PLCs: Key PD component in learning transfer for teachers of English learners

As part of a two-year long professional development program for in-service teachers leading to endorsement in English as a Second Language (ESL), this investigation examined teachers' perceptions of the role of professional learning communities on their professional development experience, particularly on their sharing and transfer of learning into their instructional practice. Results from this mixed-methods research indicated that teachers perceived their professional learning communities, especially the reflective dialogue enacted during their weekly Try It Out discussion based on peers’ strategy implementations, as the most relevant component of their professional development program to their transferring of learning into their instructional practice.     

Dissonant futures: occupational trajectories,gender and class in contemporary municipal adult education in Sweden

The aim of this article is to problematize the ways class and gender are played out in adult students’ narratives about their occupational choice and future. Drawing on Beverly Skeggs, we analyse how students think about future occupations, what motivates them towards these and how they are able to form their future in relation to them. Taking on Sweden as a case, our results show that students’ narratives on their future occupations are classed as well as gendered. In their vision of future occupations, working-class students tend to focus on occupations helping and caring for others, while middle-class students tend to focus on work more as a means of fulfilling themselves as individuals. These differences are also gendered. Female students are more likely than their male counterparts to picture their future occupations in relation to having children and a family. This tells us that in the female students’ narratives, there tends to be a strong focus on caring – for their families as well as in future occupations.     

A national study examining the impact of SEVIS on international student and scholar advisors

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact that Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) is having on the professional worklives of international student and scholar advisors (ISSAs) on U.S. college and university campuses. ISSAs are clearly satisfied with their work and hold their institutions in high regard. However, SEVIS is having a profound effect on their morale, satisfaction, and their likelihood to leave the field. That is, SEVIS (i.e., reporting, training, time) and the quality of worklife (i.e., professional activities and career development, recognition for competence and their expertise, external and intra-department relationships, perceptions of discrimination) are important to ISSAs, and thus have a strong effect on their level of satisfaction and/or morale, and their subsequent intentions to stay or leave their career/profession.     

多元文化大合唱中的响亮声音——美国印第安文学的复兴及其发展现状

20世纪60年代末以来，由于多元文化观深入人心、媒体的关注和扶持、印第安裔学者及活动家的推动，以往一直不为美国主流文化所承认的印第安文学迅速崛起并保持繁荣兴旺的势头。其复兴和发展表现出下述特点：印第安裔作家具有丰富的文学研究与写作经验和开阔的视野；他们的作品奠定在坚实的民族文化基础之上，植根于悠久的文学传统之中；他们的作品题材广泛、风格各异，但都表达了自己对有关社会人生和宇宙自然的重要问题的见解；具有强烈的民族意识和政治、文化自觉性。     

学习动机与教师课堂行为的学生感知对初中聋生学习策略的影响

本研究选取初中聋生194名,采用问卷法,考察初中聋生学习策略、学习动机和教师课堂行为感知水平,并探讨其学习动机与教师课堂行为感知各因素对学习策略的影响。结果表明:(1)初中聋生在学习策略、学习动机和教师课堂行为感知上的性别差异均不显著;(2)初中聋生在学习策略中的元认知策略得分显著低于社会性策略和认知策略得分,在学习动机的内部热衷性上得分显著高于内部挑战性得分,外部奖赏得分显著高于外部认可得分,在教师课堂感知的支持性行为和教师高期望上得分均显著高于消极反馈得分。(3)学习动机和教师课堂行为感知对初中聋生学习策略影响显著,首先,在元认知策略上,内部挑战性动机、内部热衷性动机和支持性帮助行为感知的预测效果显著;其次,在认知策略上,外部奖赏动机、内部热衷性动机、内部挑战性动机和支持性帮助行为感知的预测效果显著;在社会性策略上,内部挑战性动机、内部热衷性动机、支持性帮助行为感知和消极反馈行为感知的预测效果显著。     

我国教师进修院校的历史演进

对全国教师进修院校发展历史进行全面梳理,回顾进修院校从"创立—停滞—复建—发展—转型"的演进过程,了解教师进修院校在各个历史阶段的历史使命和功能作用。回顾教师进修院校发展的历史轨迹,有利于我们更全面地研究其产生的历史背景、发展规律和今后发展方向。     

浅谈电大英语教学研究及教师科研能力的培养

科研是提高教学质量、学生学习效果、教师自身教学能力和素质的重要手段。研究电大英语教育的教学特点、规律及过程，保证教学质量是每一个电大英语教师应该进行科研工作。英语教师应依靠外部环境和自身的努力培养自己的科研能力。     

Travellers' Tales: Reflections on the way to learner autonomy

Student opinion is an important source of information in any quality audit. This paper reports on the views of a small group of 11 part-time UK Open University students taking their first course with the university. The paper reports their views on their experience in the 'phoney' period between application and the start of their course, as well as their views on what the Level 1 (entry-level) courses demanded of them, and of the support they received; the demands on their time and the extent to which they learnt how to study is brought out. The paper then looks at the students' response to assessment-and the extent to which the assignments kept them going, with success as measured by good marks increasing their motivation. Finally, the paper reports on the students' feelings about their developing ability to study, and their awareness of their increasing confidence, fluency, and self-worth.     

Changing the Metacognitive Orientation of a Classroom Environment to Stimulate Metacognitive Reflection Regarding the Nature of Physics Learning

Problems persist with physics learning in relation to students' understanding and use of representations for making sense of physics concepts. Further, students' views of physics learning and their physics learning processes have been predominantly found to reflect a ‘surface’ approach to learning that focuses on mathematical aspects of physics learning that are often passed on via textbooks and lecture-style teaching. This paper reports on a teacher's effort to stimulate students' metacognitive reflection regarding their views of physics learning and their physics learning processes via a pedagogical change that incorporated the use of a representational framework and metaphors. As a consequence of the teacher's pedagogical change, students metacognitively reflected on their views of physics and their learning processes and some reported changes in their views of what it meant to understand physics and how they might learn and understand physics concepts. The findings provide a basis for further explicit teaching of representational frameworks to students in physics education as a potential means of addressing issues with their physics learning.     

浅谈如何与学生进行有效的沟通

现代的大学生具有很强的独立性和自主性,他们有自己的观点,有自己的主张,自尊心较强。而高校辅导员作为学生思想上的引导者、专业上的指导者,生活上的关心者,对学生的学习、为人处事、今后的工作,起着至关重要的作用。但是现在的学生对辅导员缺乏信任,戒备心较强,这很不利于辅导员工作的开展。只有我们能够与学生进行有效的沟通以后,学生愿意接受我们的时候,我们才能有的放矢的开展好辅导员工作,使得我们能够圆满的完成辅导员的神圣职责的同时,也能使我们的学生有更好的发展。     

Children''s Beliefs about Listening: Is It Enough to Be Still and Quiet?

This study examined children's conception of listening and their performance as listeners, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children were interviewed for their conceptions of good listening, their beliefs about appropriate actions for confused listeners to take, their attributions of responsibility for a listener's confusion, their reports of how speakers and listeners feel during communication breakdown, and their ability to detect inconsistencies during a comprehension-monitoring task. Results indicated that older children relied less on behavioral orientation and more on attempts to comprehend and other criteria in their definitions of good listening. Children believed that appropriate listening responses depend on the situation, and there was a developmental increase in asking the speaker a question and listening more carefully. With age, children also tended to report more complex negative emotions for listeners and speakers experiencing a breakdown in understanding. Children recalled incongruent material more than congruent material on the comprehension-monitoring task.     

Increasing Professional Self-Understanding: Self-Study Research by Teachers with the Help of Biography,Core Reflection and Dialogue

There is growing interest in self-study methods being used by teachers and teacher educators to improve their own practice. The focus of these self-studies seems to be more on acting than on understanding, and here we focus on a group of teachers who explore their professional identities. Teachers participating in a Master’s degree study were asked to formulate critical moments in their development in which they felt their values were challenged and they were faced with a dilemma connected to these challenges. They then used different self-study research methods to dig deeper into their reports. This article focuses on exploring the normative dilemmas that teachers face in their daily practice and how their self-understanding is influenced by studying these dilemmas. We found that participating teachers faced two main dilemmas between external guidance and self-regulation, and between self-consciousness and relatedness. We also found that the effects of self-study research are connected to a deeper understanding of how things work and that finding core values such as trust, connectedness, and creating space can generate a breakthrough in the two main dilemmas.     

When Teaching Makes a Difference: Developing science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge through learning study

It is a common view that developing teachers’ competence to restructure or reframe their knowledge and beliefs is inevitably a complex challenge. This paper reports on a research project with the aim to develop science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) through their participation in a learning study. A learning study is a collegial process in which teachers work together with a researcher to explore their own teaching activities in order to identify what is critical for their students’ learning. During one semester, three secondary science teachers worked in a learning study together with a researcher in a cyclical process in order to create prerequisites and further identify conditions for students’ learning. During the learning study, data were collected from video-recorded lessons and stimulated recall sessions in which the teachers and the researcher reflected on the lessons to analyze their development of PCK, their students’ learning and the impact of that knowledge on their own teaching. The results provide an insight into how the teachers developed their self-understanding in which they questioned their own epistemological beliefs, aims and objectives of teaching and taken-for-granted assumptions about science teaching and learning. As such, the study provides an understanding of teacher professional learning through a careful investigation of how teachers’ PCK is enhanced through their participation in the learning study, and further, how students’ learning might be developed as a consequence.     

Resource use and academic performance among first year psychology students

Multiple questionnaires completed over the semester by 514 students enrolled in a first year psychology course reveal that no single pattern of reliance on print, online, or in-person resources guarantees a high mark. Analyses of the reported and measured frequency of use of various resources correlated against students’, performance on both individual assessments and their final marks suggests that students employ a range of strategies in their use of class resources. They tend to rely on their textbooks, Web-based lecture notes, and online quizzes, but their final marks are more strongly determined by their university entrance scores than by their resource use strategy, their sex, or whether or not English is their first language. The data suggest that students adapt their learning strategies to the resources available, with an apparent emphasis on learning what will be assessed rather than exploring for understanding. Importantly, the results argue that investment in development of educational technologies – and students’, use of educational technologies – must be informed by empirical data concerning its impact on the efficiency and quality of learning.     

Supporting higher levels of reflection among teacher candidates: a pedagogical framework

An integrated mathematics and science methods course was designed to focus on the knowledge, skills, and beliefs of teacher candidates. Teacher candidates were involved in experiences that would prompt them to consider the influence of their experiences on their beliefs, the influence of their beliefs on their instructional decisions and the impact of those decisions on their effectiveness as teachers. Three teacher candidates who exhibited high levels of reflection and who made significant changes in the ways that they thought about mathematics and the teaching/learning process were chosen for study. Two themes related to this cognitive change emerged: a more complex, sophisticated understanding of the nature of mathematics; and an increased focus on children's thinking to guide instruction. Three program components having a major impact on these students' reconceptualization were reflection on past experiences, engagement in mathematical problem‐solving and opportunities to act on new beliefs.     

云台秀峰各有态 七贤遗韵赋新声——近二十年“竹林七贤”研究综述

竹林七贤是魏晋时期颇有影响的一个士人群体。他们在文学、哲学、艺术等方面的成就,他们的人生态度和处世方式,他们的个性精神和人生追求,在中国文学史乃至整个文化史上都具有重要地位和深远影响。文章主要从竹林七贤本身属性、政治态度、魏晋玄学对他们的影响、他们的文学成就以及他们对后世文化的影响等方面总结了近20年竹林七贤的研究情况,并指出了研究过程中存在的几点问题与不足,以期推进竹林七贤的研究。     

THE CLASSIFICATION OF ABILITIES

Sixth‐form students who had expressed varying degrees of commitment to entering teaching as a career reported on their knowledge of the teaching profession, their expectations for teacher training and on their own educational experiences. By the time they had entered the sixth form most had developed quite sophisticated views about the profession and about their own potential to become effective teachers.

A warm and approachable personality was seen as the most important characteristic of the good primary teacher, while for the secondary teacher, subject matter competence was emphasized. Students planning to enter teaching saw themselves, already, as warm and approachable, but felt that their training would have a great effect on their general level of competence, and indeed on their confidence. At their chosen college of education, they anticipated too much ‘educational theory’ and not enough on ‘methods of teaching’ or teaching practice.

Most students who planned to teach had had a reasonable amount of prior experience in one of a wide range of teaching settings. This appeared to have had a beneficial effect, especially for those enrolled in formal work experience programmes.     

Overcoming multidimensional marginality: the significance of higher education for traditionally reared single mothers living in the outer periphery

The current study gives voice to a group of remarkable returning college students whose lives are defined by multidimensional marginality. These students are single mothers who grew up in traditional families in the outer periphery of Northern Israel, where they still lived at the time of this study. Drawing on the women’s life stories gathered from in-depth interviews, the purpose of the study was twofold: to examine their multidimensional marginality in the context of the complexity of social situations they are required to face and to understand the impact of higher education upon that marginality and upon their lives. The findings demonstrate, quite powerfully, the impact of the participants’ student status on their discourse with their previously excluding family of origin, and the significance of their status for their personal growth process and for their relationship with their children. The process of matriculating into a higher education degree programme, and their continued progress in the programme, enabled these women to become proactive in moving from the margins towards a more central position of affecting and becoming a role model for their children, their families of origin and their communities.     

Connections between learning and teaching: EFL teachers’ reflective practice

This study explores six Vietnamese, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ reflections on their experiences of English language learning during the early 1980s to the late 1990s. Data collected in narrative interviews with the participating teachers revealed a wide range of issues that arose during their EFL learning, central to which was the prevalence of grammar-focused practices in all EFL classes. From their perspectives as EFL teachers today, the participants see their learning experience as a way of learning to teach. In particular, they pinpoint the negative aspects of language teaching at that time in the hope that their teaching practice today will not repeat the same mistakes. However, they also reflect on positive aspects, especially their influential teachers, to inform their teaching. Based on the findings, the study suggests that language teachers’ experience of language learning should be considered part of reflective teaching as well as of teachers’ trajectories of learning to teach.     

学术活跃度与博士生学术产出的实证分析——以中国某研究型大学为案例

本文以我国某研究型大学自然科学领域的博士生为研究对象,分析博士生在读期间的学术产出状况;构造了以学术研究投入时间、国内国际会议报告、与导师交流频率为维度的学术活跃度概念,并利用负二项分布的回归模型,证实了学术活跃度与博士生学术产出之间的关系。本研究认为,应努力创造良好的博士生教育环境和氛围,通过提高博士生的学术活跃度,进而提高其学术产出,这对提高我国博士生教育培养质量具有十分重要的意义。