Mexican Immigrant Students' Schooling Experiences and the Construction of Disengagement in Mathematics Learning Contexts

Through an ethnographic and narrative inquiry approach, this study draws attention to the plight of 4 Mexican immigrant high school students and their pursuit of education and mathematics learning. Their elementary school stories and experiences show a deep relationship between the learning contexts in which these students largely do school (i.e., an English learner context) and the nature of students' relationships (or lack thereof) with teachers and their process of disengagement from mathematics learning and school. Doing school is used to convey a key distinction from simply attending school. Attending school assumes uniformity/neutrality in how students might experience schooling and is a passive way of describing student participation in school. Doing school implies that students make sense of and respond to their schooling experiences in different ways and accounts for how these experiences are shaped and/or influenced by other forces (e.g., structural forces, social forces) in and out of school.     

三语学习者英语词汇教学

词汇是语言的基础,词汇的学习和掌握对语言学习至关重要。但词汇的习得却始终困扰着学生,对将英语作为第三语言学习的白族学生而言,教师应当从语音强化,传授词汇记忆策略,扩大阅读量,渗透文化知识等方面提高学生的词汇水平。     

The role of the English learner facilitator in developing teacher capacity for the instruction of English learners

As a field, we have a limited understanding and a dearth of empirical research concerning the role of high school instructional coaches focused on English learners (ELs). This paper examines one EL facilitator’s work as an instructional coach and resource for supporting mainstream content teachers as they learn to meet the needs of adolescent ELs in one high school. This analysis is grounded within an examination of the influence of school structure and organization on the EL facilitator’s work and her role as a resource. Drawing on sociocultural learning theory, as well as literature on teacher leadership and instructional coaching, case study data from a year-long qualitative research project are analyzed. Implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed.     

应用NLP理论转化学困生的策略初探

学困生问题是教育工作者必须面对的现实问题。转化学困生是一项长期而艰巨的任务,在今天这项工作依然严峻,尤其是在广州市白云区的许多城乡结合部的学校里,学困生所占的比例非常大很多领导和教师为此付出了很多的心血和精力,获得了成功,也遭受了失败,内心充满了信心,也同时饱含许多无奈。本文从教育实践中总结转化学困生工作中存在的不足和误区,并在此基础上,试图运用NLP的理念来提出一些改善的策略,希望能对学困生转化工作起到一定的帮助和指导。     

第二语言学生考试焦虑探究

焦虑是学习第二语言的学生在考试过程中无法避免的因素之一。引起第二语言考试焦虑的原因主要包括学生自身因素、第二语言课堂因素、社会文化因素和测试本身等因素。积极的自我暗示、帮助学生学会合理运用时间和策略完成学习任务、采用形成性评估提供反馈、传授应试技巧、重视学生所付出的努力、多鼓励和表扬等,能积极有效地帮助学生缓解考试焦虑,发挥正常水平,取得好成绩。     

虚拟仿真教学系统学习效果的影响因素研究

针对虚拟仿真教学系统如何影响学习者学习效果机制不明的问题,文章基于建构主义学习理论,构建了虚拟仿真教学系统学习效果的影响机制模型。在此基础上,文章使用系统日志数据,从教学内容、虚拟仿真技术、学习者特征三个维度探讨虚拟仿真教学系统对学习效果的影响,并提出7个研究假设。随后,文章以江苏科技大学企业管理虚拟实景实验教学系统为例进行了实证研究,对7个研究假设进行了一一验证,结果发现:学习者的专业素养正向影响操作能力表现与学习效果;任务复杂性与操作能力表现之间呈倒U型关系;虚拟仿真技术分别调节了专业素养、任务复杂性与操作能力表现之间的关系。最后,文章针对虚拟仿真教学系统的具体应用提出建议,以期提升虚拟仿真教学系统在高校应用的教学效果。     

Collaboration to teach English language learners: opportunities for shared teacher learning

This study examines collaboration between English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers and content-area elementary school teachers, and makes the case for conceptualising teacher collaboration as an opportunity for shared teacher learning. Using a sociocultural theoretical lens, this study examines how three pairs of elementary teachers and ESOL specialists used and constructed tools for collaboration, which mediated and made visible teachers’ learning processes. Employing interpretive enquiry and cross-case analysis, we examined data from classroom observations, teacher co-planning sessions and interviews with teachers. Findings demonstrated that collaborating teachers used tools to articulate and reconceptualise teaching goals, co-construct knowledge and ultimately transform teaching practices to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. This study has implications for teacher education and ongoing professional development, by shedding light on the potential affordances of collaborative tools for teacher learning. Findings suggest that teacher education could harness these opportunities for learning by incorporating collaboration between ESOL specialists and content-area teachers as an integral part of preparing more qualified teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students.     

Cooperative writing response groups: revising global aspects of second-language writing in a constrained educational environment

This article describes a cooperative writing response initiative designed to develop writing skills in foreign/second-language contexts (hereafter L2). The strategy originated from my desire to cater for my learners’ need to become better writers in English within a constrained educational environment in Argentina. In this article I describe this strategy and show how it has worked in my setting. First, I offer the rationale on which it rests, based on a sociocultural conception of reading and writing. This involves brief considerations about the notions of collaborative writing groups, social responses to texts and coherence in L2 writing. Second, I describe and explain the strategy in detail, and include one handout with specific written instructions (as my learners received them) for the cooperative writing response groups with a focus on coherence, i.e. global aspects of the composing process. Finally, I exemplify the strategy using one learner’s written text as a foundation (disclosed by permission).     

Teaching imaginary children: University students’ narratives about their Latino practicum children

This study investigates the dialogic processes involved in how teachers talk about their students and what consequences their ways of talking (i.e., “narratives”) may have for their guidance. We take a sociocultural perspective on learning as transformation of students’ subjectivity. Teaching, as a process of guiding and facilitating learning, cannot be effective if the teacher does not actively seek how the student perceives and understands reality. We borrow and adapt from Bakhtin (1999) four narrative ways of talking about others: objectivizing, subjectivizing, problematizing and finalizing. The presence of these narratives in web discussion postings of our pre-service teachers about the Latino children they worked with in a community center are analyzed. We then compare their ways of talking about children with print- and web-based discussions about children made by in-service teachers, model teachers and our pre-service teachers in a school-based practicum. Using mixed quantitative and qualitative methodologies, we found an overwhelming predominance of objectivizing and finalizing in our pre-service teachers’ narratives about the children with whom they work that seems to define a certain pedagogical regime that we call here “teaching imaginary children/students.” This “way of talking” about children seems to be characterized by unchecked speculations guiding instruction that are not tested by finding out from the children themselves how they understand the instruction and the world. These speculations, in turn, can lead to a dogmatic approach towards children.