The teaching profession against the background of educationalisation: an exploratory study

This article focuses on the teaching profession against the background of educationalisation in the Netherlands in the sense that Dutch schools are increasingly regarded as focal points at which to address and solve social issues. Our research project concentrated on the extent to which teachers, being key figures in the school organisation, understand their role as one that embraces a social in addition to an educational mission. It explores teachers’ professional identity and their awareness, task perception and self-efficacy with respect to performing a social mission. The results show that ‘addressing social issues’ can be identified as a dimension of teachers’ professional identity. However, teachers report low self-efficacy as regards carrying out social tasks, irrespective of their task perception and awareness. The phenomenon of educationalisation is occurring in other Western European countries and in the US. The results of this exploratory study raise questions about the feasibility of educationalising social problems.     

Learning habits of students with special needs in short‐term vocational education programmes

This research examined some characteristics of the learning habits of students with special needs and those without them in programmes of short‐term vocational education in five areas: motivation, learning and learning techniques, emotional, social and the area of self‐evaluation. The research sample consisted of 140 students from different secondary schools. The Questionnaire on the Learning Habits of Adolescents was used for the purpose of the study. The differences between the means from individual learning habit scales, between the students with special needs or without them, were discovered by one‐way analysis of variance. Basic findings of empirical research emphasise that there exist statistically significant differences between the students with special needs and the students without special needs in four areas of learning habits. Among the findings causing concern in connection with learning habits, we would like to underscore the fact that students with special needs are perceived as less efficient at and less competent in coping with learning and work tasks. These students are not familiar with effective methods and strategies for successful learning, which leads to the feelings of frustration and helplessness in case of failure. In order to cultivate an effective and supportive educational environment for students with special needs, short‐term vocational schools should develop learning/teaching models that provide a potentially powerful alternative to traditionally directed teaching approaches.     

Recent tensions and challenges in teacher education as manifested in curriculum discourse

This study seeks to contribute to discussions on the development of teacher education by analysing teacher educators' talk concerning curriculum reform. The curriculum is understood as a mediating construction between teacher educators and the social context, and the development of the curriculum is seen as a negotiation process between global discourses and local actors. Our aim was to understand the contrasting discourses used by teacher educators in talking about curriculum development, on the grounds that such discourses frame interpretations that direct the implementation of teacher education as a whole. Five contrasting interpretative repertoires were found. We illustrate these and discuss what they imply for the development of teacher education.     

Verification of automatic analysers Roller 20PN and iSED for measuring erythrocyte sedimentation rate

IntroductionAutomated erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) analysers are based on different methodology than Westergren method. It is questionable whether ESR values obtained from those analysers are comparable with determined values with Westergren method. The aim was verification of the precision, method comparison and accuracy of automated ESR analysers: Roller 20PN (Alifax S.p.A., Polverara, Italy) and iSED (Alcor Scientific, Smithfield, USA).Materials and methodsBlood samples (N = 752 for Roller 20PN and N = 213 for iSED) were sampled into K₂EDTA (Kima, Italy) tubes for automated and 3.8% Na-citrate tubes (Kima, Italy) for Westergren method. The data was divided into three groups according to the ESR values obtained with the Westergren method: Group Low (L) (ESR ≤ 20 mm), Group Medium (M) (ESR 21-60 mm), and Group High (H) (ESR ≥ 61 mm). Method agreement was assessed by Bland-Altman analysis and Passing-Bablok regression.ResultsAnalyser iSED has shown better comparability with Westergren method (bias 0.0 (95%Cl -1.4 to 1.5) range than Roller 20 PN (bias = - 6.4 (95%Cl - 7.1 to -5.7) in the whole measuring. For Roller 20 PN, Passing-Bablok regression has shown constant and proportional difference for Groups L and M, and for iSED only for Group H. Roller 20 PN had lower sensitivity (0.51 (95%Cl: 0.45-0.57) than iSED (0.72 (95%Cl: 0.59-0.80) while they had comparable specificity (> 0.90) and accuracy (≥ 0.80) in comparison with the Westergren method.ConclusionBoth analysers are not comparable with the Westergren method and should not be used interchangeably.     

An analysis of question asking on scientific texts explaining natural phenomena

This article relays results of a study focused on questions invoked to correct declarative knowledge deficits while readers process science texts explaining natural phenomena. Firstly, the authors focused on finding out what kind of questions are asked by students who read these texts and, secondly how task demand influences quantity and quality of formulated questions. Two hundred and eighty nine Portuguese students from 8th, 10th, and 12th grade participated in the study. The students were instructed to ask questions on two short science paragraphs that explained natural phenomena. Three task conditions were chosen. Thus, in the “Class” condition, the task was introduced as an activity aimed at developing the capacity to ask questions. In the “Examination” condition, the task was presented as a test on question generation. Finally, in the “Extra‐academic” condition the questioning task was camouflaged as a participation in a research project sponsored by the Ministry of Education and geared at the improvement of science textbooks. The results have shown that students are able to ask many questions when given an opportunity to do so. The study has also proven that students are capable of generating a large volume of causal‐antecedent questions relative to this kind of texts. Finally, no clear effects were found between grade level and/or task demand as defined in the conducted study. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 602–614, 2000     

Collaborative processes during report writing of a science learning project: The nature of discourse as a function of task requirements

The aim of this article is to specify how different aspects of task assignments are related to different types of student discourse during the report writing phase of a science learning project. A group of four ninth-grade students of the Finnish comprehensive school (about 15-year-olds) participated in a project work involving laboratory experiments, reading literature, and analysing and reporting research findings. The empirical data were collected through videotaping and interviews in authentic classroom settings. The results indicated that construction of shared, high-level understanding was quite rare in this case of small group interaction. As one of the main reasons for this, we suggest that the learning tasks were defined in a way that did not encourage shared reflection and high-level discourse. The students’ task was mostly to answer fact-seeking questions made by their teacher to guide the report writing, which promoted recollection rather than reasoning. In order to facilitate high-level discourse and learning, more attention should be paid to the kind of processes that task assignment triggers. The findings are discussed in the framework of how teachers could formulate their task assignments to promote high-level discourse.     

Associations Among Teacher–Child Interactions,Teacher Curriculum Emphases,and Reading Skills in Grade 1

Research Findings: The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which the quality of teacher–child interactions and teachers’ self-reported curriculum emphases are related to children’s reading skill development during their 1st school year. To accomplish this, we assessed the reading skills of 1,029 Finnish children (M age = 85.77 months) twice during Grade 1, and the children’s teachers (n = 91) completed questionnaires concerning their literacy-related curriculum emphases. In addition, teacher–child interactions in terms of emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support were observed in 29 classrooms. The results of multilevel modeling showed that a high global quality of teacher–child interactions was positively associated with improved children’s reading skills at the end of Grade 1. In addition, a teacher emphasis on comprehension and production skills was related to better reading skills via teacher–child interactions. Domain-specific analyses revealed that emotional support and classroom organization in particular were related to better reading skills. Practice or Policy: The present study adds to previous research by showing that children had better reading skills at the end of their 1st school year in classrooms in which the teachers were warm, responsive, and sensitive to children’s needs and provided well-planned activities, clear rules, and expectations for behavior.     

Cumulative Risk,the Mother–Child Relationship,and Social-Emotional Competence in Latino Head Start Children

Research Findings: Supportive mother–child interactions promote the development of social-emotional competence. Poverty and other associated psychosocial risk factors have a negative impact on mother–child interaction. In spite of Latino children being disproportionately represented among children living in poverty, research on mother–child interactions among economically disadvantaged Latino families remains scarce and results are mixed. The current study used an ecological approach to examine the relationship between maternal cumulative risk, child developmental delay, observed and self-reported quality of the mother–child relationship, time spent in Head Start, and teachers’ and parents’ ratings of social-emotional competence among 106 Latino Head Start children and their mothers. Cumulative risk showed a negative association with observed maternal supportiveness and self-reported quality of the mother–child relationship. Cumulative risk had negative and positive indirect effects, respectively, on child social competence and problem behavior through perceived quality of the mother–child relationship. This association only occurred when parent ratings of child behavior were used. Time spent in Head Start moderated the association between observed maternal supportiveness and social competence. Practice or Policy: Implications for providers and researchers attempting to improve social-emotional competence in disadvantaged Latino children by enhancing positive and supportive parenting practice are discussed.     

The Role of Content Knowledge and Problem Features on Preservice Teachers’ Appraisal of Elementary Mathematics Tasks

The objective of this study was to examine the nature of preservice teachers’ evaluations of elementary mathematics problems using the Mathematical Tasks Framework (MTF), a model designed to discriminate among tasks according to their cognitive complexity. We also tested the relationship between mathematics content knowledge and problem length on the preservice teachers’ evaluations. Twenty-six undergraduate students enrolled in an elementary mathematics methods course at a large urban university were introduced to the MTF and cognitive complexity during a class lecture and were subsequently required to sort 32 mathematics problems according to the framework. Results demonstrated that overall, the preservice teachers had more difficulty accurately classifying problems considered to represent high levels of cognitive complexity compared to problems that were less complex. Those with strong mathematics content knowledge, as measured by a standardized test, were able to sort the problems more accurately than those with weaker content knowledge. Two open-ended items assessing content knowledge were not related to sorting performance. Finally, the preservice teachers were influenced by the surface characteristic of task length; the data indicated that the teachers tended to label short problems as less cognitively demanding and long problems as more so. Implications for preservice professional development include an increased emphasis on mathematics content knowledge as well as expert modeling of the identification of deep conceptual principles at the heart of the mathematics curriculum.