Group size and organisational conditions for children’s learning in preschool: a teacher perspective

Background:?There is a limited amount of research about group size in preschool, and how it impacts on teachers’ working conditions and their ability to support children’s learning and knowledge development in line with curriculum intentions.

Purpose:?From a perspective on quality, this article examines the organisational conditions for children’s learning in preschool in relation to group size. The questions at issue are: how do teachers explain how they organise the child group and the learning environment in preschool, and why?

Sample:?The sample consists of 12 preschools from different parts of Sweden. The preschools selected for the study are stratified in order to represent small and large group sizes in Swedish preschools as defined by the Swedish National Agency for Education. The sample contains both urban and rural regions and represents districts that differ geographically, demographically, ethnically, and which include varied socioeconomic structures. The 12 preschools had children in three age groupings: 1–3, 3–5 or 1–5. The number of children in the participating preschools ranged from 12 children to 45 children, with seven of the preschools having more than 30 children in their groups.

Design and method:?The article is based on interactionist perspectives, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, a critical ecology of the early childhood profession, theories of children’s learning, and four dimensions of pedagogical quality. Together, these theoretical perspectives contribute to an understanding of the relationships between policy issues, educational goals, group size and teachers’ competence in organising and creating conditions for children’s learning. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two teachers from each of the 12 preschools. The interviews lasted between 40–60 minutes and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The analytical process was conducted in three steps and can be described as an analytical process of abduction. The four dimensions of pedagogical quality were used as analytical lenses to discern and understand critical aspects related to the teachers’ understanding of group size.

Result: Irrespective of group size, most of the children participate in different group constellations throughout the day, some organised by the teachers and some by the children themselves. Teachers’ competence to organise the children in such ways that good conditions for learning were created, differed between preschools, and depended on the teachers’ approach, which can be described as either intentional or unintentional learning.

Conclusion: Teachers’ organisational approaches influence the quality of the preschool and conditions for children’s learning in distinct ways.     

Personal Backgrounds of Effective Teaching

Planning time for giving students effective feedback is an important and challenging aspect of the teaching and learning process. In our article we describe and analyze how we engage students as partners in providing formative feedback in time for students to modify their own thinking or behavior to improve learning. We have found ways to provide formative feedback more frequently and to involve students in providing effective formative feedback to each other. The four techniques we describe are the following: a) three-color group quiz with feedback on product, process, and progress; b) midterm student conferencing; c) shared revision of student generated questions and statements; and d) timely feedback using collaborative assignment blogs. These techniques give feedback in time for revisions to occur, provide scaffolding for learners, inform instruction, and most importantly, involve students as partners in assessment. These pedagogical strategies show that the resulting benefits of improved instruction, enhanced student learning, and better student products are worth the time and effort and contribute to a productive classroom climate where the focus is on learning more than on grading. Formative feedback involving students as partners is a key strategy to enhance the teaching and learning process.     

Teaching chemical bonding through jigsaw cooperative learning

This study examined the effectiveness of jigsaw cooperative learning in teaching chemical bonding at tertiary level. This study was carried out in two different classes in the Department of Primary Science Education of Atatürk University during the 2005–2006 academic year. One of the classes was the non‐jigsaw group (control) and the other was the jigsaw group (experimental). Students in the jigsaw group were divided into four ‘home groups’ since chemical bonding is divided into four subtopics (Modules A, B, C and D). Each of these home groups consisted of four students. The subjects covered were ionic bonding (Module A), covalent bonding (Module B), hydrogen bonding and van der Waals (Module C) and basic concepts about bonds (Module D). The main instrument for obtaining data was the Chemical Bonding Achievement Test (CBAT), which was applied to both groups. The CBAT was divided into four modules (A, B, C and D), in which each module consisted of five questions (four multiple‐choice and one open‐ended). The data obtained indicated that the students in the jigsaw group were more successful than those in the non‐jigsaw group.     

From Crisis to Prevention: Developing a Pastoral Curriculum

David Hay discusses the ways that spirituality might be defined and its relationship to morality. He notes the well-intentioned documents produced by the SCAA Values Forum but argues that they have failed to get to grips with the ‘motivating reality of spiritual insight’. Perhaps spiritual awareness cannot be taught as it is part of the biological inheritance that makes us human. If this is the case, and he believes it is, then what the teacher must do is help children become aware of this and reflect on it in the light of the culture of which they are a part. He identifies a number of significant difficulties that have to be overcome before this can be done. In the remainder of the paper he considers the implications of creating such an awareness in children, and details the responsibilities of schools and teachers in this process.     

Teaching the language of mathematics at three levels of an English-medium primary school

This study, situated in a multilingual, English-medium educational context, draws on theory from mathematics and language education to capture teachers’ perspectives on the place of language in their mathematics pedagogy. The benchmark study explored this topic through surveying and interviewing teachers. Additionally, it sought to relate teachers’ views to their practice by focusing on observing three teachers’ mathematics lessons at primary one, three, and five. Findings are that mathematics teachers placed importance on teaching language, being specifically concerned with language as input and comprehension. They taught vocabulary and reading skills in supportive ways explicitly yet differently at the three grade levels. Particularly at the lower levels, teachers contextualised language in the concrete examples employed for mathematics teaching. At all three levels, prominence was given to teaching pupils how to read word problems as well as how to solve them. However, at primary three, a tension was observed between the two aims of teaching mathematical vocabulary and teaching the reading skills for word problems. This paper illustrates the tension and discusses its possible causes.     

Social Justice Becomes a Living Experience for Students,Faculty, and Community

This social justice course was the result of a service‐learning project with African American and First Nations peoples of a Southern community telling their story of desegregation through the creation of a video documentary project. Combining the pedagogy of service‐learning with documentary video making, a social justice project was created that impacted students, faculty, and community.     

Teacher professional development through collaborative action research: impact on foreign English-language teaching and learning

In 2011 we, a group of English-as-a-foreign-language teachers at a secondary school in Argentina, decided to investigate our teaching practices through collaborative action research so as to improve our students’ learning opportunities and thus revitalise English-language teaching in our context. We implemented and evaluated the integration of content and language learning in our classrooms through the development of our own materials. The experience revealed a growth in professional development and how our motivation and autonomy influenced our students’ motivation and language development. In our attempt to disseminate our experience as a group, this report particularly focuses on the evaluation facets of our collaborative action research project so as to encourage other teachers and teacher-researchers to adopt collaborative action research to improve their own practices.     

A Modified NEP/DSP Environmental Attitudes Scale

Abstract

The relationship between people and the rest of nature is central to the debate concerning the management of natural resources. An understanding of how environmental concern is reflected in people's attittudes and value systems is important for the development of responsive environmental management. Effective attitude measures already exist, most notably the New Environmental Paradigm scale. Since this measure was produced, however, certain issues not addressed by the scale have become increasingly important within the environmental debate. These include concepts such as the intrinsic value of nature, or the moral duties of humans to the rest of nature-issues that surface repeatedly in the environmental literature. The study has shown that it is possible to include references to the intrinsic value of nature, as well as the moral duties people have to the rest of nature and to other human beings, within a reliable and unidimensional attitude scale.     

Effective special teacher characteristics: perceptions of preschool special educators in Greece

The aim of the present study was to evaluate six characteristics of effective special pre‐school teachers, similar to those used in the relevant literature. The study participants were all special teachers (n = 226), serving in Greek state and community pre‐primary educational institutions (i.e. kindergartens and day nurseries) for children with learning disabilities. Data were collected through a two‐part questionnaire sent to the targeted special teachers (response rate 100%) and through focused group discussion with teachers. Three characteristics emerged as salient features of an effective teacher: love for the children; competent pre‐service training and ongoing professional development; and professionalism and commitment. The remaining three characteristics assessed (i.e. effective communication skills, a well‐rounded personality, and instructional ability) were also judged to be essential. Based on each characteristic’s analysis, the paper discusses the implications of pre‐service and in‐service training for special teachers.     

Learning Visualization Strategies: A qualitative investigation

The following study investigates the range of strategies individuals develop to infer and interpret cross-sections of three-dimensional objects. We focus on the identification of mental representations and problem-solving processes made by 11 individuals with the goal of building training applications that integrate the strategies developed by the participants in our study. Our results suggest that although spatial transformation and perspective-taking techniques are useful for visualizing cross-section problems, these visual processes are augmented by analytical thinking. Further, our study shows that participants employ general analytic strategies for extended periods which evolve through practice into a set of progressively more expert strategies. Theoretical implications are discussed and five main findings are recommended for integration into the design of education software that facilitates visual learning and comprehension.