The relationship between teacher value orientations and engagement in professional learning communities

The development of teacher professional learning communities (PLC) has attracted growing attention among practitioners, policy-makers and researchers. The aims of this study were to identify typologies of professional learning teams based on measures of professional learning engagement, and assess their linkages with teachers’ value orientations. Based on data obtained from 408 professional learning teams in Singapore schools, cluster analysis identified three types of professional learning teams: highly engaged, moderately engaged and less engaged. These three profiles differ mainly in terms of level of endorsement for the four measures of professional learning engagement (collective focus on student learning, collaborative learning, reflective dialogue and shared values and vision). Results revealed that highly engaged professional learning teams reported the highest levels of endorsement for all four engagement measures. Teachers among the learning teams in the highly engaged profile reported a significantly higher level of uncertainty avoidance than those in the moderately engaged and less engaged profiles. Teachers in the less engaged profile also reported a significantly higher level of power distance than those in the highly engaged teams. Multinomial logistic regression analysis found that team power distance and team uncertainty avoidance were significant predictors of engagement profile membership. The implications for fostering effective teacher development through more systematic support of PLC are discussed.     

Transformational change in instruction with professional learning communities? The influence of teacher cultural disposition in high power distance contexts

This mixed-methods study employed Hargreaves and Fullan’s (Professional capital: transforming teaching in every school, Teachers College Press, New York, 2012) concept of professional capital to re-examine whether professional learning communities (PLCs) transformed instructional practices in contexts that endorse hierarchical cultures. PLCs that facilitate transformational change in instructional practices empower teachers to embrace ambiguity, conflict, and risk to improve both student and teacher development. In contrast, PLCs that disseminate instructions for implementation produce reifying change. The findings illustrated that, in Singapore’s hierarchical cultural context, teachers participating in PLCs with high professional capital demonstrated transformational practice. These PLCs differed from most others in teacher cultural disposition toward uncertainty, unequal relationships, and risk. The findings imply that PLCs have the potential to support transformational change in practice, even when the cultural context endorses hierarchical relationships. However, this potential is moderated by the teacher cultural dispositions that prevail in PLCs. PLCs that possessed medium professional capital were the majority, demonstrating efforts to reify instructional change. Low professional capital PLCs also differed in teacher cultural disposition from the middle majority, but demonstrated neither the transformational practices of high professional capital PLCs, nor the reifying practices of medium professional capital PLCs. Recommendations are given in this paper to PLCs situated in similar hierarchical cultures on the types of adjustments required to support transformational change in practice.     

学业支持对博士生心理健康问题的舒解效应 ——基于全球博士生调查数据的比较研究

在学术竞争与职业发展等多种压力源影响之下,博士生已成为心理健康问题的高风险群体.基于全球博士生调查数据的实证分析发现,我国博士生群体的心理健康问题日益凸显,且针对性的学业支持体系建设与高等教育发达国家相比尚存在一定差距.学术指导、经济资助以及职业规划等领域的学业支持能够有效缓解博士生的焦虑情绪,从而改善其心理健康状态.基于博士生行动力的异质性分析发现,学业支持对博士生心理健康问题的舒解效应,需建立在博士生自身积极行动的基础之上方能奏效.鉴于此,高校应建立常态化的学生心理健康检测系统,并为博士生提供全面的学业支持体系,以改善博士生群体的心理健康状态.     

第二语言习得的自主性学习对师生的角色要求

自主性学习是以学习者实施对自己的学习目标、学习内容、学习材料进行掌控的学习模式.这种学习模式不仅仅强调学习者个体的投入和调控,更应该有教师在课堂教学设计中对学习者的个体学习经验和学习方法作充分考量,并能帮助和指导其实现自主学习的效能.笔者就自主性学习对师生双方的角色要求作一些探讨,以期对外语教学实践有一定的启发作用.     

Enacting feedback utilization from a task-specific perspective

Feedback is central to successful teaching and learning. Despite extensive research on the relationship between feedback, pedagogy and learning, there remain no conclusive answers as to how feedback can be effectively utilized by learners. Recently, there is emerging research exploring how feedback is conceptualized as dialogic processes to facilitate provision and uptake of feedback; and how feedback utilization is best supported by learner active involvement in the iterative feedback process for future learning. Drawn from this knowledge base, this article aims to review four aspects of feedback scholarship including nature, paradigms, issues and trends which serve as a theoretical basis, together with instructors’ interviews, to inform how five common assessment tasks in one social sciences faculty could be strategically revamped to promote feedback utilization. The article concludes with pedagogical insights to suggest three conditions wherein feedback could be made sustainable to support learning through a redesigning of conventional assessment tasks in the higher education contexts.     

强化英语听说能力有效途径的探讨

英语是一种交际工具，而听说又是语言交际的基本形式，在英语教学中占有举足轻重的作用。根据英语语言学理论和一线的教学经验，探索并提出了如何循序渐进地提高学生英语听说能力的行之有效的方法。     

Supporting Student Teachers' Professional Learning with Standards‐Referenced Assessment

Professional standards in teaching are developed in many education systems, with professional learning and quality assurance being the central purposes of these standards. This paper presents an initiative in developing a professional development progress map (hereafter, progress map) within a learning‐oriented field experience assessment (LOFEA) framework. The article examines the use of a progress map to support professional learning in teaching supervision in the field experience of a teacher education programme. Views of users, including 16 tertiary supervisors and 21 teacher participants of the in‐service programmes, were collected. Issues relating to supporting student teachers' professional learning with standards‐referenced assessment, are discussed around four themes, namely intention, instrumentation, interpretation and implementation.     

Parent–child reading in English as a second language: Effects on language and literacy development of Chinese kindergarteners

This study investigated the effects of dialogic parent–child reading in English on 51 Hong Kong kindergarteners learning English as a second language. Children were pre‐tested on nonverbal IQ, reading interest and receptive vocabulary, word reading and phonological awareness in both Chinese and English. They were then assigned randomly to one of three conditions involving different levels of parent–child interactions: dialogic reading (DR), typical reading (TR) or control. Though inter‐group comparisons showed nonsignificant interaction effects across time among the three groups, intra‐group gains across the 12‐week intervention suggested that parent–child reading could enhance English word reading skills, while dialogic reading could promote phonological awareness in both Chinese and English. These results highlight the potential benefits of English parent–child reading and dialogic reading on children learning English as a second language, and the possibility of linguistic transfer from parent–child reading in English as a second language to Chinese as a first language.     

Instructional practices and science performance of 10 top-performing regions in PISA 2015

ABSTRACT

This study analysed 10 top-performing regions in PISA 2015 on their science performances and instructional practices. The regions include Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Taipei, Finland, Macao, Canada, Hong Kong, China and Korea. The science performances of the 10 regions and their teaching practices are described and compared. The construct of enquiry-based instruction as developed in PISA 2015 is revised into two new constructs using factor analysis. Then, the relationships of the teaching practices with science performance are analysed using hierarchical linear modelling. Adaptive instruction, teacher-directed instruction and interactive application are found positively associated with performance in all regions, while investigation and perceived feedback are all negative. The regions except Japan and Korea tend to have a high frequency of teacher-directed instruction facilitated by more or less authoritative class discussion in class. A fair amount of practical work is done, but not many of them are investigations. The cultural influences on teaching practices are discussed on how an amalgam of didactic and constructivist pedagogy is created by the Western progressive educational philosophy meeting the Confucian culture. The reasons for investigation’s negative association with performance are also explored.