Exploring the dynamics of cultures of learning in internationalised higher education

ABSTRACT

One of the main drivers of internationalisation in higher education (HE) is the intention to facilitate the development of intercultural competence (IC) among students and staff. However, previous research shows that higher levels of IC are not automatically achieved by participating in internationalised educational settings. Drawing on the results from a bi- and trilateral collaborative project, we combine cultures of learning and small culture approaches to analyse how participants’ previous educational experience may have influenced the learning process in internationalised HE classrooms. This article argues the necessity of a non-essentialist view of teaching and learning practices in internationalised classrooms. Our analysis demonstrates how academic practices and classroom norms are (re)negotiated in these new contexts, forming new evolving ‘small’ cultures of learning. The role reciprocity plays in working towards cultural synergy in internationalised HE is also addressed. Striving towards equality in power distribution proves to be significant in achieving cultural synergy.     

Defining Meaningful Literacy: Findings from a Socially-oriented Literacy Intervention for Adults with Developmental Disabilities

The current study is a qualitative analysis of the results of a literacy skills intervention with a group comprising of three individuals with Down syndrome and three individuals with other developmental disabilities. The intervention was developed to address the concern that individuals in this population are often only exposed to functional literacy experiences (i.e. those building only literacy skills required for daily functioning and survival), at the expense of more enriched experiences that engage personal meaning. As a result, it included both reading and writing activities designed to invite personal investment in literacy experiences. In this vein, the data collected derives primarily from the participant’s own writing, and has been supplemented with other qualitative measures (e.g. parental questionnaires, participant focus group responses, field notes). The current article discusses the impact and implications of this intervention for future literacy interventions of this kind, in terms of the themes, which emerged from these data; with a particular emphasis on the participants’ own experiences.     

The co-existence of cultural and school science models in indigenous Mexican teachers: the mixing colors case

Cultural Studies of Science Education - This paper presents the development and structure of indigenous Nahua teachers’ ideas about mixing colors, as well their ideas about colors derived...     

SMART education technologies in mathematics teacher education - ways to integrate and progress that follows integration

ABSTRACT

SMART Education Technologies (SET) are already in place to provide teachers with different software packages and technologies to facilitate their teaching. However, when it comes to mathematics teaching in Russia, the situation here is different as the articulation of such SET in the Russian context is inadequate. This study redefines mathematics teacher education with smart technologies and identifies IT competencies that are needed to cope with the redefined curriculum. The designed course programme was implemented in the Elabuga Pedagogical Institute, involving 7 teachers from the Institute, 123 students (trainee teachers) and 5 schoolteachers (experts) to keep a professional eye on the learning experience. To evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum, a survey was carried out among teachers and experts. The survey questionnaire captured the progress made in competence development alongside three modules. The progress that students were making throughout the course was evaluated at the ‘mock teaching’ lesson, where students presented their individually prepared parts of a lesson on a given topic using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The way the learning process was organised encouraged students to use various software packages to handle maths-related problems. The research results showed that the SET learning path was flexible and allowed modification of the instructional strategy to better meet the needs of individual learners.     

Reading and writing to learn in secondary education: online processing activity and written products in summarizing and synthesizing tasks

The research reported here employed a multiple-case study methodology to assess the online cognitive and metacognitive activities of 15-year-old secondary students as they read informational texts and wrote a new text in order to learn, and the relation of these activities to the written products they were asked to generate. To investigate the influence of the task, students were required to perform two different tasks which differed in complexity and familiarity. The first task was reading a single text and making a written summary of it, while the second consisted in reading two texts and making a written synthesis of them. To gather information about how students construct meaning from informational texts, we asked students to think aloud as they read and wrote in order to provide us with information about their comprehension and composition processes. We also examined their reading and writing activities during the tasks. The results show that to a large extent secondary school students lack the cognitive and metacognitive processes that would enable them to make strategic use of reading and writing. They also show that, although there are no major differences in the way secondary school students tackle these different tasks, those who create the most elaborate products evidence a more recursive and flexible use of reading and writing. The most obvious conclusion as far as the repercussions of these findings are concerned is that there is an urgent need for work on tasks of this kind in the classroom.     

Approaches to learning and study orchestrations in high school students

In the framework of the SAL (Students’ approaches to learning) poosition, the learning experience (approaches to learning and study orchestrations) of 572 high school students was explored, examining its interrelationships with some personal and familial variables. Three major results emerged. First, links were found between family’s intellectual climate and students’ approaches to learning, in particular with Deep appraoch: The better the family’s intellectual climate the higher student’ scores on Deep approach. Second, along with general intelligence, these approaches predicted students’ academic achievement, higher grades being obtained by these students who scored lower in Surface learning approach and higher in Deep learning approach. Three, students from the four study orchestrations reported in previous research (two displaying conceptual consonance: Deep and Surface approaches, and the other two conceptual dissonance: high-high and low-low, in both Deep and Surface approaches) showed different profiles in some variables (e.g., metacognitive learning strategies, family’s intellectual climate, academic achievement), worse scores being obtained by those who orchestrated their study either in surface or in conceptually dissonant ways. These relationships shed more light on the nature of high school students ‘learning experience, and help to provide an integrated view of students’ webs of experience.     

How Can Genomics Inform Education?

ABSTRACT— This article offers some thoughts on possible connections between genomics and education. Genomics is already revolutionizing the way medical care is delivered and distributed; it will inevitably affect children's developmental trajectories by introducing more pharmacological and behavioral therapies. Educators should be prepared to understand the effect of these changes on children in the classroom, where children around the world spend a large portion of their formative years. Educators should also be prepared to understand the current advances in genomics and be able to discuss them with the parents and health care providers of their students.     

Early childhood education and cultural learning: systematic observation of the behaviour of a caregiver at the Emmi Pikler nursery school during breakfast / Educación temprana y aprendizaje cultural: observación sistemática de la conducta de la educadora Pikler durante el desayuno

The objective of this study is to analyse the everyday behaviour of a caregiver at the Emmi Pikler nursery school in Budapest as she manages the breakfast of the 12 children aged 2–3 under her care, as an example of quality care. The methodology used was observational. The design was idiographic, follow-up and multidimensional, and the observation instrument is a field format developed ad hoc. The relations of sequentiality and association among the caregiver’s different behaviours are analysed: the actions related to the breakfast itself, the use of space and the gestures accompanying the actions. The results, which were obtained via a lag sequential analysis, demonstrate the existence of a twofold behavioural pattern, instrumental and relational, in which each instrumental action inherent to breakfast is associated with a specific, unique repertoire of postural accompaniment, a combination of gestures and postures on the part of the caregiver, thus forming a clear, univocal sequence for children to learn the meal routine autonomously.     

Reflecting on quality practices through knowledge management theory: uncovering grey zones and new possibilities of process manuals,flowcharts and procedures

Process manuals, flowcharts, blueprints and procedures have been commonly employed by quality-oriented organizations as a way to represent, organize and control their work. These tools, which are the output of a documenting process, supposedly capture the practical knowledge of the organization. However, the possibility of expliciting practice has been and still is a controversial issue. This article aims to shed light on some aspects related to the possibility of expliciting knowledge through an empirical study and to inquire to what extent these formalized documentation gather the actual practice. One of the most relevant contributions of this paper is its empirical work, which covers both the knowledge and quality perspectives, providing a refreshing and integrated view to practical organizational issues.