Investigation of chemistry graduate teaching assistants' teacher knowledge and teacher identity

Graduate students play an integral role in undergraduate chemistry education at doctoral granting institutions where they routinely serve as instructors of laboratories and supplementary discussion sessions. Simultaneously, graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) balance major research and academic responsibilities. Although GTAs have substantial instructional facetime with large numbers of undergraduate students, little is known about their conceptions of teaching or their identities as teachers. To investigate the knowledge that GTAs have regarding teaching in this unique context, their teaching identities, and how these developed, we conducted 22 interviews with graduate students from several universities at various levels in their graduate school career using a modified Teacher Beliefs Interview. Interviews were analyzed for two overarching teacher learning constructs: teacher knowledge and teacher identity. We characterized chemistry GTAs' teacher knowledge and identity and determined major influencing factors. We found that chemistry GTAs often identified as a tutor or lab manager, which hindered their self-investment in developing as teachers. The results presented herein contribute to an understanding of GTAs' teacher knowledge, teacher identity, and their teaching context, from which training can be designed to best support GTA development.     

Students’ Perceptions and Emotions Toward Learning in a Flipped General Science Classroom

Recently, the inverted instruction methodologies are gaining attentions in higher educations by claiming that flipping the classroom engages more effectively students with the learning process. Besides, students’ perceptions and emotions involved in their learning process must be assessed in order to gauge the usability of this relatively new instruction methodology, since it is vital in the educational formation. For this reason, this study intends to evaluate the students’ perceptions and emotions when a flipped classroom setting is used as instruction methodology. This research was conducted in a general science course, sophomore of the Primary Education bachelor degree in the Training Teaching School of the University of Extremadura (Spain). The results show that the students have the overall positive perceptions to a flipped classroom setting. Particularly, over 80 % of them considered that the course was a valuable learning experience. They also found this course more interactive and were willing to have more courses following a flipped model. According to the students’ emotions toward a flipped classroom course, the highest scores were given to the positive emotions, being fun and enthusiasm along with keyword frequency test. Then, the lowest scores were corresponded to negative emotions, being boredom and fear. Therefore, the students attending to a flipped course demonstrated to have more positive and less negative emotions. The results obtained in this study allow drawing a promising tendency about the students’ perceptions and emotions toward the flipped classroom methodology and will contribute to fully frame this relatively new instruction methodology.     

The effects of active versus reflective learning style on the processes of critical discourse in computer-supported collaborative argumentation

This study examined how message-response exchanges produced in the interactions between active learners only, reflective learners only, active-reflective learners and reflective-active learners affected how often active versus reflective learners posted rebuttals to arguments and challenges across four types of exchanges that believed to promote critical discourse (argument–challenge, challenge–counterchallenge, challenge–explain, challenge–evidence) in computer-supported collaborative argumentation (CSCA). This study found that the exchanges between reflective learners produced 44% more responses than in the exchanges between active learners ( ES  = +0.17). The reflective–reflective exchanges produced 47% more responses than the active–reflective exchanges ( ES  = +0.18). These results suggest that groups with reflective learners only are likely to produce more critical discourse than groups with active learners only, and the ratio of active–reflective learners within a group can potentially influence overall group performance. These findings illustrate how specific traits of the learner can affect discourse processes in CSCA and provide insights into process-oriented strategies and tools for structuring dialogue and promoting critical inquiry in online discussions.     

The relations between the student–teacher trust relationship and school success in the case of Korean middle schools

This study examined relations between the student–teacher trust relationship and school success, including school adjustment, academic motivation and performance. Data were collected from 318 7th‐grade Korean middle school students (170 males, 148 females). All intercorrelations were positively correlated and correlation coefficients were statistically significant (p < 0.01). Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that the student–teacher trust relationship uniquely contributed to students’ performance through school adjustment and academic motivation. This discussion examines theoretical, empirical and practical implications of the trust relationship as a key predictor of adolescents’ school adjustment, academic motivation and performance.     

The contributions of relationships with parents and teachers to Turkish children’s antisocial behaviour

The present study examined the concurrent contributions of parent–child and teacher–child relationship quality to Turkish children’s antisocial behaviour, with a specific focus on the moderating role of teacher–child relationships (closeness and conflict) on parent–child relationships when predicting antisocial behaviour. Participants were 94 children (56 boys) with mean age of 7.05 years (SD = .88) enrolled in 24 classrooms from five elementary schools in a suburban school district in Turkey. Mothers reported on their relationship with children and teachers reported on their relationships with children as well as children’s antisocial behaviour. SAS PROC MIXED was used to test hierarchical regression models of children nested within classrooms. Results showed that teacher–child conflict moderated the association between parent–child conflict and children’s antisocial behaviour. Such that, higher parent–child conflict was related to higher levels of antisocial behaviour at the context of higher levels of teacher–child conflict. In addition, teacher–child closeness also moderated the association between parent–child conflict and children’s antisocial behaviour. Such that when teacher–child closeness was at average or high levels, lower levels of parent–child conflict was related to lower levels of antisocial behaviour. Teacher–child conflict was positively associated with children’s antisocial behaviour. Limitations and future directions of the current study are discussed.     

An online authoring tool for creating activity-based learning objects

As higher education increasingly relies on e-learning, the need for tools that will allow teachers themselves to develop effective e-learning objects as simply and quickly as possible has also been increasingly recognized. This article discusses the design and development of a novel tool, Enook (Evolutionary note book), for creating activity-based learning objects (LOs). This tool has three general foci: 1) creation of various activity-based objects for experimental learning or learning by doing while simultaneously offering as many learning resources as a real e-book that services as both a textbook and a notebook, dual functions that paperback books can never provide; 2) management of all aspects of live instructor-led classroom training in a network environment, such the Web and or a mobile network; 3) facilitated use of data on students’ progress to monitor their understanding of the material and to provide other meaningful information through learning analytics.     

Re-thinking democracy,development and social justice in education: connecting global,national and local challenges

Asia Pacific Education Review -     

The influence of home on learning to read

Large scale investigations into home variables and educational success frequently demonstrate relationships between global factors such as socio-economic status, education of parents, etc. and general educational achievement, of which attainment in reading is often taken as an index. This paper reports a small but detailed study of home influences on the early stages of learning to read within the context of the Bristol Longitudinal Language Development Research Programme. Data were derived from three sources: interviews with the parents when the children were aged 5 and 7 years; regular recordings of spontaneous conversation at home between 3 %and 5 years; assessments of reading at 5 and 7 years. Attainment in reading at age 7 was found to be strongly predicted by knowledge of literacy on entry to school, and this in turn to be predicted by parental interest in literacy and quality of verbal interaction with the child in the preschool years. The child's own pre-school interest in literacy was not found to be strongly associated with later success. The significance of these findings is discussed.     

Supporting High School Student Accomplishment of Biology Content Using Interactive Computer-Based Curricular Case Studies

Research in Science Education - Research into the efficacy of modules featuring dynamic visualizations, case studies, and interactive learning environments is reported here. This quasi-experimental...     

The effects of goal variation on adult physical activity behaviour

The purposes of this study were to examine the effects of varying levels of goals on increasing daily steps and the frequency of goal achievement among middle-aged adults. Ninety-six adults participated in a randomised control study. Participants were randomly assigned to five different step goal groups: (1) Easy (n = 19), (2) Medium (n = 19), (3) Difficult (n = 19), (4) Do-your-best (n = 19), and (5) No goal (n = 20) based on previous research. The participants wore a pedometer and were asked to reach a pre-established goal during the experimental period. In order to examine the effectiveness of the goal difficulty, (a) an average number of steps taken by different goal conditions and (b) the number of days meeting the assigned goal were tested. A one-way ANCOVA revealed significant step count differences among goal groups. Post hoc analyses indicated that the change in step count in both the Medium and Difficult goal groups was significantly greater than the remaining groups. However, there was no significant difference between the medium and difficult goal conditions. In addition, a one-way ANOVA indicated that there were no significant differences in the frequency of goal achievement among the Easy, Medium, and Difficult goal groups. Results suggest that when promoting physical activity through increasing step counts, researchers and clinicians should design goals that are specific and challenging.