Professional Development of Teacher Trainers: a case study

This paper reviews the literature on teacher trainers with special reference to current initiatives in Spain, and provides a case study of the design, delivery and follow‐up to a course for teacher trainers of English language teaching and the pedagogy of language. The course was designed to promote the concept of teachers as reflective practitioners.     

The Development of Implicit Memory From Infancy to Childhood: On Average Performance Levels and Interindividual Differences

The present multimethod longitudinal study aimed at investigating development and stability of implicit memory during infancy and early childhood. A total of 134 children were followed longitudinally from 3 months to 3 years of life assessing different age‐appropriate measures of implicit memory. Results from structural equation modeling give further evidence that implicit memory is stable from 9 months of life on, with earlier performance predicting later performance. Second, it was found that implicit memory is present from early on, and no age‐related improvements are found from 3 months on. Results are discussed with respect to the basic brain structures implicit memory builds on, as well as methodological issues.     

A Critique of the external product evaluation of the brazilian system of undergraduate education

International Review of Education -     

The role of non-formal contexts in teacher education for STEM: the case of horno3 science and technology interactive centre

Abstract

Teacher education can benefit directly from experiences in non-formal settings. This article presents a research study with elementary teachers who were teaching in public schools in the state of Nuevo León, México, and participated in a STEM Continuous Professional Development (CPD) workshop. The workshop provided a platform for teachers to interact with scientists and disseminators of science, allowing the appropriation of scientific knowledge applied to everyday activities and settings. Participants improved the quality of their teaching practices in classrooms and gained a new understanding of STEM subjects, enabling them to promote inspiring learning experiences with their students, where dialogue, experimentation and elucidation became an important part of their lessons. The study was carried out using ethnographic tools for analysing recorded videos, 15 sets of field notes, and 49 questionnaires. The sequential analysis of talk and gestures in their participation in the CPD workshop demonstrated high levels of involvement, creativity, and collaborative solution of STEM problems.     

Teaching Science Through Pictorial Models During Read-Alouds

This study examines how three elementary teachers refer to pictorial models (photographs, drawings, and cartoons) during science read-alouds. While one teacher used realistic photographs for the purpose of visually verifying facts about crystals, another employed analytical diagrams as heuristic tools to help students visualize complex target systems (rainbow formation and human eye functioning). Another teacher used fictional cartoons to engage students in analogical storytelling, communicating animal camouflage as analogous to human “blending in.” However, teachers did not always explicitly convey the representational nature of pictorial models (analog and target as separate entities). It is argued that teachers need to become more aware of how they refer to pictorial models in children’s science books and how to promote student visual literacy.     

Best Practice in Middle-School Science

Using socio-ecological theory, this study explores best practice (educational practices correlated with higher student performance) in middle-school science. Seven schools with consistently higher student performance were compared with three demographically similar, average-performing schools. Best practice included instructional approaches (relevance and engagement, inquiry, differentiated instruction, collaborative work, moderate amounts of homework, and integration of language literacy and science) and administrative practices (nurturing a climate of opportunity to succeed in science, offering professional development based on data and dialogue, engaging teachers in standards-based curriculum revision and alignment, and recruiting the right fit of teacher). It is argued that best practice entails multiple levels of teaching and administrative praxis that together form a school-wide socio-ecological system conducive to higher performance.     

Assessment of collaborative learning experiences by graphical analysis of wiki contributions

The widespread adoption of computers and Internet in our life has reached the classrooms, where computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) based on wikis offers new ways of collaboration and encourages student participation. When the number of contributions from students increases, traditional assessment procedures of e-learning settings suffer from scalability problems. In a wiki-based learning experience, automatic tools are required to support the assessment of such huge amounts of data. In this work, we present StatMediaWiki, a tool that collects and aggregates information that helps to analyze a MediaWiki installation. It generates charts, tables and different statistics enabling easy analysis of wiki evolution. We have used StatMediaWiki in a Higher Education course and present the results obtained in this case study.     

Moving beyond the minimum: socially just pedagogies and Asperger’s syndrome in UK higher education

A year‐long longitudinal study was conducted to gain insight into the lives of eight students who had a label of Asperger’s syndrome during their transitions into higher education in the UK. Reflecting on life history data, the findings suggest that universities might actually be maintaining and (re)producing barriers that perpetuate the exclusion and ghettoisation of disabled people. The analysis goes beyond an acknowledgement of institutional disabling practices to pinpoint the subtle impacts of issues of pedagogy, learning, teaching, and assessment. It is argued, therefore, that inclusive education needs to engage more directly with the specific issues faced by learners with the label of Asperger’s syndrome. However, rather than viewing this as an issue of special education for distinctly impaired learners, Asperger’s syndrome must be understood with reference to wider questions of how higher educators respond to diversity and difference.     

Library Website Management and Maintenance: A Study of the Uk 1994 Group

The Academic Library website is a key access point for information and services. This paper reports on a study of the 1994 Group Library web presence, with a view to establishing their practices in terms of site management and maintenance. It provides evidence of the commitment this Group makes towards ensuring their sites meet the needs of their users. The study encompassed a survey to gather data on current management and maintenance practices, and direct observation of the home pages of these Libraries to establish layout conventions and details of changes made over time. The influence of University policy in respect of the look-and-feel of the Library website and decision making around it are revealed. The implementation of new social technologies across this Group also became evident. We also show that a number of Libraries in the Group are not currently evaluating the use of their site, and that changes to some home pages were seldom made during the study period. Due to the limitations inherent in focusing on a limited number of Library websites, a larger sample size would make the findings of this research more applicable to a wider range of University Libraries.