Attempting to document teachers' professional knowledge

This paper explores ways of uncovering and documenting teachers' professional knowledge. Through a research project that has worked with a number of teachers over an extensive period of time, serious attempts have been made to make the (often) tacit nature of teachers' knowledge more explicit in ways that might begin to address the question of what a knowledge base in teaching might look like. The paper examines methodological issues that have guided this research and illustrates how the knowledge of teachers can be articulated in ways that might help to clarify particular features of practice. An important aspect of the research reported in this paper is the need to have a language of teaching that is common to participants. Therefore, the research reported in this paper offers one way of considering this issue and offers a methodology for exploration and further development whilst simultaneously highlighting some aspects of the problematic nature of developing such a methodology.     

Illustrating the lecture: Prepared diagrams vs. built-up diagrams

Conclusions The opinions of senior students largely confirmed the earlier speculative analysis. The sequential build-up of diagrams simplified the task of copying and, since oral and visual exposition were synchronized, led to better understanding. But the greatest advantage was that it gave the class enough time to take notes. When prepared transparencies are used, the lecturer seems irresistibly tempted to hurry on at too great a pace. All teachers subjectively exaggerate the length of an unfilled time interval in which they have nothing to do; they become impatient and allow insufficient time for the slower members of a class to complete tasks. Therefore, if lecturers believe that visually presented materials should be recorded, then they should either build up the materials as they go or discipline themselves to wait until the class has had reasonable time to record them.     

eJournals Delivery Service: an email to Internet experiment

The eJournals Delivery Service (eJDS) allows scientists based in institutions in developing countries with slow access to the Internet due to very low bandwith or extreme economic problems, to retrieve online articles from well-known journals, using offline browsing with email. This pioneering experiment, run by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in collaboration with Academic Press, American Physical Society, and World Scientific, started in Jan. 2002.