Student teachers in school practice: an analysis of learning opportunities

Abstract

Over the past decade, educational policy in Britain, as in other industrial nations, has been increasingly driven by the concern that higher education should serve the needs of the economy more effectively. The report Highly Qualified People: supply and demand reflects this concern and attempts to establish from employers Britain's likely requirement, in the 1990s, for such expensively educated labour. Though the report concluded that Britain needed more graduates over the next few years, closer scrutiny of its data suggests a very different conclusion ‐ not that Britain needs more graduates to prosper, but rather that Britain needs first to prosper before it is likely to want the graduates it already produces.

     

Grounds for Design: The Improvement of School and College Grounds

A number of national initiatives have encouraged the development of school and college grounds as an improved resource for recreational and educational purposes. This report outlines art and design activities which have been taking place at St Andrew's College, promoting interaction with the immediate environment and encouraging the use and improvement of existing resources by students, staff and visitors. It also provides examples of work carried out in partnership with artists, architects and industry and how this has assisted liaison with schools in the process of change through the development of their grounds. It concludes that our future lies in encouraging a greater concern for and a deeper understanding of nature through design education, therefore, it is essential that young children have stimulating outdoor environments in which to grow and learn     

Student absences during learning cycle phases: a technological alternative for make-up work in laboratory based high school chemistry

Absences from school present a major obstacle to students' gaining understandings of concepts developed in class. Moreover, teachers' finding effective ways for students to make up missed work is a continual problem, especially for laboratory-based science classes. In an exploratory study, we investigated an alternative procedure for making up missed class work: viewing a quasi-interactive videotaped presentation of missed portions of a learning cycle in chemistry. Two treatment groups were involved. One group of students completed data sheets while watching a videotape, then wrote answers to questions posed by the videotaped instructor. This procedure simulated make-up work. A second group of students participated in a conventional learning cycle: exploration, conceptual invention and concept application. Results demonstrate that teachers can videotape investigations to conveniently and effectively use as make-up assignments for a chemistry learning cycle.     

What the Student Does: teaching for enhanced learning

Many teachers see major difficulties in maintaining academic standards in today's larger and more diversified classes. The problem becomes more tractable if learning outcomes are seen as more a function of students’ activities than of their fixed characteristics. The teacher's job is then to organise the teaching/learning context so that all students are more likely to use the higher order learning processes which “academic” students use spontaneously. This may be achieved when all components are aligned, so that objectives express the kinds of understanding that we want from students, the teaching context encourages students to undertake the learning activities likely to achieve those understandings, and the assessment tasks tell students what activities are required of them, and tell us how well the objectives have been met. Two examples of aligned teaching systems are described: problem‐based learning and the learning portfolio.     

Student characteristics for online learning success

Higher education has been impacted significantly by the proliferation of online instruction. Despite this trend, empirical investigations of this delivery method have lagged. Many have documented the need for research on online student characteristics, yet current literature consists of personal teaching experiences and anecdotal observations. To address these issues the authors conducted three studies. The goals were to describe how the new measure of online student characteristics (i.e., TOOLS — Test of Online Learning Success) was constructed and validated, outline the contributions the measure has made to our knowledge of online learners, and review the research literature that supports the findings. The results demonstrated the measure's simple and stable structure, construct validity, criterion validity, internal reliable, and test–retest reliability. The measure, administration guidelines, scoring procedures, and outcome interpretations are provided in the public domain. The different purposes for which the measure may be used are discussed. The paramount student characteristics that emerged are presented and discussed in regards to other research findings.     

Student learning in higher education: a longitudinal analysis and faculty discussion

Answering a call put forth decades ago by the higher education community and the federal government, we investigated the impact of US college coursework on student learning gains. Students gained, on average, 3.72 points on a 66-item test of quantitative and scientific reasoning after experiencing 1.5 years of college. Gain scores were unrelated to the number of quantitative and scientific reasoning courses completed when controlling and not controlling for students’ personal characteristics. Unexpectedly, yet fortunately, gain scores showed no discernable difference when corrected for low test-taking effort, which indicated test-taking effort did not compromise the validity of the test scores. When gain scores were disaggregated by amount of completed coursework, the estimated gain scores of students with quantitative and scientific reasoning coursework were smaller than what quantitative and scientific reasoning faculty expected or desired. In sum, although students appear on average to be making gains in quantitative and scientific reasoning, there is not a strong relationship between learning gains and students’ quantitative and scientific reasoning coursework, and the gains are less than desired by faculty. We discuss implications of these findings for student learning assessment and learning improvement processes.     

Student perception of Moodle learning management system: a satisfaction and significance analysis

This research study addresses differences in student perception of the significance of Moodle learning management system (LMS) quality characteristics and differences in student satisfaction in regard to such characteristics. Therein, it has been proven in this study that male and female students are equally satisfied with Moodle LMS quality characteristics and that there is a difference in the significance that students give to these characteristics. When students were observed in regard to their age and year of study, it was found that these groups assigned different significance levels to quality characteristics and were not equally satisfied with them. It was also found that there is a substantial statistical difference in the significance students gave to quality characteristics and in student satisfaction itself, according to how much time they spent using the Moodle application, which is also noted as one of the most important aspects of the research conducted. A further analysis of the variables demonstrated that the following components of quality characteristics were more important to female students: average waiting time for a response, feedback quality, material thoroughness, material clarity, website user-friendliness, cooperation diversity, and material quantity.     

Student learning performance in online collaborative learning

Education and Information Technologies - Online collaborative learning (OCL) has received significant attention, but the ultimate goal of adopting OCL is neglected, especially in higher education...     

Student learning in higher education: a path analysis of academic achievement in science

Learning outcomes in higher education are of considerable interest to students, teaching staff, researchers, tertiary education institutions and funding authorities. To improve the quality of learning outcomes may require a better understanding of what happens in the learning process from the perspective of the learner. This study makes use of a number of current instruments for the evaluation of student learning to explore aspects of learning outcomes in terms of academic achievement. The students evaluated were either in their first year of study (N=194) or in the third year of their course (N=118). A causal mode of learning outcomes was developed for each group and evaluated using the PLSPATH program to explore the impact of student‐related causative factors. A number of these factors were shown to have a direct effect on student academic achievement, as measured by annual grade point average (GPA), with some consistency across two year‐levels. The most important factor in predicting academic performance for both groups was students' prior academic performance. Approaches to learning and English language skills were also shown to have some predictive value. Students' metacognitive skills and self‐efficacy, though showing strong inter‐relationships with other factors, did not show a direct effect on academic achievement.     

Student assessment and learning for a changing society

This article examines the traditional roles of assessment and the current demands for assessment to ‘gear up’ education systems in response to global economic changes. It argues that in the next millennium, and with the information revolution, it will be important to foster higher order skills and good learning strategies in a high proportion of our students. The article goes on to consider, set against the critical relationship among high-stakes testing, teaching and learning, the nature of high-quality assessment programmes. It will present evidence of impact of the national assessment programme on teaching in England and Wales in the United Kingdom.     

Student learning assistants: the journey from learning advice to creating community

Abstract

This study reports on a generic peer-assistance programme conducted by Learning and Academic Skills Advisors and Student Learning Assistants (SLAs) at an Australian university. The research explores SLAs’ perspective of their role and its development. Drawing on data collected from focus groups and a questionnaire it was found that SLAs, drawing on their experience and a dialogic process, empowered students to become decision-makers and more autonomous and successful as academic learners. This study contributes to the previous body of research on peer advising by showing that the sense of community created through interactive and psychosocial aspects of the relationship between an assistant and assisted is inseparable from the development of academic skills.     

Informal learning: Student achievement and motivation in science through museum-based learning

This study examined changes in student motivation and achievement in science during a visit to a university children’s science museum. The study was based on the pretest–posttest control comparison group design with four treatment groups: control, exhibit, lesson and exhibit/lesson. The sample consisted of 228 sixth-grade students from a Louisiana public school who were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental groups. Pretest, posttest and delayed posttest measures of intrinsic motivation and achievement in science were obtained using the Children’s Academic Intrinsic Motivation Inventory and an achievement test written to measure areas of science incorporated in the museum exhibits. The data were analysed using a one-way ANOVA, dependent t tests and Pearson r. Significant differences were found within groups for (1) the lesson group in motivation and (2) the exhibit group in achievement from pretest to posttest and from posttest to delayed posttest. A significant relationship between level of motivation and science achievement was revealed for the exhibit group on the delayed posttest. There were no other significant findings to support that the treatment led to any long-term effects on motivation or achievement within any of the four experimental groups.