促进流动儿童学前教育发展的实践探索——以广东省惠州市惠城区为例

流动儿童接受学前教育的问题日益突出,保障流动儿童的受教育权,解决流动儿童的入园问题,是当前学前教育领域重点关注的问题.广东省惠州市惠城区从自身发展现实出发,强调从健全机构、合理布局、社会参与、制度保障、规范管理等方面促进当地学前教育的改革与发展,为解决流动儿童的学前教育问题提供了一条切实可行的途径.其中,建立健全学前教育管理机构是前提,促进公办民办幼儿园共同和谐、健康发展是关键,由此必然要求地方政府创新办园机制、行政管理体系与监督机制,推行规范化管理,保证学前教育质量,同时严格控制幼儿园收费标准,优化资源配置,真正保障包括流动儿童在内的低收入家庭儿童接受学前教育的机会与权利,实现学前教育公平.     

Training reading fluency among poor readers of German: many ways to the goal

Outcomes of two training programs aimed at improving reading speed for 39 German-speaking poor readers in grades 2 and 4 were evaluated. During a 6-week training period, a specific target for children in a computer group was to improve reading of word-initial consonant clusters by practice in associating an orthographic unit with a corresponding phonological unit. Children in a paired reading group read books with an adult tutor. The results showed that, in reading words in which the computer-trained sublexical items were included, both groups exhibited similar improvement. A post hoc analysis suggested that computer training was associated with better reading skills with respect to the trained sublexical items; however, this improvement did not show large generalization effects to the words with the sublexical items. The paired reading group showed a more rapid gain in global word reading fluency than the computer group. Neither of the groups improved their pseudoword reading.

Students’ experiences of learning with iPads in upper secondary school – a base for proto-TPACK

This research focuses on Finnish students’ (n?=?84) experiences of using personal iPads in their studies through 3 years of upper secondary schooling. It is based on results from one of the first schools in Finland where all the new students were provided with iPads at the start of their studies. Data consists of: (i) 127 short stories written by students about how they would advise a new teacher and a new student to use iPads in teaching and learning, and (ii) four group discussions on the same topics. Qualitative thematic analysis of the data was guided by the TPACK framework. Results suggest that: (i) teachers’ pedagogical approaches changed little in response to the new devices and remained largely teacher-centred, and (ii) students do not have the confidence to radically change learning styles to take advantage of the affordances of the devices. The value that iPads add to teaching and learning is difficult to quantify because of the complex and often conflicting factors involved. Overall, the findings imply that teachers’ TPACK is generally resistant to change and students’ proto-TPACK is insufficiently developed to initiate change. An approach that systematically develops both students’ and teachers’ TPACK is advocated.     

Upper secondary and vocational level teachers at social software

This study focuses on upper secondary and vocational level teachers as users of social software i.e. what software they use during their leisure and work and for what purposes they use software in teaching. The study is theorised within a technological pedagogical content knowledge framework, the emphasis is especially on technological knowledge and technological pedagogical knowledge. Four hundred thirty seven teachers were surveyed using an online questionnaire with Likert scaled statements and open-ended questions. Results suggest that the number of different types of social software actively used for teaching is small and that the potential of social software as a tool for supporting collaborative learning has not yet been realised. Discussion of the results is framed in the context of teachers’ developing technological pedagogical content knowledge.