Teachers’ Learning Journeys: The Quality Learning Circle as a Model of Professional Development

Worldwide, teachers struggle to keep pace with demands for learning. Educational reforms mandated at a national level require teachers to reconsider their teaching, curriculum and assessment philosophies and practices. This reliance on national policy initiatives increases teachers’ dependence on others knowing what their learning needs might be. Such dependence creates problems for sustained learning because teachers are not encouraged to help themselves. This article introduces an alternative approach to professional development, known as the Quality Learning Circle (QLC), to show how it can empower teachers to become agents of change able to meet both local needs alongside national agendas.     

Schoolbag as a Mirror: The Transformation of Chinese Children’s Schooling Experiences in Songs over the Past 70 Years

The practice of integrating songs into educational research is seen as an emerging phenomenon, focusing on students’ existential situation from the perspective of culture. This paper explores the connections between the songs selected and children’s life experiences in different periods between the 1950s and the present. There exist numerous songs involving the theme of schoolbags over the past 70 years. In 14 typical popular songs, the cultural implications of schoolbags roughly fall into four categories, namely political, emotional, playful, and visionary, each respectively reflecting different degrees of weight captured by the song originators. Accompanied by the diversity of musical rhythms and melodies, the musical images of schoolbags may vary in terms of phenomenology and schooling culture. The nature of schoolbags in songs keeps changing, closely related to the micro-political experiences of the singers. Therefore, as a teaching resource outside the classroom, popular songs exert a greater influence on students’ spiritual cultivation than formal knowledge.     

English as a Medium of Teaching and Learning in a Resource-Poor Country: The Case of Malawi’s New Language Policy

Abstract

This article discusses the resource implications of Malawi’s new language-in-education policy. Whilst previous publications on the English as a medium of teaching and learning policy, which was announced in Malawi in 2014, have sharply criticised and dismissed the new language policy from pedagogical and other educational grounds, the current article is the first to dwell exclusively on the resource implications of the new language policy. The qualitative study reported on, which utilised Barron’s learning ecologies framework, was based on information drawn from one key informant; readers’ comments extracted from a Malawian online newspaper; and some scholarly publications. The article argues that the available resources are too inadequate to lead to a successful implementation of English as a medium of teaching and learning in the non-English-dominant Malawi. The article recommends that Malawi should return to the previous language policy, which was UNESCO compliant, and that adequate and enabling resources be channelled to improving the teaching and learning of English as a subject. Resources should also be injected into the professional development of teachers in order to capacitate them to effectively handle English as a medium of teaching and learning from Grade 5 onwards.     

A Pilot Study in the Field of Professional Further Education — Cooperative Learning in a Multimedia Learning Environment

ABSTRACT

Based on cooperative learning models, the present study investigated the specific effects of performance, interpersonal relations and affective variables in a computer‐based cooperative learning environment. Subjects were male and female adults who studied a multimedia learning program as a professional training task. After randomization 50 subjects worked in cooperative settings, while 25 subjects worked individually as a control group. In keeping with our assumptions, the subjects benefited from being paired. Further advantages for cooperative learning seem likely if instructions are modified and cooperative strategies used.     

Learning in the Discovery Sciences: The History of a “Radical” Conceptual Change,or the Scientific Revolution That Was Not

In this study, I provide a microgenetic-historical account of learning in an informal setting: the conceptual change that occurred while a university-based scientific research laboratory investigated the absorption of light in rod-based photoreceptors of coho salmon, which the “dogma” had suggested to be related to the migration between freshwater and saltwater environments. A morphogenetic, catastrophe theoretic model is proposed and used to structure the account of the conceptual change. The data derive from a 5-year video-based ethnographic study of the laboratory and the fish hatcheries that supplied it with hatchery-raised and wild coho at different developmental stages. Because the scientists collected their data over a 2-year period, slowing down the availability of what they would be saying were their complete data, opportunities arose for studying the conceptual change ethnographically. The study reports difficulties scientists encountered interpreting their data—because they (a) took a dogma-related perspective, (b) had to reconstruct and become familiar with the context from which they had abstracted their specimen, (c) required a biologically relevant rather than mathematically plausible explanation, and (d) exhibited aspect blindness that only disappeared as their familiarity increased.     

The curriculum as a site of counter politics: theorising the ‘domain of the sayable’

Whilst there has been increasing focus on the impact of neoliberal education policy on the curriculum covered in schools, as well as on teacher and student subjectivities, less research has been done on the possibility, or otherwise, for teachers to challenge curriculum constraints. Arguing that these curriculum constraints are not simply imposed by an external censor, this article takes up Judith Butler’s concept of the ‘domain of the sayable’ to theorise what it is possible to imagine teaching in the primary school classroom in the first place. I draw on two different ethnographic data episodes to explore the parameters of the domain of the sayable in the space of the classroom in which I taught, mapping the silences and sudden swerving away from topics that seem to be straying close to what is impossible to say or hear. This process offers new insight into how we might conceptualise teacher resistance and counter politics within the current educational policy milieu in the United Kingdom.     

The Analysis of Students’ Conceptions as a Support for Designing a Teaching/Learning Sequence on the Acoustic Properties of Materials

We believe that finding out how students think about certain topics that are covered in science classes should not be ??the end of the story?? but the starting point for planning lessons and designing materials. From this perspective, the research study presented here is intended to explore secondary school (15?C18?year old) students?? preconceptions of sound attenuation, and of the properties and internal structure of materials. Specifically, we analysed students?? explanations for the fact that some materials attenuate sound more than others. This study was conducted within a particular scenario, in which 72 students participated in laboratory sessions aimed at developing students?? understanding of the nature, propagation and attenuation of sound. From the analysis of students?? explanations, we could identify some conceptions of sound attenuation in materials (e.g. as a result of hindering the entrance of sound, or as a result of capturing sound). The results of this study also indicate that the role of properties of a material and the role of the internal structure that students associate with its acoustic behaviour depend on their conceptions of sound attenuation. We used these results as support for the design of a research-based teaching/learning sequence on the Acoustic Properties of Materials, which is intended to facilitate students?? overcoming the specific conceptual difficulties identified in this research study and promote students?? development of conceptual models of sound attenuation.     

The Effectiveness of Video as a Learning Tool in On‐line Multimedia Modules

The Broadnet Project produced on‐line interactive multimedia training modules in order to support local small and medium sized (SME) businesses. Two of these modules used videos which were incorporated into the modules and were designed to stream over the Broadnet network. These videos were produced by several different contributors to the project. This report examines the producers’ views and SME trainees’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the videos as training material. Findings suggests that it is the interactive nature of the videos with the clips and questions, and the use of narrative incorporating the information which these trainees found most useful for learning.     

Inquiry-Based Learning and Undergraduates’ Professional Identity Development: Assessment of a Field Research-Based Course

Innovative strategies in inquiry-based learning are recognized as improving the quality of higher education learning, but there is a need to explore whether and how these strategies promote the development of professional identity among undergraduates. In this article we describe an inquiry-based course, situated in a European context, which is designed to support students’ professional identity development through reflective practice; and we present the assessment of students’ learning outcomes. Results highlight the key roles of field research, peer groups, and a narrative approach in promoting positive student attitudes toward reflecting on their production of knowledge and in developing their professional identity.     

Parental Involvement in Children’s Learning: The Case of Cochlear Implantation—Parents as Educators?

Extensive research emphasises the importance of parental involvement for children’s learning and academic achievement. This paper reports from a Norwegian study researching parents’ experiences on follow-up after their child’s cochlear implantation. Within this context, parental involvement is suggested to be of major importance for the child’s language learning. The study explores the parents’ talk on their involvement in the child’s language after implantation. Data consist of 27 written parental accounts and interviews with 14 of these parents. The analysis shows the parents’ extensive involvement in the child’s language learning. The study brings into conversation how understandings of learning influence parental involvement, leading to implications for the parents and children involved. It addresses a need for debate on how parents can support children’s learning, whilst avoiding parenthood becoming a series of educational tasks.     

Farmers’ Learning Strategies in the Province of Esfahan

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate changes in farming and to look at how farmers adapt to diverse changes in and around their farms in the province of Esfahan, Iran. It is part of a larger project aimed at developing a job competency profile for agricultural extension instructors (AEIs). One hundred and two farmers who had previously followed extension courses in the province of Esfahan were interviewed. The findings demonstrate that a large number of farmers in the target group who are older, married, have low education levels, are smallholders and lack adequate job diversity on their farms. The study revealed that these farmers have experienced sluggish internal and external agricultural change, and they are generally more positive about internal changes than external ones. Respondents designated ‘extension courses’, ‘individual farm visits by official extension agents’ and ‘trial and error’, respectively as their three main learning strategies (LS) to help them adapt to the various changes. The results also indicate that older and more poorly educated farmers have more problems in adopting different LS.     

Learning from religions as ‘skilful means’: a contribution to the debate about the identity of religious education

This article is a revised version of the author’s contribution to the 2006 meeting of the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values in Driebergen, the Netherlands and is concerned with the need for continuing discussion about the identity of religious education. The article begins by arguing that, despite current criticisms, Smart’s original intentions for phenomenological religious education were far from inappropriate for a critical religious education. It then attempts to introduce some fresh ideas about how we might understand the commonly used terms of learning about and from religion. It suggests that in learning about religion it is important to engage students with the soteriological dimensions of religious traditions. The article then goes on to offer a revised version of learning from religion based on the Mahayana Buddhist concept of upaya or ‘skilful means’.     

The Impact of a Science Education Game on Students’ Learning and Perception of Inhalants as Body Pollutants

This study investigated the knowledge gains and attitude shifts attributable to a unique online science education game, Uncommon Scents. The game was developed to teach middle school students about the biological consequences of exposure to toxic chemicals in an environmental science context, as well as the risks associated with abusing these chemicals as inhalants. Middle school students (n = 444) grades six through eight participated in the study consisting of a pre-test, three game-play sessions, and a delayed post-test. After playing the game, students demonstrated significant gains in science content knowledge, with game usability ratings emerging as the strongest predictor of post-test content knowledge scores. The intervention also resulted in a shift to more negative attitudes toward inhalants, with the most negative shift occurring among eighth grade students and post-test knowledge gains as the strongest predictor of attitude change across all grade levels. These findings suggest that the environmental science approach used in Uncommon Scents is an efficacious strategy for delivering both basic science content and influencing perceived harm relating to the inhalation of toxic chemicals from common household products.     

The Use of Tape as a ‘Lead-Medium’

Mathematical circles in the schools of the Federal Republic of Germany are engaged in the examination and discussion of two proposed teaching reforms, the first concerned with the content of teaching and the second with its methods. The proposals stem from the 1968 Conference of Cultural Ministers, a subject of which was the establishment of ‘A Framework of Guiding Principles of Reform’. These principles provide for reforms in mathematics teaching in schools, to start in the school year 1972/73, and preparatory work has been going on in a number of places. The research includes a mathematical project on the theme: ‘Value of Digit Systems’, work on which has been carried out by the Institut für Film und Bild in association with the publishing firm of Ernest Klett.     

The Development of Dalton’s Atomic Theory as a Case Study in the History of Science: Reflections for Educators in Chemistry

The inclusion of the history of science in science curricula—and specially, in the curricula of science teachers—is a trend that has been followed in several countries. The reasons advanced for the study of the history of science are manifold. This paper presents a case study in the history of chemistry, on the early developments of John Dalton’s atomic theory. Based on the case study, several questions that are worth discussing in educational contexts are pointed out. It is argued that the kind of history of science that was made in the first decades of the twentieth century (encyclopaedic, continuist, essentially anachronistic) is not appropriate for the development of the competences that are expected from the students of sciences in the present. Science teaching for current days will benefit from the approach that may be termed the “new historiography of science”.     

The Master’s in Teaching and Learning: expanding utilitarianism in the continuing professional development of teachers in England

The article focuses on the policy rhetoric of the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL). This is a new degree being launched in the summer of 2010 aimed, initially, at teachers who have just joined the profession. The degree presages the aspiration for a Master’s level teaching profession in England. Professional development as conceived in the MTL is continuous rather than continuing and permeating the vision is the language of ‘personalisation’. Teachers will be accompanied on the journey by an ‘in-school coach’. These notions suggest a highly tailored approach to continuing professional development (CPD), with careful attention to the identification of teachers’ needs and close support from a colleague. The article argues that, contrary to this impression, the MTL marks a new and significant step in expanding the utilitarianism of the English education system. The MTL represents a deepening hold on education by the state and a growing scepticism about the value of higher education in the CPD of teachers. It also aspires to a changing culture in schools as the workplace becomes the locus for the CPD of teachers. As other authors have described, the national character of education systems in Europe and in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Asia reflect an increasing instrumentality. The MTL, then, can be seen as part of a global phenomenon; in this case the policy lever of CPD is employed to support performative and audit policy agendas via a rigid accountability system. The MTL also represents a particular form of neo-liberal governmentality where increasing centralisation is ‘masked’ by a ‘simulacra of care’.