The impact of polytechnic institutes on the local economy

Tertiary Education and Management - Higher education institutions and, particularly, polytechnic institutes in Portugal are, generally speaking, recognized as the key stakeholders in regional...     

“Did you do your homework?” Mathematics teachers’ homework follow‐up practices at middle school level

Teachers’ homework follow‐up practices, the in‐class strategies teachers use to monitor their students’ homework assignments, have an impact on their students’ homework behaviors and academic achievement. The current study explored the perspectives of middle school mathematics teachers on the three domains of homework follow‐up: the practices used in class, the purposes of each practice, and the aspects that may influence this process. Data were collected from two data sources (i.e., focus groups and classroom observations) and were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings showed that teachers monitored homework either using a single strategy or a combination of strategies (e.g., checking homework completion and providing individual feedback) linked to a specific purpose (e.g., promote students’ involvement). The teachers also reported that they were under certain constraints when they delivered homework follow‐up practices (e.g., pressure to follow the curriculum), so their practices’ effectiveness sometimes can be compromised. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Academic Language Instruction for Students in Grades 4 Through 8: A Literature Synthesis

Academic language, which is characterized by the words and structure of the language of schooling, is an important teachable component of academic achievement. When compared to other strong predictors of academic achievement (e.g., decoding, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension), academic language is not as well understood or explicitly taught in schools. The purpose of this literature synthesis is to identify the instructional practices that currently have the best evidence to improve academic language and broader academic achievement outcomes. The most prolific study of academic language instruction occurs with English learner samples. In the current study, we sought high-quality empirical intervention studies conducted with English learners. We describe the components of instruction that explicitly address academic language skills, and we describe the impact on outcomes for English learner students as well as their English-only peers.     

The performance of young deaf children in spatial and temporal number tasks

Deaf children tend to fall behind in mathematics at school. This problem may be a direct result of particular experiences in the classroom; for example, deaf children may find it hard to follow teachers' presentations of basic, but nevertheless quite abstract, mathematical ideas. Another possibility is that the problem starts before school: They may either be worse than hearing children at early, nonlinguistic number representations, they may be behind in learning the culturally transmitted number string, or both. This may result in deaf children failing to develop informal problem-solving strategies, which prepare most children for the more formal learning of number and arithmetic that they will have to do at school. We compared 3- and 4-year-old deaf and hearing children's ability to remember and to reproduce the number of items in a set of objects. In one condition, we presented all the items together in a spatial array; in another, we presented them one at a time in a temporal sequence. Deaf children performed as well as the hearing children in the temporal tasks, but outperformed their hearing counterparts in the spatial task. These results suggest that preschool deaf children's number representation is at least as advanced as that of hearing children, and that they are actually better than hearing children at representing the number of objects in spatial arrays. We conclude that deaf children's difficulties with mathematical learning are not a consequence of a delay in number representation. We also conclude that deaf children should benefit from mathematical instruction that emphasizes spatial representation.     

Children's Perception of Pictorial Metaphor

Abstract Pictures for children commonly contain pictorial metaphor. This non‐mimetic information supplements, clarifies or renders unambiguous properties or actions represented in the mimetic parts of a picture. Children's perception of some pictorial metaphors may not be wholly by processing them as metaphors or implied analogies but as word‐like figures. Some evidence is presented which may support this view.     

The failure of a virtual social space (VSS) designed to create a learning community: lessons learned

The disappearance of physical social spaces from today's society is seen by some to be a modern phenomenon, resulting in isolation and lack of socialisation. In fact, this is always the case in distance education, due to geographical dispersion and disparate time schedules of learners. Very often, peer‐to‐peer socialisation in distance education only occurs as part of formal learning activities, or is just left to the student's own initiative. This situation is compounded by the modularity of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), forcing students to jump from one module space to another as they progress through a course. All discussion threads, conversations or record of previous dialogues are then lost. This paper reports on the design, development and extensive evaluation of a Virtual Social Space (VSS) conceived to address these problems and to support the creation of a learning community for a Continuing Professional Distance Education (CPDE) Masters in IT Management. An action research approach was adopted to establish student needs, design and develop the site and to explore it with students. Initially received with enthusiasm and perceived as a good idea by the students, the VSS was not entirely successful. This paper discusses how characteristics of this cohort had an impact on students’ perception and usage of this social space to create a learning community.     

Thinking about Art: Could Elementary Textbooks Serve as Models of Practice to Help New Teachers and Non‐Specialists Support Reasoning in Art?

Some primary school teachers may neglect reasoning about art. Models of practice can exemplify classroom teaching and, to some extent, a textbook for children can be seen as a model of practice. Can those in art serve as models of practice and help teachers foster reasoning? This study examined 19 art textbooks intended for use by Key Stage 2 children (7–11 years old) to see to what extent they might direct a teacher's attention to reasoning in art. Some gave no attention to reasoning but some were found to have the potential to do that, at least in connection with evaluating the art of others. In this respect, they might serve as models of practice. Nevertheless, the teachers most likely to benefit from such models may not recognise a good one, be proficient in using it productively, be able to develop thinking about the art of others further or extrapolate thinking to the child's own art. Consequently, knowing what counts in art education and using models of practice to good effect could be an important part of training courses.