Special Issue

Teacher education, the process of becoming a teacher and aiding others to become teachers, is in part a journey of imaginative development. Students come to imagine teaching, and themselves as teachers, in new ways. This essay reports on an attempt to use ideas about imagination in teaching and learning as the central theme of the first semester of a one‐year teacher education program in British Columbia, Canada. Following a discussion of the theoretical and practical challenges encountered, several possible means of extending this approach are proposed. It is argued that a program thus infused by imagination may be more likely to lead to authentic professional transformation of the kind often posited as a goal of teacher education.     

An Electronic Lifeline: Information and communication technologies in a teacher education internship

Practicum experiences in preservice teacher education are often characterised by disconnection. Preservice teachers are typically disconnected from university faculty and from their peers. Traditionally, university-based supervisors work to bridge the school and university contexts of preservice teacher education and facilitate learning to teach by visiting preservice teachers in their schools. This situation places high importance on the value of face-to-face interaction. The research reported in this paper explores the possibilities of utilising information and communication technologies (ICT) in the practicum component of preservice teacher education. It investigated the use of electronic discussion groups by preservice teachers and university lecturers while the preservice teachers were completing an internship towards the end of their teacher preparation programme. The paper discusses the benefits and challenges as reported by the participants in interviews, draws on the actual text of the electronic communication, analyses the findings, and draws implications for all participants in the preservice teacher education practicum. The study highlights the potential of ICT in providing new learning spaces that enable personal and professional networking and support, and points to reconceptualised notions of university supervision focussing on facilitating learning to teach and promoting reflective practice within the context of a professional learning community rather than as 'check-up' trips to schools.     

Adding interactive graphic organizers to a whole-class slideshow lesson

This study examines the effects of including interactive graphic organizers into a whole-class PowerPoint lesson as an instructional approach intended to improve student engagement and generative learning in schools. A software application was developed and integrated into PowerPoint that makes it possible for the instructor to fill in empty graphic organizers during PowerPoint projection mode. The participants were 152 fourth-grade students selected from three schools that were grouped in four classrooms. Each classroom was divided in two groups—graphic organizer and content-based. The graphic organizer group was taught using an 11-slide PowerPoint presentation on a social study topic that included two empty graphic organizers plus two additional slides explaining how to make a comparison. The content-based group was taught using the same presentation but without these additional slides plus a set of questions students had to answer as a class activity. The lessons were recorded and the verbal statements between instructor and students examined using the Flanders Interaction Analysis System. Results indicated significant differences in how instructors and students interacted in each group, including more questions asked by teachers (d?=?1.99) and more students participating in the classroom discussion in the graphic organizer group (d?=?1.76). Learning outcomes showed that the graphic organizer group outperformed the content-based group on a memory test (d?=?.45) and a comprehension test (d?=?.44). These results encourage the use of graphic organizers as an instructional approach, and are consistent with a generative theory of learning.     

Professional standards for teachers: a case study of professional learning

This paper analyses the current Australian policy and research context in relation to developing quality teachers. Like other countries, many educational authorities in Australia are developing professional standards for teachers and the evaluation of teachers against those standards as a mechanism for ensuring and extending the quality of teaching in schools. A key policy consideration involves the use of professional standards as tools for extending professional learning and/or for credentialing and appraisal. This paper considers these uses of standards by drawing on an evaluation of Education Queensland's Professional Standards for Teachers pilot. The pilot focused on using a set of standards as a framework for professional learning. Teachers' perspectives on the standards and their intended use, their engagement with the standards during the pilot and the nature of professional learning associated with that engagement are discussed in light of current policy debates about professional standards.     

Learning strategies for making sense out of expository text: The SOI model for guiding three cognitive processes in knowledge construction

This article examines learning strategies that promote meaningful learning from expository text as evidenced by problem-solving transfer. The teaching of learning strategies involves decisions concerning what to teach, how to teach, where to teach, and when to teach. The teaching of learning strategies also depends on the teacher's conception of learners as response strengtheners, information processors, or sense makers. Three cognitive processes involved in meaningful learning are selecting relevant information from what is presented, organizing selected information into a coherent representation, and integrating presented information with existing knowledge. Finally, exemplary programs for teaching of learning strategies are presented. The most effective method for teaching students how to make sense out of expository text is for students to participate in selecting, organizing, and integrating information within the context of authentic academic tasks.     

Animation as an Aid to Multimedia Learning

How can animation be used to promote learner understanding of scientific and mathematical explanations? In this review, we examine the role of animation in multimedia learning (including multimedia instructional messages and microworld games), present a cognitive theory of multimedia learning, and summarize our program of research, which has yielded seven principles for the use of animation in multimedia instruction. These include the multimedia principle (present animation and narration rather than narration alone), spatial contiguity principle (present on-screen text near rather than far from corresponding animation), temporal contiguity principle (present corresponding animation and narration simultaneously rather than successively), coherence principle (exclude extraneous words, sounds, and video), modality principle (present animation and narration rather than animation and on-screen text), redundancy principle (present animation and narration rather than animation, narration, and on-screen text), and personalization principle (present words in conversational rather than formal style). Animation can promote learner understanding when used in ways that are consistent with the cognitive theory of multimedia learning.     

A virtual environment for process management. A step by step implementation

In this paper it is presented a virtual organizational environment, conceived with the integration of three computer programs: a manufacturing simulation package, an automation of businesses processes (workflows), and business intelligence (Balanced Scorecard) software. It was created as a supporting tool for teaching IE, its purpose is to give professors and alumni the possibility to practice and apply the concepts and knowledge of IE learned at school since the very beginning of the program. This environment allows perform many business processes functions of management; it is already running in both, Local Area Network and Internet. With this system running in a network, it is emulated the functioning of an organization, in which it is necessary a coordination of multiple actions for making decisions in a collaborative and integrated manner. The work developed in this virtual atmosphere permits the participants to face non structured problems, and also it is possible to develop their own skills and aptitudes for being a good professional. The Virtual Enterprise is managed by a Management Committee, formed by high level alumni and invited professors; they have the responsibility of achieving the productivity levels necessary to its own economic profit. The Intermediate courses alumni are in charge of the resources evaluation utilization. The lowest level alumni are in charge of Data Acquisition and feeding the Data Base. The Virtual Enterprise compromises the Industrial Engineering School as a whole, and all the students feel their belonging since the first courses, it motivates them to search for the knowledge and desire to be an Industrial Engineer.