Practice and theory in teaching practice

Christensen, O.Ø., “Practice and theory in teaching practice,” Revue ATEE Journal 3 (1980) 43‐48.

The thesis of this word for student teachers on their way to acquire school‐based experience is that there is no direct link between the theory of teacher education and the practice of the school. It is pointed out that, just like the school, teacher education has its own theory and practice. During teaching practice a synthesis is established between the theory‐practice relation of teacher education and that of the school. That is why it is extremely important that the teaching practice tutor should be able to: (a) give justification of his own practice when teaching children; and (b) to function as an adult educator who can argue for his own contribution towards widening the student teacher's growing perception of the teacher's role in society.     

Impact of New Information Technologies on Teachers and Students

This paper summarises findings from several commissioned studies, doctoral dissertations, and federally-funded technology in education projects coordinated by the authors in conjunction with international colleagues over the past five years. It features evidence regarding the impact of information technologies on teacher training and student achievement, and spotlights trans-national trend analysis through common instrumentation as the technique believed to be the most promising research avenue for the future.     

Mindfulness and situational interest

In an attempt to exploit the concept of mindfulness for educational contexts, we investigated the role of dispositional mindfulness as an internal resource for the development of situational interest. Using an online questionnaire, we assessed participants’ (N?=?161, mean age?=?30.4 years, 74% female, 66% university students) mindfulness, presented them with a text on bionics, and asked them to indicate their situational interest regarding the material (t1). One week later, they indicated their maintained situational interest (t2). Findings reveal a positive relationship between mindfulness and situational interest at t1, especially with regard to participants’ ability to be momentarily ‘present’ and affective aspects of situational interest. Furthermore, we found an indirect effect of mindfulness on maintained situational interest at t2 via participants’ interest at t1. These findings were independent from participants’ initial interest and knowledge. Contrary to our expectation, we did not find a moderation effect for mindfulness on the relation between situational interest at t1 and t2. We discuss these findings in terms of implications for formal learning contexts.     

Children with Severe Behavior Problems: A Survey of Texas Child Care Centers' Responses

This article presents the findings of an exploratory study designed to look at the issue of removal of children from childcare due to behavior problems. A survey was sent to a random sample of nonresidential licensed day care centers (DCCs) in Texas. Results from the survey indicate that 50% of DCCs have removed a child from care due to behavior problems. In most cases, parents were left to figure out for themselves what to do with their children following their dismissal from care. This and other relationships found in the data are discussed as well as the need for future research in this area.     

A more equitable account of the note-taking functions in learning from lecture and from text

Previous research investigating the encoding, encoding-plus-storage, and extermal-storage functions of note taking has failed to equate processing opportunities among the groups. The present studies did so by having the encoding group take notes on two occasions without review, the encoding-plus-storage group take notes one time and review notes the next, and the external-storage group twice review a set of borrowed notes. Three forms of note taking were used: conventional, and note taking on skeletal and matrix frameworks. In both Experiment 1, involving lecture learning, and Experiment 2, involving text learning, an advantage was found for the encoding-plus-storage function on tests involving factual-recall and recognition performance but not on tests measuring higher-order performance. With respect to note-taking forms, no advantage existed for any form when information was acquired from lecture. When text material was used there was some advantage for conventional notes and a clear advantage for not taking notes at all, but instead twice reading the material. These findings were explained relative to observed note-taking behaviors, the opportunity for review, and the processing demands proposed by the combination of reading and note taking, particularly when notes must be classified into an existing framework.     

Developing and Assessing Curriculum on the Physics of Medical Instruments

Undergraduate educational settings often struggle to provide students with authentic biologically or medically relevant situations and problems that simultaneously improve their understanding of physics. Through exercises and laboratory activities developed in an elective Physics in Biomedicine course for upper-level biology or pre–health majors at Portland State University, we aim to teach fundamental physical concepts, such as light absorption and emission and atomic energy levels, through analysis of biological systems and medical devices. The activities address the properties of electromagnetic waves as they relate to the interaction with biological tissue and make links between physics and biomedical applications such as microscopy or laser eye surgery. We report on the effect that engaging students in tasks with actual medical equipment has had on their conceptual understanding of light and spectroscopy. These initial assessments indicate that students’ understanding improves in some areas as a result of taking the course, but gains are not uniform and are relatively low for other topics. We also find a promising “nonshift” in student attitudes toward learning science as a result of taking the course. A long-term goal of this work is to develop these materials to the extent that they can eventually be imported into an introductory curriculum for life sciences majors.     

Using a Physics Experiment in a Lecture Setting to Engage Biology Students with the Concepts of Poiseuille's Law

Biology students enrolled in a typical undergraduate physiology course encounter Poiseuille''s law, a physics equation that describes the properties governing the flow of blood through the circulation. According to the equation, a small change in vessel radius has an exponential effect on resistance, resulting in a larger than expected change in blood flow. To help engage students in this important concept, we performed a physics experiment as a lecture demonstration to mimic the original research by the 19th-century French scientist. We tested its impact as a research project and found that students who viewed the demonstration reacted very positively and showed an immediate increase in test performance, while the control group was able to independently “catch up” at the fourth week posttest. We further examined whether students’ math skills mapped to learning gains. The students with lower math scores who viewed the demonstration had slightly more improvement in test performance than those students who did not view the demonstration. Our data suggest that watching a lecture demonstration may be of even greater benefit to biology students with lower math achievement.     

Stereotyped: Investigating Gender in Introductory Science Courses

Research in science education has documented achievement gaps between men and women in math and physics that may reflect, in part, a response to perceived stereotype threat. Research efforts to reduce achievement gaps by mediating the impact of stereotype threat have found success with a short values-affirmation writing exercise. In biology and biochemistry, however, little attention has been paid to the performance of women in comparison with men or perceptions of stereotype threat, despite documentation of leaky pipelines into professional and academic careers. We used methodologies developed in physics education research and cognitive psychology to 1) investigate and compare the performance of women and men across three introductory science sequences (biology, biochemistry, physics), 2) document endorsement of stereotype threat in these science courses, and 3) investigate the utility of a values-affirmation writing task in reducing achievement gaps. In our study, analysis of final grades and normalized learning gains on content-specific concept inventories reveals no achievement gap in the courses sampled, little stereotype threat endorsement, and no impact of the values-affirmation writing task on student performance. These results underscore the context-dependent nature of achievement gaps and stereotype threat and highlight calls to replicate education research across a range of student populations.