More than just a group: teacher collaboration and learning in the workplace

Teaching is often characterized as an isolated activity, yet opportunities for teachers to work and learn together in schools are increasing. Underlying this shift is the view that as teachers work on new practices and teaching challenges together, they will express varied perspectives, reveal different teaching styles and experiences, and stimulate reflection and professional growth. Despite strong research interest in teacher learning groups, few studies have looked at the relationship between teachers' conversations and collaboration outside the classroom and their actual classroom teaching. Drawing on data from a larger study of literacy instruction with middle‐school teachers, this article describes how three teachers participated in an ongoing literacy program with a research group. Two were seventh‐ and eighth‐grade language‐arts teachers, the third was a special‐education teacher who taught a substantially separate class of cognitively delayed and learning‐disabled students. Case studies of each teacher draw on meeting observations, classroom observations and interviews to describe how each participated in after‐school meetings, how they used the work of the group in the classroom, and how they brought teaching successes and challenges back to the group. Although each of the teachers participated actively in the teacher learning group and changed their practice, the teachers with the most advanced teaching of literacy practices did not bring that expertise into the teacher group as fully as they might have. The analysis raises questions about how teachers participate and learn and how to structure teacher groups to maximize teacher learning.     

浅谈中职英语阅读教学的技巧与策略

英语是当今世界应用最广泛的语言,也是大中小学生必学一门语言课程。"教师如何去教、学生如何去学、学习效果如何"也就成了教师、学生、家长、社会共同关注的焦点。尤其是在新课程背景下,英语教师该如何改进教学方式、提高教学效果呢?笔者以中职英语阅读教学为例,谈了一些自己的方法和策略。     

A Constructivist Model of Mentoring,Coaching, and Facilitating Online Discussions

This case study of an online graduate course determines the message characteristics of the instructor, volunteer teaching assistants, and students in online discussions, and proposes a mentoring, coaching, and facilitating model for online discussions. The researchers developed a coding system based on the literature of mentoring, coaching, and facilitating to identify the characteristics of conference discussion messages. The instructor fostered the development of volunteer teaching assistants into coaches and of student discussion facilitators into facilitators of learning. The proposed constructivist model fosters active learning, provides scaffolding for students to become facilitators of learning, and suggests creative ways for online instructors to manage different types of teaching responsibilities. Recommendations for further research are included.     

Secondary school students’ perceptions of teacher–student interaction and students’ attitudes towards project work

Project work (PW) provides one of the pathways for students’ self-inquiry learning and collaboration in Singapore schools. In this context, PW teachers function as facilitators. This study investigated quantitatively how a group of 270 secondary-school students (aged 14 years) perceived their seven PW teacher-facilitators’ face-to-face interactions with students based on the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI), and whether their perceptions of teacher–student interaction during PW classrooms were related with their attitudes towards PW learning as a whole. Seven out of eight QTI scales were associated with Enjoyment of Project Work Lessons and two QTI scales were associated with Attitude to Inquiry in Project Work. The findings are discussed in terms of how teachers who function as facilitators can translate their interpersonal behaviours into effective teaching strategies for communicating with students and facilitating students’ learning in PW classrooms.     

教学即促进——厘清中学数学促进式教学中的几种关系

教学即促进。在中学数学教学中实施＂促进式教学＂,必须厘清五种关系,即师生促进、生生促进、媒介促进、自我促进、评价促进等五种促进关系。     

Using critical incident reflections: a self-study as a mathematics teacher educator

In this paper, I report the results of a 4-year study into how my students learn to become mathematics teachers during the combined 15-week methods and field placement course I teach. At the start of most weekly methods class meetings, groups of three or four students reported their critical incidents to each other, and then chose one incident to report to the whole class. Each student then submitted a written report of 10 critical incidents for grading. At the end of each semester, I administered a questionnaire about the usefulness of each of the elements of the course. Using these two main data sources, along with my own personal reflections on the course, this paper answers the question “What are the critical incidents preservice teachers encounter during their field experience, and what do they learn about teaching for understanding through reflecting on those critical incidents?” My analysis of the students’ incident reports found that the issues raised focused on four main areas: teaching and classroom management; student factors such as pre-requisite knowledge, understanding, resistance and motivation; issues concerning relationships with colleagues, students and parents; and school organizational issues such as policies and access to resources. Their learning about teaching for understanding focused on three broad areas: the conditions necessary to teach for understanding; facilitators of teaching for understanding; and barriers to teaching for understanding. The paper concludes with a discussion of the lessons learned about fostering reflection in novice teachers, and suggestions for further research.     

Design-driven education in primary and secondary school contexts. A qualitative study on teachers’ conceptions on designing

Design in educational contexts is a relatively new topic. The basic idea of design and design-driven education is that students and teachers participate together in the planning, implementation and evaluation of learning projects. However, how design-driven education should be carried out in practice is yet to be established. Therefore, the aim of this study is to gain insights into how such practice could be implemented. Through a qualitative study, the authors examined primary and secondary school teachers’ (N = 5) conceptions on various aspects of design in educational contexts. The results indicate that design-driven education emphasises the need for collaboration between students and teachers, and the teachers’ active roles as facilitators for learning. Furthermore, in order for such design-driven practices to be successful, the learning process requires students to be self-regulative learners. The use of technology was also experienced as a natural part of design-driven education. The results present the participating teachers’ understanding of how design-driven education in school contexts could be organised.     

Online project based learning via cloud computing: exploring roles of instructor and students

This one semester case study intended to explore the roles of the instructor and students in design activities based on project based learning via cloud computing technology. Participants were 13 pre-service computer teachers enrolled in an internet programming course at faculty of education. Online course records, interviews and questionnaires were used to collect data. The data were analyzed via qualitative techniques. Results suggested that cloud computing facilitates planning, collaboration, and communication and also supports individual learning in online project based design activities. The instructor exhibited the roles of guidance, technical support, administrate and communicate. Students’ roles were found as cooperation, coordination, communication, leadership, practice, effort provide in project based activities. The results are hoped to provide insights about the roles of the instructor and students in online project based design activities. Along with the study findings, some implications were discussed for using cloud computing effectively in project based learning.     

How to Become an Excellent Tertiary-level Teacher. Seven golden rules for university and college lecturers

This article highlights the changing role of university and college lecturers from teachers to facilitators of learning, together with the requirement that they work to increasingly high standards. It presents seven golden rules for becoming an excellent tertiary-level teacher, and offers detailed practical guidance on how to put these into practice. The seven golden rules are: 1. Find out how your students learn. 2. Set appropriate learning targets. 3. Use appropriate teaching/learning methods. 4. Use appropriate assessment methods. 5. Monitor and evaluate your teaching. 6. Always try to improve your performance. 7. Keep yourself up-to-date.     

为在线学习提供有效的反馈

在教与学的过程中,学生与教师都会提出反馈,也会收到反馈.课程应该提供不会让人感到威胁的环境,学生在其中能够向教师和其他学生充分地表达自己.学生需要得到针对他们工作和表现的、持续的、及时的反馈.提供有效的反馈有助于保证学生的需求得以满足,有助于保证他们能够开展高质量的学习.(Co-hen,2003:Thurmond 和 Wambach,2004)本文主要讨论的是对学生提供的反馈,而反馈本身也是对学习者的工作和活动的回应,帮助学习者更好地理解他所取得的进步,或帮助学习者改善他的学习或表现.反馈可以在教师和学生之间、学生与学生之间,也可以是学生对自身的长处或改进学习活动的某一方面进行的反思和评价.要使反馈真正有效,对学生提供的反馈应着重于缩小学生当前的表现与期望目标之间的差距.文中所提出的案例均来自于本人在线教学经历过的或访谈在线教师过程中了解到的.     

Constructing constructivism: how student‐teachers construct ideas of development,knowledge, learning,and teaching

This case study investigates the development of the understanding of constructivist theory among students in a Masters level elementary teacher education program within a particular course. The focus of the study is a seminar entitled ‘Advanced Seminar in Child Development’. The questions explored include: How do students’ ideas of teaching, learning and knowledge develop within the context of their experience in this course? How do they come to understand constructivism? What are their definitions of constructivism? What is the course of the development of this understanding? The nature of the students’ learning processes is examined through three sources of data: dialog journals, videotaped sessions and the instructor’s reflective teaching journal. The study looks both at student development and instructional practice to further understanding of how student‐teachers can learn to apply constructivist theory to their teaching and to understand the learning process, both within themselves and their students. Their development is placed in the context of Korthagen and Kessels’s model of teacher understanding and practice, and within a broader context of principles of practice that emphasize a belief in equity and social justice. The case illustrates how the way student‐teachers are taught theory can help them integrate their own ideas of learning and teaching with constructivist theory in order to think critically about their own practice in an ongoing developmental manner.     

The Impact of Coordination Methods on the Enhancement of Business Writing

Universities with limited resources are being pressured to cover more material within their degree programs. Because of this, schools are looking to integrate material from different classes. This paper sets out to determine if students can learn business writing within the context of another class, specifically, an information systems class. The goal is to eliminate the need for a separate business‐writing course. However, the students will have to learn the material with limited support in order not to place an additional load on the instructor. This study investigates whether individuals can develop their business‐writing skills during the course of repeated group work and whether there are differences in the level of their learning, based on collaborative media. The results show that individuals can learn business‐writing skills with a minimum of support through direct instruction. In addition, there is no difference between individuals working in face‐to‐face (F2F) groups and those working in groups using electronic collaborative work (ECW) systems.     

小学语文个性化阅读教学探讨

个性化阅读教学已成为新课程改革背景下的热门话题,有关个性化阅读教学的策略探究层出不穷。为此,我们要对教师与学生的角色进行定位,坚持＂以人为本＂的教学理念,构建开放活跃的课堂教学格局;把个性化阅读教学的起点放在课内,尊重学生的阅读感受,让学生在个性化阅读中得到独特体验;提倡教师做学习型教师,为学生个性化阅读教学提供保障,以求达到最终育人的功效。     

Academic support model for post-secondary school students with learning disabilities: student and instructor perceptions

ABSTRACT

While post-secondary school students with learning difficulties confront many challenges, there is little research on methods of support. In the current study, the ‘adapted course’ model was qualitatively examined from the perspective of both students and instructors. The main goal was to explore how students and instructors perceived the instruction in adapted courses. Five pre-service students with learning disabilities (LD) and/or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and three instructors were interviewed. Responses were analysed using subjective analysis, with central content categories identified based on student and instructor statements. Six main themes emerged: (1) small class size; (2) emotional support; (3) adjusted teaching methods; (4) independent practice exercises; (5) instruction by modelling; and (6) instructor characteristics. The current study can inform pedagogical principles on which a support model for post-secondary students with LD can be based. It provides analyses of the effectiveness of one support model and presents the perceptions of both faculty and students. Moreover, the study provides an opportunity to learn about potential components of effective teaching-learning, not only in the specific context of adapted courses, but in any supportive learning situation (e.g. tutoring) or course.     

The Role of Struggle in Pre-Service Elementary Teachers’ Experiences as Students and Approaches to Facilitating Science Learning

Science education researchers are concerned with preparing pre-service elementary teachers (PSETs) to teach in ways that support students to learn science in a meaningful way. Preparing elementary teachers to teach science is complicated given that they tend to be generalists and may not have the same experience with science as secondary teachers. During an elementary science methods course, we explored PSETs?? perspectives on the teaching and learning of science via a case study that included four PSETs. Using Frykholm??s (Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 19:125?C149, 2004) framework of ??educative?? and ??debilitating?? discomfort, we examined PSETs?? approaches to their own science learning and their approaches to science teaching. A theme apparent in PSETs?? perspectives was struggle. We described ways in which struggle was either educative or debilitating for PSETs, both in terms of their own learning and the ways in which they approached teaching. Some PSETs who struggled in their own learning developed learning experiences to engage their students in reform-based science teaching, while some PSETs developed learning experiences that prevented their students from experiencing any sort of struggle in their learning process. The ways in which these students dealt with their own learning struggles mirrored the ways in which they dealt with their struggles to become teachers of reform-based science instruction. Helping PSETs to deal with their feelings of discomfort with science content or ideas about the nature of science learning and teaching promoted by reform documents may be a key issue in developing their willingness to become facilitators of meaningful science learning.     

Rethinking the nature of online work in asynchronous learning networks

Research on asynchronous learning networks (ALNs) has indicated that there are problems with both the quantity and quality of online interactions that can undermine the aim of inquiry. The goal of this paper is to offer a new way of thinking about these problems in the context of knowledge building, a specific form of collaborative inquiry supported by an ALN. Drawing from interviews with teachers following two teacher education courses that introduced teachers to knowledge building, it is argued that we need to rethink the role and purpose of online work in ALNs—as building a communal learning resource. A framework for doing this is proposed in terms of three notions: collaboration, learning how to learn and idea improvement. The framework is expected to contribute to the literature on knowledge building by providing a new way to distinguish knowledge building from other forms of collaborative inquiry.     

Teaching as Designing: Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for Adaptive Teaching

This conceptual article explores teaching as design work, arguing that a critical thing teachers do is design systems that enable their students to learn. Designing occurs when teachers generate new learning activities or modify curricular programs to create coherence for themselves and their students. Nonetheless, few teacher education programs include instruction in learning how to engage in design thinking. Here, designing is explored as a means to help pre-service teachers develop their facility for adaptive teaching practice by incorporating design thinking at an early stage in their teacher education programs. Literature is drawn from traditional design fields to articulate design capacities and to describe design studio pedagogy practices often used in the education of designers. As an illustrative example is presented of such practices were incorporated throughout one 15-week educational psychology course embedded in an undergraduate elementary-education program to support pre-service teachers development of design thinking. The goal was not to prepare students to use particular instructional innovations, but to collaboratively design such innovations themselves.     

Flipping Quantitative Classes: A Triple Win

In the “flipped” class, students use online materials to learn what is traditionally learned by attending lectures, and class time is used for interactive group learning. A required quantitative business class was taught as a flipped classroom in an attempt to improve student satisfaction in the course and reduce the “transactional distance” (perceived barriers to engaging with the instructor, other students, technology, and course content) and increase satisfaction. Analysis indicated improvements to both transactional distance and student satisfaction in the flipped classroom. Multiple regression analysis quantified the extent of which each transactional distance was a predictor of student satisfaction. The improved satisfaction in the flipped classroom was predicted by the improvement in transactional distances between students, students and the instructor, and students and the instructional technology used in the class. The conclusions from this study suggest that the flipped classroom is a particularly good pedagogical strategy for quantitative classes. It allows the instructor to increase student satisfaction (a win for the students) in a course in which it is usually low without compromising academic standards (a win for the teachers). Finally, increased satisfaction leads to increased retention and hence increased revenues for the institution, which is a win for the administration.     

虚拟学习社区环境下教师协作学习的问题与实证

教师培训作为促进教师专业化发展的重要途径,当前主要存在培训主题“行政化”、培训形式单一化、培训内容理论化、培训时间间断化和培训受益面相对窄化等弊端。虚拟学习社区环境下协作学习为教师专业发展提供了一条可持续发展的途径。虚拟学习环境下教师协作学习的理论基础包括支架理论、替代性学习理论和群体动力学理论,协作学习的类型可分为机械协作和有机协作两种。为了探究虚拟学习社区环境下持不同活动策略的主持者在促进教师协作学习的互动效果及其差异,项目组实施了案例研究,结果表明：在活动主持者动机水平一致的情况下,持解答式活动策略的主持者比持启发式活动策略的主持者更能促进教师协作学习的互动效果;教师在学习活动中应重视角色的作用,关爱学生的内心体验,重视自身学习能力的提升。