Building Context: Using Activity Theory to Teach About Genre in Multi-Major Professional Communication Courses

Instructors in multi-major professional communication courses are asked to teach students a variety of workplace genres. However, teaching genres apart from their contexts may not result in transfer of knowledge from school to workplace settings. We propose teaching students to research genre use via activity theory as a way of encouraging transfer. We outline theory and research relevant to teaching genre and provide results from a study using activity theory to teach genre in two different professional communication courses.     

Using Portfolios to Teach Teachers About Assessment: How to Survive

In this article I respond to a call for inquiry into the teaching process using one's own teaching as the object of inquiry. A focus on the dilemmas faced by an individual teacher acknowledges that teaching is, as Wineburg (1991) put it 'a complex activity fraught with pitfalls, problems, setbacks, failures, errors and disappointments' (p.278). Single cases have value if they contain elements that can be generalized beyond the specific personalities and contexts of the given situation. In this article I describe the evolution of a portfolio-based assessment course in a traditional teacher education program. I describe the elements of the course, the aims of instruction, and the potential power of portfolios and authentic performances to enhance student learning. I also describe the problems that may arise from the use of portfolio and performance-based assessments. The various adjustments made during a 3-year period to make the course workable for both students and the instructor are described as an evolutionary process. The problems and their solutions can be generalized beyond the given assessment course and show the kinds of decisions teachers must make for their students and for themselves when using portfolios in teaching.     

论视觉传达专业教育中基础理论课程的地位

随着高等艺术教育突飞猛进的发展,视觉传达这一学科迅速升温。而在我们的艺术教育中却面临很多问题,很大一部分学生认识不到设计类基础理论课程在本专业中的重要性。教师应结合教学和实践,针对设计类基础理论教学问题,在学生中树立健康的学习风气和指导方向,使学生在学习过程中能深刻认识到基础理论课程的重要性和指导性,从而在专业技术和实践当中更好的发挥自身优势。     

Training Online Technical Communication Educators to Teach with Social Media: Best Practices and Professional Recommendations

ABSTRACT

The author reports on social media research in technical and professional communication (TPC) training through a national survey of 30 professional and technical communication programs asking about their use of social media in technical communication. This research forms the basis of recommendations for training online TPC faculty to teach with social media. The author offer recommendations throughout for those who train online TPC faculty as well as for the teachers themselves.     

Using the Five Faces of Oppression to Teach About Interlocking Systems of Oppression

In social justice education a tension sometimes emerges between the complex ideas we want participants to grapple with and the relatively straightforward activities we use to communicate those ideas. We adapt learning activities to meet participants’ evolving needs and to communicate emerging theories and analyses, but sometimes adjusting an activity's content is not enough; the activity's very structure can contradict our stated frameworks and undermine the content we wish to convey. In this article I explore two activities commonly used for teaching about systems of oppression whose structures inadvertently support linear, single-issue thinking, and largely fail to account for intersectionality, despite educators’ best efforts to incorporate more complex content. I describe an alternative activity, structured around Iris Marion Young's The Five Faces of Oppression, that can be used to teach about multiple, interlocking systems of oppression while highlighting rather than obscuring the specificity of interrelationships among those systems.     

高等院校财务管理专业课程体系构建之我见

财务管理学科作为一门独立的专业学科，必须要有自己的学科体系和人才培养模式。根据学科特点，主要从财务管理学科范畴的界定、财务管理学科体系的构建和课程体系的构思、如何实现财务管理专业人才培养目标等三个方面加以探讨。     

有效地进行高职高专英语教学

根据高职高专的学生英语水平和高职高专教育英语课程教学基本要求，为了有效地进行高职高专英语教学，必须对高职高专英语教育进行改革。     

Diagnostic Problem-Solving Process in Professional Contexts: Theory and Empirical Investigation in the Context of Car Mechatronics Using Computer-Generated Log-Files

This article deals with a theory-based investigation of the diagnostic problem-solving process in professional contexts. To begin with, a theory of the diagnostic problem-solving process was developed drawing on findings from different professional contexts. The theory distinguishes between four sub-processes of the diagnostic problem-solving process and includes several hypotheses. According to the theory, the quality of the sub-processes “representing information” and “testing hypotheses” causally influences the diagnostic problem-solving success. Additionally, the theory suggests that the influence of “testing hypotheses” on the problem-solving success is higher than the influence of “representing information”. Moreover, the theory assumes that the influence of the quality of “representing information” on the success is mediated by the quality of “testing hypotheses”. These hypotheses were examined in the context of car mechatronics using diagnostic problems of the car sector, a computer-based assessment and a sample of car mechatronic apprentices (N = 339). To operationalize the sub-processes’ quality, observable critical behavior was theoretically identified and extracted from computer-generated log-files. The empirical results were largely in line with the hypotheses and indicated a (very) first corroboration of the theory in the context of car mechatronics. The theory could be helpful to investigate and teach diagnostic problem solving in different professional contexts. Further studies, however, should scrutinize whether the theory applies to other studies and professional contexts.     

Learning to Teach Generatively: Mentor-Supported Professional Development and Research in Technology-and-Science

In a year-long, school-based teacher education project, primary school teachers were given workshop- and classroom-based support, including sustained mentoring, as they appropriated a generative heuristic for teaching technology-and-science in their classrooms. The mentor participated in their lessons and recorded her frequent conversations with teachers. Extracts from 3 conversations (of many, spanning 5 months) between 1 teacher and the mentor illustrate this teacher's changing ideas and the mentor's role. The teacher realized that although she preferred to learn generatively, she had been using instructionist approaches in her technology-and-science teaching. These dialogues show how the mentor supported this teacher as she gradually aligned her technology-and-science teaching with the generative style of learning she already valued.     

浅谈新课程理念下我们怎样教学

新课程特别强调每个教师都必须拥有课程意识。课程意识是一种开放的、民主的、科学的意识。课程意识需要呼唤主体的教学自觉。教与学的过程是师生双方平等合作、追求主体间相互理解,获得解放和自由的过程。在这个过程中,教师和学生每时每刻都面临着复杂多变的事件与各种信息的刺激,需要充分调动双方的知识储备和智慧潜能,梳理原有的经验,通过创造性的教学活动,寻找有效的成长途径,建构具有个性的意义世界。一、以专业化发展促进教学20世纪80年代以来,教师专业化发展已成为教育研究的主题之一。所谓教师专业化发展是指作为专业人员的教师在整…     

体裁教学法在大学英语听力教学中的应用

随着体裁及体裁分析理论研究的不断深入,人们逐渐认识到体裁教学法是提高学生英语各方面能力的一个有效途径。在理论分析的基础上,尝试把体裁教学法运用到大学英语的听力教学中,以促进大学英语听力教学。     

Genres and Genre Theory: A Response to Michael Rosen

This paper responds to Michael Rosen’s blog entries, ‘How Genre Theory Saved the World’, arguing that genre theory in the tradition of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has made an important contribution to language and literacy pedagogy. It emerged in the Australian context in about 1980 and was initially developed in response to educational theories that tended to focus on ‘processes of learning’ and the role of the teacher as ‘facilitator’ only of these processes. This was at the expense of more structured and goal-directed language curricula which provide guidance and support to language and literacy learners, especially in learning to write. Genre theory, supported by extensive research using the SF grammar, identifies certain elemental genres for teaching; they are canonical because each is part of an assemblage of related genres, which successful students learn to manipulate, playing with them and adapting them for their own purposes. Learning the genres of a culture is part of learning how that culture means.     

What History Can Teach Us About Science: Theory and Experiment, Data and Evidence

Scientists often use more than the results of experiment to arrive at a result; they use anticipation and analogy to arrive at the results that fit their theories, and sometimes they correct results in the light of analogy. They also need to be clear about the difference between accuracy and precision. They do all this using not only theories, but also apparatus, and the interplay between apparatus and the development of concepts and theories is often crucial. Historians of chemistry (notably including the recent work of Usselman, Rocke, and Holmes) furnish us with plenty of examples of such interplay, and of the selection of data in the light of theory. Lavoisier, Dalton, and Liebig can each teach us a good deal about the way that good scientists arrive at reproducible results.     

Using Physical Activity to Teach Academic Content: A Study of the Effects on Literacy in Head Start Preschoolers

The potential impact of increased physical activity on early literacy skills in preschool children has not been sufficiently explored. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a 6 month, low cost, teacher-directed, academic program that delivered existing literacy lessons using physical activity in Head Start preschools. Preschool Literacy Individual Growth and Development Indicators were used to assess early literacy and phonological awareness in the areas of alliteration and picture naming. The results showed significant increases in physical activity during free play and improvements in early literacy (Picture Naming, Alliteration) compared to a non-exercising control group. In conclusion, the findings suggest that academic lessons taught using physical activity improve early literacy in preschoolers.     

新课改背景下范例教学理论再审视

范例教学论主张以精选的“范例”取代“百科全书”式的教学内容,通过范例的学习,引导学生主动地学习,掌握学科结构,从而获得系统的认识。其基本思想对于我国今天的课程改革仍然具有指导意义。     

把交往教学法引入研究生教学的思考与实践

认为目前的研究生公共课教学在教学定位、学生态度、教师角色、教学手段等方面都存在一定的问题。从教师的角度,提出通过交往教学法重新认识教学活动的特点,探索促使学生积极参与教学活动的步骤和方式。介绍了在“自然辩证法”教学中运用“交往教学法”的探索和尝试。     

An Analysis of Different Addressing Terms in High Context Communication and Low Context Communication from the Perspective of Frame Theory

Within the scope of human beings, some addressing terms are similar. However, different addressing terms still exist,which are influenced by the background of high context communication or low context communication. A good example is that Chinese traditional culture, a typical instance of high context communication, puts much emphasis on etiquette, which is represented in addressing terms as more complex and definite; In western, with the background of low context communication, every individual is more equal and they address each other more generally and much simpler. This paper tries to explore the addressing terms both in Chinese and in English from the perspective of frame theory.