Boundary Crossing and the Professional Learning of Teacher Educators in New International Contexts

In this collaborative self-study, two teacher educators examine their experiences of working in new international contexts and the impact of those experiences on their professional learning and identities. Mandi moved from a major research university in one country to another, while Judy co-led a group of pre-service teachers on an international practicum for three weeks each year for three years. Using the concept of boundary crossing as a theoretical and analytical framework, each teacher educator identified a boundary-related critical incident or experience that occurred during her work in new international contexts. Through individual and collaborative analysis of their critical incidents, they found that working as a teacher educator in new international contexts involves the crossing and re-crossing of multiple personal, professional, linguistic and cultural boundaries. Working in these boundary spaces involved learning how to negotiate new kinds of relationships with colleagues and students, manage changed roles and responsibilities and, ultimately, a search for a renewed sense of self, as each sought to understand herself differently within a new professional context.     

Young children's learning and transfer of biological information from picture books to real animals

Preschool children (N = 104) read a book that described and illustrated color camouflage in animals (frogs and lizards). Children were then asked to indicate and explain which of 2 novel animals would be more likely to fall prey to a predatory bird. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-olds were tested with pictures depicting animals in camouflage and noncamouflage settings; in Experiment 2, 4-year-olds were tested with real animals. The results show that by 4 years of age, children can learn new biological facts from a picture book. Of particular importance, transfer from books to real animals was found. These findings point to the importance that early book exposure can play in framing and increasing children's knowledge about the world.     

Social interaction,relationships, and the development of causal discourse and conflict management

Links between the development of social understanding and social processes are considered, in the context of data on the development of causal reasoning and argument in conflict, drawn from a longitudinal study of 50 children observed in conversation with their mothers, siblings, and friends at 33 and 47 months of age. Children showed powers of causal reasoning before they were 3 years, capabilities that showed rapid developmental change; their interest in cause was particularly focussed on psychological causality and social action. The contexts of disputes were especially important. Differences were found in children’s arguments with their mothers, siblings, and friends, with more ‘other-oriented’ reasoning shown with friends. It is argued that the data support Vygotskyan ideas on the significance of social interaction in developmental advance, that the pragmatics of what children and their partners are trying to do must be taken into account in considering what children may be learning in interactions, and that ‘social competence’ should not be treated as an individual within-child trait, but that we should move towards a ‘relationships’ approach to the development of social understanding.     

Teachers engaging in action research: challenging some assumptions

A number of recent professional development projects in Australia have expected teachers to engage in action research as a process for professional learning and educational reform. This study investigated the experiences of ten teachers from one school who spent a year undertaking action research projects as part of the Innovative Links Project. The author was a participant observer in the study in her role as the school's ‘academic associate’ for the project. In this article, the project's expectations of the teachers are examined to reveal the extent to which they were based on realistic assumptions about the conditions within which the teachers worked as they tried to achieve them.     

Question Posing, Inquiry, and Modeling Skills of Chemistry Students in the Case-Based Computerized Laboratory Environment

A new learning unit in chemistry, Case-based Computerized Laboratories (CCL) and Computerized Molecular Modeling (CMM) was developed at the Technion. The CCL and CMM curriculum integrates computerized desktop experiments and molecular modeling with an emphasis on scientific inquiry and case studies. Our research aimed at investigating the effect of the CCL and CMM learning environment on students’ higher-order thinking skills of question posing, inquiry, and modeling. The experimental group included 614 honors 12th grade chemistry students from high schools in Israel who studied according to this learning unit. The comparison group consisted of 155 12th grade chemistry honors students who studied other chemistry programs. Pre- and post-tests questionnaires were used to assess students’ higher-order thinking skills. Students’ responses were analyzed using content analysis rubrics and their statistical analysis. Our findings indicated that the scores of the experimental group students improved significantly in question posing, inquiry and modeling skills from the pre-test to the post-test. The net gain scores of the experimental group students were significantly higher than those of their comparison peers in all three examined skills. In modeling skills, experimental group students significantly improved their achievements in making the transfer from 3D models to structural formulae, but only about half of them were able to transfer from formulae to 3D models. By presenting a case-based chemistry assessment tool and content analysis of students’ responses in this paper, we enable teachers and educators to analyze their students’ higher-order thinking skills both qualitatively and quantitatively.     

Exemplifying a Continuum of Collaborative Engagement: Raising Literacy Achievement of At-Risk Students in New Zealand

This article reports different ways researchers work with stakeholders in national projects targeted at raising achievement of students. Specifically, New Zealand has a persistent high performance–low equity profile in international tests, with indigenous Māori students and immigrants from the Pacific Islands most at risk of underachievement and of leaving school without qualifications. Policy has aimed to address this issue largely through provision of high-quality professional development to enhance effectiveness of practice. The notion of a continuum of collaboration is proposed; examples are presented that are positioned at different points in terms of the ideal of coconstructed, evidence-based judgments and decisions. The examples represent models or ways of working and the analysis captures both the varied nature of the interface that researchers have with policy makers, ministry officials, deliverers of professional development, and schools, and the affordances and tensions that accompany each model. Student achievement outcomes are identified.