Significant societal and educational changes in the US during the last two decades have influenced kindergarten education for five‐year‐olds. The American family structure has been effected by the increased divorce rate, the economy, and the increase in two‐employed parents.
Education changes include a shift to an emphasis on standardised testing at all levels, accountability, and the incorporation of four‐year‐olds in public schools. The result has been a ‘spiraling down’ of academic expectations.
In addition, schools are responding to the needs of demographic shifts in the nature of the population. Increasing numbers of children have multicultural backgrounds and English in their second language.
These societal and educational changes have precipitated the movement to the all day kindergarten. As more and more schools offer an all day experience to kindergarten children, numerous issues surface that challenge the original purpose of kindergarten. Entrance age, screening practices, retention, commercial books and materials are all influencing the nature of the all day kindergarten.
The current focus in the US on developmental appropriate practice places the emphasis on child‐centred programs that utilise hands‐ on learning and attention to the development of the whole child. A strong parent education and involvement component, a rich environment, and a qualified teacher are components of a quality kindergarten program. These issues and trends will be discussed within the context of the historical perspective of kindergarten education. The results of a current and thorough literature review will be shared with participants. 相似文献
Methodology: Relevance and knowledge levels were tested through a teaching competency questionnaire developed and run on 292 respondents fitting into administrator, faculty and student groups. Needs Assessment Model by Borich [1980. “A Needs Assessment Model for Conducting Follow-up Studies.” Journal of Teacher Education 31 (3): 39–42] is used to identify training needs.
Findings: Results indicate differences in perceptions among groups towards teaching competencies. Prioritized training needs were identified which provide the content and direction for the development of faculty in-service educational programmes.
Practical implications: Faculty of agricultural universities need periodic in-service training programmes in order to improve their teaching competencies so that they become effective and competent teachers in the present educational environment.
Theoretical implications: The statistically validated methodological framework provides for capturing the perception of all stakeholders on the teaching competencies among the faculty members of Agricultural Universities in India, and offers a scope for scaling up the study for similar educational setting in the region.
Originality/value: The perception of students and administrators was also considered along with the self-perception of faculty about the relevance and knowledge levels of teaching competencies. 相似文献
This paper recounts some of the principal findings of research in which the teaching staff of a large 9‐13 middle school were interviewed individually regarding their perceptions of their South Asian pupils. The school has an almost wholly South Asian intake and is situated near the centre of a large northern city.
The teachers’ markedly deficit view of their charges is detailed and this is followed by an explanation of their constructions in microsociological terms. A model is presented which clarifies the processes by which close intercultural interaction seem to accomplish worlds as divergent.
The author teaches children with special educational needs at the school in which the study was undertaken. 相似文献
This article highlights the emergence of alternative education in PEI and brings to light the complexities underpinning how a child with challenging behaviour is viewed. Through the use of Foucauldian genealogical analysis and critical discourse analysis, this research centres on the discourse of ‘alternative education’ and problematises how alternative education programmes have been put in place as a solution to the problem of the child with challenging behaviour in ‘mainstream’ schools as constituted in the 1990s in PEI, Canada.
Using data generated from educational policies, government documents, and interviews with educators who worked in alternative placements and practitioners who worked with students identified as having problematic behaviour, I propose that alternative education programmes are hybrid programmes emerging from an overlapping of understanding from ‘mainstream’ education and ‘special education’. 相似文献
By mid-1986, there were 12 special schools catering for some 2,000 pupils; intellectually disabled, educationally subnormal, hearing impaired, visually handicapped, cerebral palsied and multiple handicapped. All these schools are run by Voluntary Associations with Government support in terms of funds, buildings and some teachers.
However, an analysis of prevalence figures indicates a possible shortfall in the numbers of disabled children actually attending special schools, and an over-concentration of these schools in one part of Singapore which might deter some parents from sending their children to the appropriate special school.
One major improvement in the quality of Special Education has been the systematic training (since 1984) of the unqualified Association teachers at the Institute of Education on the Certificate in Special Education Programme.
However, there would still seem to be a need for more therapists and para-professionals to support the services offered in the special schools. 相似文献
There is a sound legislative base: a series of laws passed since 1973 create both a new model of school and the procedures and organisations designed to facilitate its emergence, including councils at the class and school level. The right and duty of teachers to engage on in‐service education is firmly recognised as an essential component in school development.
The European Centre for Education and the Pedagogical Documentation Library are mentioned, but the author dwells at greater length on the Regional Institutes for Educational Research, Experimentation and In‐Service Training (IRRSAE). He provides a detailed explanation of the duties of the IRRSAE and of their organisation and functioning.
The IRRSAE are widely regarded as key institutions in educational development in Italy. 相似文献
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the impact on overall educational performance as a result of engaging with technology subjects at post-primary level.
Sample: A five year cohort study was designed to gather longitudinal data from a total sample of 1761 pupils’ grades from the Irish Leaving Certificate examination. The sample was distributed across four schools.
Design and methods: Grades from the Irish Leaving Certificate were selected because the examination is considered high stakes as it serves as the country’s primary mechanism for matriculation into third-level education. Individual examinations are designed externally to schools by a government body ensuring the validity of each examination in capturing the holistic interpretation subject syllabi. Finally, a points system is used to score each examination facilitating comparisons between subjects.
Results: The results show that pupils who study the technology subjects are statistically significantly less likely to perform well overall in comparison to pupils who study science and mathematics subjects. They also show that for pupils who study the technology subjects, those subjects are statistically significantly likely to be their best performing subjects.
Conclusions: Due to the array of variables impacting subject selection, a definitive causal explanation cannot be deduced from the data for these results. However, it is possible to infer that the variance in knowledge types between the science and technology subjects has an impact on the results. A case is made that a compulsory technological component should be incorporated into educational curricula to provide a comprehensive and general education and to facilitate the holistic development of pupils. 相似文献
Design/methodology/approach: Using an ideological framework based, the research focussed on the common shared understandings across each school pertaining to each ideology. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and analysed through interpretive and hermeneutic processes.
Findings: The findings show the tensions, subtleties and nuances of two dominant and competing ideologies: a dominant discourse of individual schooling purpose for student mobility and economic productivity and an emerging public purposes ideology of education for good citizenship, sustainable futures and the public good. The dominant neoliberal public policy ideology and the associated historical design logics of conventional schooling is challenged and reconstituted by the experience, expertise, courage, determination and moral purpose of the principals in this research.
Originality/value: This article opens specific ideological understandings held by the Principals that have moved all of the schools towards pedagogical excellence and a repurposing of their organisations for the students’ sake. 相似文献
Commenting on current neo‐Marxist models of analysis, we argue that more attention needs to be given to the universalising practices of schools if reproduction is to be fully understood. Drawing on evidence taken from a national study of Irish [1] schools, we show how the state's intervention in schooling can have universalising effects. However, we argue that the state has only intervened in the realm of educational provision, not in the realm of consumption, hence inequalities persist.
The second part of the paper tries to explain why state intervention in education is largely limited to provision. In effect, this means examining the processes of universalism and particularism within the context of the capitalist state. Here we argue that actions by state managers (particularly in response to resistances developing in schools) are restricted by an array of vested interest groups within the educational site. While contradictions lead to resistances in school, these resistances generate counter‐resistances from those class and/or status groups, which have their own agenda within the educational system. The managers’ need to reproduce both the skills and attitudes necessary for the capital accumulation which funds the state machinery is, of course, another powerful controlling force. 相似文献
Purpose The study examined how an interactive theatre performance, where professional actors deliver a performance but invite regular audience participation as a way to promote active learning, benefited both understanding of plant reproduction and attitudes towards plants. Perceptions of the play and the way in which specific elements influenced learning and emotions were examined in detail and placed in a theoretical context.
Sample Opportunity sampling was used to recruit participants from five public primary schools in Devon, UK. One hundred and forty-four students (aged 9–11 years) participated in the study.
Design and methods A mixed methods approach was adopted. Quantitative analysis of pre- and post-intervention knowledge tests involved t-tests and repeated measures ANCOVA. Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews made use of an emerging theme analysis with a priori categories.
Results Pre- and post-intervention tests indicated an increase in both knowledge of plant reproduction and positive attitudes towards plants. Follow-up interviews identified elements that were particularly beneficial for learning and enjoyment, including the thematic singing, humour, novelty of the play, visual elements and participatory art activities.
Conclusions This case study demonstrates the potential that an interactive theatre production offers for enhancing appreciation and interest in school science while improving knowledge. 相似文献
Design: The study used path analytic techniques with survey data provided by 283 school and district leaders to test a path model of effective network characteristics. Interview data were provided by 23 school leaders. Variables in the model included Network leadership, structure, health, connectivity, and outcomes.
Findings: Results confirmed that the model was a very good fit with the data and, as a whole, explained 51% of the variation in network outcomes. Network leadership had the largest total effect on network outcomes, followed closely by the effects of Network Health and Network Connectivity. Interview data confirmed the nature of variables measured by the survey and added additional features for future research. Most results replicated the previous study.
Research Limitation: The study was limited to leadership networks intentionally organised within districts, not networks organised by school leaders themselves or networks arising spontaneously by their members. Results cannot be generalised to other types of networks.
Practical implication: In addition to a focus on single unit leadership development in districts, systematic initiatives should be designed to help prepare network leaders to foster the forms of collaboration that are so central to professional capacity development.
Originality: Results of the study offer explicit guidance to network leaders about how to improve the contribution of network participation to their colleagues’ capacities; it is one of a very small number studies in educational contexts to provide such guidance. 相似文献
1. schools do make a difference over and above the socio-economic backgrounds of learners they enrol;
2. learners are most successful in schools where they and their parents are actively engaged in the learning processes; 3. schools with these characteristics tend to compensate for learners’ socio-economic disadvantage; 4. learners from disadvantaged backgrounds are less successful in schools; and 5. the impact of SES on learners’ achievement levels is particularly prominent in high-achieving schools.These findings call for the need to rethink the current schooling processes and policies to include structures that allow schools to provide opportunities to engage learners and their parents in the schooling processes with the objective of compensating for learners’ socio-economic disadvantage. We argue that this objective can be achieved through a capability framework where inclusion, democratic participation and child centredness serve as the major principles of the provision of quality education for all. 相似文献
Patterns of instruction and control observed at the three schools suggest that children from different social classes receive substantially different kinds of schooling. The most obvious distinction in ideological discourse observed among staff members at the three schools concerns the existence of an explicit pedagogy endorsed at the private school and the concomitant absence of any such similar rationale at the other two schools.
The final sections of the paper discuss the implications of these findings for processes of cultural and social reproduction and their relation to relevant literature. 相似文献
Purpose: This qualitative case study investigates a primary science teacher’s TPACK development in the context of two interdependent learning spaces: a joint-school and a within-school professional learning community. The school’s organizational and sociocultural influences on teacher learning are also examined.
Participant: Teacher Sean (pseudonym) embarked on a science innovation project after two years of teaching in a Singapore mainstream school. He was tasked to integrate mobile-based inquiry learning and visible thinking pedagogical approaches, and to pilot the designed lessons for a primary three class.
Design and methods: A case-study approach involving multiple sources of data with cultural historical activity theory as the analytical lens was employed, to unpack the complementary and contradictory interactions across different interrelated activity systems. The purpose was to understand the (mis)alignments within and between the two professional learning communities.
Results: The findings indicate that Sean’s (subject) learning from the joint-school professional learning community to the within-school professional learning community faced multiple tensions that hindered his TPACK development (object). He faced difficulty in manipulating tools (technology and visible thinking routines) to translate the joint-school co-designed lessons into classroom implementation. Additionally, the volatility of the school’s organizational routines (rules) and the lack of communicative leader–teacher partnership (division of labor) did not afford sufficient infrastructure or instructional support.
Conclusions: Interactions between the teacher’s personal and contextual factors inhibited the designed TPACK from being implemented successfully. For ambitious pedagogical undertakings as illustrated in this case, more perceptive and synergistic organizational design thinking is needed to support beginning teachers’ TPACK development. 相似文献
The paper also explores the range of possible policies for dealing with this problem.
The main elements of this document are outlined below. 相似文献
Purpose: This study frames peer assessment as a social process in the science classroom. The aim is to explore peer assessment in science education as social practice in order to contribute to an understanding of the affordances and constraints of using peer assessment as a learning tool in science education.
Design and Method: The study was conducted in four lower secondary school classes, school years 8 and 9, in two different schools. An intervention study was designed focussing on the topic of experimental design. It involved the students in a process of peer assessment where they designed experiments individually, and then exchanged their designs, conducted each other’s experiments, provided feedback to each other and revised their original design after discussing the feedback in groups. Data were collected in the form of audio recordings of student discussions and written work.
Results: The results show that, although not all peer feedback resulted in revisions, peer feedback was useful to the students in group interaction when negotiating quality in their work.
Conclusions: To conclude, the potential for using peer assessment in science education should not only be evaluated through the students’ revisions but also in terms of in what ways the feedback constitutes interactional resources for defining quality in student work. 相似文献
Design/methodology/approach: Initially, we defined ‘extension system’ as a wide range of actors integrating resources with the aim of co-producing value (not for but with) farmers. To capture the value flow within this constellation of actors we distinguished between the notion of ‘value in production’ – i.e. the value embodied in service offerings – and the value emanating when service content is used in real settings or ‘value in use.’
Findings: Our approach revealed that, despite their structural and organizational differences, the ES in the three countries share common problems arising from a limited focus on the issue of value in use.
Practical implications: The application of a systemic approach – seeing farmers as co-creators and not as end-users of extension services – in the evaluation of ESs contributes to better understand the complexity of value flow within the system and can strengthen extension systems’ effectiveness.
Theoretical implications: The present study, by reconsidering traditional evaluation approaches and by focusing on value co-production, offers an alternative value-centric framework for the conceptualization of extension services and points out to the need for refining the evaluation criteria of ESs.
Originality/value: Our work, by emphasizing the reciprocal creation of value within ESs, and by adding the concept of value in use, offers a new systems approach worth considering when evaluating ESs within different organizational and sociocultural contexts. 相似文献
The system is aware of the need to promote a real change in the pedagogical‐educational approach to teaching and learning, and recent reforms have implemented structural innovations and have required changes in the teachers’ roles and functions.
The new professional profile of the teacher points out the need for initial and in‐service education and training; given the insufficient provisions available, in 1979 the Ministry of Education, in cooperation with OECD, has initiated a project for introducing PRESET pilot projects in a number of Italian universities.
The MPI/OECD Project has gone through a four‐phase preparation process, including a background report, a national seminar, feasibility studies, planning of pilot projects.
The basic ideas were to improve the scientific/cultural and methodological preparation of teachers: curricula of study must ensure an appropriate balance between scientific knowledge in a subject‐matter or in a discipline area and educational studies. Teaching practice is considered as essential all through the course of study.
Starting November 1983 the University of Bologna will start a PRESET course of study for primary school teachers as a joint activity between the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Sciences.
Other projects are on study at other universities. 相似文献