The virtual class is coming

A long term action research programme initiated in 1987 by the Department of Communication Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, is seeking to develop a virtual class. The virtual class is regarded as the critical component of a new educational paradigm for an information society. The action research programme takes the form of a spiral of cyclical attempts to create a virtual class. Each attempt is seen as a syntagmatic episode of a virtual class paradigm attempted in the light of an existing paradigm. The results of each syntagmatic episode are seen as influencing the further development of the paradigm.     

The Representation of Extendedness in Children''s Drawings of Sticks and Discs

Piaget has suggested that the reason why children find it difficult to draw foreshortened views is because they lack any conscious awareness of their own viewpoint. Instead, it is proposed that most of these difficulties derive from the constraints of drawing as a representational system: for example, although a round region shows a true view of a foreshortened stick, it is unsatisfactory as a representation. To test between these alternative proposals, 4-, 7-, and 12-year-olds were asked to draw sticks and discs in foreshortened and nonforeshortened positions. As predicted, fewer 7- and 12-year-olds used a round region to represent a foreshortened stick, compared with children of the same age who used a long region to represent a foreshortened disc. In addition, the 12-year-olds used a different and more effective denotation system compared with the 7-year-olds.     

Classroom dialogue and science achievement

Conclusion This study indicates the responsibility that rests with the teacher in an activity-oriented classroom as far as providing the structural support necessary for effective learning (Note 4). The teacher is acting as a “surrogate textbook”. Using their own organization of knowledge-albiet wrong or incomplete-teachers provide the structure that is lacking. As the results indicate, some teachers can do this better than others. A challenge for teachers and teacher educators is to devise ways to improving the structure and sequencing of classroom dialogue. The TSA Technique could help here in two ways. It allows a sophisticated analysis of dialogue, indicating specific areas of weakness which could then be remedied by appropriate training. A similar approach has been used successfully with text material to rewrite and restructure deficient segments (Clarke; 1973). It could also be used to produce ideal “templates” of various models of teaching (e.g. Brady; 1985) for use as a guide for lesson planning.