Effects of Teacher Professional Development and Science Classroom Learning Environment on Students’ Science Achievement

Research in Science Education - Science classroom learning environment (CLE) and science teacher professional development (PD) are two important factors in students’ science learning....     

Utilizing Professional Vision in Supporting Preservice Teachers’ Learning About Contextualized Scientific Practices

Drawn from the cultural-historical theories of knowing and doing science, this article uses the concept of professional vision to explore what scientists and experienced teachers see and articulate as important aspects of climate science practices. The study takes an abductive reasoning approach to analyze scientists’ videotaped lectures to recognize what scientists pay attention to in their explanations of climate science practices. It then analyzes how ideas scientists attended align with experienced teachers’ sense-making of scientific practices to teach climate change. The findings show that experienced teachers’ and scientists’ explanations showed alignment in the focus on scientific practices, but indicated variations in the temporal and spatial reasoning of climate data. Furthermore, the interdisciplinarity of climate science was emphasized in climate scientists’ lectures, but was not apparent once scientists and teachers shared the same culture in meetings to provide feedback to preservice teachers. Given the importance of teaching through scientific practices in classrooms, this study provides suggestions to capture the epistemic diversity of scientific disciplines.     

Integrating Laptop Computers into Classroom: Attitudes, Needs, and Professional Development of Science Teachers—A Case Study

The study examines the professional development of junior-high-school teachers participating in the Israeli “Katom” (Computer for Every Class, Student and Teacher) Program, begun in 2004. A three-circle support and training model was developed for teachers’ professional development. The first circle applies to all teachers in the program; the second, to all teachers at individual schools; the third to teachers of specific disciplines. The study reveals and describes the attitudes of science teachers to the integration of laptop computers and to the accompanying professional development model. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight science teachers from the four schools participating in the program. The interviews were analyzed according to the internal relational framework taken from the information that arose from the interviews. Two factors influenced science teachers’ professional development: (1) Introduction of laptops to the teachers and students. (2) The support and training system. Interview analysis shows that the disciplinary training is most relevant to teachers and they are very interested in belonging to the professional science teachers’ community. They also prefer face-to-face meetings in their school. Among the difficulties they noted were the new learning environment, including control of student computers, computer integration in laboratory work and technical problems. Laptop computers contributed significantly to teachers’ professional and personal development and to a shift from teacher-centered to student-centered teaching. One-to-One laptops also changed the schools’ digital culture. The findings are important for designing concepts and models for professional development when introducing technological innovation into the educational system.     

The Creation of Easy and Stress-free Classroom

This research paper concentrates on creating easy and stress-free classroom in English teaching.The paper talks that teachers should adopt pupil-centered teaching methodology and employ every means of teaching such as listening and speaking;acting;singing songs;playing games;role-playing.     

Classroom Language Environment and Seniors’ Oral English

The current situation of English teaching cannot keep pace with the requirements of the Senior High School Standards (the Ministry of Education, 2003). Due to the influences of the traditional teaching method, some English teachers still insist on the teacher-centered teaching approaches. The result is that there is less target language (TL) input and TL output in class, and senior students are weak in their oral English. This paper attempts to discuss the importance of language environment in classroom and...     

The Gender Gap and Classroom Interactions: Reality and rhetoric?

This paper examines the gender gap at GCSE in eight contrasting English secondary schools, and discusses the reality and rhetoric of classroom interactions, focusing on the views of teaching staff, the perspectives of Year 11 students, and observations of teacher-student interactions in the classroom. In an earlier paper (British Journal of Sociology of Education, 17 (3)), the authors examined the extent to which there was less positive teacher-support for the learning of boys than for the learning of girls, and this issue is reviewed in differing school contexts. Research in this broader context suggests that most teachers believe that they give equal treatment to girls and to boys, particularly in support of their learning, but focus group interviews with students and classroom observation suggest that this is rarely achieved; in most schools, boys appear to dominate certain classroom interactions, while girls participate more in teacher-student interactions which support learning. If the underachievement of some boys is to be addressed successfully, these patterns of interaction need to be challenged, to enable boys to begin to develop the very learning strategies which many girls employ effectively to enable them to learn.     

New Classroom

新教室，大又亮， blackboard 黑又光， white 墙壁白如雪， yellow 桌椅颜色黄， brown 棕色讲桌旁， 朵朵flower齐开放， red 红，blue 蓝， orange 橙色开中间， green 绿叶缀下面。New Classroom@金杉     

Our Classroom

I‘m a student of Wang Cang Middle School.I‘m in Class 2. Grade 1. I‘d like to say something about our classrom.     

My Classroom

I see a chair and a desk Look at the whiteboard.What do you see? story:All of the students greet Miss Grant as she stands beside the whiteboard.She then tells the students to look at the whiteboard.“What do you see?”asksMiss Grant.Everyone looks up and answers,“I see a chair and a desk.”     

Capturing and Enhancing Science Teachers’ Professional Knowledge

This paper reports research from a three-year Australian science teacher professional learning project, the Science Teaching and Learning (STaL) Project, in which groups of science teacher participants (across years K – 12) worked with academics over a one-year period as teacher researchers. Through reflecting on their experiences within the STaL Project and collecting data from their classrooms related to specific science teaching concerns, teacher participants constructed cases around particular aspects of their professional learning. The cases that these participants developed elicited rich insights into their teaching and their students’ learning of science. This paper discusses how the cases were developed by the teacher researcher participants and uses exemplars as a way of illustrating the nature of the professional knowledge developed.     

Teachers’ Continuing Professional Development and Higher Education

This paper presents and analyses data gathered from a survey of teachers in a range of secondary school English departments. It seeks to establish the ways in which teachers perceive their subject knowledge Continuing Professional Development (CPD) needs and the ways in which they would like to engage with Higher Education (HE) English as part of their CPD. It also explores teachers’ reasons for wishing to undertake such study, and the ways in which they believe such studies could contribute to their development. Finally, it goes on to consider some of the constraints on CPD and the possible implications of this for Higher Education Institutions. The interface between schools and HE has, historically, been limited. However, engagement in CPD is one of the most significant ways in which dialogue between secondary and HE teachers of English can be fruitfully established.     

Looking Beyond the Undergraduate Classroom: Factors Influencing Service Learning's Effectiveness at Improving Graduate Students’ Professional Skills

This study provides a greater understanding of which factors influence the effectiveness of service learning projects at improving graduate students’ professional skills. Data for this study was gathered from students in eight Master of Public Administration (MPA) courses taught during two semesters at a large state university. Younger students were more likely than older students to believe that their service learning project was helpful in improving their professional skills. We also find that students who spent more time working on a service learning project outside of class reported their projects were more helpful in improving their professional skills. In addition, our ANOVA analysis indicates that for projects involving group activities, students who were members of groups that worked as teams reported that their projects were more helpful in improving their professional skills than students in less cohesive groups.     

Experimental Impacts of the “Quality Preschool for Ghana” Interventions on Teacher Professional Well-being,Classroom Quality,and Children’s School Readiness

We assessed the impacts of a teacher professional development program for public and private kindergartens in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. We examined impacts on teacher professional well-being, classroom quality, and children’s readiness during one school year. This cluster-randomized trial included 240 schools (teachers N?=?444; children N?=?3,345, M_age?=?5.2) randomly assigned to one of three conditions: teacher training (TT), teacher training plus parental-awareness meetings (TTPA), and controls. The programs incorporated workshops and in-classroom coaching for teachers and video-based discussion groups for parents. Moderate impacts were found on some dimensions of professional well-being (reduced burnout in the TT and TTPA conditions, reduced turnover in the TT condition), classroom quality (increased emotional support/behavior management in the TT and TTPA conditions, support for student expression in the TT condition), and small impacts on multiple domains of children’s school readiness (in the TT condition). The parental-awareness meetings had counteracting effects on child school readiness outcomes. Implications for policy and practice are discussed for Ghana and for early childhood education in low- and middle-income countries.     

Curriculum Discourse and Foreign Language Teachers’Professional Development

The significance and status of the teachers’professional development make the education system and the society pay more and more attentions.The article elaborates the internal contact of curriculum discourse and teachers’professional development from a few respects such as the rationality of curriculum discourse,the long-term nature of the teachers’professional development and many factors affecting the teachers’professional development.The article also analyzes the external and internal factors influencing Tibet foreign language teachers’professional development,and puts forward the corresponding countermeasures in the light of these problems.     

In The Classroom

不小心算了算,发现自己居然每天有大于1/2的时间是在教室度过的,多多少少,这期间总还有些触动或感悟吧……     

Software Design and the Future of the Virtual Classroom®

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the software functionality that has evolved over the past two decades of research in Computer Mediated Communications at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) to create a Virtual Classroom® to support distance education. Based upon many years of evaluating its effectiveness we also summarize our views about the software functionality needed for further improvement of this approach to distance education. This view of a future Virtual Classroom® allows the instructor complete control over the learning materials and the tools to easily to weave in the learners as co contributors to a growing web of course knowledge. Beyond the current basic tools of the Virtual Classroom® we discuss the future role for hypertext, gaming and simulation, animation and multimedia and the role of the educator as a facilitator of a collaborative learning process. Both the proper software and the proper pedagogical techniques are necessary in order to obtain maximum effectiveness in the asynchronous computer‐mediated environment