Fostering a “head start” in math: observing teachers in early childhood mathematics engagement

ABSTRACT

Studies show that early engagement with mathematics leads to increased math achievement later in life. Yet, early childhood teachers do not regard mathematics as critical to young learners’ development and lack confidence with helping children learn mathematics. Early childhood teacher comfort and engagement with mathematics is a critical element to promoting intentional math instruction. Research was conducted to examine the effects of an innovative professional development program for Head Start preschool teachers with the goal of increasing pedagogical content knowledge and confidence in teaching mathematics. The findings in this article focus on classroom observations that concentrated on teacher engagement with mathematics.     

Experiential Learning: Context and Connections for Legal Research–A Case Study

The American Bar Association requires that all law students receive “substantial instruction” in legal research. This article discusses a unique legal research program that meets this requirement by focusing on experiential learning. Two components of experiential learning, context and connections, are explained pedagogically and specifically as to legal research curriculum.     

STARS AND STRIPES

Stars and Stripes is a unique newspaper with a distinctive mission, ownership and journalistic staff unlike any in the USA. Despite its parentage in the US Department of Defense, directives give the newspaper editorial independence. Still, military commanders and Pentagon overseers have challenged and interfered with those rights since the newspaper's First World War beginnings in Europe. This study examines the published accounts of that struggle, finding that despite the newspaper's journalistic successes, the military has periodically engaged in control and interference, particularly because of the newspaper's logistical dependence upon the Department of Defense. Stars and Stripes' achievements have largely been dependent upon having the support of various military commanders in charge of US overseas military forces, having military editors or publishers who were resolute against military intrusion, or having the involvement of Congressional oversight committees and other news media willing to expose military news management at the newspaper.     

Situated learning in an abstract algebra classroom

Advisory committees of mathematics consider abstract algebra as an essential component of the mathematical preparation of secondary teachers, yet preservice teachers find it challenging to connect the topics addressed in this advanced course with the high school algebra they must someday teach. This study analyzed the mathematical content knowledge that developed in preservice teachers during a semester course in abstract algebra utilizing Lerman's “person-in-practice-in-person” lens. This unit of analysis provided insights into the situated nature of the algebra learned by illuminating how the goals of the instructor and preservice teachers impacted the community of practice created in the university classroom and how participating in that community impacted the preservice teachers' mathematical identities.     

明日简讯

Predicting the Wind 预测风向To sell their energy, wind-farm operators need to predict when they can deliver the power, but wind is skittish(多变的)and unpredictable. Researchers are hoping that artificial-intelligence techniques will make wind-energy forecasts more accurate. A method developed at Northern Ireland' s University of Ulster assesses past wind-flow patterns to predict     

Implementing information power

Conclusion Guidelines implementation is no mysterious process. It is a systematic undertaking, beginning with a carefully and clearly thought out plan, followed by patient and persistent pursuit of a selected set of achieveable goals. As each goal is met, another takes its place and the cycle begins again.     

Graduate teacher motivation for choosing a job in education

This article compares individuals already in teaching and non-teaching teacher graduates, and explores the motivation to pursue a teaching job based on job motives and work values. From the response of 241 recently graduated teachers it may be concluded that teachers consider intrinsic, altruistic and interpersonal features as strong job-specific motivators. Furthermore, teachers prefer altruistic and interpersonal work values, while non-teachers are more attracted by individualistic work values such as career opportunities and executive power.     

School fieldtrip to engineering workshop: pre-, post-, and delayed-post effects on student perceptions by age,gender, and ethnicity

ABSTRACT

This article presents a large-scale evaluation study of over 3000 9–14-year-old students who participated in an engineering workshop during their school fieldtrips. Student perceptions right before and after, as well as two weeks after the workshop were captured and examined. Before the workshop, younger students and boys, generally exhibited higher interest, higher self-efficacy, and less negative stereotypes for engineering than their counterparts. Also, Caucasian students had higher self-efficacy and lower negative stereotypes than Hispanic students. Students’ interest, self-efficacy, negative stereotype, and utility perceptions of engineering were significantly improved right after the workshop, and improved perceptions were maintained at the delayed-post (follow-up) survey. The results indicate that fieldtrips can significantly improve students’ perceptions towards engineering and improved perceptions are not limited to the workshop day, but persist afterwards. The gender and ethnic differences in engineering perceptions in the youngest age group indicate that outreach interventions should begin in elementary school.     

Teacher adaptation to flexible learning environments

Learning Environments Research - Teaching practices respond to the prompts, resources and inherent potential of a school’s physical, social and cultural landscape. This study involved how...     

Reading This Bridge Called My Back for pedagogies of coalition,remediation, and a razor’s edge

In this article, I examine the engagement of pre-service teachers with US feminist of color theory. Centering coalition relations, re-mediation, and dialogic narrative, I argue that the field of women of color thought is pedagogical in thinking through the intersectional and multidimensional problems of teaching and schooling, particularly when working with under-resourced schools and displaced and dispossessed students and their families. A framework based on the intellectual labor of US women of color, where the pedagogies of coalition, re-mediation, and dialogic narratives create powerful epistemological interventions that support pre-service teachers as they think about the complex problems of schools in this era of the defunding and the dismantlement of public education. It is a US women of color pedagogy that engages teachers in developing alternative accounts of their relationship to the world, how these new accounts are unavoidably theoretical and provide a starting point for new thinking about pedagogy, power, and praxis.