Tools for pedagogical inquiry: the impact of teaching thinking skills on teachers

This paper explores the idea of thinking skills approaches as tools for pedagogical inquiry and in so doing seeks to develop the link between the promotion of inquiry‐based learning, which is a central tenet of thinking skills, and inquiry‐based teaching as an approach to professional development and school improvement. The first part of the paper examines the impact of teaching thinking skills on teachers by drawing upon a systematic review of research evidence. The second part of the paper sets the characteristics identified in the context of research into teachers’ development and considers the contribution of a pedagogy based on thinking skills approaches to continuing professional development.     

Spatial thinking in science,technology, engineering,and mathematics: Elementary teachers' beliefs,perceptions, and self-efficacy

Fostering students' spatial thinking skills holds great promise for improving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. Recent efforts have focused on the development of classroom interventions to build students' spatial skills, yet these interventions will be implemented by teachers, and their beliefs and perceptions about spatial thinking influence the effectiveness of such interventions. However, our understanding of elementary school teachers' beliefs and perceptions around spatial thinking and STEM is in its infancy. Thus, we created novel measures to survey elementary teachers' anxiety in solving spatial problems, beliefs in the importance of spatial thinking skills for students' academic success, and self-efficacy in cultivating students' spatial skills during science instruction. All measures exhibited high internal consistency and showed that elementary teachers experience low anxiety when solving spatial problems and feel strongly that their skills can improve with practice. Teachers were able to identify educational problems that rely on spatial problem-solving and believed that spatial skills are more important for older compared to younger students. Despite reporting high efficacy in their general teaching and science teaching, teachers reported significantly lower efficacy in their capacities to cultivate students' spatial skills during science instruction. Results were fairly consistent across teacher characteristics (e.g., years of experience and teaching role as generalist or specialist) with the exception that only years of teaching science was related to teachers' efficacy in cultivating students' spatial thinking skills during science instruction. Results are discussed within the broader context of teacher beliefs, self-efficacy, and implications for professional development research.     

A model for the professional development of teachers of thinking

Teaching for the development of students’ thinking is not a straightforward matter. It requires pedagogical skills, which are different from those of normal good quality teaching for conceptual development. It follows that providing professional development (PD) for teachers of thinking is a ‘hard case’—we can learn much of general value to providers and clients of PD from the specific case of a PD programme for teachers of thinking. A series of empirical studies are summarised and, combined with 30 years worth of first hand experience and a thorough review of the literature, are used to build a model of the factors which have a direct impact on the effectiveness of PD, that effectiveness being defined in terms of measurable changes in students. A fuller account of the work summarised in this paper is available in Adey et al. [Adey, P., Hewitt, G., Hewitt, J., & Landau, N. (2004). The professional development of teachers: Practice and theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic].     

The Impact of a Professional Development Program on Teachers' Understandings about Watersheds,Water Quality,and Stream Monitoring

Abstract

Professional development programs should provide teachers with experiences that develop their knowledge and skills to integrate environmental field studies into their school curriculum. This article reports on a professional development model that engaged teachers in designing and conducting local environmental science research projects. An overview of the professional development model is provided and evaluation data are reported, detailing the impact of the professional development model on teachers' understandings about watersheds, water quality, and stream monitoring.     

Enhancing thinking skills in early childhood

A case study approach was adopted to investigate two thinking skills programmes for a maximum variation sample of five- to six-year-olds in four schools, in two local authorities (LAs), in England and Wales, using multiple methods. School staff interviewed felt that thinking skills programmes enhanced critical thinking skills and improved use of language, attentive listening, social cooperation, confidence and independence. Welsh staff indicated that the programmes had a whole-school impact, reflecting national policy, intensive training, coaching and monitoring and leading to transfer to other lessons, such as mathematics. Without a national curriculum mandate, the English thinking-skills practice was vulnerable to disruption and lack of continuity. Observation showed that teachers' delivery varied in open questioning and challenge, group work and pupil talk. Pupils' verbal reasoning and numerical attainments showed modest evidence of change and development. Conditions supporting change and sustainability included: national policy with thinking skills at its core; high-quality professional development and a whole-school approach; coaching with systematic observation and feedback. This promoted changes in leadership, trust and collaboration, structures of interaction between policy and LA, head teacher, teachers and children.     

What GATE Did: an exploration of the effects of the CATE criteria on students’ use of information technology during teaching practice

ABSTRACT

Information technology (IT) has assumed an increasingly important role in the English primary school curriculum. The CATE criteria (DES, 1989b) require that student teachers develop competencies in teaching with IT if courses are to be accredited. Consequently, colleges have modified their policies and practices. To explore the effects of these changes, the experiences of a group of students were monitored over their four year course at Edge Hill College, and related to the experiences of students from a pre‐CATE cohort The CATE group made more use of IT in each of their teaching practices, with every respondent reporting some use of IT. Word processing was the most common IT based activity; uses of LOGO and simulations were disappointingly low. Students’ accounts of the benefits to pupils from using IT focused largely on improving skills in specific subject areas and computer skills, increasing motivation, and facilitating group and social skills. Little emphasis was placed on the development of thinking skills. Very few tutors offered help with IT on teaching practice; tutor skills, and in‐school mentoring both appear to be barriers to development These data are related to on‐going developments in the College. CATE has had, and continues to have, a direct effect upon College practices and these effects are visible in the classroom experiences of student teachers. Yet more progress is needed in developing student teachers’ abilities to use IT in class; we conclude that IT development should be seen as the focus for long term development, like other professional skills.     

Using video to promote early childhood teachers' thinking and reflection

This article examines findings from a qualitative study employing group stimulated-recall interviews using video-recordings of early childhood teachers to elicit their thinking and reflections about their teaching interactions. It focuses on the value of video to enable teachers to reflect on their practices and the extent to which collectively viewing recorded episodes allows negotiated understandings of their own and other teachers' practices. Whilst these findings suggest that video and collective dialogue are useful professional learning tools for teachers to examine and improve their teaching, structural and relational challenges exist that may impact on how effectively such tools are used.     

Understanding mainland Chinese students' motivations for choosing teacher education programmes in Hong Kong

In this paper, we report on an inquiry exploring the experiences of 10 mainland Chinese student teachers of English so as to understand why they came to Hong Kong for a teacher education programme. The study revealed that these students were largely attracted to teaching in Hong Kong because of its extrinsic benefits such as professional stability, the prestige associated with the English language teaching profession and the opportunities to acquire valued skills transferable to other professions including English competence. Facing challenges as non‐local students, they were also uncertain of becoming teachers in the new context. As ‘elite’ Chinese students were often unwilling to become teachers, we found it strategic to attract a large number of talented non‐local students to the teaching profession and retain them. We conclude the paper with recommendations for various stakeholders to support these non‐local students' adaptation and development as committed and competent teachers in local schools.     

Creating thinking schools through authentic assessment: the case in Singapore

Using Singapore as an example, we argue that schools need to equip and encourage teachers to adopt authentic assessment in teaching and learning so as to develop the students’ higher-order thinking. The importance of teaching and assessing higher-order thinking in Singapore classrooms is encapsulated in the vision of ‘Thinking Schools’ launched by the Ministry of Education in 1997. Underpinning this vision is a shift from conventional assessment to authentic assessment. Unlike conventional paper-and-pencil tests that focus on knowledge reproduction and low-level cognitive processing skills in artificial, contrived contexts, authentic assessment tasks underscore knowledge construction, complex thinking, elaborated communication, collaboration and problem solving in authentic contexts. However, the creation of thinking schools in Singapore remains a constant challenge as many teachers tend to rely on conventional assessment and are often ill-prepared to implement authentic assessment. By presenting the findings from a recent empirical study, we propose that schools build teacher capacity by providing ongoing and sustained professional development on authentic assessment for teachers.     

Teaching Thinking Skills in Context-Based Learning: Teachers’ Challenges and Assessment Knowledge

For an educational reform to succeed, teachers need to adjust their perceptions to the reform’s new curricula and strategies and cope with new content, as well as new teaching and assessment strategies. Developing students’ scientific literacy through context-based chemistry and higher order thinking skills was the framework for establishing a new chemistry curriculum for Israeli high school students. As part of this endeavor, we developed the Taste of Chemistry module, which focuses on context-based chemistry, chemical understanding, and higher order thinking skills. Our research objectives were (a) to identify the challenges and difficulties chemistry teachers faced, as well as the advantages they found, while teaching and assessing the Taste of Chemistry module; and (b) to investigate how they coped with teaching and assessing thinking skills that include analyzing data from graphs and tables, transferring between multiple representations and, transferring between chemistry understanding levels. Research participants included eight teachers who taught the module. Research tools included interviews, classroom observations, teachers-designed students’ assignments, and developers-designed students’ assignments. We documented different challenges teachers had faced while teaching the module and found that the teachers developed different ways of coping with these challenges. Developing teachers’ assessment knowledge (AK) was found to be the highest stage in teachers’ professional growth, building on teachers’ content knowledge (CK), pedagogy knowledge (PK), and pedagogical-content knowledge (PCK). We propose the use of assignments designed by teachers as an instrument for determining their professional growth.     

Science teaching techniques associated with higher-order thinking skills

Science teachers are encouraged to emphasize higher-order thinking skills, but little is known about the use and relationships of teaching techniques related to these skills. This study reports on a recent survey in Minnesota designed to provide a picture of the instructional styles that are used by seventh and eighth grade science teachers. Further, the data were factor analyzed to identify underlying structure and the resulting factors were correlated to examine the relationships between the factors. Although relationships do exist, it appears that seventh and eighth grade science teachers are individualistic and diverse in their reported teaching technique preferences.     

Using video clubs to develop teachers’ thinking and practice in oral feedback and dialogic teaching

ABSTRACT

The authors report outcomes of an evaluation of a ‘video club’ intervention to improve the feedback and dialogic teaching practice of 91 teachers from 11 primary schools in England. Participating teachers worked collaboratively in a sequence of six video clubs over a six-month period. To understand teacher engagement they examine videos of video club meetings; online platform use metrics; surveys; selected videos of classroom practice; focus groups; and interviews. They evaluate change in teachers’ thinking and practice using survey results for participants compared to a comparison group of non-participating teachers at the intervention schools. The survey includes a new instrument for gathering evidence of teachers’ thinking and practice in feedback. The results suggested changes in thinking and practice for teachers who self-reported as engaging highly with the intervention. They conclude by discussing the potential of video technology within professional development and the challenges of researching changes in thinking and practice.     

Positioning thinking within national curriculum and assessment systems: Perspectives from Israel,New Zealand and Northern Ireland

Over the past decade there has been a major move to position ‘thinking’ (however thinking is defined and enacted) as a more explicit outcome within the curriculum of many nations, with implications for teachers’ professional development, assessment, and examination requirements. This paper analyses approaches to this challenge taken by Israel, New Zealand and Northern Ireland. Each short case study considers: the political context in which the developments emerged; the ways in which thinking has been framed within the national curriculum, assessment and examination system; and the successes and challenges of the approaches taken to embedding change. Comparing and contrasting three different national systems provides important insights into the priorities, commitments and resources allocated to supporting a focus on thinking as a valued curriculum goal and outcome. In particular, it highlights the need for greater coherence between curriculum, professional development, pedagogy and assessment policies generally. Given the increasing international emphasis on the importance of developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills as a response to 21st century learning challenges, the paper reflects on what more may need to be done to leverage and sustain change.     

Fostering higher‐order thinking in science class: teachers’ reflections

The study reported in this article aimed at exploring what teachers know and do about fostering higher‐order thinking skills in teaching science, and how they see themselves involved in achieving this end. Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with 11 teachers experienced in teaching high school physics, which is considered a relatively difficult but well‐established discipline. The findings highlighted a diversity among the teachers in four areas: meta‐strategic knowledge of the concept of higher‐order thinking; practical utilization of instructional strategies related to fostering higher‐order thinking in the classroom; beliefs about students’ abilities to acquire higher‐order thinking skills; and self‐perception regarding teaching towards higher‐order thinking. Regarding the second area, for example, some of the teachers reported using teaching strategies in class that could impede the development of students as autonomous thinkers; others occasionally try to foster higher‐order thinking among their students but regard this as a way of conveying subject content better; only a minority of the teachers see the fostering of higher‐order thinking as an important objective of teaching physics. In summary, teachers are frequently puzzled or uncertain about the entire issue of fostering higher‐order thinking in school. Introducing elements of constructivist pedagogy combined with the specific steps aimed at fostering higher‐order thinking into the science class is required to make the development of higher‐order thinking a regular ingredient in science teaching within the current schooling.     

Measuring Pedagogy and the Integration of Engineering Design in STEM Classrooms

The present study examined changes in high school biology and technology education pedagogy during the first year of a three-year professional development (PD) program using the INSPIRES educative curriculum. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) calls for the integration of science and engineering through inquiry-based pedagogy that shifts the burden of thinking from the teacher to the student. This call is especially challenging for teachers untrained in inquiry teaching and engineering or science concepts. The INSPIRES educative curriculum materials and PD provided a mechanism for teachers to transform their teaching to meet the NGSS challenges. This study followed a longitudinal triangulation mixed methods design. Selected lessons were video recorded, scored on the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) rubric, and examined for qualitative trends. Year 1 results indicated that teachers had begun to transform their teaching and pointed to particular lessons within the INSPIRES curriculum that most facilitated the reform. Instructional practices of participants improved significantly as a result of the INSPIRES PD program and also aligned with previous, similar studies. These findings provide insights for rethinking the structure of professional development, particularly in the integrated use of an educative curriculum aligned with intended professional development goals.

     

幼儿园卓越教师的专业特质与培养路径

新时代呼唤高品质学前教育,而高品质的学前教育需以幼儿园卓越教师的培养为前提。卓越教师是指能够将专业的精神和科学严谨的态度贯穿于教育教学的全过程,同时具备良好的教学技能与研究性思维,能够形成个人独特的教育思想的复合型、领军型教师。在实践中,卓越教师的专业特质可表征为崇高师德的践行者、课程开发与实施的引领者、创新思维能力的养成者以及独具个人教育思想的教育者这四重角色。卓越教师的培养路径为:以文化理念为核心,塑造教师职业发展的共同愿景;以平台建设为依托,形成教师自主发展的专业共同体;以园本研修为支撑,构建五位一体的教师专业发展体系。     

Factors affecting teachers’ continuation of technology use in teaching

This study was conducted to investigate the continuation of technology use in science and mathematics teaching of the teachers who attended a professional development program between 2010 and 2012. Continuation of technology use was hypothesized to be affected by the professional development program and by personal, institutional, and technological factors. Twelve teachers and three school leaders participated in the study. Data was collected through interviews. Findings showed that the continuation of technology use differed for the teachers involved in the professional development program. While all teachers reported to have gained knowledge and skills through the professional development program and were positive about technology use in education, only some teachers continued the use of technology. The data revealed that despite the challenges that all teachers in the sample encountered when using technology in their teaching (such as large classrooms, problems with electricity supply, lack of time and lack of technology tools), the encouragement of school management was a critical factor in teachers’ continuation of technology use. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Learning to teach literacy through collaborative discussions of student work

Despite the high numbers of students with disabilities struggling with literacy, few teachers report feeling well prepared to address it. Most students with disabilities encounter challenges in reading and professional development can help teachers learn a range of ways to address those. In this article, we discuss a professional development project in which prospective teachers work collaboratively with practicing teachers throughout their university preparation. The professional development provided builds on the idea of ‘literacy artifacts’, which are samples of students’ and teachers’ work. Using guided discussions, teachers across the career continuum construct understandings and practices in which they learn how to infuse literacy instruction into all teaching and learning. By conjoining the literacy artifact with instructional resources teachers use, participants make visible the complexity of literacy instruction and how literacy could be embedded in teaching content for students with disabilities especially in general education classrooms.     

The use of assessment in the development of higher-order thinking skills

Abstract

In an increasingly complex and specialised society, it is imperative that individuals think critically and creatively. This kind of thinking is also required to achieve the critical outcomes as stated in the Revised National Curriculum Statement for South Africa. It seems, however, that higher-order thinking is unlikely to occur unless learners are engaged in activities that deliberately promote this kind of thinking. They should also be guided on how to engage in these complex thinking tasks. The aim of this article is to reflect on the use of assessment to promote learners' higher-order thinking skills. The role of assessment has implications for the nature of teacher training programmes. If lecturers model the way assessment can be done to develop higher-order thinking skills, it is hoped that teachers will have little difficulty in adapting it to their unique classroom situations. Examples from language modules of an in-service teacher training programme are used to show how assessment can be implemented to help learners develop higher-order thinking skills within the framework of outcomes-based education and the Revised National Curriculum Statement.     

广西地方性高校外语教师职业发展路径探究

对于广西新升本的三所地方性高校外语教师的职业发展状况的问卷调查,新升本的地方性高校普遍存在外语师资队伍薄弱、外语教学资源紧缺等诸多问题。促进外语教师职业发展的主要途径：学校加大投入,创造条件,让教师有更多培训机会;外语教师坚持自主学习,不断提高自己的个人素养;建立教师工作坊;重视反思性教学;注重科研创新能力培养,以科研促进教学。