What do K-12 students feel when dealing with technology and engineering issues? Gardner's multiple intelligence theory implications in technology lessons for motivating engineering vocations at Spanish Secondary School

The interest on engineering and scientific studies can be raised up even from the early years of academic instructional process. This vocation may be linked to emotions and aptitudes towards technological education. Particularly, students get in touch with these technological issues (namely STEM) during the Compulsory Secondary Education in Spain (12–16 years old).This work presents a preliminary evaluation of how relevant is Gardner's multiple intelligence theory (MIT) in the teaching–learning process within the Technology Lessons. In this sense, MIT was considered as an explanation variable of the emotional response within the different educational parts (so-called syllabus units, SU) in the Technology spanish curriculum. Different intelligence style (IS) will orient the student to a vision of the engineering and technology. This work tries to identify which relationships can be established between IS and specific technology and engineering learning. This research involved up to 135 students were subsequently tested about their predominant (IS) and on the emotions that arouse in them when working with each SU. The results were statistically significant and only those with a Logic-arithmetic or Environmental IS were not affected by the SU.Best teaching and learning practicesare required for encouraging further engineering studies.     

From resource to document: scaffolding content and organising student learning in teachers’ documentation work on the teaching of series

We examine teachers’ use of resources as they prepare to teach the topic of numerical series of real numbers, in order to identify how their personal relationship with mathematical content—and its teaching—interacts with their use of a commonly used textbook. We describe this interplay between textbook and personal relationship, a term coined in the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic (ATD, Chevallard, 2003), in terms of documentation work (resources, aims, rules of action, operational invariants), a key construct from the documentational approach (DA, Gueudet & Trouche, in Educational Studies in Mathematics, 71, 199–218, 2009). We do so in the case of five post-secondary teachers who use the same textbook as a main resource for teaching the topic. Documentational analysis of interviews with the teachers led to the identification of their aims and rules of action (the what and how of their resource use as they organise their teaching of the topic) as well as the operational invariants (the why for this organisation of their teaching). We describe the teachers’ documentation work in two sets of aims/rules of action: scaffolding mathematical content (series as a stepping stone to learning about Taylor polynomials and Maclaurin series), and organising student learning about series through drill exercises, visualisation, examples, and applications. Our bridging (networking) of theoretical constructs originating in one theoretical framework (personal relationship, ATD) with the constructs of a different, yet compatible, framework (documentation work, DA) aims to enrich the latter (teachers’ documentation work) with the individual agency (teachers’ personal relationships with the topic) provided by the former.     

The design,implementation, and evaluation of a digital interactive globe system integrated into an Earth Science course

The aim of this study is to design and implement a digital interactive globe system (DIGS), by integrating low-cost equipment to make DIGS cost-effective. DIGS includes a data processing unit, a wireless control unit, an image-capturing unit, a laser emission unit, and a three-dimensional hemispheric body-imaging screen. A quasi-experimental study was conducted to evaluate the learning effectiveness of our system. A total of 105 junior high-school students from Taiwan participated in this 8-week experiment. The students were divided into three individual groups of 35 students each, with one control group and two experimental groups (EG1 and EG2). The results of one-way mixed design ANOVA indicated that participants in the experimental group, who used the DIGS, outperformed the other two groups, in the post-test as well as in the delayed test. These findings demonstrate that the proposed DIGS can effectively enhance the performance of the learners in an Earth Science course.     

Ethological analysis of predator avoidance by the paradise fish (Macropodus opercularis L.): II. Key stimuli in avoidance learning

The possible role of eyespot patterns in predator recognition by paradise fish was examined using a passive avoidance conditioning technique with various dummies or live goldfish. It was found that a low-intensity shock, although clearly uncomfortable, elicited exploratory behavior in the fish and that observable learning did not occur. However, if the paradise fish was shocked in the presence of a live goldfish or various fish dummies, exploration diminished and avoidance learning was detected. This was characterized by a considerable increase in latency to enter the shocked compartment. The most effective dummies were those with two laterally arranged eye-like spots. The possible role of species-specific key stimuli in avoidance learning and organizing defensive behavior of the paradise fish is discussed.     

Exploring pre-service primary teachers’ progression towards inquiry-based science learning

ABSTRACT

Background

An in-depth understanding of pre-service primary teachers’ progression towards teaching science through inquiry is critical for improving teacher education programmes and, ultimately, improving the quality of science teaching and learning in the classroom.     

Minority Serving Institutions: Incubators for Teachers of Color

This article explores the role of Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) in producing teachers of color. Specifically, it looks at larger national trends and highlights individual MSIs that have experienced success in the area of teacher education and the production of teachers of color. Recommendations are made to assist colleges and universities across the nation.     

Primary school teachers as a tool of secularisation of society in communist Czechoslovakia

This study focuses on the secularisation of society in communist Czechoslovakia (1948–1989) as a process in which primary school teachers played an important role. It aims to describe and explain typical everyday situations in which teachers were forced to fulfil tasks in connection with the Communist Party’s politics of secularisation. The text is based on witness memories obtained through oral history interviews, and on examination of historical archival sources and legislation. The study shows that the situations in which teachers found themselves in connection with performing these tasks were often not easy to face. This was, on the one hand, due to the expectations of the political establishment that teachers would obey their instructions meticulously and without reservations. The teachers, on the other hand, strove to interfere in negative ways with the lives of their students (and their families) as little as possible.     

PISA as a Political Tool in Spain: Assessment Instrument,Academic Discourse and Political Reform

This study examines to what extent there is a sort of “political appropiation” by political parties when they seek to set a discourse about the Spanish PISA outcomes. We have consistently found that programs for assessing the competencies of students, especially PISA, have become tools of rationalization and the legitimization of education policies in both the national and territorial contexts. Furthermore, each regional government focuses its discourse on what it feels to be its strong points, that is, a clear “self-justifying reading” of PISA outcomes.     

Unkindest Cuts? Some effects of picture editing on recall of television news information

Research into picture effects on encoding of verbal material has paid little attention to the effects of picture changes. In this experiment, it was found that adults’ recall of the spoken text in a TV news item was impaired by mid‐sentence picture editing. In contrast, both 11‐12 year old and 14‐15 year old children's recall was enhanced by rapid cutting, so long as the accompanying pictures were relevant to the verbal text. Both adults’ and younger children's recall was better with some of the experimentally‐manipulated material than it was with the original broadcast version of the news item. However, 14‐15 year olds performed best with the original version.

It is suggested that viewers are differentially sensitive to unintended production effects and that their processing of verbal information can be disrupted by inappropriately‐timed picture cuts. Research on picture‐text relationships in audio‐visual material needs to take account of picture‐timing, as well as picture content, and television editing procedures may need to be tailored more specifically to suit the intended audience.     

“Above must be above,and below must be below”: enactment of relational school leadership in Vietnam

Over the past 20 years, relational theories of leadership have gained increased traction in the global discourse in educational leadership. This is observable in the increased frequency with which scholars have begun to construct leadership within the sociocultural and institutional systems of different societies. This study addressed the question, “How is effective school leadership constructed in the multi-faceted education context of modern day Vietnam?” We employed a multi-site case study research design to collect qualitative data from several stakeholder groups in three Vietnamese schools. Analysis centered on describing and synthesizing how principal leadership was constructed in these settings. This study “contextualized school leadership” by describing how leadership themes of managing relationships, preserving harmony, and teacher empowerment were shaped by institutional, political and socio-cultural forces in Vietnamese society. The findings support the importance of contextualizing leadership in order to understand differences in how “effective school leadership” is constructed and understood across different societies.