Teaching and Learning in Iraq: A Brief History

This article investigates the Iraqi educational system and the historical, political, religious, and cultural factors that have influenced teaching and learning in Iraq. It is based on the author's personal experience as an educator within the system for three decades. The author posits that Iraqi educators must establish a collaborative and cooperative endeavor for a reformation of the Iraqi educational system. The current educational system of rote memorization has governed Iraqi schools and universities for almost one century. The author envisions a new educational system that would be based on new teaching and learning approaches that cultivate students’ critical thinking skills, as well as teachers’ pedagogical skills.     

Teaching Qualitative Research to Practitioner–Researchers

Practitioner–researchers are well-positioned to apply qualitative methods to the study of significant problems of educational practice. However, while learning the skills of qualitative inquiry, practitioners may be compelled by forces outside of qualitative research classrooms to think quantitatively. In this article, the author considers two sources of pressure on novice education researchers that may hinder their development as qualitative researchers. Drawing on the long-established tradition of reflexivity in qualitative inquiry, the author outlines an instructional approach that can guide students in examining and responding to these pressures.     

“以问题为本的学习“之心理学分析

以问题为本的学习是以问题为起点 ,通过学习者合作解决问题 ,从而获得知识与发展能力的学习。学习的途径与方式是小组自主合作 ,学习的结果是建构知识、形成技能、发展能力。本文从其内涵、实质、心理过程、制约条件及其心理机制等方面进行了心理学分析。旨在加深人们对这一模式的本质理解 ,说明其不仅是我国目前培养创造性人才所需的一种好的教学模式 ,而且也是我国目前教育管理培训事业培训模式的突破与创新。     

Do students need to be taught how to reason?

In this theoretical essay, the author addresses the existence of divergent evidence, portraying both competence and lack of competence in a fundamental realm of higher order thinking - causal and scientific reasoning - and explores the educational implications. Evidence indicates that these higher order reasoning skills are not ones that can be counted on to develop naturally among students exposed to a traditional curriculum. Instead, it is argued, such skills warrant attention in their own right as legitimate and significant educational objectives.     

A Model for Assessing Learning Outcomes for Australian Students in Special Schools

Questions contine to be raised about the relevance of educational outcomes for young people with learning difficulties. Margaret Dowrick, lecturer in special education at the University of Western Sydney, suggests that there is ongoing concern that education services fail to prepare students with severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties 'for the demands of adult life'. In this article, Margaret Dowrick describes a project that brought together professionals, parents and students in order to generate consensus about the skills that young people with learning difficulties need to gain before leaving school. The results of these consultations were fed back to schools in order to support the process of curricular review. Although this paper is written from an Australian perspective, the author makes telling links with the situation in North America and the United Kingdom and raises issues that will be of interest to specialist educators everywhere.     

微格教学对教育技术专业学生从师技能的培养

微格教学对培养教育技术学生的从师技能是联系实际、与时俱进的。通过微格教学,学生可转换角色进行讲课,并通过他人评价和自我评价弥补不足,既巩固所学知识,又锻炼实际操作能力,从而提高从师技能。分别从微格教学、当代教育技术专业学生应掌握的技能以及微格教学对从师技能培养的作用3个方面介绍。     

Lifelong Learning Within Higher Education in South Africa: Emancipatory Potential?

In South Africa under apartheid higher education was inaccessible to the majority. This article argues that in the new South Africa there is an opportunity to redress this situation and promote equity though lifelong learning. This would involve greatly widening access and providing programmes to develop broadly applicable abilities such as computer literacy and problem-solving skills, which would increase the economic competitiveness and personal empowerment of learners. At the same time, the author argues, new educational approaches are needed to promote active citizenship.     

Lifelong Learning Within Higher Education in South Africa: Emancipatory Potential?

In South Africa under apartheid higher education was inaccessible to the majority. This article argues that in the new South Africa there is an opportunity to redress this situation and promote equity though lifelong learning. This would involve greatly widening access and providing programmes to develop broadly applicable abilities such as computer literacy and problem-solving skills, which would increase the economic competitiveness and personal empowerment of learners. At the same time, the author argues, new educational approaches are needed to promote active citizenship.     

Designing a robot teaching assistant for enhancing and sustaining learning motivation

Although many researchers have pointed out that educational robots can stimulate learners’ learning motivation, the learning motivation will be hardly sustained and rapidly decreased over time if the amusement and interaction merely come from the new technology itself without incorporating instructional strategies. Many researchers have identified that the sustainability of the learning motivation is closely related to the instructional strategies. Accordingly, learners must be well guided by suitable instructional strategies to enhance and sustain their learning motivation. In other words, suitable instructional strategies are required even if introducing educational robots to learners can stimulate learning motivation at the beginning of learning activities. Literature also suggests that systematic instructional strategies can be designed with the use of the Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS) model. As the rapid development of robotics, it has become feasible to apply the educational robot for enhancing learning. A robot teaching assistant (RTA) was designed to enhance and sustain learning motivation for the learning of English reading skills. A quasi-experimental design and the Instructional Material Motivational Survey questionnaire were used for data collection and evaluation. The findings showed that the design of the RTA-based learning activities guided by the ARCS model for learning English reading skills can significantly improve learners’ learning motivation, learning performance, and continuance intention.     

Advantages of authentic assessment for improving the learning experience and employability skills of higher education students: A systematic literature review

This study is a systematic review of literature that investigates the advantages of implementing authentic assessment for improving two major categories that are relevant to academic and professional success of higher education students: learning experience and employability skills. Authentic assessment involves students in challenging tasks that closely resemble those of the workplace settings. 26 papers from 2010 to 2019 that were relevant to the topic of this paper were selected for the review process. Findings of this review indicate that authentic assessment can play a role in improving the learning experience of higher education students through enhancing their engagement in learning and improving their satisfaction as well as positively influencing their efforts to achieve educational goals. We also discuss the benefits of authentic assessment for equipping students with essential skills for their future professional life, such as communication skills, collaboration skills, critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, self-awareness, and self-confidence.     

Exploring the effects of online team-based learning and co-regulated learning on students' development of computing skills

As more and more educational institutions are providing online courses, it is necessary to design effective teaching methods integrated with technologies to benefit both teachers and students. The researcher in this study designed innovative online teaching methods of team-based learning (TBL) and co-regulated learning (CRL) to improve students' computing skills. The participants in this study were 124 undergraduates from three classes taking a compulsory course titled “Applied Information Technology: Data Processing.” There were three blended classes involved in this empirical study. The first group (EG1), which received the treatment of online TBL and CRL, and the second group (EG2), which received the treatment of online TBL only, were the experimental groups. The last group, which received the traditional teaching method, served as the control group. Before the experiment started, the author conducted a pretest to confirm that the differences of students' computing skills among the three groups were not significant at the beginning of the course. Based on the analysis of the post-test, the results indicate that students who received the intervention of online CRL had significantly better computing skills for using Excel by semester-end than those without. However, the intervention of online TBL did not contribute to better learning effects in this study. Based on the findings in this study, the author points out implications for teachers, schools, and educators, particularly for those responsible for courses focusing on solving ill-structured problems and those students who have typically received traditional didactic pedagogy for many years.     

Case study of a problem-based learning course of physics in a telecommunications engineering degree

Active learning methods can be appropriate in engineering, as their methodology promotes meta-cognition, independent learning and problem-solving skills. Problem-based learning is the educational process by which problem-solving activities and instructor's guidance facilitate learning. Its key characteristic involves posing a ‘concrete problem’ to initiate the learning process, generally implemented by small groups of students. Many universities have developed and used active methodologies successfully in the teaching–learning process. During the past few years, the University of the Basque Country has promoted the use of active methodologies through several teacher training programmes. In this paper, we describe and analyse the results of the educational experience using the problem-based learning (PBL) method in a physics course for undergraduates enrolled in the technical telecommunications engineering degree programme. From an instructors’ perspective, PBL strengths include better student attitude in class and increased instructor–student and student–student interactions. The students emphasised developing teamwork and communication skills in a good learning atmosphere as positive aspects.     

Learning analytics application to examine validity and generalizability of game-based assessment for spatial reasoning

Game-based assessment (GBA), a specific application of games for learning, has been recognized as an alternative form of assessment. While there is a substantive body of literature that supports the educational benefits of GBA, limited work investigates the validity and generalizability of such systems. In this paper, we describe applications of learning analytics methods to provide evidence for psychometric qualities of a digital GBA called Shadowspect, particularly to what extent Shadowspect is a robust assessment tool for middle school students' spatial reasoning skills. Our findings indicate that Shadowspect is a valid assessment for spatial reasoning skills, and it has comparable precision for both male and female students. In addition, students' enjoyment of the game is positively related to their overall competency as measured by the game regardless of the level of their existing spatial reasoning skills.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic:

• Digital games can be a powerful context to support and assess student learning.
• Games as assessments need to meet certain psychometric qualities such as validity and generalizability.
• Learning analytics provide useful ways to establish assessment models for educational games, as well as to investigate their psychometric qualities.

What this paper adds:

• How a digital game can be coupled with learning analytics practices to assess spatial reasoning skills.
• How to evaluate psychometric qualities of game-based assessment using learning analytics techniques.
• Investigation of validity and generalizability of game-based assessment for spatial reasoning skills and the interplay of the game-based assessment with enjoyment.

Implications for practice and/or policy:

• Game-based assessments that incorporate learning analytics can be used as an alternative to pencil-and-paper tests to measure cognitive skills such as spatial reasoning.
• More training and assessment of spatial reasoning embedded in games can motivate students who might not be on the STEM tracks, thus broadening participation in STEM.
• Game-based learning and assessment researchers should consider possible factors that affect how certain populations of students enjoy educational games, so it does not further marginalize specific student populations.

     

Exploring the potentials of educational robotics in the development of computational thinking: A summary of current research and practical proposal for future work

Educational robotics are increasingly appearing in educational settings, being considered a useful supporting tool for the development of cognitive skills, including Computational Thinking (CT), for students of all ages. Meanwhile, there is an overwhelming argument that CT will be a fundamental skill needed for all individuals by the middle of the twenty-first century and thus, should be cultivated in the early school years, as part of the child’s analytical thinking and as a principal component of Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) education. This study reviews published literature at the intersection of CT and educational robotics, particularly focused on the use of educational robotics for advancing students’ CT skills in K-12. The reviewed articles reveal initial evidence suggesting that educational robotics can foster students’ cognitive and social skills. The paper discusses specific areas for further inquiry by learning researchers and learning practitioners. Such inquiry should start from a widely agreed definition of CT and validated measurement instruments for its assessment. A practical framework for the development of CT via robotics is next in demand, so as instructional designers and educators can implement it consistently and at scale.     

A Proposed Model For Assessing Quality Of Education

This paper proposes a framework for assessing the quality of education, based on the outcomes defined in educational standards. The author takes the view that educational standards reflect the mission that schools must fulfill. He explains that the classroom curriculum, derived from educational standards, must customize the learning process to respond to the teaching–learning environment. Defining quality as the extent to which the delivery of the school curriculum realises the learning outcomes defined in the educational standards, the author proposes that quality in education should be evaluated using two approaches: relative achievement assessment and absolute achievement assessment. In elaborating on the two dimensions of assessment on which the model is based, the author highlights the need for greater attention to be paid to values and attitudes in assessing quality of education.     

Educational Technologies and Mathematics: Signature Pedagogies and Learner Impacts

In this article the author focuses on signature pedagogies that are associated with different forms of educational technologies. The author categorizes forms of technologies that support the teaching and learning of mathematics in different ways, and identifies signature pedagogies associated with each category. Outcomes and impacts of different technologies are reviewed, as are implications of implementation, and the integration of signature pedagogies into teaching practices. In conclusion, the author asks whether technologies alone can bring about learning impacts, whether other key factors need to be in place, and the need to explore these integrally within future research.     

利用现代教育技术为中小学教学"减负"

减轻中小学生的课业负担,已成为当今社会人们关注的话题.恰当运用现代教育技术手段进行中小学教学,既能调动学生的各种感觉器官参与教学活动,提高学习效率,又能有效地突破教学中的重点、难点,提高教学质量,还能节约时间用于学生在课堂上巩固练习,减轻课后作业负担,让学生学得轻松、自然.这样既培养学生的学习能力,又达到为中小学教学"减负"的目的.     

Practical training and internships in engineering education: Educational goals and assessment

In many engineering curricula a period of practical training in industry is either compulsory or advised. Often the educational goals of such a period are defined as 'learning to put knowledge and skills into practice'. The assessment is usually based on a technical report of the activities during the period. In this paper, how the definition of educational objectives led to the introduction of practical training is discussed. These objectives are acquiring insight in the engineering profession, learning to 'survive' in a different culture and learning to apply as well as broadening technical knowledge and skills. Furthermore, an assessment procedure is introduced which allows for testing whether the students have met the objectives.     

In Early Education, Why Teach Handwriting Before Keyboarding?

Legible written communication is essential for students to share knowledge (Rogers and Case-Smith 2002). If students lack proficiency in written communication, their composition skills will suffer, which can affect their self-esteem and grades. Whether or not this proficiency is in handwriting or keyboarding is a question worthy of discussion. In this article the authors define motor learning, examine the overlapping principles of motor learning in handwriting and keyboarding skill development, and discuss the need for fluency. The principles of motor learning indicate that handwriting precedes keyboarding when comparing skills and time needed to gain competency. Also discussed are correlations between handwriting and keyboarding skills and the impact of teacher attitudes toward each. As occupational therapists, the authors’ recommendations are based on the review of literature and evidence their combined with their extensive experience as school-based occupational therapists. Using a school-based consultative model of occupational therapy at the continuing education or university educational level can facilitate the sharing of this knowledge with early childhood education teachers.