Understanding Pre-Service Teachers' Emerging Practices Through Their Analyses of a Multimedia Case Study of Practice

The limits inherent in field experiences and the difficulties in learning howto use student thinking in instructional practice are significant challengesin pre-service teachers' preparation. In this research, we haveinvestigated how multimedia case studies of practice can support pre-service teachers in making meaning of complex classroom experiences andin developing strategies and rationales for using student thinking to guideinstruction. In this paper, we present a brief review of the research on casestudies to situate our particular approach that builds on the notion that amultimedia case study can be a site for investigation, analysis andreflection by pre-service teachers. We then report the results of examiningthe issues that one cohort of pre-service mathematics teachers (grades 7–12) identified as meaningful for them in terms of their own emergingpractice and the ways in which they connected the case study teacher'spractice to their own practice. We found that the pre-service teachers wereable to use their perspectives on a common practice to highlight some of thedilemmas and tensions found in teaching. In particular, these pre-serviceteachers focused on the difficulties encountered when trying to usestudent thinking and to follow their own mathematical goals in a lesson.They were able to frame many of the issues that they encountered in theirown practice (such as checking for student understanding and the use ofquestioning) in terms of their analysis of the case study teachers' practice.     

Signatures of quality teaching for Indigenous students

This paper presents findings from the validation of a survey instrument constructed in response to what Indigenous parents/carers and students believe constitutes culturally responsive pedagogies that positively influence Indigenous student learning. Characteristics of culturally responsive pedagogies established through interviews with Australian Indigenous parents, community members and students generated themes which were distilled into survey items by a team of Indigenous and other educators. The instrument was then put on trial with 141 teachers for statistical validation. Analyses employing the Rasch model confirmed that the instrument measured a unidimensional latent trait: culturally responsive pedagogy. Seven subscales, content validities of which were determined by a panel of experts, were also confirmed. Results highlighted differences between primary and secondary teachers’ self-reported practice, and important facets of teacher pedagogy in the two different school contexts emerged. Analyses of four of the subscales of the instrument—Indigenous cultural value, self‐regulation support, literacy teaching and explicitness—are presented in the context of current emphases on quality teaching and Indigenous student outcomes. The instrument can be used to measure teachers’ nuances in pedagogy, and the resulting teacher profiles can be used to assist teachers to focus on particular aspects of their pedagogy to meet the needs of their students.     

Effects of Traditional Versus Montessori Schooling on 4‐ to 15‐Year Old children's Performance Monitoring

Through performance monitoring individuals detect and learn from unexpected outcomes, indexed by post‐error slowing and post‐error improvement in accuracy. Although performance monitoring is essential for academic learning and improves across childhood, its susceptibility to educational influences has not been studied. Here we compared performance monitoring on a flanker task in 234 children aged 4 through 15, from traditional or Montessori classrooms. While traditional classrooms emphasize that students learn from teachers' feedback, Montessori classrooms encourage students to work independently with materials specially designed to support learners discovering errors for themselves. We found that Montessori students paused longer post‐error in early childhood and, by adolescence, were more likely to self‐correct. We also found that a developmental shift from longer to shorter pauses post‐error being associated with self‐correction happened younger in the Montessori group. Our findings provide preliminary evidence that educational experience influences performance monitoring, with implications for neural development, learning, and pedagogy.     

A cross-cultural study of parents' perceptions of early childhood programs

Cross-cultural studies in early childhood education assist in expanding perspectives and gaining increased understanding and appreciation of programs in other countries. Because both Sweden and the United States are interested in parent involvement in early childhood programs, a survey was conducted to assess parent's perceptions of these programs. Following a review of family life and early childhood education in Sweden and the United States are the specific components of the cross-cultural study. A stratified random sample of parents whose children were involved in early childhood programs was done in St. Louis County, MN, United States, and Kronobergs Lan, Småland, Sweden. In the first section of the five-part survey, parents indicated the degree to which they agreed or disagreed with statements about such areas as governmental support of children and families. Parents in Sweden felt more support of the government, whereas parents in the United States used early childhood programs as a support mechanism to increase their confidence. In the other four sections of the survey, parents rated the importance of various types of parental involvement and the importance of various materials, activities, and caregiver actions in their children's programs. In general, parents in Sweden valued informal contact and inner-directed creative materials and activities. Parents in the United States valued more confining activities such as rote counting, community-based experiences, and compliance with adult expectations. The influence of the macro-society on parents' perceptions as well as microsystem interactions and environments is evident in this study. As early childhood educators learn about and adapt new ideas to their own programs, the potential of cross-cultural studies becomes realized in improved opportunities for young children and their families.     

钓鱼的艺术--《大河之恋》观感

Norman,the hero of the movie,is the son of apriest.He was born in a middle—class fami-ly.He and his families live in a town,not farfrom a clear stream and a waterfall.His father is apious(虔诚的),who takes belief to the hearts andsouls.Norman is good at learning,and going to be-come a professor in the University of Chicago.Theonly libertine(浪子)of the family is his little broth-er,Paul,who is a journalist in a newspaper inMontana.Though the two brothers and their fa-ther are quite different persons,they like fishing     

‘Just a Minute ...’—managing interruptions in the junior school classroom

This study uses a continuum to exemplify the range of interruptions experienced by teachers in junior schools. Further clarification is supplied by the matrix, showing sources and types of interruptions.

Reasons for the transformation of ‘interruptions’ into ‘disruptions’ are also discussed, substantiated where possible by selection from the available literature. Further illustrative material is taken from interviews with 12 head teachers and 13 class teachers. Non‐participant observations of 16 of these teachers, working in 11 schools, over a period of six months, provide the data about actual interruptions.

Analyses of these data provide information about the types and frequency of interruptions and evidence of how teachers manage them. Teachers’ ‘coping strategies’ are thus identified and ways of minimising interruptions are examined. The differences between ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive’ class management are considered and the effects of both upon teachers’ effectiveness is debated.     

Diffractive pedagogies: dancing across new materialist imaginaries

ABSTRACT

We theorise an interdisciplinary arts practice university course and consider the forms of educational imaginary challenged by our curriculum. We argue for the disruptive and generative potential of what we call diffractive pedagogy as an example of the type of learning that can take place when materiality and entanglement are considered as vital constituents. Through self-expression and interweaving across disciplinary boundaries, the potential to produce, embody and theorise simultaneously can be realised. Student bodies do not exist in isolation from one another, or from the environment. It is indeed impossible to separate the dancer from the dance, the teacher from the student, and the bodies from the environments and objects to which they relate. This being true, our student body reproduced our teaching bodies as abject, as messy and peripheral to their imaginings of university education. Materially, student bodies remade the limits to which their consciousness was imaginatively drawn. Through our embodied work, unconscious change began the processes of affecting students’ imaginaries of university education.     

Information access and retrieval with hypermedia information systems

Students' success with interactive information systems (IIS) such as those found in many CD-ROM applications depends to large degree on their capacity accurately to choose and apply search strategies in response to information needs. IIS systems provide many ways to retrieve information, with some methods being more efficient and effective than others. The purpose of this study was to investigate the search strategies employed by novice users of an IIS system and to analyse the problems and issues that were impediments to successful use. A class of 12 year old students was instructed in the use of an electronic encyclopaedia. The students used the encyclopaedia as an information source for individual projects and on completion their information skills tested and analysed. The study found that students tended to employ inefficient search strategies and experienced difficulty in creating search requests for information related problems.     

Autistic Children''s Talk about Psychological States: Deficits in the Early Acquisition of a Theory of Mind

Spontaneous speech samples collected from 6 autistic and 6 age- and language-matched Down syndrome controls over the course of 1-2 years were analyzed for the presence of language referring to different psychological states. Utterances containing lexical terms for desire, perception, emotion, and cognition were functionally coded to distinguish conversation uses of such terms from actual reference to mental states, and for perception terms to distinguish reference to perception from calls for joint attention. The main findings were that autistic children were comparable to the Down syndrome control subjects in their talk about desire, perception and emotion. However, they used significantly less language to call for attention and to refer to cognitive mental states. These results are discussed in relation to current theories about the nature of the psychological deficit in autism.     

The emerging role of CD-ROMs in teaching chemistry

Learning chemistry requires students to relate chemical equations and other symbolic notation both to molecular or atomic events and to macroscopic laboratory observations and data. Traditionally, textbooks have provided symbolic notation with minimal pictures of either microscopic events or macroscopic events leaving the teacher and student to conjure these pictures from words. This paper describes the design of several CD-ROMs with very different strategies and focus for teaching general chemistry with large databases of visual information. Teacher tools for preparation facilitate the planning of more hands-on laboratory experiences and live demonstrations to develop laboratory observation skills. Presentation materials provide animations of abstract microscopic events and concepts to help teachers explain these molecular and atomic events. Students improve observation skills in laboratories with supplemental computer tutorials that mimic the decision making required for laboratory tasks in a virtual laboratory, but students reinforce the experience and learn techniques with practice in a real laboratory. New college textbooks on CD-ROM, that integrate the molecular animations and laboratory experiments with the introduction of new terms and symbolic representations, portend large changes in all textbooks.