Teaching strategy: reflections on professional practice

This paper explores how strategic management concepts, especially the notion of ‘wicked problems’, can be useful in analysing the professional practice of teachers in higher education. The keeping of a dialogical journal with a colleague helped illuminate that strategic management and education have much in common. Both are situated in unstable, unpredictable environments where contradictory demands and conditions exist. The keeping of the journal points to some of the difficulties in self-reflection illustrating the need for a more refined understanding and definition of reflective practice in education. The paper does not attempt to promote an agenda for efficient teaching, or suggests what teachers should do. However, clearly distinguishing between educational problems and technical or managerial problems will serve the educational interests of teachers, students and institutions.     

EXTENDING SELF‐MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES: THE USE OF A CLASSWIDE APPROACH

Notwithstanding the wealth of research that documents the effectiveness of self‐management programs in the classroom, few investigations have explored classwide use of self‐management procedures as a universal intervention. To extend existing research in this area, we examined the effectiveness of a classwide self‐management intervention for decreasing disruptive behaviors among three at‐risk second‐grade students. We used a multiple baseline across subjects design and evaluated the effects of the self‐management program at both the individual and classwide levels during academic instruction time. Results of the study showed a decrease in disruptive behaviors of the target students and a general decrease in classroom disruptive behavior. In addition, teachers and students provided positive ratings of intervention acceptability and feasibility. Limitations, implications, and future directions for research are discussed.     

What actually works to enhance graduate employability? The relative value of curricular,co-curricular,and extra-curricular learning and paid work

Higher Education - The focus on short-term graduate employment metrics has catalysed the employability agenda as a strategic directive in universities. A raft of embedded, co-curricular, and...     

Enhancing children's thinking skills: an instructional model for decision-making under certainty

Modern society is characterized by rapid change, an overload of information, an interrelation between once distinct fields (science, technology and society) and a growing recognition of the importance of personal and social values. In such a dynamic society the teaching of facts becomes less vital while the teaching of thinking skills turns out to be indispensable. Educators have recognized the need for curricula devoted to thinking skills in general and attempts to attain this goal have already been made. However, almost no attention has been given to teaching children the very important and daily used skill of decision-making under certainty. In the present paper we propose a framework for developing school material which cultivates decision-making skills. This framework is a tripartite model which describes (a) the general strategy an ideal decision maker should adopt, (b) the underlying cognitive skills needed for that strategy and (c) the educational objectives for the promotion of each cognitive skill mentioned.Science in a Technological Society, a curriculum developed in the Israeli Science Teaching Center, Center for Curriculum Research and Development, School of Education, Tel-Aviv University.NoteIsraeli Science Teaching Center, Center for Curriculum Research & Development, School of Education,Tel-Aviv University     

Feedback as a relational concept in the classroom

Abstract

This paper constructs a theoretical argument to frame feedback as a relational concept. It addresses contemporary concern that formative assessment, of which feedback is a part, is under theorised. The arguments presented link to existing theoretical and research evidence. The paper also challenges the dominant policy discourse in high stakes assessment contexts in which feedback is typically seen in technised ways to serve the need to raise measured pupil outcomes. Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development is explored as a relational space in which both teachers and learners understand differences between learning ‘now’ and learning ‘next’. Extending Vygotsky’s perspective, a socio-cultural perspective is offered, by considering the role of ‘others’, ‘language’, ‘activity’ and ‘identity’, as part of the process of sharing and understanding feedback in classrooms. The work of Holland et al. (1998), Bakhtin (1986) are central to the developing argument. The paper reveals feedback as a complex situated process, requiring mediated dynamic interaction, where feedback is appropriated as a cultural artefact by its participants. The implications of such an articulation demands a greater sense of understanding pupils’ roles in feedback and the importance of teachers enabling pupils to see themselves in new ways as future learners.     

China's universities and Western academic models

China's Cultural Revolution began in the universities where Mao was able to gain strong support for his vision of radical societal transformation by a focus on two issues: the need to uproot persisting traditional values and patterns, summed up under the four olds, and a call to shatter the shackles of all foreign dogmas which was clearly directed at prominent Soviet influences in Chinese higher education. This essay briefly summarizes the main characteristics of China's traditional scholarly institutions, then considers the western academic models introduced by foreign missionaries, those selected and implemented by Chinese modernizers and finally the Soviet academic model adopted by Chinese Communist leaders in the fifties. The historical lessons drawn from this overview provide a context for some critical reflection on the ways in which western academic models are once again affecting reforms underway in Chinese higher education since 1978.     

Speaking of books

Clinical Experiences in Teaching for the Student Teacher or Intern. Edgar M. Tanruther. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, Inc., 1967, 297 pp. Paper $4.50.

Education in a Free Society: An American History. S. Alexander Rippa. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1967. 369 pp. $3.75.

Education of the Disadvantaged. A. Harry Passow, Miriam Goldberg, and. Abraham J. Tannenbaum, editors. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1967. 497 pp. $7.95.

Programmed Teaching: A Symposium on Automation in Education. Revised edition. Joseph S. Roucek, editor. New York: Philosophical Library, 1965. x, 195 pp. $10.00.

The Friend of the Singing One, E. C. Foster and Slim Williams. Illustrated by Fermin Rocker. New York: Atheneum, 1967. 122 pp. $3.75.