Teacher change: ideas emerging from a project for the teaching of university mathematics

This paper reports the changes that occurred in the didactic approaches of three professors who participated in a project intended to develop new ways of teaching mathematics to second year university students. An enactivist perspective is used to address the process of change that emerged as a result from interactions during project meetings. We describe changes in the participants' actions by looking at data obtained from the meetings and the classrooms. Teachers were able to ‘see more’ and modify their teaching practices incorporating a more open and flexible approach in accordance to their structural state which depended on their previous history. Therefore, the results varied. It was possible to observe, however, similar changes in all members of the group which included the use of vocabulary from learning theories and the inclusion of in-depth reflections on teaching and learning.     

Girls Helping Girls: Assessing the Influence of College Student Mentors in an Afterschool Engineering Program

Current data suggest fewer females than males continue to be interested in engineering and that this gender gap is first evidenced during middle school years. One might expect that female engineering role models would encourage adolescent girls to pursue future careers in engineering and thereby increase the girls’ interests in and attitudes towards science and mathematics. This study sought to correlate middle school girls’ overall confidence in science and mathematics with a year-long, afterschool mentoring program led by female engineering students from a local university. The results demonstrated that there was a significant correlation between the quality of the mentoring relationship and the girls’ confidence in mathematics. The relationship between female role models and young girls’ attitudes toward science and mathematics is discussed.     

School teachers' perception about distributed leadership practices for inclusive education in primary schools in Bangladesh

This article reports on the third phase of a larger study that explored the perceptions of teachers about distributed leadership practices for inclusive education (IE) in primary schools involved in IE reform in Bangladesh. The Distributed Leadership Practice for Inclusive Education scale was developed specifically for this study to collect data. Participants for the present study were head teachers and teachers from 308 public primary schools. The results of this study indicate that teachers perceived that distributed leadership practices for IE were present in primary schools in Bangladesh. The findings indicate that teachers' perceptions about distributed leadership practices for IE have a significant positive correlation with their satisfaction about the implementation of IE policy.     

Gendered study choice: a literature review. A review of theory and research into the unequal representation of male and female students in mathematics,science, and technology

This article presents an overview of the recent literature on gendered patterns of academic choice in mathematics, science, and technology. It distinguishes in this literature micro-level, macro-level, and institutional explanations. Micro-level explanations focus primarily on psychological constructs, that is, variables at the level of the individual students. Macro-level explanations focus primarily on socioeconomic conditions and cultural understandings of gender roles. Institutional explanations focus on design characteristics of (national) education systems. After a presentation of these perspectives and of recent research progress that has been made, the authors critically discuss the lacunae that still exist in explaining cross-national variety, and provide suggestions for designing future research in this field.     

Schematising activities in early childhood education

The purpose of this study was to determine the importance of introducing schematising to children in early childhood and to determine whether schematising can be taught to children. This was done using a longitudinal, quantitative study with a quasi-experimental design (N = 133). In this study, the use of schematising was taught to an experimental group of children to determine if it is possible to realise significantly improved results in schematising tasks for an experimental group in comparison to a control group of children who were not taught schematising. Pupils in the experimental group demonstrated significantly better results on schematising, which cannot be explained by maturation. In our future research, we will investigate the mathematical performances of these experimental and control groups in the next grade of the primary school curriculum.     

Editorial

This paper analyses the experience of a teacher and her Year 6 class (10–11 year‐olds) over a school year, while participating in a pilot project introducing Personal Digital Assistants as a learning tool. The intervention was initiated and supported by the local City Learning Centre, which was concerned with how best to use technologies for learning, and the teacher was prepared to take risks to learn how to use the technology and apply it within the national curriculum. This paper focuses on the roles the teacher played in designing, managing and mediating multi‐modal approaches to teaching and learning, while meeting the curriculum requirements. Her creative approach was rewarded with high levels of student engagement, motivation and autonomy across the class, and higher than expected results in the national tests.     

Pre-service teachers’ TPACK competencies for spreadsheet integration: insights from a mathematics-specific instructional technology course

This article explored the impact of strategies applied in a mathematics instructional technology course for developing technology integration competencies, in particular in the use of spreadsheets, in pre-service teachers. In this respect, 104 pre-service mathematics teachers from a teacher training programme in Ghana enrolled in the mathematics instructional technology course for one semester. Strategies applied in designing the course were: aligning theory and practice, collaborative design, learning technology by design, modelling how to use technology and scaffolding authentic technology experiences. The pre-service teachers’ technology integration competencies were assessed through analysis of lesson plans and lesson observations, their self-reported technological pedagogical content knowledge and attitudes towards technology. Findings show that pre-service teachers’ technology integration competencies improved after participation in the course. All strategies were considered important, but in particular, scaffolding authentic technology experiences including feedback from teaching try-outs made significant contributions to the pre-service teachers’ developed technology integration competencies. The study provides guidelines that can serve as a benchmark for implementing strategies in the design of a subject-specific teacher education programme in preparing pre-service teachers to integrate technology in teaching.     

Survivin在原发性肝癌组织中的表达及其临床意义

目的 研究Survivin在原发性肝细胞癌中的表达水平及其临床意义,探讨其表达水平与原发性肝细胞癌发生发展的关系.方法 将101例原发性肝细胞癌及32例正常肝组织标本用免疫组化SP法检测Survivin的表达.结果 Survivin在原发性肝细胞癌组织中的表达明显高于正常肝组织中,差异具有统计学意义（p＜0.05）;在原发性肝癌中,Survivin的表达与肿瘤的淋巴结转移以及肿瘤的分化程度显著相关（p＜0.05）.结论 Survivin在原发性肝癌中的表达与肿瘤的发生发展有关,Survivin可作为判断原发性肝癌预后的指标之一.