Action research and reflection on student approaches to learning in large first year university classes

This paper presents an action research approach to exploring methods of improving the learning styles and outcomes of first year university students within large class environments. The genesis of this project stemmed from an observation that entire tutorial groups were often lethargic in their approach to learning. Following a survey of learning styles, students were exposed to more student-centric teaching styles within tutorial groups, with a view to encouraging deeper student learning and self-regulated learning behaviours. Although the project was successful in motivating students' participation in class activities, no noticeable change to a sustained deeper learning style became evident. The findings suggest that simply motivating students to participate in class does not necessarily alter overall learning styles, at least in the short term. This suggests that the process of “unlearning” previous learning styles may pose a significant problem for instructors and it appears likely that the process of changing from surface to deep learning may require more than a single course intervention. However, there is some evidence that student-centred and self-regulated learning results in a more positive learning experience for both students and teachers. The article concludes with a model of proposed relationships uncovered by the research which deserve further exploration in the quest to provide greater levels of student satisfaction with their higher education experiences.     

Malaysian Parents' Ideal and Actual Perceptions of Pre-school Education La Perception Ideale et la Perception Reelle de l'Enseignement Prescolaire par les Parents Malaisiens Percepciones Ideales y Reales de los Padres Malasios sobre la Educacion Preescolar

This study explores and describes the perceptions of Malaysian parents concerning pre-school education. The study examines the potential influence of socio-cultural elements on the parents' perceptions and in doing so, challenges the current notion of what constitutes 'appropriateness' in early childhood education. Findings indicate that Malaysian parents hold both idealised and actualised perceptions of pre-school education. The former relate to the parents' image of childhood and the type of education they would like their child to receive in an ideal world, whilst the latter relate to the type of education parents feel their child needs in order to meet the needs of Malaysian society. The authors suggest that this model may be a useful one for exploring perceptions in future studies. Cette etude explore et decrit la perception de l'enseignement prescolaire par les parents malaisiens. Elle examine l'influence potentielle des elements socioculturels sur la perception des parents et elle souleve ainsi la question de ce qui constitue le caractere 'approprie' de 1'enseignement des tres jeunes enfants. Les resultats indiquent que les parents malaisiens ont une perception idealisee et une perception actualisee de 1'enseignement prescolaire. La premiere depend de 1'image que les parents se font de 1'enfance et du type d'education qu'ils voudraient que leur enfant recoive d'un point de vue ideal, tandis que le seconde se rattache au type d'education que les parents pensent necessaire a leur enfant pour repondre aux besoins de la societe malaisienne. Les auteurs suggerent que ce modele pourrait sent a explorer les perceptions dans de futures etudes. Este estudjo explora y describe las percepejones de los padres malasios con relacion a la educacion preescolar. El estudio examina la posible influencia de los elementos socioculturales en las percepciones de los padres y, con ello, se reta la nocion actual de lo que constituye 'lo apropiado' en la educacion de la infancia. Los descubrimientos indican que los padres malasios tienen tanto percepciones idealizadas como reales de la educacion preescolar. La primera hace relacion a la imagen que los padres tienen de la infancia y el tipo de educacion que les gustaria que sus hijos recibieran en un mundo ideal, mientras que la segunda hace relacion al tipo de educacion que los padres creen que necesitan sus hijos a fin de satisfacer las necesidades de la sociedad malasia. Los autores sugieren que este modelo podria ser util para explorar percepciones en futuros estudios.     

Artificial intelligence and multimodal data in the service of human decision-making: A case study in debate tutoring

The question: “What is an appropriate role for AI?” is the subject of much discussion and interest. Arguments about whether AI should be a human replacing technology or a human assisting technology frequently take centre stage. Education is no exception when it comes to questions about the role that AI should play, and as with many other professional areas, the exact role of AI in education is not easy to predict. Here, we argue that one potential role for AI in education is to provide opportunities for human intelligence augmentation, with AI supporting us in decision-making processes, rather than replacing us through automation. To provide empirical evidence to support our argument, we present a case study in the context of debate tutoring, in which we use prediction and classification models to increase the transparency of the intuitive decision-making processes of expert tutors for advanced reflections and feedback. Furthermore, we compare the accuracy of unimodal and multimodal classification models of expert human tutors' decisions about the social and emotional aspects of tutoring while evaluating trainees. Our results show that multimodal data leads to more accurate classification models in the context we studied.     

The hearing environment

Glue ear, a condition resulting in intermittent hearing loss in young children, affects about 80% of young children under seven years old. About 60% of children will spend a third of their time unable to hear within normal thresholds. Teachers are unlikely to consider the sound quality in classrooms. In my research young people provided suggestions to help them hear, identifying the benefits of using their insight in improving the hearing environment. This article identifies five aspects from the literature which impact the hearing environment in classrooms. The focus is on practical low‐cost actions that teachers can implement in their classrooms, thus reducing stress levels in students and teachers.     

Identity development: what I notice about myself as a teacher

Teacher identity has been recognised as critical to the practice and development of teachers. However, there remains a paucity of scholarship capturing the voice of pre-service teachers’ meaning making of their own development as teachers during initial teacher education. This paper sets out to explore seven pre-service teachers’ meaning making of becoming a teacher. Reflections gathered using autobiographical narratives and teaching metaphors, were prompted by video clips of practice during School Placement. Results suggest that pre-service teachers’ were initially drawn to the physical depiction of what a teacher looks like. Their meaning making then turned towards instances of dissonance between their prior meanings of what it is to be a teacher and their lived experiences of School Placement. These sources of dissonance challenged the pre-service teachers’ ongoing construction of their teacher identity. The findings of this paper are discussed in terms of relevant literature.     

Marital status and birthrate of deaf people in two Swedish counties: the impact of social environment in terms of deaf community

Deafness affects many social interactions. The impact of deafness depends on several factors, e.g., the type of social environment in terms of the particular Deaf community a person lives in. The authors recorded the birthrate and the proportions of married and divorced people among deaf people in two Swedish counties: Narke, which had a strong Deaf community, and Varmland, whose Deaf community was weak. In both counties, the authors found that deafness was associated with low marriage rates and low birthrates. Further, in Narke, 99% of the people in the sample were married to another deaf person; only 10% were in Varmland. In Narke, the divorce rate among deaf people was about the same as that of the reference population (i.e., the county's marriage-age population). In Varmland, deaf people had a relatively low divorce rate. The findings are discussed from medical and social perspectives.     

The uncertainty and fragility of learning to teach: a Britzmanian lens on a student teacher story

This paper turns the kaleidoscopic lens of Professor Deborah Britzman’s writings on a student teacher story of learning to teach. It begins by briefly setting the context for the research. It then explains the study’s ontological and epistemological focus on experience and how student teacher and researchers create expressions of experience through an interpretative process. This leads to the design for interpretation in this study and to an explanation of why the work of Britzman became part of the interpretative layering for understanding student teacher Ciara’s texts. It continues by explicating Britzman’s concept of ‘struggle for voice’ as a metaphor for learning to teach and briefly makes comparison with the work of Bakhtin and his concept of the dialogical imagination. It then presents the layered interpretation in the form of indicative excerpts in a chronological story. Finally it focuses on the salient and pervading theme of affect and offers a brief commentary on its significance in initial teacher education and the need for developing an understanding for the feeling world of learning to teach.     

The Influence of Emotional Reaction on Help Seeking by Victims of School Bullying

Research has begun to focus on how victims of school bullying cope, but there is still little understanding of why pupils will cope in one particular way and not another. This paper aimed to examine the effects of gender, stage of schooling, frequency of victimisation, and different emotions (anger, vengeance, self‐pity, indifference, and helplessness) upon the social support that children report using. Questionnaires were completed by 6,282 Maltese schoolchildren between 9 and 14 years of age. Analyses revealed that specific patterns of emotion and victimisation predict pupil reports of using certain sources of social support. Results are discussed in relation to possible intervention, future research needs, and implications for the theoretical framework used.     

Towards a model for the determinants of occupational stress among schoolteachers

The determinants of stress in teaching were investigated in a context which allowed many of the characteristics of an educational system to be incorporated in the design. Using a specially developed self-report instrument, 545 secondary schoolteachers in Malta reported the perceived levels of stressfulness of 35 items covering various aspects of the teacher’s work environment. One-third of the respondents rated being a teacher as either very stressful or extremely stressful. A principal components analysis of the data on the 35 sources of stress yielded a four-factor structure described in terms of ‘pupil misbehaviour’, ‘poor working conditions’, ‘poor staff relations’ and ‘time pressures’. Repeated measures ANOVA of the factor scores revealed a number of significant two-way and three-way interactions involving the demographic variables of sex, age, type of teaching post, type of school selectivity, type of single-sex school, size of school, and type of curriculum subject/s taught.