‘Educating rita’: Is an academic science course for prospective infant and primary teachers appropriate

Conclusion Our decision to choose the Open University S101 Science: A Foundation Course represents a direct attempt on our part to provide a background in science for our prospective infant and primary teachers. Our objective that this course achieve parity with first year Faculty of Science courses may appear to be an unattainable goal, given the methodological problems that have to be faced for such a general purpose course. It would certainly not be feasible for a lecture staff of four persons were it not for the printed readers, texts, assignments, examinations, and audio-visual software purchased, with approval, from the Open University in the United Kingdom. Our pilot study in 1983 gave us some encouragement and, most interestingly, 10 out of the 17 students continued with Science study into Year 2 in 1984, thus committing them to the major study in science in Years 3 and 4. Given that three students failed, 10 out of 14 is a far higher retention rate than anything we have experienced previously. Clearly, the evaluation of our efforts to influence the teaching of science in Tasmanian primary schools must wait, but these evaluative studies should make a contribution to the research data on curriculum issues in Australia. This course could play an important in-service function for present primary teachers. We are hopeful that such a content-based approach to science teacher education may help to convince teachers to take the extensive range of available curriculum materials seriously.     

对“关爱”意义的探究

教育者们面临着挑战:丰富一种教学的道德词汇内涵,使它敏感于活生生的、经验过的教学关系。本文通过对“关爱”意义的简略探究,给出了一个现象学困惑,它涉及到专业的“关爱”概念和日常“关爱”体验之间的关系。专业的“关爱”概念常常忽略其敏感而微妙之处,但对许多父母和教师而言,“关爱”被体验为忧虑和责任,而这种忧虑常会由于自身的幸福感受被忽略。面对这一困惑,作者围绕“当道德语言变成专业的理论词汇、意义变得模糊或被消解之后会发生什么”的问题展开讨论。     

Automated SKOS Vocabulary Design for the Biopharmaceutical Industry

Ensuring quick and consistent access to large collections of unstructured documents is one of the biggest challenges facing knowledge-intensive organizations. Designing specific vocabularies to index and retrieve documents is often deemed too expensive, full-text search being preferred despite its known limitations. However, the process of creating controlled vocabularies can be partly automated thanks to natural language processing and machine learning techniques. With a case study from the biopharmaceutical industry, we demonstrate how small organizations can use an automated workflow in order to create a controlled vocabulary to index unstructured documents in a semantically meaningful way.     

Connecting Soccer to Middle School Science: Latino Students’ Passion in Learning

Building on a pedagogical model designed to support the teaching and learning of the language of science investigation practices with middle school emergent bilingual learners, we developed a series of soccer and science investigations to promote interest and engagement in science learning. We used assemblage theory to study how students engaged in and acted within this bilingual curriculum situated in an afterschool soccer practice context. We found that soccer, a passion for several Latino students, can be used as a cultural tool for science teachers to support the emerging bilingual students’ learning process. Implications for educators and researchers considering ways of integrating diverse students’ cultural practices and passions with culturally sustaining pedagogies for science teaching and learning are discussed.     

Factors influencing teacher appropriation of professional learning focused on the use of technology in science classrooms

Understanding factors that impact teacher implementation of learning from professional development is critical in order to maximize the educational and financial investment in teacher professional learning. This multi-case qualitative investigation elucidates factors that influence the appropriation of instructional tools associated with professional development focused on technology within science classrooms using activity theory as a theoretical framework. This framework has the capacity to account for multiple elements in professional learning. Implementation variability associated with professional development adoption drives this inquiry to search for better understandings of the appropriation of pedagogical practices. Purposeful sampling was used to identify four participants from a group of science teachers engaged in professional development designed to investigate how cyber-enabled technologies might enhance instruction and learning in eighth-grade science classrooms. The data from this investigation add to the literature of appropriation of instructional practices by connecting the conceptual and practical dispositions of teachers with an appropriation hierarchy.     

教育敏感性和教师行动中的实践性知识

在日常的课堂生活中,教师每一刻所做的、所说的,甚至什么都不做,都具有教育实践意义。无论教育目标或目的是什么,也不管教学中使用何种方法和手段,它们对教和学都有教育价值,都会产生教育效果。这些都是教师在和学生的交往活动中所体现出来的实践性知识,本文就是探究教师这种实践性知识的本质和意义。教师行动中的实践性知识需要教育敏感性,也可以说需要教育关切和机智,或身体化的、直觉的理解。     

A meta-analysis on the influence of gamification in formal educational settings on affective and behavioral outcomes

Educational technology research and development - The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of gamification used in formal educational settings on student affective and behavioral...     

关系性思维中的一些重要关联——对中国和澳大利亚6～7年级学生进行的调查研究

近年来,关系性思维(relational thinking)的研究成为数学教育领域的一个热点问题.这一领域研究的主要目的之一就是促进学生从算术学习向代数学习的顺利过渡.利用带有一个未知数字和两个未知数字的数式,来探索学生在数式中运用关系性思维的能力与处理含有字母的式子的能力之间的重要关联.重点讨论学生对含有两个未知数字的数式和含有字母式子的不同类型的回答,以及学生在含有两个未知数字数式上的表现是如何影响他们在含有字母的式子上的表现.     

Comportements et attentes de formation continue chez les enseignants du secondaire

How do teachers in the second cycle regard in‐service training and what are their expectations? This article proposes to describe their attitudes on the basis of a postal survey carried out among a representative sample of teachers in lower and upper secondary schools and LEP (upper‐secondary vocational schools) in France. The survey brought in 2106 usable replies, of which a representative group of 988 replies have been analysed.

First it was noted that three‐quarters of the teachers had in the past had some in‐service training. It consisted of self‐training, done especially by reading and fairly short courses, bearing essentially on knowledge of the main subject and on the methods and techniques of teaching.

More than two‐thirds of the sample knew about academic plans of training, though in most Académies it was the first year of their existence. Half of them enrolled for at least one of the proposed courses and 60% of these candidates were accepted.

After multidimensional analysis of the expectations of contents, five concepts of training can be identified:

1. a traditional concept of didactic training, centred on the contents and methods of teaching, is widely shared by all the teachers;

2. a concept based on the ‘modern’ contribution of didactics, the pupil‐teacher relation and collaboration inside the institution;

3. a concept centred on pupils’ knowledge, external collaboration and innovation, (like the preceding one, this concept is shared above all by women, the young, vocational and general subjects teachers in the LEP);

4. a concept centred on interests not directly linked to classroom activities but related to teaching. It is especially held by vocational teachers in the LEP.

5. a concept centred on personal interests not directly linked to the teaching profession, especially held by men, the young, LEP teachers, auxiliary teachers and LEP teachers in technological teaching.

Teachers in the classical and modern upper secondary level and even more so the agrégé teachers are the ones who share the least in these concepts, except for the first one.