成功之道探秘

本文通过把握学习科学发展历程中关键学术领袖的贡献,再现了学习科学创建的辉煌历程,揭示了这一学习研究新学科的成功之道:首先,敏锐把握了20世纪下半叶学校教育从"教"向"学"转变,以及相应的教育研究向实践转向的内在需求;其次,通过发展和完善基于设计的研究,奠定了学科发展的方法论根基;再次,以开放胸怀和包容精神创建了一个具有多学科交叉背景的学习科学共同体,开辟了教育研究的第三条道路;最后,准确选择了创新发展的战略支点,通过注重战略研究、纳入国家战略、创新学习文化,实现了跨越式发展.     

Lessons in Service Learning: Developing the Service Learning Opportunities in Technical Communication (SLOT-C) Database

We justify and describe our development of the Service Learning Opportunities in Technical Communication (SLOT-C) Database. The database broadens the range of organizations that instructors and students have for client-based communication projects. We argue in support of incorporating service learning into classes and facilitating partnerships among university instructors, their students, and nonprofits. We report strategies we learned for working with student interns and IT experts and strategies we developed as we worked with usability-test participants.     

Augmenting Learning in an Out-of-school Context: The Cognitive and Affective Impact of Two Cryogenics-based Enrichment Programmes on Upper Primary Students

Concepts learned in the classroom were reinforced and augmented by presenting them in a different context using cryogenics-based enrichment programmes (CBEPs) held in an out-of-school setting. The effectiveness of two CBEPs, which involve the use of liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen, was explored. Using a sample of 265 upper primary students, it was found that both enrichment programmes were effective in promoting the learning of science concepts. Fair improvements, albeit only transient, in two attitude constructs, enjoyment of science and career preference, due to either CBEPs were detected. The CBEPs did not have any significant impact on the attitude construct relating to students’ views on the social implications of science. The impact of CBEPs showed signs of retention, specifically in the cognitive realm, and reasonable indications of influencing subsequent learning and activities of students.     

A Case Study in the Integration of Assessment and General Education: Lessons learned from a complex process

This paper tracks an ongoing, 15-year initiative to reform and assess a general education programme at a regional comprehensive university in the US. The paper identifies four key phases in the process, chronicling emergent challenges, describing key setbacks and highlighting noteworthy successes. The authors identify five key lessons that may prove useful to other institutions planning or currently attempting to integrate assessment into their general education programme, and conclude that designing and implementing general education assessment is more challenging than assessing other programmes in post-secondary settings because it is influenced by more internal and external constituencies than any other assessment process.     

Searching for evidence of curricular effect on the teaching and learning of mathematics: Lessons learned from the two projects

The two research projects described and discussed in the special issue provided much needed longitudinal empirical data to show the curricular influence on classroom instruction and student learning outcomes. The findings have helped to advance our understanding of whether the reform curricula can bring about positive changes in classroom instruction and student learning outcomes and how such changes might be sustained. In this article we synthesize the results from the two studies and discuss several lessons learned from the projects about investigating and understanding curricular effects on the teaching and learning of mathematics.     

The Benefits of Intergenerational Learning in Higher Education: Lessons Learned from Two Age Friendly University Programs

This article focuses on the role of universities in the promotion of intergenerational learning and the facilitation of reciprocal sharing of expertise among learners of all ages. The principles of the Age Friendly University are used as a particular lens for interpreting two university programs, one in the United States and one in Ireland. Though different in operational implementation, core commonalities emerged within the nature of benefits to younger learners, older learners, the university, and the community. A review of these benefits illustrates how universities can provide opportunities for older and younger learners to co-create experiences and mutually enrich each other’s lives.     

Development and Validation of an Instrument for Assessing Distance Education Learning Environments in Higher Education: The Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES)

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a new learning environments instrument designed to aid investigators and practitioners in measuring and researching the psychosocial learning environment in post-secondary distance education. Using a three-stage approach, the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES) was developed, field-tested with 680 distance education students, and then validated. The DELES has 34 items allocated to six scales: (1) Instructor Support; (2) Student Interaction and Collaboration; (3) Personal Relevance; (4) Authentic Learning; (5) Active Learning; and (6) Student Autonomy. An additional scale of Enjoyment was included in this study to explore associations between the psychosocial learning environment and student affective traits. Each learning environment item had a factor loading of at least 0.50 with its own scale, and less than 0.50 with all other scales. The alpha reliability coefficient for each scale ranged from 0.75 to 0.94. Simple correlations between Enjoyment and the DELES scales ranged from 0.12 to 0.31, with the scale of Personal Relevance having the strongest correlation with Enjoyment when all other scales were mutually controlled. The DELES, an online instrument that can be utilized by students at any location, eliminates data transfer errors and does not allow for non-responses, adding to the overall validity of the instrument. The development of DELES relied extensively on literature pertaining to high-quality distance education and expert content validation techniques. It treats distance learning as having a distinct social-psychological climate unlike those found in other post-secondary classroom environments.     

Feedback in Distance Learning Programmes in Languages: Attitudes to linguistic faults and implications for the learning process

In distance learning provision in languages, fault correction and feedback can facilitate teacher–student dialogue. This article examines teachers’ beliefs and assumptions about faults and the attitudes of both teachers and learners towards the correction process, all of which can play a key role in fostering this dialogue. Our findings are based on two surveys, one of 215 students enrolled on an intermediate Open University Spanish course and one of a sample of 18 tutors who teach on this course. The results of the two questionnaires suggest that the strategies currently in use for identifying and correcting faults may not be explicit enough. We conclude that this problem may be addressed if both tutors and students are given the tools to make the process more transparent and are encouraged to see dialogue as an essential component in the feedback mechanism.     

Learning from James: Lessons about Policy and Practice for Schools' Special Provision in the Area of Literacy Difficulties

Janice Wearmouth is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Language Studies at the Open University in the UK. She has many years' experience of teaching and research in mainstream secondary schools and of developing and leading postgraduate development courses for teachers in the area of special and inclusive education. In this article, she argues that successive Governments in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have adopted policies in relation to special educational provision that are essentially technicist in character. These policies proceed from assumptions that are made about the clear and unproblematic nature of the issues and the responses that need to be made. In this model, difficulties in learning can be 'fixed' by selecting the most appropriate 'tool' in the most efficient and cost-effective way. The current focus on competency-based teacher education can be seen as a corollary of this approach.
Drawing upon a personal account of the experience of having difficulties in literacy acquisition, this article presents a contrary view. Janice Wearmouth argues that the area of special educational needs in schools, including literacy difficulties, is fraught with uncertainty and conflicting viewpoints. Given this complex situation, the technicist responses of recent Governments in the UK seem inappropriate and inadequate, Janice Wearmouth suggests. She proposes that practice in relation to special educational needs in general, and literacy difficulties in particular, can be most effectively understood from the perspective of a reflective practitioner. Her article closes with a call for practitioner professional development to be reconceptualised in these terms.     

利用开放教育资源推进终身学习

2001年,麻省理工学院(MIT)启动了“开放课件“(OCW)计划.这是一项耗时多年、规模浩大的工程.该项目依托互联网,旨在免费提供麻省理工学院全部的电子课程材料.休利特基金会(the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation)慷慨解囊资助了目前几乎所有的开放课件计划和项目,已成为开放教育资源运动中的决定性因素.另一个具有决定性的因素就是联合国教科文组织(UNESCO),是它敏锐意识到了开放教育资源的重大意义,尤其是对发展中国家而言,所以成功推动了开放教育资源运动的发展.2006年,由休利特基金会资助的欧洲开放教育资源三大计划掀起了开放教育资源运动的新浪潮.互联网上免费提供专为自主学习设计的优质学习材料,而非大学教师的传统教学材料,体现了开放教育资源的额外附加值.本文阐述了欧洲三大计划及其特征,这些计划都是以开放和灵活的方式推进终身学习,也是达成里斯本战略目标中关于提高劳动力教育水平的必要条件.三大计划的另一个有待探讨的问题是,开放教育资源这一革命性的运动改变了潜在的商业和市场模式,但是开放教育资源的可持续性发展问题却成了人们的关注点.同时,这三个项目的一些具体特征也受到了特别的关注:英国的计划课程规模相对较大,过程中的基础和重点放在技术、非正规协作学习、社区的研究和评价方面;荷兰的计划致力于正规和非正规学习的衔接、国家有关政府额外拨款资助的政策,及相应的效果测量;欧洲远程教育大学协会的计划则针对提升欧洲高等教育普及率、促进多种语言和文化多样性的发展,以及各个国家教育体系在互相承认方面应采取的共同措施.总之,我们正在目睹一个教育范式的转变,这需要我们在谨慎思考的同时,大胆采取相应的行动.     

Self-Regulated Learning and New Literacies: an experience at the University of Barcelona

This article summarises the findings from an evaluation of a Media Literacy course at the University of Barcelona. It focuses on some aspects of Self-Regulation and on the learning environment used by students. The students' learning processes were embedded in an eLearning project, in which students analysed the representation of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the media.
Key findings are the usefulness of this particular Technology-Enhanced Learning Environment (TELE), and its specific settings regarding Self-Regulated Learning (SRL). Students self-regulated their learning processes, in that they were working in a blended learning environment. However, their acquired media literacy skills seem to be fostered by the TELE rather than by the self-regulation mechanisms.
Throughout the article, special attention is paid to the conceptual framework of digital and media literacy, and the specific competences related to them.     

Learning for Life or Learning from Books: Reading Practices in Mexican Rural Schools (1900 to 1935)

This article furthers our understanding of the uses of textbooks within the complex social history of school cultures. It focuses on rural schools in an indigenous region of central Mexico, before and after the Mexican revolution (1910‐1921). Two contextual factors are highlighted. First, the gradual displacement of the native language by the dominant Spanish used in schools. Secondly, the pedagogical discourses that discouraged the use of textbooks in teaching and stressed ‘learning for life’. These circumstances shed light on the fragmentary evidence of available textbooks and actual classroom practice. I suggest that the period witnessed a shift in classroom cultures, from the intensive reading of religious and moral texts that were possibly familiar to the children, towards the extensive, silent reading of textbooks on a variety of subjects. However, native children had still to bridge a considerable gap between their own life and language and the printed Spanish they encountered in schools.     

Co-operation Through Cultural Interaction: Lessons from the Past and an Agenda for the Future

Although the term much used to describe a major sub-region in South Eastern Europe, the Balkans, has unpleasant political connotations, evoking the ultimate in political fragmentation, its peoples share a long common history and many common cultural traits. In particular, there has been the heritage both of Orthodox Christianity and of the Byzantine Empire. Even the coming of the Ottoman Turks was not as divisive as has traditionally been thought. The "pax ottomanica" also brought elements of unity to the area, even attempts at religious syncretism involving Orthodox hesychastic mystics and Muslim Sufi "bekta y i" dervishes. Recently, a Community of the Black Sea nations has come into existence that, extending to the Caucasus, could form a new South-East European-Pontic supranational unifying structure.     

初中生物课外学习活动的实践与探索

阐述了在新课改背景下初中生物课在课前和课后开展课外学习活动的一些有效形式.     

综合学习的蓝图(上)——四元教学设计模式

本文对四元教学设计模式做出概述。该模式最初是由范梅里恩伯尔等人在20世纪90年代初期为设计综合能力的培训项目而开发的。本文论述了综合学习培训蓝图的结构及相应的教学方法,其基本观点是:学习任务、相关知能、支持程序和专项操练这四个彼此关联的元素,在综合学习蓝图中是必不可少的。文章讨论了与涉及综合能力有关的基本学习过程相匹配的教学方法,同时提供了"检索文献"培训蓝图的样例。