Critical Democratic Teacher Preparation and the Practice of Council

“If democracy is to become a way of life in contemporary North American life, we certainly need to have schools with strong democratic commitments... if we are going to have democratic schools, we need teachers with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for developing sustained democratic ways of educating... if we are going to seek and sustain democratic teachers, we will also need... democratic teacher educators...” (Novak, 1994, p. ix)     

Context in Methods Course Learning: Lessons for partnership work

Teacher education programs are being encouraged to collaborate with K‐12 partners to develop and implement contextually rich field experiences that integrate methods course instruction with public school practices. As a result, we outline four models of integrating methods instruction and field experiences and raise the question “How does the classroom and school context of the field experience influence what prospective teachers learned in the methods courses?” This study examines the way two different cohorts of prospective elementary teachers who learned to teach in two different contexts define their own social studies pedagogical content knowledge. The students' espoused philosophies of education offer insight into how different models of integrated field experiences may impact on their beliefs about social studies teaching. Through this study we raise questions that should be considered in constructing methods courses linked to field experiences and suggest Bronfenbrenner's model as a tool for looking at these contextual influences.     

Casting the assessment net wide: Capturing all student learning

North Georgia College and State University has joined a national effort to move away from the isolated approach to measuring student learning. Educators from three divisions offer their perspectives.     

Composing print essays versus composing across modes: students' multimodal choices and overall preferences

The current study presents results from students' engagement of composing print essays and composing across modes on the same topic. It builds on the premise that print‐based reading and writing should complement and coexist with multimodal pedagogy. A group of Taiwanese adolescent students were invited to complete one print essay and one multimodal product on the same topic of “My favorite place in the world”. For their multimodal product, students were required to use at least two modes (e.g. words and image, sounds and words) in any medium (e.g. video, collage, scrapbook or website) of their choice. It was found that the most frequently used medium for students' multimodal projects was video which incorporated words, sounds and visuals. Most students felt that for the topic of “My favorite place in the world”, their multimodal products helped them to convey their ideas better because they provided the audience with more sensory information. To conclude the paper, a few future research directions are outlined to help move the research of multimodal composing forward.     

Reading Foreign Languages in the First Phase of Secondary Education: why,what and how?

In this article it is argued that reading skills in the teaching of a foreign language are much neglected in the first phase of secondary education. In order to show (I) why reading is of great importance for language acquisition in general and (2) how to utilise reading in the initial stages of language learning, the following questions are dealt with: (1) What is the status of reading in the different approaches to foreign language learning? (2) Why not focus on listening in terms of the receptive skills? (3) Which different types of texts (books) can be used? (4) How should these texts be used in order to maximise the contribution to language acquisition?     

Measuring the quality of e‐learning

This paper shows how concept mapping can be used to measure the quality of e‐learning. Six volunteers (all of them 3rd‐year medical students) took part in a programme of e‐learning designed to teach the principles of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Their understanding of MRI was measured before and after the course by the use of concept mapping. The quality of change in individuals' maps was assessed using criteria developed to distinguish between meaningful and rote‐learning outcomes. Student maps were also scored for evidence of conceptual richness and understanding. Finally, each map was compared directly with the content of the electronic teaching material. The results show that many of the student misconceptions were put right in the course of their learning but that many of the key concepts introduced in the teaching were ignored (or sometimes learnt by rote) by the students. This was because the teaching material locked these new ideas in structures and terminology that precluded meaning‐making among non‐experts. Our data suggest that students' prior knowledge is a key determinant of meaningful learning. We suggest that this must be acknowledged if the design and use of electronic teaching material is also to be meaningful. Ultimately, measures of student learning are the only authentic indicators of the quality of teaching through technology.     

Science achievement of english language learners in urban elementary schools: Results of a first‐year professional development intervention

This study is part of a 5‐year professional development intervention aimed at improving science and literacy achievement of English language learners (or ELL students) in urban elementary schools within an environment increasingly driven by high‐stakes testing and accountability. Specifically, the study examined science achievement at the end of the first‐year implementation of the professional development intervention that consisted of curriculum units and teacher workshops. The study involved 1,134 third‐grade students at seven treatment schools and 966 third‐grade students at eight comparison schools. The results led to three main findings. First, treatment students displayed a statistically significant increase in science achievement. Second, there was no statistically significant difference in achievement gains between students at English to Speakers of Other Language (ESOL) levels 1 to 4 and students who had exited from ESOL or never been in ESOL. Similarly, there was no significant difference in achievement gains between students who had been retained on the basis of statewide reading test scores and students who had never been retained. Third, treatment students showed a higher score on a statewide mathematics test, particularly on the measurement strand emphasized in the intervention, than comparison students. The results indicate that through our professional development intervention, ELL students and others in the intervention learned to think and reason scientifically while also performing well on high‐stakes testing. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 31–52, 2008