Building a Constructivist Practice: A Longitudinal Study of Beginning History Teachers

This longitudinal interpretative case study examined the constructivist beliefs and related practices of four secondary history teachers from their teacher preparation through their first year in the classroom. The results of this study showed that issues of classroom control were major barriers for the implementation of constructivist-oriented practices. However, contrary to some previous studies, learning to teach in transmission-oriented contexts did not result in the diminishing of the teachers' constructivist beliefs and in some ways affirmed their constructivist beliefs. Furthermore, the teachers expressed that a lack of practical tools hindered their ability to better and more frequently use constructivist-oriented practices in their classrooms.     

Inside a beginning immigrant science teacher’s classroom: an ethnographic study

Teaching is a highly personal endeavor shaped by ‘funds of knowledge’ and beliefs about teaching, learning, and students. This case study examines how one Asian immigrant teacher’s personal expectations and beliefs influenced his expectations of students and the teaching and instructional strategies he employed. His expectations of students’ behavior and their failure to conform to his expectations influenced him to utilize more traditional, didactic instructional practices and responses to classroom management dilemmas. It is generally assumed that immigrant and minority students will benefit from exposure to teachers from similar backgrounds, and that ethnically diverse teachers can better prepare minority students for the multicultural workplace and global economy. This study focuses on the role a teacher’s background and experiences play in development of their beliefs about teaching and learning, their expectations of students, and the instructional decisions they make regarding teaching and learning. This study suggests that teachers draw on their personal histories and cultural understandings to create classroom practices which are molded by microcosms of personal ‘funds of knowledge’ and beliefs about teaching and learning. In contrast to conventional wisdom and unquestioned myths, this study emphasizes the importance of knowing that teachers’ cultural backgrounds do not necessarily qualify them to provide the most appropriate instructional environment for students from similar cultural backgrounds. This study suggests that all teachers need to learn to recognize and negotiate the unique social elements culturally diverse students bring to the classroom.     

体育教师教育课程实践性教学的困境及对策

体育教学论是高师体育教育专业的教师教育课程,其实践性教学的实施对教与学都有着重要的意义.本文针对体育教学论课程教学普遍存在的问题,阐述了体育教学论课程实践性教学的必要性,分析体育教学论课堂实践性教学面临的困境,探讨解决问题的对策和具体措施,意在使体育教学论体现出师范性、实践性、理论性三者的融合与统一,提高体育教育专业学生的专业实践能力,缩短学生毕业后对基础体育教育的适应期,高质量实现高师体育教育专业的培养目标.     

Curriculum reform in post-1990s sub-Saharan Africa

The article uses both primary and secondary sources to examine why learner-centredness, outcomes- and competency-based education and national qualifications frameworks were favourably received at local level in sub-Saharan Africa but have not resulted in widespread change in classroom practice. It argues that they found local favour because they were not entirely new ideas, and were ambiguous enough to be seen as key vehicles for achieving not so much educational, as economic, social and political goals. It suggests that the failure of implementation could lie in expectations that education would lead to transformation without paying necessary attention to implementation and capacity.     

虚拟实验移动Web平台设计与开发

面对多样的移动终端,在开发移动应用时如何实现在不同移动系统的无差异化移植显得越来越重要,移动Web应用能够很好地保证跨终端,跨平台的同一用户体验。将移动学习,翻转课堂聚焦于大学物理,选择构建虚拟实验移动Web应用平台和基于该平台开发虚拟实验和物理模型,能够辅助物理课程的教学和学习,为翻转课堂提供学习支持。     

Mind the gap: Holocaust education in Germany,between pedagogical intentions and classroom interactions

The injunction to learn from history is a key feature of German debates over the politics of memory and history, which, since the end of World War II, have been seen primarily pedagogical. Thus, state schools were asked to serve as society’s central location for memory and learning. Research on history education has rarely addressed questions about how instruction on the history of National Socialism (NS) plays out in practice, about how ambitious educational goals are implemented at the level of actual instruction, or about the challenges that teachers and students face when they are asked to address such a morally fraught topic. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study that explored these issues using analyses of concrete classroom experience. The paper is based on four carefully selected case studies. The first looks at how a contemporary account of the issue and its moral implications are handled in the classroom. The second examines the consequences for classroom discussion of a discrepancy between teacher expectations and student interpretations of an excerpt from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The third also addresses a discrepancy, focusing on the institutionalized generation gap in school. Finally, the fourth case shows how instructional communication benefits when participants assume a reciprocal, though not always articulated, consensus opinion on NS. The interpretation of the cases illustrates how both the organizational framework of schools and the specific conditions of classroom interaction shape the treatment of NS. Classroom interactions are strongly influenced by the quirky, often unexpected, ways that students appropriate knowledge—ways that often conflict with the intended content of the lesson and with public expectations for the treatment of Germany’s past. The analysis reveals a tension between the under-moralization and the over-moralization of teaching the Holocaust, and a tension between the need to represent the crimes of NS adequately, and to fulfill the goals of moral education.     

Bring your own device – a snapshot of two Australian primary schools

Background: The use of 1:1 and Bring Your Own Device strategies in schools is in its infancy and little is known about how mobile devices such as tablets are being used to support educational practice.

Purpose: In this article, two suburban primary schools in Sydney, Australia were focused on with an aim to understand how mobile device strategies were developed and implemented and how the devices were being used in the schools.

Design and method: This qualitative study uses a case study method. It draws upon questionnaires, interviews and classroom observations, and builds upon previous research in English and Australian schools.

Findings: Results of the research indicate that the devices have only recently been incorporated into the school and suggest that their usage has been generally embraced by both school staff and parents. Key issues highlighted by these two schools included the importance of the school’s vision and uncertainty about the differences between models of provision. Participant responses also referenced some positive impacts on classroom practice, which amplify constructivist pedagogy: there were examples of device use extending student learning by supporting peer assessment, collaboration, research skills and projects.     

The culture of the classroom: Socialization in an urban bilingual classroom

This article reports on an ethnographic study of a fourth-grade bilingual classroom. The focus of the article is on the culture that is created in this classroom and how children are socialized to it. Three themes are explored: socialization around being engaged learners, socialization to participate in a community of learners, and socialization to be second-language learners. I argue that the culture of the classroom for students who typically do poorly in school and who have negative experiences in school, such as the poor, urban Latino students in this study, must be one that has different roles, values, beliefs, and expectations than what exists in the cultures outside the classroom. In this way, the children experience school in positive ways which can lead to school success.     

高校应用型课程课堂教学模式“市场化”刍议

教学模式"市场化"、课堂经营技巧化、授课语言艺术化,是作者正在进行的系统化教学探索的核心内容。文章提出"教学模式市场化"的新概念,并以《应用写作》课程为例,从教学模式上来探讨高校部分应用型课程实行"市场化"(绝非货币交换)的"模拟教学法"的可行性,以使学生在"公司"经营氛围中接受知识教育和积累"工作"经验,并在毕业后一走上工作岗位就能适应工作需要。     

大学物理课堂教学中运用多媒体手段的探讨

多媒体课堂教学获得了巨大发展。使用多媒体手段辅助大学物理教学，对帮助学生理解复杂、抽象的物理现象有很积极的作用。运用power point甚至可以代替板书。但是，传统的板书教学也具有不可替代的教学效果，也是教学媒体的一种，是多媒体教学中不可缺少的一个组成部分。根据每节课各种媒体的教学资源，综合加以运用，既利用发挥了多媒体资源的优势，又充分发挥教师的主导作用，以期取得最佳的教学效果。     

A Sorry Tail: Ability, Pedagogy and Educational Reform

This paper argues that if 'reforms'of education designed to raise standards leave unquestioned the notion of fixed differential ability, then they are likely to be self-defeating. It considers alternative ways of formulating knowledge about individual differences reflected both in the literature and in classroom practice, and concludes by making a case for further research to be undertaken to establish frameworks for teaching consistent with an anti-determinist view of individual potential.     

An inquiry into school context and the teaching of the virtues

If teachers' views of their work are strongly influenced by school-level processes, and if it can be shown that there is a tight connection between teachers' views of their work and their actual conduct in the classroom, then what students gain morally and intellectually from their experiences in school may be contingent, in important ways, on the avowed philosophy of the school and the commitment of the school principal to that philosophy. Although this chain of reasoning may be lengthy and somewhat fragile, it is filled with interesting implications. This paper is a first step in examining these potential connections. Using multiple case study methods, an analysis is presented around principals' and teachers' views regarding the school philosophy, the organizational structures that allow for its implementation, and to what any congruence between them might be attributed.     

Practical considerations informing teachers’ technology integration decisions: the case of tablet PCs

The unique characteristics of tablet PCs promise important benefits for education. Yet, little is known about the rationale underlying teachers’ decisions concerning their educational uses within the constraints of daily classroom practice. The current multiple case study investigated the practical considerations informing nine secondary school teachers’ decision-making processes regarding the use of tablet PCs. Stimulated recall interviews revealed 10 criteria underpinning teachers’ instructional decisions. Four criteria influenced the degree of congruence with teachers’ previous practices: familiarity, alignment with course content, opportunities to achieve (new) instructional goals efficiently, and compatibility with established pedagogical beliefs. Costs and benefits of tablet PCs were determined in terms of educational added value, lesson preparation requirements and potential disruptions to the learning environment. Finally, access to a solid technology infrastructure, supportive school policies and knowledge of how to effectively integrate tablet PCs with course content were identified as important pre-conditions for sustainable implementation. Overall, the results suggest that practical concerns constitute a critical element in teachers’ decision making, influencing not only teachers’ intention to adopt tablet PCs, but also the ways in which they use this technology to support instruction.     

The impact of a professional development model for a mobilized science curriculum: a case study of teacher changes

Background and purpose: To date, there has been little research on the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) for delivering a mobile technology-supported science curriculum. To address this, a TPD model for a science curriculum supported by mobile technology was developed and evaluated in this paper. The study reported focuses on the establishment of the TPD model and exploration of its impact on teacher behaviors in the curriculum implementation.

Sample, design, and methods: In the study, two representative science teachers’ implementation of the science curriculum was presented together with an in-depth study of the TPD sessions. The data from the teacher-led PD working sessions, classroom observation and teacher interview were collected. Mixed methods and case study were used to analyze the teacher performance on the PD working sessions and on the curriculum implementation.

Results: Our findings suggested that teachers benefited from the structured TPD which provided opportunities for sharing, extensive feedback, and reflection of the curriculum implementation. It showed that teachers had transformed questioning from traditional ways into constructivist-oriented patterns in the classroom. More student-centered activities were conducted and complemented with teachers’ various scaffolds for learning. Analysis of learning artifacts attested to improvements in students’ conceptual understanding of science.

Conclusion: TPD refers to a continuing and dynamic system for PD which needs to be changed and elaborated based on teacher needs, school context and the problems and challenges encountered in the teaching practice. TPD development and teachers’ growth in the belief and competences on the instruction constitute a mutual evolution process. Their evolution could guarantee the apt enactment and spread of the curriculum innovation to impact depth, to sustain and to spread.     

让标准照进现实——国内外教师教育技术相关标准实施的比较

要保证优质的教育技术标准能够发挥其特有的功能,仅靠文本形态的标准是远远不够的,必须借助特定的形式、途径和过程,使标准在教学实践中被理解、应用和执行,这就是"标准实施"。当前我国教师教育技术标准实施面临的最大瓶颈是如何将标准实施从教师的认识和初步体验层面推进到课堂实践层面,使标准真正转换为教师在课堂里的常态行为。美国的教师教育技术标准(NETS-T 2008)和联合国教科文组织(UNESCO)的教师教育信息能力框架(ICT-CFT)是国际上具有代表性的两个标准。它们的实施模式、过程及策略为破解我国教师教育技术标准的实施困境提供了思路,尤其应该借鉴的是与这些标准相关的考核认证的操作模式、项目实践的实体建模及课程资源的开发策略,这些环节为教育技术标准向课堂实践延伸,促进学校层面的变革奠定了很好的基础。     

How teachers perceive the new curriculum reform: Lessons from a school district in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

The meanings that a teacher attaches to the new curriculum reforms act as his or her map on the curriculum implementation journey, and these usually determine the success of the education reforms. This research article explores the meanings attached to the new Science curriculum reforms by primary school teachers in a school district in South Africa, where the perceived meanings emanated from, as well as the role they played in the implementation of the reforms in the classroom. It is argued that new curriculum reforms have to take place concurrently with other changes in order for them to have a significant and long-lasting effect. Three possible ways will be suggested that will help the teachers to avoid formulating reform meanings that are not aligned with the vision and goals of the new curriculum.     

Power, Language, and Professional Choices: A Hermeneutic Approach to Teaching Technical Communication

This article argues that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer provides a useful theoretical framework from which to discuss ethical issues in the technical communication classroom. The article analyzes a previously published case study to demonstrate how hermeneutics can shed light on the ways that writers can be unconscious of ethical problems in their own writing. Finally, some suggestions for pedagogical applications are presented.