Collaborative learning practices: teacher and student perceived obstacles to effective student collaboration

While the educational literature mentions several obstacles affecting the effectiveness of collaborative learning (CL), they have often been investigated through the perceptions of only one actor, either teachers or students. Therefore, some sources of obstacles that teachers and students encounter may not have been revealed. In this study, 19 teachers and 23 students in different disciplines at a pre-service teacher education faculty at a university in Vietnam were interviewed. In total, 47% of the teachers taught science subjects and 53% taught social subjects; 35% of the students majored in science subjects, 57% in social subjects, and 8% in primary education. With regard to study cohorts, 22% of the students were in the first and second year while 78% were in the third and fourth year of their four-year bachelor’s programme. These programmes produce qualified teachers for primary and secondary schools nationwide. Based on grounded theory analysis, four common obstacles to collaboration were identified: students’ lack of collaborative skills, free-riding, competence status, and friendship. Furthermore, the results showed three interrelated antecedents that contribute to these obstacles. Central to the antecedents is the strong focus of the teachers on the cognitive aspects of CL, which led the participating teachers to neglect the collaborative aspects of CL. These antecedents were demonstrated in the ways teachers set CL goals, provided instruction, and assessed student collaboration. This study may be useful for educators, designers, and researchers to foster the quality of student collaboration.     

Transformational change and business process reengineering (BPR): Lessons from the British and Dutch public sector

Facilitated by electronic government, public agencies are looking for transformational change by making a radical improvement. At first glance, this development is similar to the business process re-engineering (BPR) movement in the private sector. While policy makers and practitioners in the public sector have branded their recent improvements as BPR, the academic and research community have thus far eluded from making any comparisons. This has left a vacuum in terms of understanding the complexity of the challenges facing e-Government re-engineering and resultant change in public agencies. The aim of this paper is to translate the BPR movement findings to the field of e-Government induced change in the public sector. BPR characteristics and challenges are derived using normative literature and compared with two cases of public sector transformation in the UK and Netherlands. The results of these cases show that e-Government-induced change requires a plan for a radical improvement which, in contrast to BPR, is obtained by incremental steps and has a high level of participation. The findings offer policy makers valuable insights into the complexities and possible strategies that may need to be followed in order to succeed in e-Government implementation.     

Modeling Judgments in the Angoff and Contrasting-Groups Method of Standard Setting

Essential for the validity of the judgments in a standard-setting study is that they follow the implicit task assumptions. In the Angoff method, judgments are assumed to be inversely related to the difficulty of the items; contrasting-groups judgments are assumed to be positively related to the ability of the students. In the present study, judgments from both procedures were modeled with a random-effects probit regression model. The Angoff judgments showed a weaker link with the position of the items on the latent scale than the contrasting-groups judgments with the position of the students. Hence, in the specific context of the study, the contrasting-groups judgments were more aligned with the underlying assumptions of the method than the Angoff judgments .     

Scientific Perspectivism in Secondary-School Chemistry Education

Science & Education - The importance of learning chemical ways of thinking is widely recognized. Various frameworks have been developed to address the essence of chemistry and chemical...     

Differential trust between parents and teachers of children from low-income and immigrant backgrounds

This study was designed to investigate the trust relationship between parents and teachers in first grade. Additional research questions were whether trust was related to ethnicity and reading performance. The five facets of trust; benevolence, reliability, competence, honesty and openness, were measured on a 4-point Likert scale. Reading performance was measured by the three-minute test. Parents were found to have more trust in the reliability, competence and honesty of teachers than teachers in parents. Native-Dutch and immigrant parents have the same trust level towards their children’s teacher. However, teachers reported lower trust levels on all five facets of trust for immigrant parents. Our findings indicated that ethnicity has no influence on parents trust in teachers, but ethnicity may explain teachers’ trust in parents. Some support was found for the assumption that teachers’ trust plays a role in reading performance. Children were found to have higher reading performance when teachers reported higher trust in the benevolence and openness of parents.