Investigating university tutor perceptions of assessment feedback: three types of tutor beliefs

Feedback is a key element in effective teaching and learning. The issue of how teachers perceive the role of feedback will impact significantly their feedback approaches, the amount of the detail of their feedback and the time and effort expended on the feedback provision. This research was designed with the purpose of exploring how a group of over 50 tutors who were supporting an online university English course perceived, understood and interpreted the processes of assignment feedback. A factor analysis study based on questionnaire data revealed three sets of tutor beliefs towards assessment and tutor feedback: traditional–autonomous–global (TAG), student‐centred (SC) and traditional‐local (TL). Follow‐up in‐depth interviews were conducted with tutors. The TAG tutors saw scores as the most important feedback to students, but doubted the value of detailed feedback. SC tutors maintained that good tutor feedback should offer more than mere scores, and that students needed feedback in order to improve. TL tutors tended to underline all the errors and provide detailed feedback. They were negative towards the idea of their feedback being monitored. The authors identified some differing and converging tutor perceptions on assessment feedback, the understanding of which could arguably play an important role in introducing changes in tutor feedback culture.     

Understanding the science of environmental issues: development of a subject knowledge guide for primary teacher education

In the light of an increased concern for environmental education (especially in the context of sustainable development) in the UK, this study used questionnaire surveys to explore the understanding of 170 practising primary school teachers, 120 primary trainees and 88 secondary science trainees in four areas: biodiversity, the carbon cycle, ozone and global warming. A methodological innovation in this research was the prior identification of basic scientific explanations of each area for a primary teacher and the use of these as benchmarks for judging understanding. Knowledge of the component parts of these explanations was tested in the questionnaires. Hence the study was able to identify those underpinning science concepts which were well understood, and those which were not so well understood. The frequencies of several misconceptions, uncovered in earlier interviews and also included in the questionnaires, are also reported. It is suggested that both the basic explanations and the difficulties of understanding displayed by the teachers in some areas can usefully inform programmes of professional development for sustainable development and environmental education. An outline of a guide for teachers adopting this approach is provided.     

Beyond Useful Knowledge: Developing the Subjective Self

While not underestimating the value of useful knowledge and skills, it is suggested that education should also develop the subjective self of the learner. A distinction is drawn between an ‘additive’ view of education which simply furnishes the individual with knowledge and skills and a ‘transformative’ concept which concerns itself with changes to more central parts of the learner's self. In developing a concept of the subjective self, reference is made to the Enlightenment notion of the autonomous rational self and the interpersonal or cultural self of the Symbolic Interactionists and Communitarians. Particular attention, however, is given to Heidegger's three categories of entities experienced by the phenomenological self: the ‘present at hand’, the ‘ready to hand’ and those entities with whom we share the experience of ‘being with’. An attempt is made to interpret important aspects of education in terms of the development of learners' growing knowledge and deepening understanding of these three kinds of entity and the relation in which they stand to them.     

Role of concept definition, teaching examples, and practice on concept learning from prose

Two experiments were performed to evaluate the effects of definition adjunct questions on concept learning. Each experiment included 132 undergraduates at a large midwestern university. In both experiments, subjects studied a passage containing matched or unmatched application questions only, matched or unmatched application questions preceded by a definition question, definition questions only, or no questions at all. The critical attributes of the to-be-learned concepts were more salient in the sets of examples and nonexamples presented in the matched application questions than in the unmatched application questions. Subjects took a criterion test which consisted of novel matched and unmatched application questions. In both experiments, only unmatched application adjunct questions preceded by a definition question produced significantly higher performance on the criterion questions than definition questions only. The discussion focused on the importance of definition questions for effective use of different types of application questions.     

Kiribati — The search for educational alternatives in a pacific micro-state

The Central Pacific Republic of Kiribati attempted during the 1970s to set up Community High Schools for the majority of students living in small-island village situations who could not proceed to academic secondary schools. The scheme failed as parents saw these schools more as high schools, and wanted them to lead to Western employment. The government was firm in not allowing this to happen, and continuing to pursue locally-oriented schooling through upper primary classes. This direction has been thrown into doubt by the recent emergence of private high schools on the main island which have attracted many outer-island students.