Infant Educators’ Use of Pedagogical Questioning: Relationships With the Context of Interaction and Educators’ Qualifications

Research Findings: This study investigated the prevalence of pedagogical questions posed by 27 early childhood educators as they interacted with infants in each of two naturally-occurring contexts: book-focused interactions and educator mediated play. The pedagogical questions expressed by educators to infants were coded as confirm (yes/no), specify (what, who, where, when) or explain (why, how) on the basis that these question types present infants with different opportunities to use their developing communication skills to provide information to others. We sought to determine associations between question use, activity context and educators’ qualification levels. Explain questions were used very rarely, while confirm and specify questions were more frequent, comprising 7.60% and 8.32% respectively of the messages expressed by educators to infants. A 2 (activity context) × 2 (qualification level) mixed factorial MANOVA, supplemented with post-hoc qualitative analyses, demonstrated that, in specific activity contexts, degree qualified early childhood teachers used pedagogical questioning in ways which differed from their less-qualified counterparts. Practice or policy: The findings provide much needed data on how educator questioning is used with children under two, how questioning affords context-specific language learning opportunities for infants in ECEC centres, and how educator qualifications may be implicated in these opportunities.     

Changing Research Contexts in Teacher Education in Australia: Charting new directions

This paper examines research into initial teacher education in light of current Australian policy initiatives concerned with both the quality of research conducted in higher education and the quality of teacher education programs. The purpose of the paper is to explore some ways in which the research is, and can be, positioned in the current policy context. The paper begins with a brief overview of some of the main characteristics of the research concerned with initial (pre‐service) teacher education in Australia over the last decade. In terms of scope, scale and methodology, the research can be characterised in the following way: typically small‐scale; many one‐off studies; localised in nature; and a growing application of qualitative research methods. An obvious strength of this type of research is that it is closely tied to practice and to the day‐to‐day workings of initial teacher education programs. An equally obvious weakness is that the research does not necessarily have so called ‘impact’ in relation to policy debates and/or other measures of success in the wider research community. The paper charts some possible new directions for teacher education research in ways that build on the strengths and address the weaknesses. The directions can be characterised as follows: a ‘big funding’ approach; an ‘institutional aggregation’ approach; and a ‘platforms and protocols’ approach.     

Who Needs What: Recommendations for Designing Effective Online Professional Development for Computer Science Teachers

The new Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science (CS) Principles course increases the need for quality CS teachers and thus the need for professional development (PD). This article presents the results of a 2-year study investigating how teachers teaching the AP CS Principles course for the first time used online PD material. Our results showed that the teaching and computing background of teachers had a significant impact on the teachers' need for and use of online PD material. More specifically, novice CS teachers needed and used PD for developing their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Non-CS teachers needed and used PD materials emphasizing content knowledge. Experienced CS teachers believed they had little need for PD even though they were teaching a new course. Our study makes three recommendations for designing effective online PD for CS teachers: match PD to teachers' background, align PD with the course curriculum, and use effective motivational design to enhance teacher engagement. (Keywords: computer science education, online professional development, K–12, AP computer science principles course)     

The Relationship Between Objectified Body Consciousness and Wellness in a Group of College Women

Objectified body consciousness theory provides a framework for understanding young women's negative body experiences and their impact on well‐being. This study examined the impact of body surveillance, body shame, and appearance control beliefs, the 3 components of objectified body consciousness, on wellness in college women. Data indicated a negative relationship between body surveillance and body shame and several components of wellness and a positive relationship between appearance control beliefs and aspects of wellness. Implications are examined.     

A participatory approach to the evaluation of participatory museum research projects

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we will describe, justify and critique a participatory approach that we have developed in order to evaluate the success of a participatory research project that was exploring ways of making museum learning experiences more inclusive for adults who have a diverse range of access preferences. Because we were researching in a unique space at the intersection of inclusive museum education, inclusive technologies and participatory research, we have needed to develop an original evaluation approach, informed by methods and frameworks derived from other fields. We present examples of the kind of evaluation information that the framework elicited and use this as a basis to critique the strengths and weaknesses of the framework. Our experience of using creative methods for eliciting evaluation data suggest that useful information about participation can be revealed but that further improvements can be made in order to make the research experience more participatory.     

Online Physics Lab Exercises—a Binational Study on the Transfer of Teaching Resources

In this paper, we present the design and the results of a comparative study that evaluated the success of a transfer of an online-teaching resource between two universities, one in Germany and one in the USA. The teaching resource is an online physics lab that has been used in the physics education of medical students in Germany since 2003. The online lab covers geometrical optics and the optics of the human eye using interactive screen experiments. It was translated and transferred to a university in the USA where it was used and evaluated with a group of pre-health students. In a cross-national study, students’ backgrounds (demographic data, selected cognitive abilities, previous knowledge, and self-concept in physics), students’ attitudes towards the online lab, and their learning gain were compared. The results show significant differences between the German and the US cohorts with regard to students’ backgrounds. Despite these differences, the outcomes are similar, with slightly higher leaning gains for the US students. Students’ attitudes towards the online lab are similar in both countries but tend to be more positive among the US students. The results indicate that the transfer of the online lab to another educational system was successful.     

Experiences of the Relation between Teaching and Research: What do academics value?

Many attempts have been made to account for the relation between teaching and research. In general, studies have assumed the nature of this relation and characterised it as one that exists between externally defined indicators such as teaching effectiveness and research productivity . Most frequently used indicators are quantitative measures such as students' evaluations of teaching and publication counts. In contrast, few studies have explored how academics experience teaching and research and their inter-relation. The results of this small, qualitative study, consisting of interviews with a sample of academic staff who expressed strong views of the teaching/research relationship, show that there is substantial variation in academics' experiences of the meaning of this relation. The results suggest that such variation requires further exploration using methods that differ from those that have been associated with past research in this area.