Supporting Programming and Learning-to-Program with an Integrated CAD and Scaffolding Workbench*

Programming is a complex cognitive task for students, because of the difficulty of finding the appropriate elements (the “decomposition” problem) and integrating them correctly into a whole (the “composition” problem). Programming is also hard to learn, because so much of the thinking behind a program is implicit and the process of programming is long and complicated. Our approach is to integrate a computer-aided design tool (CAD) with scaffolding to create a single, cohesive, and coherent workbench for the entire process. Our workbench is called the GPCeditor. We have evaluated its use by high-school students. Our results suggest that students program well in the GPCeditor, they learn good programming practices, and that the learning is occurring through use of the GPCeditor.     

Teaching Teleapprenticeships: Electronic Network-Based Educational Frameworks for Improving Teacher Education

New technologies can be used to create new educational frameworks for learning that go beyond the standard schooling paradigm. This paper describes research and development efforts to investigate “teleapprenticeships,” interaction frameworks that support learning in the context of remote practice. The studies summarized here have focused on teleapprenticeships embedded in teacher education, exploring a range of different “teaching teleapprenticeships,” in which education students at a wide range of levels have learned to become teachers within the context of teaching practice. Five kinds of teaching teleapprenticeships were studied: question answering and asking, collaborations, student publishing, web-weaving, and project generation and coordination. Different implementations of these frameworks are compared and contrasted to uncover important general features of successful network use, including the need for institutional support for new learner and te acher roles.     

Goal orientation towards teaching (GOTT) scale

Goal orientation theory has been widely investigated and found to affect many motivation and behavior variables in relation to student learning and work performance. However, unlike the motivational construct of self-efficacy, researchers have yet to investigate whether this theory can be applied to the field of teaching and contribute to the explanation for trends in instructional behavior and motives. The purpose of the present study was to develop an instrument to begin the exploration of teachers’ goal orientation towards teaching. From a three-phase research design consisting of scale development, score validation, and convergent/discriminant validation, results provided support for the development of, and validity of scores on, a Goal Orientation towards Teaching (GOTT) Scale. Although further validation is needed, future researchers and practitioners can use the GOTT scale to investigate how teachers’ goal orientation towards teaching can impact student learning, teaching effectiveness, pedagogical learning, and even professional morale.     

Cultures of (Un)happiness: teaching,schooling, and light and dark humor

The author explores humor during a time of increasingly hostile accountability measures directed toward educators. Drawing on incongruity and other theories of humor, he explores both light and dark humor and some aspects of the educational potential and power of humor. Noting how humor is related to creativity and problem management, the argument is that humor has an important place not only in producing educator well-being but for student learning and school renewal.     

Images as orienting activity: using theory to inform classroom practices

Conceptualizations of teacher knowledge have shifted to focusing on the role of experiential rather than theoretical knowledge. There are different approaches to this, but the idea of an image that guides practice is widespread. One approach to images that has not been frequently investigated in studies of second language teachers is through sociocultural theory, specifically in the contribution of activity theory known as orienting activity. In this view, images mediate teaching actions by linking theoretical knowledge and practical experience. This article will use orienting activity to examine the role that images play in an English as a second language teacher’s personal practical knowledge by drawing on classroom observations, informal discussions, simulated recall interviews and documentary evidence collected over a nine month period. Analysis of the data shows that several key images mediated the teacher’s classroom actions. These emerged in the observations and in the teacher’s commentary on planned and spontaneous, routine and novel and successful and unsuccessful activities. The images appeared to have developed through both tacit knowledge associated with practical experience and theoretical knowledge associated with research and theory. This demonstrates the usefulness of orienting activity as a theoretical framework for exploring classroom practices and teacher development through the links it can make between theory and practice.     

The way of openness: Moral Sphere Theory,education, ethics,and classroom management

Noting the challenges of radical pluralism and uncertainty to ethics and education, the author describes, then explores Moral Sphere Theory (MST) developed by the philosopher Robert Kane and in relationship to insights drawn from American pragmatism. The argument is that MST offers fresh ways for thinking about education and the profound obligation of educators to support and sustain worthy forms of life.     

Observer based leader-following consensus of second-order multi-agent systems with nonuniform sampled position data

This paper deals with the leader-following consensus problem of multi-agent systems with the consideration that each agent can only transmit its position state to the neighbors at irregular discrete sampling times. In the proposed algorithm, a continuous-discrete time observer is designed for the continuous estimation of both position and velocity from the discrete position information of the neighbors. These estimated states are then used for designing a continuous control law which solves the leader-following consensus problem. Moreover, the dynamics of the leader is not fixed and can be controlled through an external input. The stability analysis has been carried out by employing the Lyapunov approach which provides sufficient conditions to tune the parameters according to the maximum allowable sampling period. The developed algorithm has been simulated and then tested on an actual multi-robot system consisting of three differential drive wheeled robots. Both simulation and hardware results validate the effectiveness of the control algorithm.     

Search tactics used in solving everyday how-to technical tasks: Repertoire,selection and tenacity

With greater access to computational resources, people use search to address many everyday challenges in their lives, including solving technology problems. Although there are now many useful ‘how-to’ resources online (especially videos on YouTube), it can still be difficult to identify, understand, and resolve certain kinds of technical problem. While research tasks have been studied for many years and we know the tactics people use, we know far less about searchers’ tactics for how-to technical tasks that involve actually being able to apply found information to resolve a problem. Crucial to our study was developing and studying a highly realistic, how-to technical task, for which there was no single guidance resource: making a phone safe for a child. After providing 39 participants with an actual phone to fix, and a search engine to perform the task, we analysed their search tactics using retrospective cued think aloud interviews. Our primary contribution is a set of 77 tactics used, in three categories, along with detail of how common they were. We conclude that people had a lot of tactics in their repertoire. Although it was not hard for participants to find relevant information, what was hard was for participants to find information they could use; indeed only 23% of participants successfully completed the entire task. Domain knowledge affected the choice of tactics used (although not necessarily towards better task success). We discuss these influences and make design recommendations for how future search systems can support those in resolving how-to technical tasks.     

Preservice teachers perspectives and experiences teaching personal and social responsibility

ABSTRACT

Background: Pedagogical models have become an established component of physical education over the past several decades. One such model, the Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility model, has gained momentum in practice and research, though little is known regarding its use in preservice teacher training. The model follows a flexible format focused on teaching life skills (e.g. leadership) that can be applied in all lived ecologies. Occupational socialization theory provides insight into the pretraining and teacher education experiences of preservice teachers that shape their understanding and practice of physical education and associated pedagogical models.

Aims: The purpose of this study was to understand the influence of a sequence of methods courses and early field experiences on U.S. preservice teachers’ understanding and implementation of the teaching personal and social responsibility model with youth from a community affected by poverty.

Method: This study took on a phenomenological and social constructivist approach. Ten preservice teachers (9 males, 1 female) took part in the study. The participants were an average age of 22.10 years old (SD?=?4.38) and seven identified as White and three as Black. Each participant was enrolled in methods and early field experience coursework that provided scaffolded training in primary education in a community affected by poverty. Preservice teachers team-taught groups of 10–15 children twice a week along with one day committed to on-campus reflection. Data collection included autobiographical essays, critical incident reports, reflective journals, non-participatory observations and field notes, and semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed deductively through the lens of occupational socialization theory, and inductively as theory divergent trends were sought. Open and axial coding was completed with member checking throughout, resulting in a final set of themes and subthemes.

Findings: The preservice teachers initially struggled to connect with their students due to conflicting backgrounds, but the teaching personal and social responsibility model guided the relationship-building process. As the model was continuously utilized, more empathy and care were shown towards the children. Preservice teachers felt there was a lack of progression in positive behaviors but were able to empower youth and felt that the model was culturally relevant. Overtime, the students began to appreciate the affective domain despite the challenge of working in a community affected by poverty through frustration towards the larger system limiting any potential progress was present.

Conclusions: Subjective theories transitioned to include relationship building and life skills learning, likely because of the extended field experience and faculty support. The preservice teachers desire to connect with and teach the students well displays the connection between models-based practice and positive relationships. Preservice teachers’ knowledge of their students was limited as it was based on secondhand knowledge of youth, teacher educators, and school staff. Evidence indicates some cultural responsiveness development though there were also elements of a deficit model due to white privilege and class differences. Further work explicitly integrating a culturally relevant approach and social justice in teacher education programming should occur.