Book reviews

Researchers have largely ignored students’ creative works as a source of insight into their everyday experiences. This study is a hermeneutic analysis of 23 works written by talented writers on the topic of academics. The findings include depictions of students as detached from their teachers and their curriculum. In these stories and poems, moments of intellectual engagement occur unexpectedly when students connect course content with personal introspection. Competition serves to heighten the conflict in the stories and develop resentment among capable students. Geekdom is depicted as both a strength and a social liability. Practical implications for teachers and school counselors are discussed.     

Self-Regulated Strategy Development at Tier 2 for Second-Grade Students With Writing and Behavioral Difficulties: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

We examined the extent to which strategies instruction, using the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model, would enhance the writing, engagement during writing, and behavior of 44 second-grade students identified as having behavioral and writing difficulties. This study occurred within a comprehensive, integrated, three-tiered model of prevention that included behavioral, social, and academic components. Students were randomly assigned to an experimental or control condition. Students in the experimental condition received SRSD as a Tier 2 intervention. They were individually taught strategies for planning and composing, first for opinion essays and then for stories. Students met with their instructor 3 to 4 times per week for 30-min sessions, spending 3 to 4½ weeks in intervention for each genre. Students in the control group received the regular writing program. SRSD instructed students made significantly greater gains in writing quality and composition elements than control students for both opinion essays and stories. Students in the experimental condition also made greater gains than controls in academic engagement when writing opinion essays in their regular classroom. Transfer and behavioral effects, however, were limited. Implications are discussed.     

谈高中生英语写作能力的提高

高考英语书面表达最能体现学生英语综合素质水平,如何指导学生写出优秀的作文是许多英语教师思考的问题。词汇句子和句型仍是好文章的基础。再通过各种形式的写作练习,加上教师的面批和优秀范文的背诵,学生会在高中三年循序渐进地提高自身的写作能力。     

Becoming a Teacher of Mathematics

For many years I have engaged future mathematics teachers in activities that focus on emotional dimensions of their learning. Even those teachers who were able to reconstruct themselves as learners of mathematics had difficulties with changing their practice. Through a series of autobiographical stories, I examine my own experiences as a teacher and a learner. These stories—one from a computer class, one from a workshop for elementary teachers, one from college, and one from eighth grade—serve as data from which I draw themes that capture the tensions that I experience as I teach. Sharing these tensions with mathematics teachers has had an impact on the way the teachers talk about their teaching and promises to change how they teach. The paper is written to encourage teacher educators to adopt the practice of sharing teaching and learning stories with their students.     

The Stories They’d Tell: Pre-Service Elementary Teachers Writing Stories to Demonstrate Physical Science Concepts

Preservice teachers enrolled in a science content-based course wrote stories that could help their future students understand a science concept. First, participants chose their topic and wrote the story with few guidelines to establish a baseline. In the next part, a different set of students were given a choice of three topics (based on force, electricity, and heat misconceptions), and collaborated to write stories with guidance from the instructor. Stories were analyzed for narrative and science units, and test scores examined. Without guidance, many students struggled to find ways to integrate science within a story. With guidance, participants wrote stories that included more narrative elements overall, and participants felt the stories helped them understand the concepts.     

Reflections as Part of a Problem-Solving Delivery Service

The purpose of this study was to describe the nature of the social interactions during a cooperative writing structure and explore how interactions relate to the quality of the written stories. During a 12-week period, Mexican American and Anglo American students with learning disabilities were videotaped while they wrote stories in ethnically heterogeneous and homogeneous dyads using a simple word processing program. In general, the data suggest that both groups of students were skilled in maintaining positive and assertive reciprocal interactions during writing together, whether paired with a partner of the same or different ethnicity. The students helped one another with spelling; however, there was a negative relation between the total initiation-response exchanges and the length and coherence of the stories. Implications for instruction of second language learners and students with learning disabilities are discussed.     

Transition-Related IEP Objectives: Ensuring Their Functionality,Technical Adequacy,and Generality

This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of an inservice training program on the objectives that special educators developed (a) in response to written vignettes describing hypothetical students and Co) for their actual students. Participants were 2 vocational coordinators and 7 teachers of students who were labeled mentally handicapped. The inservice program consisted of 3 modules, 1 each on (a) determining functional objectives for students, (b) writing objectives that are technically adequate (i.e., include condition, behavior, and criterion), and (c) including statements that program for generalization. The inservice format included lectures, provision of examples, and group activities. A multiple baseline design across responses was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the inservice program. Results revealed that the inservice was effective in teaching the participants to write objectives that were technically adequate and that programmed for generalization. These results were obtained both in response to written vignettes describing hypothetical students and for actual students. The inservice had a less substantial effect on the functionality of objectives because most were rated as functional prior to the inservice. Limitations of the study are discussed, recommendations for future research are made, and implications for transition are explored.     

作文写作中如何写好开头部分

在作文教学中,教师经常说好的开头就是成功了一半,就是说作文有了一个好的开头,那么写作的思路就清楚了,作文就能一气呵成。这样写出来的作文就前后连贯、层次分明,让人读了以后明白写了什么内容,抒发了作者什么样的情感。所以,在作文教学中一定要抓好作文的开头教学,训练学生整体上把握作文的能力,提高他们的写作水平。在培养学生写作能力的同时,还不能忘记对学生语文基本能力的训练,强化学生的语言积累和知识储备,以此提高学生的语文综合能力,进一步提高他们的写作技能。     

Teachers’ monitoring of students’ text comprehension: can students’ keywords and summaries improve teachers’ judgment accuracy?

We investigated intra-individual monitoring and regulation in learning from text in sixth-grade students and their teachers. In Experiment 1, students provided judgments of learning (JOLs) for six texts in one of three cue-prompt conditions (after writing delayed keywords or summaries or without a cue prompt) and then selected texts for restudy. Teachers also judged their students’ learning for each text, while seeing - if present - the keywords or summaries each student had written for each text, and also selected texts for restudy. Overall, monitoring accuracy was low (.10 for students, ?.02 for teachers) and did not differ between cue-prompt conditions. Regulation, indexed by the correlation between JOLs and restudy selections, was significant (?.38 for students, ?.60 for teachers), but was also not affected by cue-prompt condition. In Experiment 2, teachers judged students’ comprehension of six texts without knowing the students’ names, so that only the keywords and summaries, not prior impressions, could inform judgments. Again, monitoring accuracy was generally low (.06), but higher for keywords (.23) than for summaries (?.10). These results suggest that monitoring intra-individual differences in students’ learning is challenging for teachers. Analyses of the diagnosticity and utilization of keywords suggest that these may contain insufficient cues for improving teacher judgments at this level of specificity.     

Preservice Teachers' Stories Of Mathematics Classrooms: Explorations Of Practice Through Fictional Accounts

This report describes four preservice secondary teachers' fictional accounts about mathematics classrooms. The narrative structures and meanings of the preservice teachers' stories, written while the preservice teachers were enrolled in a secondary methods course, were examined with the goal of gaining insight into the preservice teachers' emerging identities as mathematics teachers. Although past research has examined experienced teachers' stories, little research, if any, has focused on stories written by preservice mathematics teachers or on intentionally fictional stories about mathematics classrooms. This report uses methods of narrative analysis to develop understandings about preservice teachers' storied identities and specifies areas for further investigation into the role of narrative in mathematics teacher education.     

The effect of expertise-based training on the quality of digital stories created to teach mathematics to young children

This study investigated the effect of expertise-based training (XBT) on the quality of digital stories created by early childhood education (ECE) pre-service teachers. The participants of the study were 69 pre-service teachers from the ECE Department. The study was experimental, utilizing a static-group pre-test/post-test design, supported with qualitative data. Data were collected through analysis and evaluation of digital stories, open-ended questionnaire, and journals. During analysis, an independent t-test was conducted and open coding analysis was applied. The results showed that the XBT group teachers earned significantly higher scores on their digital stories than the traditional group. Moreover, the XBT group focused more on the details of digital story creation, such as emphasizing the purpose of the story during each component; choosing an appropriate tone of voice; using pictures, including characters as Pepe, Kayo, and The Smurfs; and defining key words then applying pictures accordingly.     

Creating a space where teachers can locate their voices and develop their pedagogical awareness

The claim is made here that we need to prepare teachers who can locate their voices in teaching situations, recognize their relationship with other voices in those situations, and reflect on their pedagogical intentions. In a teacher education course, stories written about practicum experiences offered students an opportunity to reflect on the location of their voice in classroom situations and to discuss with peers different classroom situations and possibilities for teaching and learning. This study examines more closely the reflections of two of the students with seemingly distinct orientations to learning to teach. Their practicum stories and reflective essays were analyzed for positioning of voice as described by Belenky et al. (1986). The two students located their voices in distinct ways, and also expressed growing awareness of classroom dynamics and the value of peer dialogue in broadening and deepening their understandings of teaching and learning.     

试析弱化成教跟读生自卑情绪的叙事策略

自卑是成教跟读生的一个“通病”.教师可以根据成教跟读生的故事叙说,找出他们维持自卑的支配故事,并利用“外化”、重塑新故事、强化新故事等方法,改善他们的生活学习故事,以激起他们重新定立目标、追求成功的信心.     

Hope as Work--Student Teachers Constructing Their Narrative Identities

This article examines how student teachers construct their teacher identities by using (auto)biographical stories. Teacher identity is seen as a narrative process and teaching as a certain kind of practice, in which hope is a significant part. The inquiry is based on 35 essays written by students. The analysis includes five different stages of reading. The students are aware of the moral roots of teachers' work, its joys and predicaments, and struggle to make sense of the different narratives they hear about teachers' work. Although student teachers consider hope as an important part of teaching, they at the same time 'apologise' for having such an 'unrealistic view'. The results prove that (auto)biographical stories are a powerful tool for making the moral dimensions of teachers' identities visible. The results also challenge teacher educators and administrators of education to support student teachers to keep up their prospects of hope.     

Pre-service Mathematics Teachers’ Noticing Skills and Scaffolding Practices

A 14-week course program was designed to investigate pre-service teachers’ noticing skills and scaffolding practices. Six pre-service teachers were matched with a pair of sixth grade students to observe and scaffold students’ mathematical understanding while they were working on the given tasks. Data was collected through pre-service teachers’ own recorded videos of implementation of tasks, their written reflections about the implementations, videos of group reflections before and after the implementations, and students’ written work. The analysis of data revealed that pre-service teachers mostly noticed students’ errors and strategies during their interactions with students, they attended important instances about students’ thinking and justified their reasoning for their comments in their written reflections. However, while interacting with students, they usually used low level scaffolding practices such as asking for clarification, explanation, and justification rather than attempting to elicit students’ thinking and improve their understanding.     

Lessons learned: Using the literacy histories of education students to foster empathy

In order for new teachers to foster equitable literacy learning environments, they must first understand the scope and variety of experience that will pervade their classrooms. The following multi-case study describes the potential of digital stories as an instructional tool in a literacy methods course at a northeastern university and college where the authors examined four digital autobiographical stories created by their students and the subsequent reactions to these stories by classmates. These stories were shared to allow the preservice teachers to reflect on social equity with a goal of building empathy.     

Defining the Difference: Comparing Integrated and Traditional Single-Subject Lessons

Early childhood curricula should be authentic and child-centered, however, many teachers still rely on direct instruction lessons. To better define how an integrated curriculum meets the needs of students, this study examined teacher talk and actions during instructional activities with first and second graders under two conditions: (1) subject-integrated social studies lessons of an integrated curriculum unit (experimental condition); and (2) single subject-focused mathematics lessons of a traditional separate subject curriculum (control condition). The mixed-methods study sought to define and compare characteristics of both curriculum approaches. Fourteen hours of observations were collected in each setting. In the integrated curriculum setting, the teacher was a facilitator of teamwork, offering choices, and giving praise; students made choices, decisions, and worked collaboratively. In the traditional setting, the teacher delivered direct instruction and controlled behavior; students followed directions, recalled knowledge, and worked individually. Less teacher energy was expended for behavior management in the integrated curriculum setting, indicating intrinsic motivation of students. Implementation of integrated curricula is recommended because of the student-centered focus that results in greater motivation, ownership, and teamwork, along with deeper knowledge connections. Because many factors hinder implementation, teachers need support when first teaching with this approach.     

Accurately detecting students’ lies regarding relational aggression by correctional instructions

This study investigates the effect of correctional instructions when detecting lies about relational aggression. Based on models from the field of social psychology, we predict that correctional instruction will lead to a less pronounced lie bias and to more accurate lie detection. Seventy-five teachers received videotapes of students’ true denial messages (e.g., students were innocent) and untrue denial messages (students were involved in relational aggression). A random half of the teachers were either given no further instructions or were told not to use stereotypical non-verbal cues when forming judgements (correctional instruction condition). As predicted, teachers in the correctional instruction condition were slightly better at detecting true than invented stories.     

Illuminating growth and struggles using mixed methods: Practice-based professional development and coaching for differentiating SRSD instruction in writing

In this mixed methods study, qualitative, quantitative, and single-case methods were combined to provide a comprehensive investigation of teacher and student outcomes following practice-based professional development (PBPD) for self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) in writing. Qualitative observations were used to determine outcomes among the three-fourth grade teachers involved, a nested quantitative model was used to analyze classwide student writing outcomes across 53 students in the three classes, and single case design was used to determine differential outcomes among randomly selected struggling and average writers in each class. PBPD was followed by coaching for differentiation based on student performance and fidelity as teachers taught their students strategies for writing timed imaginary stories (with self as main character), as required by the state writing test. Qualitative results indicated two teachers did not differentiate writing instruction without coaching; one teacher was unresponsive to coaching and did not differentiate instruction. Classwide analysis demonstrated significant growth in writing at the class level for students from baseline to posttesting. Single case design results indicated mixed outcomes among struggling and average writers and instances where instruction was not effective. Teachers indicated high social validity for PBPD and for SRSD; students indicated high social validity for SRSD. Results across the multiple methods illuminate growth and struggles often disguised in group data and are addressed to aid in understanding and enhancing PBPD as well as instruction in SRSD and other evidence-based practices. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.     

On the Serious Teaching of Philosophy

Dozens and dozens of little deaths occur in college classrooms each day as teachers, mostly because of fear, steer themselves and their students away from what is alive and real and toward what is dead, safe, and boring. In this paper, I use a collection of stories to describe a practice that enlivens classroom dynamics that I call “Steering Into the Curve.”