Teaching high school science using image processing: A case study of implementation of computer technology

An in-depth case study of teachers' use of image processing (a state-of-the-art computer technology used by research scientists) in biology, earth science, and physics classes within one high school science department explored issues surrounding technology implementation. The study, conducted within a districtwide, schoolwide, and classroom context, explored four areas related to the teacher's adoption of image processing: (a) teachers' background with computers outside of instructional use, (b) teachers' attitudes toward educational technology and insights gained from their experience using computers within the science curriculum, (c) training and perceived influence of district and school administrators, and (d) teachers' classroom and computer lab practices. The following factors were deemed critical in teachers' decision to use or not use image processing with their students: (a) time to thoroughly explore and master the technology so they could use it with students to explore science concepts; (b) classroom management skills specific to technology use; (c) perception of the teaching value of the technology; (d) perception of the reasonableness of administrators' expectations for technology use; and (e) understanding of how to implement inquiry-based science teaching, independent of technology issues. These factors have implications for how to help teachers use computer technology to teach high school science. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 297–327, 1998.     

浅析高校中层干部素质建设

高校中层干部,在高校管理工作中起着承上启下、上传下达的重要作用。如何提高高校中层干部素质,是高校管理者的重大课题和长期任务。高校中层干部要切实提高自身的素质,提高管理高校的能力和水平,提高服务高校的能力,在实施科教兴国、人才强国的战略中发挥更大的作用。     

Converging Paths or Ships Passing in the Night? An 'English' critique of Japanese school reform

This article examines the origins and potential effects of the liberalising reform agenda in Japanese secondary education in the light of experiences in the UK with policies such as local school management and school choice. The analysis is based on extensive interviews conducted with Japanese policy-makers, school heads and Prefectural administrators in 1997 in Tokyo and Osaka. The research was part of a joint Anglo-Japanese study, supported by the Japanese Embassy in London, and the analysis here highlights issues of national perspective which emerged in the collaboration between English and Japanese researchers observing reforms in each other's countries. The paper argues that the reform agenda in Japan has two strands. These involve both a necessary diversification of curriculum and pedagogic practices, and an administrative shift towards deregulation and school competition which may undermine some of the traditional strengths of Japanese secondary schooling.     

Translanguaging in Today's Classrooms: A Biliteracy Lens

As US classrooms approach a decade of response to No Child Left Behind, many questions and concerns remain around the education of those labeled as English language learners, in mainstream, English as a Second Language, and bilingual education classrooms. A national policy context where standardized tests dominate curriculum and instruction, and first language literacy is discouraged and undervalued, poses unusual challenges for learners whose communicative repertoires encompass translanguaging practices. Drawing on ethnographic data from two different educational contexts, we argue via a continua of biliteracy lens that the welcoming of translanguaging in classrooms is not only necessary, but desirable educational practice. We suggest that Obama's current policies, on the one hand, and our schools' glaring needs, on the other, offer new spaces to be exploited for innovative programs, curricula, and practices that recognize, value, and build on the communicative repertoires and translanguaging practices of students, their families, and communities.     

Aspiring School Administrators' Perceived Ability to Meet Technology Standards and Technological Needs for Professional Development

The merits of technology in general and of educational technology specifically are well documented. The use of educational technology has been shown to improve teaching and learning and the overall educational quality of schools. However, the successful integration of educational technology in schools hinges on school administrators' technology leadership abilities. The purpose of this study was to investigate aspiring school administrators' perceived ability to meet technology standards established by ISTE Standards for Administrators (formerly known as the NETS·A) and to determine which standards they wished to pursue for future professional development. Utilizing the ISTE Standards–A as a framework, a survey was created to decipher how aspiring school administrators perceived their own abilities to become leaders with foundational technology leadership skills. The findings showed that (a) the aspiring school administrators were more likely to indicate a need for professional development in technology utilization to meet the standards than they were to indicate their perceived current competence in meeting the technology standards and effectively utilizing technology in their schools; (b) when interests were examined by race, African American aspiring school administrators were more interested in pursuing professional development to enhance their abilities to perform the tasks than were Caucasian aspiring school administrators; and (c) there was a statistically significant difference between aspiring school administrators' average Perception and Interest scores. It appeared that in general, the participants perceived a greater need for professional development in technology standards than their perceived current ability to perform the standards.     

中层干部心理资本对组织公民行为与工作绩效的影响机理——不同高校场域内不同领导类型的调节作用

高校作为社会场域特定构型,发挥了经济、社会、文化乃至权力等资本竞争优势,但受固有主观认知惯习影响,对个体心理资本潜能作用挖掘发挥不够。文章以564名高校中层干部为样本,通过问卷调查、方差检验、相关分析及多元线性回归等实证分析,得到研究结果:不同高校中层干部心理资本具有显著差异;心理资本与组织公民行为、工作绩效显著相关,且正向影响组织公民行为和工作绩效;公民组织行为发挥部分中介效应;校领导风格调节中层干部心理资本对组织公民行为的影响;民主型领导具有组织管理的普适性。最后,构建适应不同高校场域、不同校领导类型、不同职级中层干部管理效能的3M匹配模型(MS-MAP-ME)。     

Resistance to classroom observation in the context of teacher evaluation: teachers’ and department heads’ experiences and perspectives

This paper reports the main findings of a study that sought to understand how teachers and department heads perceived and experienced the implementation of a classroom observation system in a teacher evaluation context. The data was collected through a teacher and department head survey and interviews with department heads who were responsible for classroom observation. The findings show that respondents regarded classroom observation as an inadequate teacher evaluation instrument. It was also viewed as one of the features of the teacher evaluation system that least contributed to the teachers’ professional development. Department heads felt torn between their intermediate management role as teacher observers and their professional role as teacher peers. Cultural norms of individual professional autonomy that regulated relations among colleagues prevented department heads from using information, gathered through classroom observation, to nourish in-depth professional discussions about concrete educational practices.     

Faculty Activities and Rewards: views from education administrators in the USA

The heads of education divisions of 245 colleges and universities in the USA were surveyed regarding their opinions about faculty activities and reward procedures. Tenure, which was viewed as having the greatest effect on faculty behavior, received significantly more attention from decision‐making bodies in the colleges, and merit pay received significantly less. Education administrators at top universities and larger universities viewed the desire for reputation as more motivating than did other education administrators. The department chairs believed that internal satisfaction was more of a motivating factor than did deans. The deans rated merit pay, contract renewal, promotion and tenure higher as motivators than did the department heads. Although evaluations of teaching were considered the most important for year‐to‐year contract renewal, article and book publication were the most important considerations in merit pay, promotion and tenure. A factor analysis grouped faculty activities into three factors: teaching, service, and publication.     

Spaces of agency within contextual constraints: a case study of teacher’s response to EFL reform in a Chinese university

This paper draws on a case study conducted in a Chinese university in the context of national College English reform. The aim is to investigate the policy enactment of the latest College English reform in China and the interaction between national policies, institutional policy, and teacher agency in responding to this educational reform from an activity theory perspective. The analysis examines the tensions and contradictions within and between the macro policy initiation level, the university implementation level, and the teacher’s classroom level, as well as examining the power distribution between these three activity systems. Data were collected from classroom observation, interviews, and examination of reform policy documents and analysed by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The findings suggest that the control-compliance model functioned as the rule for the curriculum implementation at both national policy and institution level. However, in such a restrictive context, the participant teacher’s agency was enhanced through her engagement with the research and reflection on teaching, even exceeding the expectations of the reform.     

English language teaching curriculum in Iran: planning and practice

The present study investigates English language teaching (ELT) curriculum planning in Iran's Ministry of Education and its implementation by teachers. We studied programme evaluation; needs analysis; the ELT-specific documents; communication channels between planning and practice levels; teacher evaluation and student assessment; interpretation and re-examination of national policies within the Ministry; and the criteria set for ELT material development. Instrumentation included: curriculum documents; interviews with Ministry officials, material developers and headteachers; and teacher questionnaires. Results attested to the lack of any ELT-specific document for material development and absence of research-based needs assessment as the foundation of the programmes. Also, there are no pre-defined linguistic and professional criteria for evaluating teachers, and planning for students' assessment is limited to a set of general guidelines. Moreover, there is neither a programme evaluation nor an ELT evaluation model and national-level policies are not re-examined at planning level. Results also indicate that politico-ideological beliefs of material developers are as important as their expertise and communication channels between planning and practice levels are of a top-down nature. It is argued that the gap between planning and practice results from a highly centralised policymaking process in which local policymakers (i.e. teachers) are not involved.     

Rich Task Implementation: Modernism meets postmodernism

'School renewal', 'productive pedagogies', 'rich tasks', 'New Basics', 'key learning areas'--these are some of the discourses of change in selected Queensland schools. This paper will report on teaching as an insider/outsider in a school's Health and Physical Education department during a time of intense pressure for structural, curriculum and pedagogical shifts. As a teacher/researcher, I spent ten weeks in a government secondary school attempting to implement rich tasks as well as collect data using formal and informal interviews, field note, and document analyses, with a focus upon teachers', students' and administrators' sense of change processes and outcomes. It is suggested that the processes of, and barriers to, curriculum change in this context are best explained in terms of tensions between modernist and postmodernist phenomena.     

A Foucauldian analysis of literary text selection practices and educational policies in Ontario,Canada

Like schools, curricula are socially constructed and constituted within broader social, political, and historical relations of power, powerfully shaping students’ beliefs and attitudes about themselves and their relationship toward the world. In light of this, the importance of literature selection cannot be overstated. School-sanctioned texts often provide the core curriculum, and secondary school English teachers rely on them heavily. The self-regulatory practices a teacher engages in will shape not only how the teacher begins to understand the self, but also works to construct an ‘appropriate’ teacher identity. Using a Foucauldian theoretical lens, this paper draws upon findings from a synthesis of school board policies and interviews with English teachers and department heads in Ontario, Canada, to explore the discursive practices that shape literary text selection.     

Localized Representation of Formative Assessment in China: A Regional Study from a Sociocultural Perspective

Formative assessment originated and developed in a Western context. With its function of learning improvement being evidenced in research, formative assessment has been adopted in assessment initiatives in multiple contexts including that of China. Research, however, reveals that formative assessment as implemented in Chinese contexts is by no means equivalent to what is understood and implemented in the West; rather, in many cases, it is decontextualised and recontextualised, or culturally appropriated. This paper presents findings of a study which examined the culturally appropriated representation of formative assessment within eight universities in a mid-western province of China. Senior administrators in each university were interviewed face-to-face and individually to fulfill three purposes: (1) To clarify understandings of formative assessment in the area of college English education; (2) To explore the existing gap between formative assessment principles and their representation in College English Curriculum Requirements (CECR), and the gap between formative assessment initiatives at the national level and local contexts; and (3) To distill implications for policy-borrowing and effective implementation in the Chinese context.     

School administrators and university practicum supervisors as boundary brokers for initial teacher education in Chile

The study examines school administrators' perspectives on a central problem of the school-based component of initial teacher preparation: the distance between schools and universities. Data obtained through in-depth interviews and focus groups with administrators (N = 51) from 36 schools were analyzed using Wenger's (2000) theory of inter-organizational learning. Findings suggest that an expansion of the roles supervisors and school administrators have traditionally played in the practicum may help reduce this gap. As brokers for their respective institutions they can coordinate actions by gaining access to the meanings each community assigns to practices and acknowledging the competence each brings to the practicum.     

Power relations in the enactment of English language education policy for Chinese schools

The scale of English language education in China is astounding, but recent research has shown that the latest national English education policy for Chinese schools has not been implemented successfully due to various reasons. One reason given for the lack of success is the impracticability of the top-down policy itself excluding teachers’ involvement and neglecting the contextual constraints. Building on the theoretical framework of multi-levelled actors in language planning and language policy, and drawing on some key concepts in relation to power in Critical Language Policy research, this paper explores how a national English language curriculum that emphasizes the international standards and norms in curriculum design has been enacted, ineffectively, by the key stakeholders through analysing the specific roles of three groups of key stakeholders involved in the English as a foreign language curriculum policy implementation.     

地方高校大学英语后续教学研究

大学英语课程教学当前处于转型时期,政府教育部门、高校以及外语教学专家们都在积极探索全球化背景下的大学英语教学出路。地方高校由于受到硬件和软件条件的限制,在大学英语教学改革的背景下更应探索并完善自己的发展道路。将大学生的英语四、六级考试需求及其对专业英语的学习需求结合起来,实现大学四年不间断的英语学习,是一项积极的探索。     

Towards a More Appropriate University English Curriculum in China in the Context of English as an International Language

The rapid and wide spread of English has given rise to its lingua franca status, which in turn, changes the nature of English and English teaching at the tertiary level. This paper, based on a survey, discusses some of the problems with the current English curriculum used in Chinese universities and proceeds to offer some suggestions for a more appropriate university English curriculum in China in the context of English as an international language.     

English as a symbol of internationalization in higher education: a case study of Vietnam

Vietnam universities have experienced remarkable changes brought about by their internationalization policies. The switch to English as a medium of instruction (EMI) for some academic programs was one of these critical changes. Literature has reported numerous issues related to EMI, including inadequate language proficiency of teaching staff. This paper looks at a qualitative research study on how a government university from Vietnam employs different strategies to enhance teachers’ English proficiency. The study reveals that the introduction of new supporting systems, assessment bodies, recruitment criteria and institutional strategies on training, monitoring and motivation have created cultural change within the teacher community. This cultural change, which includes elements such as self-directed learning, peer learning, professionalism, and ‘open-to-change’ attitudes, has been perceived by both leaders and teachers to be conducive to teachers’ language learning. The findings presented in this paper seek to contribute to the formulation or adjustment of policies related to educational reforms, such as curriculum reform, teacher recruitment and teacher professional development in non-English-speaking countries.     

Attitudes of Taiwanese scholars toward English and Chinese as languages of publication

Under the influence of globalization, English has almost become the default language in scientific academia. While the culture-independent nature of scientific research may result in scholars' preference for using one common language, over-reliance on English may shape non-English-speaking scholars' negative attitudes toward their national languages and may constrain their use of these languages in the domain of scientific publication. Therefore, this study investigated the attitudes of Taiwanese science scholars toward English and Chinese as languages of publication. The findings indicated that it is not “English” itself but its “pragmatic value” (which is accrued through publishing in international indexed journals) that drives the choice of English over Chinese. However, this choice has led to an early sign of diglossia and the minimal use of Chinese in scientific publication. To mitigate this problem, it is believed that stakeholders in both international indexed journals and local universities should make efforts to value different languages as well as local journals published in other languages.     

Spoken Soul: The Language of Black Imagination and Reality

Despite American schools administrators' refusal to accept the language of African-American students and their overzealousness to frame language and literacy skills in terms of an “achievement gap,” African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the language of African-American imagination and reality. This article discusses the characteristics of AAVE that make it a real language, as well as The Dozens—an original use of AAVE and one of many creative vehicles of expression used in the African-American community. The article also describes how African-American adult learners used AAVE in their composition class discussions and writings.