Selection and Professional Development of Initial Teacher Educators: a case study from The Netherlands

In this article we describe the selection and professional development of a newly appointed teacher educator at the Institute for Teacher Education at a Dutch university. The situation described is, in our view, representative of the Dutch situation in general. A senior teacher educator and a newly appointed teacher educator were interviewed. The first interview presents mainly information on selection, the second interview covers the professional development of the appointed teacher educator. Both interviews indicate the importance of informal aspects. Personal factors of both colleagues and the teacher educator himself have influenced selection and development. We suggest both elements should be elaborated on and formalised. Notwithstanding, the position of a teacher educator in The Netherlands will remain an uncertain one.     

基于国际大规模学生评估的中国高中毕业生质量研究

在过去的二十年间,国际大规模学生评估主要对教育研究、学校体系和教育政策产生影响.本文着重介绍这些项目的主要结果,并在此基础上,于2003年在中国四个省份展开数学胜任力测试.作为过去几十年国际大规模学生评估的非参与国,中国无疑提供一个特殊视角.因而,本文所报告的中国学生成绩国际比较是一项独特工作.     

Learning Strategies in Self-directed Language Learning Using Mobile Technology in Higher Education: A Systematic Scoping Review

Education and Information Technologies - Language learners in higher education increasingly use out-of-class self-directed learning facilitated by mobile technology. In order to make informed...     

Individual characteristics of students in vocational education moderating the relationship between school engagement and vocational identity

In any country, there is a group of students who are at risk of dropping out of school without any qualifications. This is detrimental for many of those students, because failure to graduate increases risks of unemployment and societal exclusion. To reduce this risk, specialized curricula aim to prepare these students for their working life by fostering the development of a vocational identity, that is, how they define themselves as workers. As a prerequisite to achieving this goal, students need to attend school and feel engaged with school. The curricula seek ways to stimulate emotional school engagement, taking into account the heterogeneous target group of students they serve. To address potential consequences of individual differences, this questionnaire study (N=996) conducted in the Netherlands explored how various individual characteristics of students in these specialized curricula moderated the relationship between emotional school engagement and vocational identity. Results show that stronger school engagement always coincided with a stronger vocational identity; however, the strength of the relationship varied. Stimulating emotional school engagement was specifically important for the subgroups of students who are young, less agreeable, less motivated, and less resilient. In order to foster the vocational identity of their students, the specialized curricula are recommended to draw nuanced conclusions and formulate refined strategies to effectively respond to the heterogeneous group of students who are at risk of dropping out.

     

A developmental psychology perspective in Germany: co‐construction of transitions between family and education system by the child,parents and pedagogues

In Germany, there exists a traditional gap between kindergarten and primary school. Transition research has led to a new understanding of the need for cooperation between different educational institutions and the family at this time. This article emphasises that educational transitions affect not only the child but also the parents, who actively cope with a family transition. A team from the State Institute of Early Childhood Education and Research (Staatsinstitut für Frühpädagogik) in Munich has formulated developmental tasks for children and their parents during transition, based on interviews with children and parents as well as on the research literature. This approach to transition has informed initiatives at different administrative levels within Germany, as well as a European project for training transition experts in order to support children and their parents to cope with transitions, and enhance collaboration between families and educators in kindergartens and primary schools.     

Moving out of their comfort zones: enhancing teaching practice in transnational education

This paper investigates the development of teaching practice of the multinational staff delivering UK programmes in a higher education institution in Oman hosting these programmes. It presents a tool to evaluate the teaching practice, and points to those elements of an academic development framework that were found to be most useful in supporting staff in moving towards a student-centred, learning-focused teaching approach. The majority of the lecturers made this shift. We therefore conclude by arguing for long-term CPD aimed at enhancing teaching quality to be part and parcel of a partnership.     

The impact of global and local context information on the processing of deceptive actions in game sports

In basketball, the defender’s reaction to a pass is slower and more error prone if the attacking player gazes into the opposite direction. This so-called head-fake effect might be modulated by context information, that is, the frequency and the sequence of head fakes occurring. Accordingly, the present study investigates the head-fake effect for different frequency proportions (20% vs. 50% vs. 80%). The results show that the head-fake effect decreases when the head fake occurs more often. Furthermore, a potential influence of previous fake experience (i.e., congruency-sequence effect) on the size of the head-fake effect was investigated. Importantly, previous fake experience did not cause the frequency-based modulation of the general size of the head-fake effect. These findings bare important implications for sports practice, especially when it comes to instructing players about the tactical use of deceptive actions.