Exploring Teachers’ Meta-Cognitive Skills in Mathematics Classes in Selected Rural Primary Schools in Eastern Cape,South Africa

Undoubtedly the acquisition of mathematical skills for problem solving is critically important in today’s sophisticated technological world. There is growing evidence that meta-cognition application is an important component of academic success in general and impacts on mathematical achievement in particular. Teachers’ application of meta-cognition therefore directs and reflects their teaching-practice behaviour which influences their learners’ learning with understanding in problem-solving. The purpose of the study reported on in this article was to explore teachers’ available meta-cognitive skills in class with the intention of supporting learners’ development of mathematics in problem-solving in some selected rural primary schools in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The participants were three teachers purposefully selected from three primary schools. Interviews were conducted with the three teachers and three lessons were observed. The interviews, as an extension of observation, focused on the teachers’ knowledge or understanding of available meta-cognitive skills and how they used these skills in helping their learners’ development of mathematics problem-solving. The findings included a detailed exploration of the teachers’ acquisition and use of specific metacognitive skills, either consciously or unconsciously, during teaching and learning processes in order to develop their mathematics learners’ meta-cognitive skills as well as in solving mathematical problems. The results of the observation showed that there was evidence of teachers applying meta-cognitive skills unconsciously in assisting their learners in problemsolving in class. The interviews confirmed this evidence of available meta-cognitive skills which the teachers usually applied in assisting their learners in problem-solving in class. Recommendations have been made regarding teachers’ methods of teaching to improve the development of such skills in the lives of their mathematics learners through problemsolving.     

The Social Skills and Social Status of Mainstreamed Students with Intellectual Disabilities

This paper reports on the social skills and social status of 22 students with mainly moderate intellectual disabilities who had received an inclusive preschool intervention and were subsequently followed up from 18 months to more than five years later in their mainstream classrooms. Measures included direct assessment of social interaction in the playground, social status obtained by interviewing classmates, and the ratings of classroom teachers, parents and school principals. Large differences were found between the students with disabilities and their typical peers for amount of time spent interacting with peers and amount of time spent in isolation, with a moderate difference found for interactions with teachers. However, no difference was found between the social status of the two groups, and the students with disabilities were still spending more than half their time in the playground interacting with typically developing peers. Parents generally rated their children as having better social skills than did principals or teachers. A moderate relationship was found between the direct measures of peer interactions and teachers' perceptions of peer interaction skills. The relationships between the parents' and principals' perceptions of peer interaction and direct measures of the interaction were only small. Some of the implications of these findings for integrating students into mainstream schools and classes are discussed.     

Antiracism defined as equitable sociocultural interactions in prekindergarten: Classroom racial composition makes a difference

This study used secondary data from the My Teaching Partner-Math/Science 2013–2016 randomized control trial to explore whether equitable sociocultural classroom interactions (see Curenton et al., 2019) were associated with the skills of 105 four- and five-year-olds (52% boys; drawn from 20 unique video recordings of preschool teachers/classrooms; 43% were Black, Latine, Asian, or other racially marginalized learners). Equitable interactions predicted children's skills with effect sizes ranging from small (0.01–0.44) to large (1.00). Moderation analyses revealed that when classrooms had more racially marginalized learners, teachers’ use of equitable disciplinary and personalized learning practices were associated with higher executive functioning gains across prekindergarten. Findings illustrate how classroom composition can be a key indicator between equitable classroom interactions and young children's early skills.     

A Socio-cognitive Approach to How Children with Deafblindness Understand Symbols

Children with congenital deafblindness are a population of learners who may need intervention in order to develop symbolic understanding. They experience a combination of vision and hearing impairments that can affect how they make sense of the world, develop relationships, and understand symbols. In this article, the author reviewed a socio-cognitive framework of symbolic understanding and suggested it as one way to organise the extant research on symbolic development of children with deafblindness. A socio-cognitive framework describes the development of children’s individual skills and how their abilities are supported by active participation in social and cultural experiences. Symbolic understanding is not an isolated cognitive skill, but rather a complex socio-cognitive developmental process that is intimately supported by meaningful interactions. A socio-cognitive framework may help teachers to support the symbolic understanding of school-aged children with deafblindness. Teachers of children with deafblindness can use the framework to understand their students’ individual socio-cognitive abilities and their social interactions. In other words, a socio-cognitive framework may support teachers of children with deafblindness to understand the abilities and environments that are critical to the development of symbolic understanding.     

学习管理系统的社会性交互功能比较——基于对Blackboard、Moodle、Sakai的调查与使用体验

教育信息化的快速发展对技术支持的学习环境提出了更高的要求。学习管理系统集教学、学习与管理功能于一身,为辅助教师开展教学活动,以及实现教学交互提供了有力的技术支持。通过对国际和国内使用较为广泛的Blackboard、Moodle和Sakai三款学习管理系统在社会性交互方面的比较发现,三款学习管理系统在支持学习者与教师间的交互方面主要体现在通知、日程、作业、成绩簿、内置邮件、投票、测验等模块,在支持学习者与学习者间的交互方面主要体现在聊天室、讨论区、Wiki、内置邮件等模块。三款学习管理系统在细节设置上各有特色：Sakai的通知和日历功能最为强大,Moodle和Sakai支持在线协作编辑;Moodle在论坛模块的用户界面呈现良好、使用便捷;Blackboard能够方便地支持用户角色设置。因此,教师在选择学习管理系统时,应充分挖掘各类系统的特色功能,综合运用多种交互工具,整合各种教学系统,使之能更好地促进远程学习者的有效交互和有效学习。     

For squad-members only! Why some teachers are more popular to interact with than others in data use

Teacher interactions are seen as a source for teachers’ professional development. To better understand this potential, research is needed into who is consulted in data use. Therefore, this study investigates whether Flemish teachers’ popularity in data use discussions can be attributed to formal aspects of the formal school organization, similarity among teachers, proximity and informal bonds between teachers. A multi method study combining social network analysis and interview data was designed. The results reveal that informal bonds between teachers may not be overlooked in how interactions are formed. Because the participants do not seem to choose the colleagues they interact with for data use purposefully, the potential of these interactions for their professional development is questionable. Future research should invest in examining how conscious teachers are of the knowledge and skills of their colleagues in data use and how this knowledge affects the formation of data use interactions.     

Teachers and ICT: current use and future needs

In Scotland, ICT is clearly integral to the existing curriculum in primary and secondary education, see, for example, the 5–14 Development Programme or Higher Still in which information technology is identified as one of the core skills areas (HSDU, 1998). In light of current UK-wide developments such as the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) and the New Opportunities Fund (NOF) funded training in ICT for teachers and librarians, it is all the more important to understand teachers' ICT skills and knowledge needs, to discover their priorities for future development and to establish what will encourage teachers to adopt ICT where appropriate in their professional lives as classroom practitioners, as planners and managers and as learners. An investigation of the ICT skills and knowledge needs of teachers working in Scotland was therefore commissioned by the Scottish Office and completed by the authors. This paper reports on that study indicating relatively low use of ICT and a number of key issues which have implications for teacher training and development. The full report is available on the Scottish Executive website (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/).     

Helping students to become capable learners

The main aim of this article is to argue that the need for teachers and their schools to prepare their students for life beyond their school-days must be met by requiring teachers themselves to both achieve this aim and produce the evidence of their students’ capability as learners. In so doing, they must change their classroom teaching from a focus on transmission of content knowledge to the active involvement of students in open-ended and collaborative learning. Achievement of this aim requires that some specific features of pedagogy be implemented in classrooms. In order to do this, teachers will have to develop the linked skills of design of activities, of guidance of students’ progress, of the adaptation of the design through teacher-student and student-student interaction, and of making assessments at the many stages of implementation and as a final summation of achievement. So a secondary aim of this article is to review the evidence for work which has studied the development of these skills with and by teachers.     

Spanish-Speaking Children's Social and Language Development in Pre-Kindergarten Classrooms

The current study examined the social and language development of 345 Spanish-speaking pre-kindergartners who attended pre-kindergarten programs that varied widely in how much Spanish was spoken in the classroom by the teacher. Previous studies on English language learners have focused on how the language of instruction impacts children's language proficiency, ignoring the context in which children are learning. The current study found better social skills and closer teacher—child relationships in classrooms where teachers spoke some Spanish. Teacher ratings of children's peer social skills and assertiveness were positively associated with increased amounts of Spanish being spoken. More Spanish language use in the classroom was also related to a decrease in children's likelihood of being victims of aggression as rated by independent observers. The findings have implications for better understanding how policy decisions regarding language of instruction impact children in the social domain. As early education programs are faced with the challenging task of developing best practices for English language learners, it is essential that programs are attentive to the social implications of language.     

“微博点名”促进在线学习交互研究

随着信息技术的发展,在线学习因其灵活、便捷等特点成为信息时代的一种重要学习手段。促进学习者实现较高水平的交互是提高在线学习质量的关键之一。然而现实的在线学习（尤其是异步交互的在线学习）交互效果并不理想。各类在线学习中的观望者和逃避者较少或根本不参加在线学习,教学交互的实现水平也显著低于积极参与者。通过社会网络分析法对一个基于微博的在线学习社区中社会性交互进行分析发现,“微博点名”活动能够显著促进在线学习交互,尤其是学习者之间的交互。“微博点名”活动的规则、微博交流方便快捷的特点,以及活动本身的趣味性是促进在线学习交互的原因。“微博点名”适合设计类和创作型学习实践活动。开展“微博点名”和基于微博的在线学习活动时,教师应营造良好的在线学习环境,发挥核心学习者的作用,引导边缘学习者积极参与,促进学习团体的形成和建设,同时应注意引导学生反思,提高交互质量。     

Community detection with opinion leaders’ identification for promoting collaborative problem-based learning performance

In the 21st century when knowledge-based economy is emphasized, the cultivation of autonomous learning and problem-solving abilities presents the importance. With web-based collaborative problem-based learning (CPBL), learners could more conveniently cultivate their problem-solving abilities through autonomous learning. Nevertheless, learners are often guided to solve a target problem by the information announced by teachers during the CPBL processes. Individual learners often could not effectively absorb such standard information, thus ignoring the important information from teachers. In the information communication theory, the two-step flow of communication through opinion leaders has been proved that it can better change audiences’ attitudes than the one-step flow of communication through mass media. This study thus employs the modularity Q function as the fitness function of genetic algorithm to optimally detect learning communities and uses PageRank measure to accurately find out community opinion leaders according to the social network interaction data of learners in the CPBL process. Based on quasi-experimental design, this study examines whether learners in the experimental group using the two-step flow of communication through opinion leaders to convey information for solving the target CPBL missions could more significantly enhance web-based CPBL performance, social network interaction and group cohesion than learners in the control group using the one-step flow of communication through teachers’ information. Analytical results show learners in the experimental group remarkably outperform those in the control group on learning performance and peer interaction under a CPBL environment. Particularly, female learners in the experimental group notably outperform female learners in the control group on learning performance, while there is no significant difference in male learners between both groups. More importantly, learners in the experimental group present significantly higher group cohesion than those in the control group. This study confirms that using the two-step flow of communication instead of the one-step flow of communication traditionally used in web-based learning environments could significantly promote web-based CPBL performance, social network interaction and group cohesion.     

在线协作学习过程中社会临场感的社会网络分析

已有的研究和实践证明,社会临场感有助于降低学习者在线学习过程中的孤独感、提升学习满意度和促进虚拟学习社区的建立。社会临场感与交互的关系十分密切,以往研究者主要借助内容分析方法或调查问卷来分析两者之间的关系,注重测量个体的意见和主观的感知,但无法反映社会临场感随时间发展变化的动态特征。社会网络分析(SNA)的中心度、密度、中心势、派系等参数能够较为合理地表征在线协作学习中师生的交互过程特征,为研究这一问题提供了新的思路。通过对一门网络课程实施期初、期中和期末三个阶段师生在线论坛中的交互过程与行为进行定量和可视化的社会网络分析,结果显示:学习者在不同学习阶段的社会临场感存在显著差异,交互和社会临场感之间具有十分紧密的联系,个体的社会临场感会随时间的发展而变化。社会网络分析有助于理解在线学习环境中社会临场感的形成和发展变化,有助于教师改进教学,提升网络教学的质量。     

Spanish-Speaking Children's Social and Language Development in Pre-Kindergarten Classrooms

The current study examined the social and language development of 345 Spanish-speaking pre-kindergartners who attended pre-kindergarten programs that varied widely in how much Spanish was spoken in the classroom by the teacher. Previous studies on English language learners have focused on how the language of instruction impacts children's language proficiency, ignoring the context in which children are learning. The current study found better social skills and closer teacher—child relationships in classrooms where teachers spoke some Spanish. Teacher ratings of children's peer social skills and assertiveness were positively associated with increased amounts of Spanish being spoken. More Spanish language use in the classroom was also related to a decrease in children's likelihood of being victims of aggression as rated by independent observers. The findings have implications for better understanding how policy decisions regarding language of instruction impact children in the social domain. As early education programs are faced with the challenging task of developing best practices for English language learners, it is essential that programs are attentive to the social implications of language.     

South African Teachers’ Attitudes toward the Inclusion of Learners with Different Abilities in Mainstream Classrooms

This research sought to examine South African teachers’ attitudes toward the inclusion of learners with different abilities in their hypothetical mainstream classrooms. Participants were 93 South African teachers who responded to the Teachers’ Attitudes and Expectations Scale, a measure developed for this study, regarding four vignettes depicting learners with different types of impairments. Overall, teachers reported that inclusion would benefit learners’ social development (mean scores from 2.57 to 3.35) more than their intellectual development (mean scores from 2.14 to 2.83). It also was found that teachers overwhelmingly were more confident about including learners with Down syndrome into their hypothetical mainstream classes when compared with the inclusion of learners with other disabilities, F(3, 90) = 9.59, p < 0.01. The results suggest that providing teachers with sufficient resources within the classroom and training that includes hands-on experience with children with disabilities could positively influence their attitudes toward the inclusion of learners with disabilities in their classrooms.     

New Directions in Social Skills Assessment and Intervention for Elementary and Middle School Students

Social skills are important to the successful social and academic functioning of all students and play a significant role in avoiding or preventing negative responses from others. Social skills also are important aspects of effective schools. In this article, we emphasize the assessment and intervention of the academic side of social skills. That is, we examine the role that social skills play in facilitating individuals' learning and creation of a school environment where others can feel supported and motivated to learn. As a basis for this examination, we first review several key studies documenting interrelations among social skills and academic competence. Next, we briefly review current assessment practices focusing on rating scale methods for documenting students' social skills and perceptions of social support. Finally, we introduce an instructional approach called the Responsive Classroom (Charney, 1992) that has been shown to advance the development of elementary and middle school students' social skills and academic achievement, and result in supportive school environments for learners and teachers. We conclude with recommendations for researchers and practitioners to continue to consider the strong interrelations among social skills, academic functioning, and social support when working with all students in elementary and middle schools.     

建导技术在少数民族预科生思想政治教育课程教学中的初步尝试——以广西为例

少数民族预科生思想政治教育的传统课堂教学方式导致了教学效果低下、师生轻视课程的问题。建导技术引入到思想政治教育的课堂教学中,面临学生思想抵触、学习思维不转变、教师缺乏系统理论知识和操作技术的支持等问题。建议建导师在引入建导技术过程中要注意与传统讲授方式相结合,两种方式互相融合,同时教师和学生要转变思维,改变心态,积极参与建导技术过程。     

Collaboration, scaffolding and the promotion of problem solving strategies in Mexican pre-schoolers

Research in Mexican schools, drawing upon earlier research in the UK, has led to the development and use of a method for describing, comparing and evaluating the particular approaches and interactional strategies used by teachers and learners. Using this method, qualitative and quantitative comparisons are made to distinguish between teachers who use a conventional, formal, directive approach when teaching 5-year-old children mathematical skills (called the “Official” method) and those who use a more interactive, collaborative, supportive, “scaffolded” approach to teach similar classes of children (called the “High Scope” method). In an earlier study, we found more competent and independent problem-solving among High/Scope pupils than among their peers taught by the Official method. In the present study, discourse analysis and statistical analysis of the relative frequencies of types of teacher-pupil interaction in the classrooms of two “Official” teachers and two “High’ Scope” teachers are used to explain the improved problem-solving of the “High Scope” pupils. The findings support the view that by creating a more collaborative, scaffolded version of classroom education, teachers can more successfully enable children to develop their own problem-solving skills, learning strategies and curriculum-related understanding. The research also contributes to the development and implementation of methods for promoting a more effective style of teacher-learner interaction in the classroom.     

基于学习进阶的幼儿教师数学核心经验模型建构

幼儿教师数学核心经验主要是指教师在教学实践中形成的数学领域至关重要的概念、能力或技能,对于幼儿的数学学习和教师的数学教学具有至关重要的作用。幼儿教师作为基本的学习者,其专业发展过程符合学习进阶的各项准则,不同职业发展阶段的幼儿教师有着各自不同的进阶轨迹。学习进阶强调学习是一种不断积累和发展的过程,并倡导为不同阶段的学习者设计不同的进阶框架,这为有效推动幼儿教师数学核心经验的发展提供了充分的理论参考。本研究在厘清幼儿教师数学核心经验内涵与结构的基础上,依据学习进阶的主要观点,建构幼儿教师数学核心经验的经验模型,并提出相应的教师培养策略,主要包括加强数学核心经验的学习共同体建设、制订数学核心经验的阶梯式成长方案和完善数学核心经验的质量监测指标。     

Scaffolding teachers to foster inclusive pedagogy and presence through collaborative action research

Teachers can be influential change agents in transforming their schools if they regularly reflect on their pedagogical practices, looking for improvements that will help all learners reach their full potential. However, in many sub-Saharan African countries, teachers seldom get an opportunity to collaboratively reflect on their practices. Action research, as an in-service professional development strategy, can be an ideal means of empowering teachers to collaboratively reflect on and improve their pedagogy to be more inclusive. Drawing from collaborative action research projects conducted by teachers in two primary schools in Zanzibar, Tanzania, this article explores the role of collaborative action research in developing the capacity of teachers to inform improvements in their pedagogical practices. The findings show how the participating teachers, with scaffolding influence from a critical friend (research facilitator), developed professionally along their zones of proximal development by promoting their pedagogical and research skills to enhance the presence, participation and achievement of all learners in their schools. Based on the findings, the article shows both the advantages and disadvantages of using collaborative action research in teacher professional development in the study context. The article also discusses the significance of organisational learning in in-service professional development in order to foster inclusive pedagogy through collaborative inquiry among teachers.     

Integrating the Arts and STEM for Gifted Learners

This study investigates the process of identifying high-quality lessons for gifted learners that integrate the arts with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. These STEAM lessons have the potential to develop deep thinking, as well as develop creativity and visual–spatial skills that are necessary in the STEM disciplines. Lessons were solicited from teachers through their involvement in national organizations, and 61 lessons were analyzed and reviewed by experts in the arts and STEM fields, as well as master teachers. High-quality lessons provided deep content knowledge in both STEM and arts fields, connections across content areas, specific criteria for assessment, and collaborations between teachers and between students. The findings from this study will be used to further define the evaluation process for STEAM lessons designed for gifted learners and to develop professional development opportunities for teachers of the gifted.