A consideration of direct and indirect teaching styles with respect to achievement and retention of learning in science classes

Students taught by teachers of science with a higher I/D ratio, according to Flanders scale, will achieve more and retain more information than will students of teachers with a lower I/D ratio. This study tested students in high school chemistry and junior high school general science at the end of a year of study in their respective classes. They were then retested four months later. The teachers were scaled according to their I/D ratio. It was found that the I/D ratio of a teacher could be a guide toward determining the success of students so taught in a particular class.     

Teaching learning disabled students goal-implementation skills

Eight learning disabled (LD) junior high school students were taught goal-setting and self-regulatory skills in a resource room setting. The training program was designed to help students set realistic goals, develop plans to achieve these goals, monitor and evaluate their own behavior, and accept responsibility for the outcome of goal-directed activities. The goal-implementation strategy was effective in increasing some students' rates of assignment completion in the resource room and the regular classroom. Following the training program, students attributed success to effort; failure was attributed to effort, luck, and task difficulty.     

Narrowing the gap between research and practice in sight word reading instruction

This paper describes a program designed to bridge the gap between educational research and practice. Researchers disseminated findings and gathered additional field data on teaching sight words to learning disabled children, while practitioners were given the opportunity to apply these findings in their own teaching. Learning disabilities teachers (N = 37) were divided into three experimental groups and given training and materials for a one-week teaching procedure to be used with children in their classes. Instructional packets differed in the number of sight words presented at one time (5 + 5 vs. 10) and the use of reduced response competition. Results showed that overall posttest performance did not differ among the groups; however, children taught using reduced response competition required fewer trials to reach criterion on each word. Questionnaire results indicated that teachers benefited from the program. Future attempts such as this should be made to combine research and teacher-training efforts.     

Teaching experiences of students with special educational needs in co‐taught and non‐co‐taught classes

Co‐teaching has gained considerable interest as a service delivery model for promoting the inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream classrooms. This study examines whether co‐teaching has an effect on the teaching experiences of 12 students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 10 students with intellectual disability (ID) as compared with the experiences of the same students in non‐co‐taught classes. We implemented 264 structured observations in 22 classes to identify students with SEN grouping arrangements, level of engagement, interactions with teachers and peers, and the nature of the interactions. We also conducted 44 structured interviews with co‐teachers to compound their perceptions with our observations. Observational results indicate that co‐teaching has a strong effect on students' with SEN level of engagement and on the nature of interactions. The grouping arrangements for these students and their interactions with teachers and peers were slightly different between co‐taught and non‐co‐taught classes. More statistically significant differences were identified between the two conditions for students with ASD than for students with ID. Also, co‐teachers reported that co‐teaching had a positive effect on students with SEN in all researched variables. Our study concludes that co‐teaching has some positive effect on the teaching experiences of students with SEN; nevertheless, there is still scope for improving the employment of co‐teaching in Greek mainstream classrooms. Implications of these findings for current practice are discussed.     

Near‐peer teaching in anatomy: An approach for deeper learning

Peer teaching has been recognized as a valuable and effective approach for learning and has been incorporated into medical, dental, and healthcare courses using a variety of approaches. The success of peer teaching is thought to be related to the ability of peer tutors and tutees to communicate more effectively, thereby improving the learning environment. Near‐peer teaching involves more experienced students acting as tutors who are ideally placed to pass on their knowledge and experience. The advantage of using near‐peer teachers is the opportunity for the teacher to reinforce and expand their own learning and develop essential teaching skills. This study describes the design and implementation of a program for fourth year medical students to teach anatomy to first‐ and second‐year medical students and evaluates the perceptions of the near‐peer teachers on the usefulness of the program, particularly in relation to their own learning. Feedback from participants suggests that the program fulfills its aims of providing an effective environment for developing deeper learning in anatomy through teaching. Participants recognize that the program also equips them with more advanced teaching skills that will be required as they move nearer toward taking on supervisory and teaching duties. The program has also provided the school with an additional valuable and appropriate resource for teaching anatomy to first‐ and second‐year students, who themselves view the inclusion of near‐peer teachers as a positive element in their learning. Anat Sci Educ 2:227–233, 2009. © 2009 American Association of Anatomists.     

Student teachers’ professional identity

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative interview study of the professional identity of 45 student teachers. The students described their personal experiences in teaching their own subject and the positive and negative emotions that were evoked. Students emphasized failure or success but not what they had or had not learned. Broader social contexts and professional relationships within the teaching community were marginalized.The study suggests developing the social aspects of learning to teach by supporting teacher identity formation in initial training. Stronger links between teacher education and society might better prepare students for their future work.     

ACTT now: A collaboration reshaping teacher technology training

Conclusion While the FBMP has had to go through many of the growing pains that often come with a new program, it is continuing to develop to meet the changing needs that teachers have in regards to both technology training and implementing technology-infused lessons within their daily classroom activities. As uncertified teachers work toward their particular subject area credentials, they are also working to develop the skills that will make them into the types of teachers that will be better able to help their students experience many of the technological advancements that may provide them with the skills necessary to compete in an ever-changing marketplace. While the goal is to create a teaching staff grounded in the belief and understanding that technology has the potential to fundamentally change how teachers teach and students learn, the FBMP recognizes the fact that teachers themselves are all moving on their own integration continuum. Some are just starting to become familiar with different technological applications, and others are already manipulating technology and using it effectively to benefit their own subject area lessons. Helping teachers move along this continuum is the overarching goal of the program, and by providing a systematic structure for both training and support, the FBMP is working to revamp the educational process in Brunswick County and ultimately raise the standards of both teachers and students across the County as a whole.     

Using an Undergraduate Geometry Course to Challenge Pre-service Teachers' Notions of Discourse

This investigation uses classroom discoursein an undergraduate mathematics course tochallenge pre-service secondary mathematicsteachers' notions about mathematical discourse,what it might resemble in the classroom, andhow its various forms can be cultivated byclassroom teachers. The research setting was arequired geometry course taught by the author.Eleven pre-service mathematics teachers intheir junior or senior year of an undergraduate program participated. Results indicated participants made a transition toward an image of discourse as an active process by which students use the collective knowledge of their peers to build mathematical understanding and developed in their ability to participate in such discourse.This awareness, along with participants'analyses of their own habits of discourse asclassroom teachers, prompted shifts in theirprojected image of the role of discourse intheir future practices of teaching. Resultssuggested further that the undergraduatemathematics classroom (as opposed to themethods classroom) offers a powerful and uniqueforum in which pre-service secondary teacherscan practice, articulate, and collectivelyreflect on reform-minded ways of teaching.     

Houston Teaching Academy: Partnership in developing teachers

The need for excellent teachers to teach at-risk inner-city children is well documented. Too often new teachers who have received their field experience in the suburbs are hired to teach in multicultural inner-city schools with little preparation to serve this population of children and families. Changing the history of failure for this population of teachers and their students to an experience of success was the primary goal of the partnership between the Houston Independent School District and the University of Houston's College of Education.The structure of the Houston Teaching Academy (HTA) includes four collaborative decision-making councils. Representatives from the school and college serve on each of the councils. Shared weekly seminars for supervising teachers, student teachers, and college supervisors are led by school teachers or college supervisors. Methods courses are taught at the HTA, and the students serve as tutors in the classrooms. Several graduate college courses requested by teachers are offered at the HTA.Concurrent with the development of the HTA, a formative and summative evaluation has monitored the progress of the HTA toward its goals. The HTA graduates have been followed into their first years of teaching. Interviews with their principals indicate that 77% are effectively teaching in inner-city and multicultural settings.     

Talking and Teaching Through a Positional Lens: Recognizing what and who we privilege in our practice

This article describes a year‐long professional development project that brought together a group of high school English teachers around multicultural literature they would be teaching to their students. The teachers all taught together in a culturally and economically diverse high school context in the USA. One objective of the project was to enable the teacher participants to explore their discourse patterns around the literature to discern their own subject positions with regard to one another and to the texts studied. In addition, the teachers together analyzed their own classroom discourse to determine how those subject positions carried over into their teaching, how they essentially taught who they were. Discussions of multicultural literature and teachers’ talk around that literature, accompanied by close interrogation of classroom practice, enabled the teachers to discern what (and who) they privileged in their teaching practice. These realizations led one of the two teachers highlighted to readily change her pedagogy and curriculum to better support the learning and empowerment of all students.     

Impact of the collaboratives for excellence in teacher preparation program

This study investigated the national impact of the Collaboratives for Excellence in Teacher Preparation program (CETP). Impact of the program was examined in two different settings: institutions of higher education, and K–12 science and mathematics classrooms. The focus of this study was to determine the impact of the CETP program on the institutional culture and collaborations among faculty, and changes in instructional techniques used by higher education faculty and K–12 teachers. Data were gathered over a 3‐year period from 12 different CETP projects. At the higher education level faculty reported more collaboration and a slight increase in the use of standard‐based teaching. At the K–12 level, students of teachers who were prepared by the CETP program viewed classroom instruction as slightly more standards‐based than comparable students of non‐CETP prepared teachers. Additionally, external observers rated classes taught by teachers educated in CETP projects as more standards‐based than classes taught by non‐CETP teachers educated in other programs. Implications of the results for national large‐scale reform of science and mathematics education are discussed. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 1348–1369, 2007     

Supporting new science teachers in pursuing socially just science education

This forum explores contradictions that arose within the partnership between Teach for America (TFA) and a university teacher education program. TFA is an alternate route teacher preparation program that places individuals into K-12 classrooms in low-income school districts after participating in an intense summer training program and provides them with ongoing support. This forum is a conversation about the challenges we faced as new science teachers in the TFA program and in the Peace Corps program. We both entered the teaching field with science degrees and very little formal education in science education. In these programs we worked in a community very different from the one we had experienced as students. These experiences allow us to address many of the issues that were discussed in the original paper, namely teaching in an unfamiliar community amid challenges that many teachers face in the first few years of teaching. We consider how these challenges may be amplified for teachers who come to teaching through an alternate route and may not have as much pedagogical training as a more traditional teacher education program provides. The forum expands on the ideas presented in the original paper to consider the importance of perspectives on socially just science education. There is often a disconnect between what is taught in teacher education programs and what teachers actually experience in urban classrooms and this can be amplified when the training received through alternate route provides a different framework as well. This forum urges universities and alternate route programs to continue to find ways to authentically partner using practical strategies that bring together the philosophies and goals of all stakeholders in order to better prepare teachers to partner with their students to achieve their science learning goals.     

Reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension in a New Zealand high school

This paper presents an experimental evaluation of a trial implementation of reciprocal teaching procedures by high school teachers to address reading comprehension deficits in a group of their students. Forty-six students with the lowest scores on a standardized test of reading comprehension in seven eighth-grade classes participated in the study. Following 3 hours of instruction in reciprocal teaching procedures, four classroom teachers and two support teachers ran eight reciprocal teaching groups. Four of these groups, 20 students in all, were exposed to between 12 and 16 reciprocal teaching sessions, while 15 students in the other four groups received between six and eight sessions. The remaining 11 students served as a no-treatment comparison group. Pre- and posttest scores on the standardized test served as the dependent measure. Significant gains were observed with students in the extended program, with no significant differences observed between the short program and comparison groups. Follow-up assessments of extended program students between 3 and 7 months later showed a maintenance of comprehension gains. Implications for high schools are discussed in terms of the absence of student progress with insufficient spaced practice in metacognitive skill training and strategic resourcing for remedial comprehension instruction.     

Professional Conversations and Professional Growth

A professional development program for 18 teachers was conducted over a two-year period. The participating teachers taught in intermediate schools (students aged 11–13) and secondary schools. The teachers worked collaboratively to improve their mathematics teaching, with encouragement to reflect on their practice but with minimal instruction from the researchers. Results, as defined by change in teaching practices, beliefs, and reflections, and student achievement, indicated that the collaborative program was particularly useful for experienced secondary school teachers but less useful for intermediate school teachers. We concluded that this type of professional development was most useful for teachers who had sufficient knowledge of mathematics; these teachers were able to focus on pedagogy and to draw connections between aspects of the mathematics they taught, without recourse to a specialist's advice. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Teaching strategies associated with conceptual change learning in Science

The use of teaching strategies associated with a conceptual change model of science teaching was examined in a study of thirteen 7th-grade life science teachers. Teachers taught units on photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and matter cycling in ecosystems in their regular classes under conditions varying as to whether or not conceptual change-oriented instructional materials and training sessions were provided. Greater use of conceptual change teaching strategies was associated with use of the special instructional materials, but not with the training. Students in classes where teachers were provided with the materials tended to perform better on posttests than those where such materials were not provided. The use of the conceptual change strategies by teachers was also associated with higher student performance on tests designed to assess conceptual change learning. The results support claims for the usefulness of conceptual change teaching strategies, but few of the teachers in this study could successfully implement these strategies without the support of appropriately designed curriculum materials.     

Effectiveness of National Board Certified (NBC) teachers in terms of classroom environment, attitudes and achievement among secondary science students

No previous research has employed learning environments criteria in evaluating the effectiveness of the system of teacher certification sponsored by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Because the litmus test of any professional development effort is the extent of the changes in teaching behaviours in participating teachers’ classrooms, our study drew on the field of learning environments in evaluating the effectiveness of National Board Certified (NBC) teachers in terms of their students’ perceptions of their classroom environments. A sample of 443 students in 21 Grade 8 and 10 science classes taught by NBC teachers in South Florida was compared with a matched group of 484 students in 17 classes taught by non-NBC teachers in terms of classroom environment (as assessed by the What Is Happening In this Class?) and students’ attitudes and achievement. Statistically significant differences (with small to medium effect sizes ranging from 0.14 to 0.35 standard deviations) were found in favour of NBC teachers for numerous classroom and environment scales (Teacher Support, Involvement, Task Orientation, Investigation and Cooperation) and for student attitudes.     

REFLECTIONS OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE STUDENTS REGARDING MENTEE/INSTRUCTOR TEACHING AND LEARNING EFFECTIVENESS

This investigation used data collected from students who assessed their instructors' teaching and learning effectiveness. Instructors were community-college career and technical-education faculty enrolled in the Community College Induction Mentoring Program (CCIM), a jointly sponsored program between Iowa State University and the instructors' respective community colleges. These new faculty were involved in a structured mentor/mentee program in which the mentor was involved in a 1-day mentor training program. The mentor/mentee relationship was designed around annual goals with an action plan developed, executed, and assessed for each goal. One component of the mentor/mentee program involved documentation of an effectiveness plan, including students' perception of their mentored-instructors' teaching and, as a consequence, their own learning effectiveness. Students were asked to complete an evaluation instrument comparing their “reactions” and “learning” in classes taught by mentored instructors enrolled in the CCIM program relative to other nonmentored instructors. A total of 9 hypotheses provided the direction of the research. Student ratings were typically higher for new instructors who received peer mentoring. Mentees and mentors consistently reported a high level of satisfaction about their partnership. Supervisors voiced strong support for the program. This paper shares student survey results of mentee/instructor teaching and student learning effectiveness.     

Evaluating an Integrated Science Learning Environment Using the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey

This article reports the validity and use of a new form of the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES). As part of a larger study, a comparative student version (CLES-CS) was developed to evaluate the impact of an innovative teacher development program (based on the Integrated Science Learning Environment, ISLE, model) in school classrooms. Two separate response blocks for 30 items comprising five scales are presented in side-by-side columns to measure students’ perceptions on a five-point frequency response scale of the extent to which certain psychosocial factors are prevalent in the science class taught by a teacher who had attended the ISLE program (THIS), as well as their perceptions of other science and non-science classes taught by other teachers in the same school (OTHER). The five scales of the CLES are called Personal Relevance, Uncertainty of Science, Shared Control, Critical Voice, and Student Negotiation. Using data collected from 1079 students in 59 classes in north Texas, principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization confirmed the a priori structure of the CLES-CS. The factor structure, internal consistency reliability, discriminant validity, and the ability to distinguish between different classes and groups were supported for the CLES-CS. Students whose science teachers had attended the ISLE program (THIS) perceived higher levels of Personal Relevance and Uncertainty of Science in their classrooms relative to the classrooms of other science and non-science teachers in the same schools (OTHER). Similar results were found when comparing the classroom environment perceptions of students whose science teachers had attended the ISLE program with the perceptions of students whose science teacher had attended alternative field trip programs (non-ISLE).     

Team teach with a student: A pilot study in criminal justice

In this study, criminal justice classes were team taught by six pairs of one faculty member and one student teacher. The professor-student teaching teams met together before class to plan and after class to problem solve. The student teachers were charged with helping the professors introduce active learning exercises into their classes. This article reports on survey data from these professors, student teachers and the students they taught, including their views on both the benefits and problems. The article shows professors how to team teach with a student and helps professors who want to try the approach to anticipate and minimize the problems while capitalizing on the benefits.