Teaching with new technology: four ‘early majority’ teachers

This paper explores how four good teachers, who do not have a special interest in technology, meet the challenge of introducing the rapidly developing mathematics analysis software (e.g. spreadsheets, function graphers, symbolic algebra manipulation and dynamic geometry) into their classrooms. These teachers’ practice is viewed through the lens of Roger’s framework for the diffusion of innovation and Pierce and Stacey’s pedagogical opportunities map. Data on teachers, views and practices were collected over 2 years. ‘Pedagogical Maps’ give a picture of the teachers’ perception and uptake of pedagogical opportunities. New practices have been added slowly to each teacher’s repertoire and their increasing fluency in practical ability to teach with the technology resulted in some changes to the classroom didactic contract. Overall, new technology seemed to have been absorbed into current practice, more than changing practice. At this stage of their development, these teachers do not identify the distinctive new mathematical capabilities as contributing to the major relative advantage of the innovation. Instead, they see the relative advantage mostly in the incremental improvements to capabilities of earlier calculators, and meeting the need for students to be up to date. One of the current challenges is that significant changes in both software and hardware design have been happening so rapidly that these early majority teachers felt almost constantly hampered by the need to learn and teach new technical skills and so continue to make limited progress in taking advantage of opportunities to approach mathematics concepts in new ways.     

Impact of a physical education-based behavioural skill training program on cognitive antecedents and exercise and sport behaviour among adolescents: a cluster-randomized controlled trial

ABSTRACT

Background: School-based physical education has been associated with a multitude of potential learning outcomes. Representatives of a public health perspective suggest that promoting physical activity in and outside the context of school is an important endeavour. While the importance of behavioural skill training to improve (motor) learning is well documented in both general and physical education, the promotion of behavioural skills to foster physically active lifestyles constitutes a rather neglected area in physical education research.

Purpose: To examine whether a standardized physical education-based behavioural skill training program has the potential to positively impact on adolescents’ self-reported exercise and sport participation, as well as cognitive antecedents involved in the regulation of exercise and sport behaviour.

Research design: Cluster-randomized controlled trial.

Methods: A sample of 143 secondary school students (50% girls, aged 14–18 years) attending academic high schools in German-speaking Switzerland were assigned class-wise to the intervention (behavioural skill training) and control condition (conventional physical education lessons). Data were assessed prior and after completion of the 7-week intervention program, which was composed of four 20-min lessons and two reflection phases. Exercise and sport behaviour and cognitive antecedents (exercise/sport intention, motivation, implementation intentions, coping planning, self-efficacy) were assessed via self-reports. A multilevel mixed effects linear regression procedure was used to test the main hypotheses. The regression analyses were adjusted for clustering of school classes, and controlled for baseline levels of the outcome measure and potential confounders.

Results: Compared to a control condition, the intervention program resulted in significant improvements with regard to introjected motivation (p?<?.05), coping planning (p?<?.001) and self-efficacy (p?<?.01). The intervention also had a positive impact on adolescents’ self-reported sport/exercise behaviour (p?<?.001). Improvements in exercise/sport intention (p?<?.05), coping planning (p?<?.01), and self-efficacy (p?<?.01) were associated with increased levels of self-reported exercise/sport participation.

Conclusion: Behavioural skill training as part of compulsory physical education has the potential to improve cognitive antecedents of exercise and sport behaviour and to foster adolescents’ exercise and sport participation. Enhancing behavioural skills might be one way in which school physical education can contribute to the creation of more physically active lifestyles among adolescents.     

Elaborating on elaborations: role of maternal reminiscing style in cognitive and socioemotional development

Initial research on maternal reminiscing style established clear and consistent individual differences that vary along a dimension of maternal elaboration and that are related to children's developing autobiographical skills. More recent research has linked maternal elaborative reminiscing to strategic memory development, language and literacy skills, developing attachment relationships, and understanding of self, other, and mind. In this review, this research is placed in theoretical context by arguing for the critical role of reminiscing in developmental process and outcome.     

Challenges for teacher education: the mismatch between beliefs and practice in remote Indigenous contexts

The poor performance of Australian Indigenous students in mathematics is a complex and enduring issue that needs a range of strategies to enable success in schooling for these students. Importantly, large numbers of teachers in remote Indigenous contexts are new graduates who, although full of enthusiasm, lack experience. Similarly, many of them are unfamiliar with the demands and nuances of teaching in remote and/or Indigenous contexts. This paper explores the nexus between the beliefs and practices of teachers working in a remote, Indigenous region of Australia. In particular, it proposes that the discrepancy between beliefs and practices found in the reconnaissance phase of a design study is due to the teachers realising that they need to implement changed practices to enable students to learn but having little knowledge of what such practices may look like. This finding has implications for pre-service and in-service teacher education.     

What do upper-elementary and middle school teachers know about the processes of text comprehension?

Reading and Writing - Teachers’ knowledge of reading comprehension processes is underresearched relative to teachers’ knowledge of word identification and phonological awareness. In...     

Riding the rapids of classroom-based research

Conducting classroom-based research can be difficult, often fraught with challenges, analogous to riding a canoe down the rapids. The dynamics of classroom-based research often require flexibility on the parts of both the researcher and school personnel. Classroom-based research is viewed here through a framework of problem-based methodology as developed by Robinson and adapted to real-world research in the classroom. A simple and adaptable model of the nature of schools as organisations is discussed, and problem-based methodology is used to explore how such complex and dynamic institutions maintain the ability to function effectively. Problem-based methodology is then applied to the development of a theoretical framework to clarify the processes of recruiting participant schools and of conducting the research. The framework is operationalised through a brief account of one researcher’s experiences.     

The effect of plot explicit,educational explicit,and implicit inference information and coviewing on children's internal and external cognitive processing

Parental coviewing – the act of being present when a child is watching television – can influence the child’s cognitive processing and emotional reactions. This study investigated the role coviewing has on the child’s cognitive processing – which is evidenced by the phasic psychophysiological orienting response to three types of information: plot explicit, educational explicit, and implicit inference. An experiment was conducted that measured the heart rate of children (N?=?88; mean age?=?9.12 years) while watching messages either with or without a parent present in the room. It was predicted, and found, that coviewing leads to greater resource allocation to encoding the message – as indicated by phasic cardiac deceleration, and that information that required internal processing, such as plot explicit or implicit inferential content, leads to greater resources allocated to internal processing – as indicated by phasic cardiac acceleration. Implications for parental mediation strategies and educational television programming are given.     

Assessment of Genetics Understanding

Understanding how situational features of assessment tasks impact reasoning is important for many educational pursuits, notably the selection of curricular examples to illustrate phenomena, the design of formative and summative assessment items, and determination of whether instruction has fostered the development of abstract schemas divorced from particular instances. The goal of our study was to employ an experimental research design to quantify the degree to which situational features impact inferences about participants’ understanding of Mendelian genetics. Two participant samples from different educational levels and cultural backgrounds (high school, n = 480; university, n = 444; Germany and USA) were used to test for context effects. A multi-matrix test design was employed, and item packets differing in situational features (e.g., plant, animal, human, fictitious) were randomly distributed to participants in the two samples. Rasch analyses of participant scores from both samples produced good item fit, person reliability, and item reliability and indicated that the university sample displayed stronger performance on the items compared to the high school sample. We found, surprisingly, that in both samples, no significant differences in performance occurred among the animal, plant, and human item contexts, or between the fictitious and “real” item contexts. In the university sample, we were also able to test for differences in performance between genders, among ethnic groups, and by prior biology coursework. None of these factors had a meaningful impact upon performance or context effects. Thus some, but not all, types of genetics problem solving or item formats are impacted by situational features.