Teaching thinking on a national scale: Israel's pedagogical horizons

Like other countries, Israel had its share of projects that see the implementation of inquiry and higher order thinking in schools as their main goal. However, although many of these projects were quite successful, they did not succeed in changing the bulk of teaching and learning in Israeli schools. This article describes a new national educational policy called “Pedagogical Horizons for Learning”. The goal of this policy is to move the whole educational system towards a focus on higher order thinking and deep understanding. Such a move must consider the knowledge gained from previous projects but it must also lean on strategies for implementing systemic educational change. Implementing the goals of the “Pedagogical Horizons for Learning” on a national scale requires simultaneous work on three-dimensions: (a) curriculum, learning materials and standards; (b) professional development; and (c) assessment. The article outlines the plan for each of these three-dimensions and provides some accounts of the first stages of the implementation process.     

Themes of individualism, competition, and cooperation in teachers' stories

This paper deals with themes of individualism, competition, and cooperation in teachers' stories, as they are told in a high school staffroom. Teachers told stories to their colleagues and through these stories they presented their professional culture to themselves. The three themes of individualism, cooperation, and competition were woven together in the stories, stressing the importance of all three in the teachers' work. This triple theme is contradictory in essence and so it shows new difficulties in the teaching profession.     

Reasoning about Interactions between Variables

Thinking about interactions between variables is a necessary condition for accurate scientific thinking. The purpose of this study was to investigate difficulties in thinking about interactions between variables and to suggest remedial educational means. A conceptual analysis distinguishes between valid interaction inferences, invalid interaction inferences, and limited inferences which can be seen as a partial or a primitive interaction inference. Empirical findings show that expert thinkers demonstrate thinking about interactions at both an operational and a metastrategic level. Some lay-adults however, although able to draw many limited inferences, encounter substantial difficulties in drawing valid interaction inferences while engaged in an investigation of a scientific sort. Four types of difficulties were identified in this study: lack of a “double set of controlled comparisons” strategy that is necessary for valid inferences about interacting variables; lack of the conceptual framework for interacting factors; diversion of attention to other features; and difficulty in maintaining the necessary control of other variables. The implications of the findings to science curriculum are discussed.     

Contribution of Meta‐strategic Knowledge to Scientific Inquiry Learning

The aim of the present study is to explore the effects of Meta‐strategic Knowledge (MSK) on scientific inquiry learning. MSK is a subcomponent of metacognition defined as general, explicit knowledge about thinking strategies. Following earlier studies that showed considerable effects of explicit instruction of MSK regarding the strategy of variables control, the present study explores whether similar effects are found in two additional scientific thinking strategies: Define Research Questions and Formulate Research Hypotheses. Participants were 119 eighth‐grade students from six classes of a heterogeneous school. Equal numbers of low‐achieving and high‐achieving students were randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. The findings showed dramatic developments in students’ performance following instruction. The effect of the treatment was preserved in a delayed transfer test. Our findings show that explicit teaching of MSK had a stronger effect for low‐achieving students than for high‐achieving students. The implications of the findings for teaching and learning in the context of scientific inquiry are discussed.     

Children's sleep regulation is linked to mothers’ sleep-related childhood experiences

The present research explored how mothers’ own childhood experiences are linked to their perceptions of their children's sleep regulation. It focused on collective sleeping; a practice used in the past in the Israeli kibbutz, and used a quasi-experimental research design to examine whether mothers who were raised in collective sleeping arrangements differed from mothers who were raised in home sleeping. Two typically developing cohorts: infants (n = 68; ages 9–15 months; M = 12.2, SD = 2.2) and preschool children (n = 113; ages 48–55 months; M = 51.5, SD = 1.85) participated in this investigation. Sleep regulation and temperament were reported for infants and children, whereas for mothers data were collected on separation anxiety and appraisal of the ecology in which they were raised. Collectively raised mothers evaluated their upbringing significantly more negatively than home-raised mothers, expressed higher separation anxiety with regard to an alternative caregiver, but were not different in their views of their child's sleep difficulties. For infants, it was maternal separation anxiety that contributed uniquely to the explained variance in maternal view of sleep regulation difficulties. For preschool children, it was maternal evaluation of own childhood ecology and child's temperament that contributed uniquely to the explained variance in maternal view of sleep regulation difficulties. These findings suggest that mothers’ representations of their sleep-related early experiences, rather than their childhood ecology in and of itself, influenced their perceptions about their child's sleep, which, in turn, affect child's sleep patterns. Implications to caregiving are discussed.     

How the Curriculum Guideline “The Cell Is to Be Studied Longitudinally” Is Expressed in Six Israeli Junior-High-School Textbooks

The most recent science and technology curriculum for junior high school in Israel contains a new guideline stating that the cell topic is to be taught “longitudinally in conjunction with other study contents.” This guideline confers a change in teaching the cell topic and provides an opportunity to form meaningful relationships between biological phenomena at the macro level and their cellular explanations. Here, we examined the extent to which six textbooks, available for junior high schools in Israel, support this teaching approach. We found that the textbooks differ in how they express the guideline and that most of them do not support the new teaching approach to any significant extent. Moreover, the textbooks generally emphasize cells’ structure and pay less attention to the processes occurring in them. Our findings could shed light on students’ difficulties in comprehending the living cell and in correlating macroscopic phenomena with their cellular explanations.     

Student teachers' reasoning while making pedagogical decisions

SUMMARY This study examines student teachers' reasoning when making pedagogical decisions at two stages of the teaching process: the pre-active stage of lesson planning and the post-active stage of analysis of the lesson taught. The sample consisted of 21 student teachers, all with a BA degree but no teaching certificate, already teaching various subjects in secondary schools. The student teachers took a course in pedagogy, during which they gained experience in planning lessons and teaching them by means of peer teaching. Qualitative and quantitative findings were gathered from the student teachers' reflective journals. Findings relate to: (1) the topics figuring in their pedagogical decisions; (2) the arguments used to explain the decisionss; and (3) the range of arguments given for each decision. The importance of the study lies in identifying student teachers' reasoning when planning and teaching lessons, highlighting specific shortcomings, in view of the complexity of teaching situations. The study yielded insights relevant to the educational process.     

Reconsidering Personal Epistemology as Metacognition: A Multifaceted Approach to the Analysis of Epistemic Thinking

One of the central unresolved conceptual issues that concerns researchers of personal epistemology is the characterization of the intersection between personal epistemology and metacognition. The contested and diverse nature of both constructs makes untangling their connections a complex yet vital task. The purpose of this article is to advance the discussion regarding this intersection by offering a theoretical approach that may serve as a basis for analyzing epistemic thinking and aligning it with current views of metacognition. Based on a synthesis of theoretical and empirical studies, we argue that epistemic thinking is a multifaceted construct with both cognitive and metacognitive aspects. Furthermore, we propose that epistemic metacognition includes several aspects such as metacognitive skills; metacognitive knowledge about persons, strategies and tasks; and metacognitive experiences. The theoretical, methodological, and instructional implications of this approach are explored.     

Lexical inference in L2: predictive roles of vocabulary knowledge and reading skill beyond reading comprehension

The current study examined the predictive roles of L2 vocabulary knowledge and L2 word reading skills in explaining individual differences in lexical inferencing in the L2. Participants were 53 Israeli high school students who emigrated from the former Soviet Union, and spoke Russian as an L1 and Hebrew as an L2. L2 vocabulary knowledge and decoding accuracy predicted L2 reading comprehension, which in turn was strongly related to lexical inferencing abilities in the L2. In addition, decoding accuracy predicted additional variance in lexical inferencing, beyond the role of reading comprehension. These findings support the idea that beginning L2 readers with more precise and efficient lexical representations demonstrate better lexical inferencing abilities, most likely due to the increased automatization of word reading, which frees up resources for higher level processing. These results suggest that lexical inferencing from text in the L2 might be limited not only by vocabulary knowledge and higher order comprehension processes, but also by basic decoding skills.     

Reading Science Texts—Epistemology, Inquiry, Authenticity—A Rejoinder to Jonathan Osborne

We shall structure this rejoinder around two main sections. In the first, we address three underlying assumptions of our work that Osborne has identified. We indicate points of agreement, disagreement, and clarification. In the second section, we discuss briefly and add our clarifications to three understandings of his that Osborne introduces into the discussion. It should be noted that Osborne’s response is grounded in the same basic assumption as our set of papers, namely, the central role played by reading and writing, and communicative activities in general, both in science and in learning science.