What and how teacher educators prefer to learn

In which areas and domains do individual teacher educators prefer to work on their professional development? What kind of learning activities do they want to take on and with whom? Are there significant differences in these preferences between teacher educators? This article reports on a recent survey (N = 268) about the professional development of teacher educators and differences in learning preferences between less and more experienced teacher educators and between university-based and school-based teacher educators. Findings show, for example, that while most university-based teacher educators were mainly interested in improving their teaching, less experienced school-based teacher educators were more focussed on aspects such as coaching skills. In this study, ‘learning profiles’ have been developed for four categories of teacher educators. These profiles may help to create more meaningful arrangements for teacher educators’ initial education and further professional development in a context where teacher education is required to have a more school-based as well as a more research-based orientation.     

Transcultural analysis of the effectiveness of a program to promote self-regulated learning in Mozambique,Chile, Portugal,and Spain

The current investigation aims at assessing the effectiveness of an intervention program designed to enhance self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies at the university level, with students from different cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds. The central tool of the program is a set of letters in which a fictional first-year student describes his experiences as an SRL student. The program was implemented in four universities in different countries and continents (Portugal, Spain, Chile, and Mozambique), with an experimental group and a comparison group at each university (263 students from experimental groups and 247 from comparison groups). Findings display the effectiveness of the program in enhancing a set of motivational variables related to the study process and the use of SRL strategies. Data were consistent across the different cultural and academic contexts in which the program was implemented. The implications of these findings for university administrators and faculty are discussed.     

Instrument adaptation in cross-cultural studies of students’ mathematics-related beliefs: learning from healthcare research

Much comparative research into education-related beliefs has exploited questionnaires developed in one culture for use in another. This has been particularly the case in mathematics education, the focus of this paper. In so doing, researchers have tended to assume that translation alone is sufficient to warrant a reliable and valid instrument for cross-cultural research, prompting concerns that a number of necessary equivalences are unlikely to have been addressed. In this paper, we consider the nature of these equivalences before examining the literature of a different field, healthcare research, to synthesise an approach to instrument adaptation that is pragmatic but rigorous. Finally, we demonstrate how this pragmatic approach, incorporating extensive cognitive interviews, enabled us to adapt and refine a mathematics-related beliefs questionnaire, developed in Flanders, for use with students aged 14–15 in England and Spain. Analyses indicate that the instrument so developed is multidimensional, reliable and cross-culturally valid. Some implications are discussed.     

High school boys’ and girls’ writing conceptions and writing self-efficacy beliefs: what is their role in writing performance?

This study investigated the conceptions about writing and writing self-efficacy beliefs held by high school students in relation to the students’ gender as well as their associations with writing achievement. The results show that female students have more sophisticated writing conceptions than their male counterparts but no gender differences were found in writing self-efficacy beliefs. In addition, results reveal that writing self-efficacy beliefs and gender play an important role in predicting writing performance and that writing performance is moderated by students’ writing conceptions. Educational implications and further research are discussed.     

Development of students’ conceptual thinking by means of video analysis and interactive simulations at technical universities

Video analysis, using the program Tracker (Open Source Physics), in the educational process introduces a new creative method of teaching physics and makes natural sciences more interesting for students. This way of exploring the laws of nature can amaze students because this illustrative and interactive educational software inspires them to think creatively, improves their performance and helps them in studying physics. This paper deals with increasing the key competencies in engineering by analysing real-life situation videos – physical problems – by means of video analysis and the modelling tools using the program Tracker and simulations of physical phenomena from The Physics Education Technology (PhET?) Project (VAS method of problem tasks). The statistical testing using the t-test confirmed the significance of the differences in the knowledge of the experimental and control groups, which were the result of interactive method application.     

Translating quality in higher education: US approaches to accreditation of institutions from around the world

This article reports on findings from a sociolinguistic qualitative study exploring inter-discursive relations manifested in the approaches and strategies that regional accrediting agencies in the United States utilise when recognising foreign universities. Even as most countries have developed national quality assurance systems and whilst international rankings comparing institutions globally are available, a growing number of universities around the world seek recognition from American regional agencies. By comparing policy statements, manuals, guidelines and other documents, and after interviewing top-level officers at US accrediting agencies, this study makes explicit the assumptions and central discourses associated with US accreditation of non-US institutions of higher education, from the accreditors’ perspective. Following constant comparison and cultural critical discourse analysis, the study reveals concerns about the equivalency of quality, emphasis on capacity building and reluctance toward adapting US standards. An interest in building international partnerships, in order to respond to globalisation, is also identified.