Teacher adaptation to flexible learning environments

Learning Environments Research - Teaching practices respond to the prompts, resources and inherent potential of a school’s physical, social and cultural landscape. This study involved how...     

Working collaboratively with teachers to promote effective learning

The work of educational psychologists (EPs) is often focused on those children identified as having special educational needs. This focus may restrict opportunities for EPs to become involved in the wider application of psychology within education. This article explores ways in which EPs can make an effective contribution to the enhancement of learning opportunities for all children by working collaboratively with teachers. As a group of EPs working in the same local education authority (LEA), we undertook a small‐scale action research project with teachers in order to explore ways to promote children's thinking and learning skills. The study involved us working with Year 5 class teachers in three mainstream primary schools over a six‐week period, with the aim of developing materials which helped pupils develop an awareness of their own learning techniques (metacognition) and a positive and confident approach to learning (self‐efficacy). Some of the benefits of and barriers to joint research are considered, as well as implications for future collaborative work between teachers and EPs.     

Educating pre‐service teachers for a sustainable environment

The paper reports on an initiative to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for a sustainable environment. The initiative involved the training of pre‐service teachers to not only be aware of, or know about environmental problems and want to act for the environment, but also to be able to act for the environment. Small group community problem solving projects illustrate the nature of environmental community problems that could be acted upon. The process of the projects, including how the pre‐service teachers identified the community problems and conducted the projects, is described. Outcomes of the projects including reflections about what the pre‐service teachers have learnt in being involved with the projects show the nature of capacity building efforts possible to work towards a sustainable environment. Lessons learnt from the involvement in community problem solving projects are also highlighted.     

Desktop multimedia environments to support collaborative distance learning

Desktop multimedia conferencing, when two or more persons can communicate among themselves via personal computers with the opportunity to see and hear one another as well as communicate via text messages while working with commonly available stored resources, appears to have important applications to the support of collaborative learning. In this paper we explore this potential in three ways: (a) through an analysis of particular learner needs when learning and working collaboratively with others outside of face-to-face situations; (b) through an analysis of different forms of conferencing environments, including desktop multimedia environments, relative to their effectiveness in terms of meeting learner needs for distributed collaboration; and (c) through reporting the results of a formative evaluation of a prototype desktop multimedia conferencing system developed especially for the support of collaborative learning. Via these analyses, suggestions are offered relating to the functionalities of desktop multimedia conferencing systems for the support of collaborative learning, reflecting new developments in both the technologies available for such systems and in our awareness of learner needs when working collaboratively with one other outside of face-to-face situations.     

Using scenarios to design complex technology-enhanced learning environments

Science Created by You (SCY) learning environments are computer-based environments in which students learn about science topics in the context of addressing a socio-scientific problem. Along their way to a solution for this problem students produce many types of intermediate products or learning objects. SCY learning environments center the entire learning process around creating, sharing, discussing, and re-using these learning objects. This instructional approach requires dedicated instructional designs, which are supplied in the form of what are called pedagogical scenarios. A SCY pedagogical scenario presents the learning process as an organized assembly of elementary learning processes, each associated with a specific learning object and a tool for creating this learning object. Designing a SCY learning environment is basically a two-step procedure: the first step is to select one of the available scenarios, and the second step is to define the domain content. The SCY technical infrastructure then handles the instantiation of the scenario as a SCY computer-based learning environment. In this article we describe the SCY pedagogical design scenarios and report on our experiences in designing four different SCY learning environments.     

Designing learning environments to teach interactive Quantum Physics

This study aims at describing and analysing systematically an interactive learning environment designed to teach Quantum Physics, a second-year physics course. The instructional design of Quantum Physics is a combination of interactive lectures (using audience response systems), tutorials and self-study in unit blocks, carried out with small groups. Individual formative feedback was introduced as a rapid assessment tool to provide an overview on progress and identify gaps by means of questioning students at three levels: conceptual; prior knowledge; homework exercises. The setup of Quantum Physics has been developed as a result of several loops of adjustments and improvements from a traditional-like type of teaching to an interactive classroom. Results of this particular instructional arrangement indicate significant gains in students’ achievements in comparison with the traditional structure of this course, after recent optimisation steps such as the implementation of an individual feedback system.     

Educating science teachers for the sociocultural diversity of urban schools

This interpretive study of the preparation of science teachers for urban high schools explored the extent to which learning to teach was facilitated by the methods courses, cooperating teachers and university supervisors. Because the methods course was minimally effective in addressing the needs of teaching low track students from conditions of poverty the methods instructor, Tobin, decided to be a teacher-researcher with such students. He joined Smith, a student teacher and Seiler, a doctoral student, in an investigation that examined learning to teach in a graduate teacher preparation program. In an endeavour to gain a first hand grasp on the challenges of teaching African American students placed in a low track program of study the three authors of this paper co-taught science in an urban high school. The paper incorporates rich perspectives gained from the teacher-researchers and theoretical frameworks associated with resistance, habitus and learning to teach by co-teaching. The paper advocates co-teaching as an essential component of teacher education programs.     

教师专业化和教师学习共同体的建构

教师专业化是时代的呼唤,也是教师劳动的本质要求;教师专业化是一个渐进的过程,是与教师的学习分不开的;教师学习的特点决定了教师学习共同体的构建是实现教师专业化的有效途径。     

高职教师课程教学质量评价的方法问题

教学质量评价与具体的课程相关联,高职课程具有课程类型多、教学内容变化快、教学质量受教学环境的制约明显等特点,应针对不同的课程类型,分类建立指标内涵或权重有差异的评价指标集.教学质量评价数据来自不同的评价主体,对教学质量的观察角度各不相同,应划分相应的指标子集,并赋予相应权重,以尽可能消除主观评分引起的误差.     

Understanding collaborative learning processes in new learning environments

Trying to understand the complexity of computer-mediated problem-based learning environments is not easy. Sociocultural theory provides a theoretical framework for understanding such environments because it emphasizes the socially situated nature of learning and the critical role of tools in mediating learning. To examine how different aspects of discourse relate to each other, as well as to the tools being used in the collaborative learning process, it is important to understand how collaborative knowledge building unfolds and how these processes are mediated. This requires going beyond coding individual speech acts. The use of Chronologically-Ordered Representations of Discourse and Tool-Related Activity (CORDTRA) diagrams is one way of achieving this understanding. We use this to study contrasting cases of more and less successful groups using the STELLAR learning environment. STELLAR is an integrated online PBL environment for preservice teachers, containing a learning sciences hypermedia, a library of videocases, and online personal and collaborative spaces. Our analyses suggest that an important locus of differences is how students use resources and engage in different kinds of metacognitive talk and knowledge transforming activities, sometimes to the group’s detriment. Frequency analyses provided an easily interpreted snapshot of each group’s activity. The CORDTRA analyses provide a more dynamic view that helps researchers and teachers better understand how collaborative learning unfolds. Such analyses have implications for understanding new learning environments as well as helping identify where interventions might be needed.     

Using test scores to evaluate and hold school teachers accountable in New Mexico

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - For this study, researchers critically reviewed documents pertaining to the highest profile of the 15 teacher evaluation lawsuits that...     

Cognitive requirements for learning with open-ended learning environments

Open-ended learning environments (OELEs) use the capabilities of technology to provide students with opportunities to engage in authentic problem solving; generate, test, and revise hypotheses; explore and manipulate concepts; and reflect on what they know. By design, such environments require sophisticated levels of cognitive functioning. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze assumptions underlying learner-centered, technology-based environments in light of how well learners appear to meet the cognitive demands for engaging them. Implications for design include the following considerations: (a) direct learner attention to key variables and visual cues; (b) prompt and guide connections to prior knowledge; and (c) provide explicit scaffolding of metacognition and teaching-learning strategies.