Is Effective Teaching Stable?

The authors examined the ecological validity of using observation-based scores to evaluate individual teachers’ effectiveness, mirroring their use by school administrators. Using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, the authors asked (a) how similar are teachers’ emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support scores from each other; and (b) to what extent are these scores stable from day-to-day? Using a time-series, single-case methodology, the authors examined patterns of eight Kindergarten teachers’ performance in all lessons within a 4–5 week, thematically coherent science unit. Thus, the opportunity for identifying within-teacher stability was maximized. Teachers' instructional quality was significantly less effective than their emotional supportiveness and classroom organization. Furthermore, teachers’ effectiveness ratings varied markedly from one lesson to the next, for all three dimensions.     

Are We Banishing Self-starters from Teaching?

This is an opinion piece that discusses problems created for self-starting teachers by growing external direction of teaching. The article points to the importance of self-starters in the classroom and suggests lessons to be learned from them.     

Does Learning-Centered Teaching Promote Grade Improvement?

When the grade distribution within a course shifts towards higher grades, it may be due to grade inflation or grade improvement. If the positive shift is accompanied by an increase in achievement or learning, it should be considered grade improvement, not grade inflation. Effective learning-centered teaching is designed to promote student learning due to increased responsibility for learning, engagement with course material, and opportunity for formative assessments prior to summative assessments of course learning outcomes, which leads to improved grades. We suggest ways that faculty members practicing learning-centered teaching can collect and analyze data to support increased learning and grade improvement.     

Is Inquiry-Based Science Teaching Worth the Effort?

Inquiry-based science teaching has been advocated by many science educational standards and reports from around the world. Disagreements about and concerns with this teaching approach, however, are often ignored. Opposing ideas and conflicting results have been bouncing around in the field. It seems that the field carries on with a hope that someday they can reconcile. Unfortunately, over half a century, the opposing views have never been reconciled. Rather, they have become clearly divided, as shown in a recent debate. As such, this article intends to serve as a bridge between people holding different views and to identify key disagreements that have been sustaining the tension. The purpose is to improve science education. Suggestions for future research are also provided for a discussion.     

Computational What? Relating Computational Thinking to Teaching

Computational thinking is one of the skills critical for successfully solving problems posed in a technology driven and complex society. The limited opportunities in school settings to help students develop computational thinking skills underscores the need for helping teachers integrate it in their practices. Besides developing the knowledge of technology, content, and pedagogy, teachers need to recognize the relevance of computational thinking to their teaching, a factor influencing their future practice with it. Drawing from the literature on problem-solving and TPACK framework, this paper discusses strategies, including content-specific examples, problem-solving nature of computational thinking, and the methods of teaching problem-solving for enabling teachers to make the connections between computational thinking and their practices.     

Application of ＂Inducing-mode Teaching, Exploratory Teaching, Discussion Teaching＂ to Physical Chemistry Teaching

引导式、探究式、讨论式教学方法,可激发学生好奇心,发挥学生主动精神,鼓励学生进行创造性思维,提高物理化学教学效果。