Collaborative feedback and reflection for professional growth: preparing first-year pre-service teachers for participation in the community of practice

Teaching has been described as an emerging community of practice. Within such professional communities, the processes of reflection and collaborative dialogue, or critical transformative dialogue, are central to the maintenance and improvement of professional practice for individuals, and the field. This paper reports on the challenges experienced by a group of first-year pre-service teachers engaging in a process of reflection and critique with peers, as they participated in a program focused on the development of core practices of teaching. These pre-service teachers' responses indicated their growing understanding of the importance of engaging in ongoing critical dialogue, as part of the “unnatural” aspects of teaching. The paper concludes with a reflection on the value of feedback from the earliest stages of professional learning.     

A love towards a thing eternal: Spinoza and the classroom

There is a growing concern about the struggles of early career teachers and an understandable questioning of the preparation being offered by teacher education courses. Are our preservice teachers being given workable strategies and techniques to allow them to survive the early years? Is it strategies and techniques that are primarily at issue here? Could it be that there is something more fundamental, to do with an underlying philosophical understanding about human nature, the desire to learn and the need to relate? I want to suggest that instruction about strategies and techniques is too often built on an insecure and incompatible foundation of assumptions about the nature of the world of sentient beings and their relationships. Ontology matters. Philosopher Spinoza divided the world of thought into ideas that were adequate – contributing to our well-being, potency and happiness – and those that were inadequate – leading us to feel weak, at the mercy of outside forces, and sad. I want to argue, with Spinoza, that inadequate ontologies lead to a sense of impotence and frustration, and that adequate ideas – a stronger ontology – can underpin and sustain a more durable pedagogy. I explore this idea by looking at some classroom events through a Spinozean lens.     

Peer versus staff tutoring in problem-based learning

Effects of student versus staff tutoring on student learning in a problem-based, health sciences curriculum were studied. Academic achievement of 334 tutorial groups guided by staff tutors was compared with achievement of 400 groups guided by student tutors. In addition, students rated their tutor's performance on four behaviors considered critical to facilitating student learning. Overall, students guided by a staff tutor achieved somewhat better. In terms of practical significance, the difference was, however, fairly small. Staff tutors were rated as more knowledgeable and their contributions as more relevant. In addition, they asked stimulating questions to a larger extent. However, an interaction effect was found between the ratings and the year of study: Peer tutors displayed the supportive behaviors more extensively in the first year, whereas staff tutors' ratings were higher as the curriculum advanced. These results were interpreted in terms of the cognitive congruence framework.Parts of this article have been presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA, April, 1993.     

To tag or not to tag? How to support organizing and classifying bookmarks from the Web (¿Con etiquetas o sin etiquetas? Cómo asistir en la organización y clasificación de los marcadores de páginas Web) (¿Con etiquetas o sin etiquetas? Cómo asistir en la organización y clasificación de los marcadores de páginas Web)

ABSTRACT

When searching for information on the Internet, it can be stored in a bookmarking system. The ability to organize this information in such a system depends on one’s own prior knowledge to create an appropriate classification scheme. Providing a classification system for bookmarks might support people with low prior knowledge. Even though different bookmarking systems exist, hierarchical menus and tagging are being most widely used. In the current exploratory study with 95 ninth-grade students, a 2 × 2 between-subjects design was used to investigate the influence of providing classification support (or not) for either a tagging or a hierarchical system. Results showed that despite the low familiarity with tagging systems, using a hierarchical system is not necessarily a better approach than using a tagging system to organize previously found information. Rather, a tagging system seems to yield storage of fewer but higher-quality information sources. The most important conclusion is that, despite the low familiarity with tagging systems, using a hierarchical system was not beneficial over using a tagging system to organize previously found information.     

The mathematics teacher identity of two early career mathematics teachers and the influence of their working communities on its development

Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education - To better understand the critical early years of teaching and teacher identity development, this study explored the mathematics teacher identity of two...     

Personal reactions to ‘strange’ situations: Attachment styles and acculturation attitudes of immigrants and majority members

A growing number of studies examine the influence of individual factors on acculturation attitudes of immigrants, but few studies focus on majority members’ attitudes. In this paper, two studies are reported on the relation between attachment styles and acculturation attitudes of both immigrants (N=177) and majority members (N=243) in the Netherlands. Until now very few studies have associated cultural adjustment with attachment styles. This is remarkable, because attachment theory refers to interaction with others in new situations. Four different styles of attachment (the secure, dismissing, preoccupied and fearful attachment styles) are related to Berry's classification of acculturation attitudes. People, both immigrants and majority members, with a secure attachment style were positive towards integration, whereas people with a dismissing attachment style were not. Dismissing immigrants were more positive towards separation. Whereas both immigrants and majority members with a secure attachment style showed a similar pattern of correlations between attachment and acculturation, they seem to react quite differently, and even in opposite ways, when they have a preoccupied attachment style. Yet, the different reactions may be caused by the same psychological process: The existential ambivalence of preoccupied people may lead to diverse reactions.     

Age is more than just a number! The role of age and maturity in the processes leading to early school leaving in Flanders (Belgium)

In many educational systems, age is used as a criterion to organise education. Children's age is used to group students together and indicate entry into particular programmes. The use of age for organisational purposes in education stems from the idea that age provides an indication of the development of children, which is associated with teaching and learning. However, more far‐reaching consequences of age‐related educational practices are insufficiently recognised in policy and academic research. Qualitative methods are used to study students and school personnel in diverse types of educational institutions in Flanders (Belgium) to assess how age and age‐related issues matter for the students’ educational trajectories and educational decision‐making processes leading to early school leaving. Data analyses reveal that school staff members consider age and perceived maturity during evaluation procedures. Students also consider age during educational decision‐making processes: when getting older or being too old for the grade, students increasingly weigh the costs and benefits associated with getting an educational qualification and being enrolled in school and alternative opportunities. Students’ expectations related to age shape their school experiences and feelings of belonging. The findings of this study demonstrate how these educational practices add to the reproduction of inequalities through education. These results could inform debates concerning the evaluation procedures in secondary education, compulsory education and the reduction of early school leaving in Europe.     

Launching the Virtual Academic Center: Issues and Challenges in Innovation

In October 2010, the University of Southern California School of Social Work entered the online education environment with the launch of the first national web-based MSW program. After an initial enrollment of 80 students, in just 3 years this state-of-the-art MSW, offered in a technology-advanced synchronous and asynchronous format, has generated an enrollment of 2,000 students residing in 38 states. The development and rapid growth of the Virtual Academic Center has not been without significant challenges, the most substantial of which has been the creation of a national field education program. This paper describes the MSW courses taught in the online environment, and pedagogical hurdles faced in order to maintain the educational quality that is the hallmark of the School's campus-based MSW program.