Classroom Events Research Articles

Using virtual classroom simulations in a mathematics methods course to develop pre‐service primary mathematics teachers' noticing skills

AbstractThis study proposed a low‐cost, easy to set up and easy to modify virtual classroom simulation environment, CartoonClass, and tested its impact on 27 pre‐service primary school teachers' noticing development during a semester‐long mathematics methods course. The participants' perceptions of using CartoonClass were also examined. A Wilcoxon signed‐rank test of the pre‐test and post‐test results showed that the participants (1) significantly developed their noticing skills, with regard to both general classroom events and attending‐to skills; and (2) significantly changed their focus on ‘mathematics thinking,’ an accepted indicator of better noticing skills. (3) However, a novel video‐summarising task aimed at detecting the participants' skills to quickly notice and grasp a complex teaching situation found no significant change in such ability over the course of the experiment. On the other hand, the qualitative data analysis showed the participants had positive perceptions of the virtual environment regarding realism, enjoyment and effectiveness. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Using virtual classroom simulations can improve pre‐service teachers' expertise, but teacher educators need a low‐cost virtual environment that can be easily used in their own classrooms. Our understanding of using classroom simulations to improve teacher noticing is still limited. Using animation‐based assessment in teacher noticing is meaningful. Examining teacher noticing relies much on written reflections of watching videos but developing different types of tasks is critical. What this paper adds This study provided an economical and easy way to build a virtual classroom environment. Compared with previous classroom simulation studies, this study used a more structured instrument to examine pre‐service teachers' noticing performance. A novel task (write a full‐video outline with a short time watching) was created to examine teachers' noticing skills in quickly recognising a classroom situation. Implications for practice and/or policy The two types of questions (general and specific) in assessing teacher noticing yielded different results that may provide valuable insights for future research on this topic. As our pre‐service teachers developed only basic noticing skills (ie, attending‐to), we suggest that teacher educators should be provided with more intensive training in teacher noticing. Developing only attending‐to skills may be not sufficient for quickly recognising a classroom situation.

Language learners’ emotional dynamics: insights from a Q methodology intensive single-case study

ABSTRACT Learner emotions represent sudden, dynamic, and complex adaptations to the language classroom environment. Recent Second Language Acquisition research calls for a more holistic perspective in approaching classroom emotions, one that considers emotional variations between and across learners, and which foregrounds the interconnections among emotions and between emotions and the learning environment. This paper approaches emotions from a complex dynamic systems perspective and investigates the classroom emotions of five university students of Korean as a foreign language using a Q methodology intensive single-case study design. Overall results show that students have sometimes similar, sometimes different emotional reactions depending on classroom events, indicating different levels of interaction between a learner’s emotional system and other individual characteristics. Additionally, a more fine-grained analysis at the level of individual learners reveals clusters of emotions triggered by the same event and foregrounds the relevance of epistemic emotions for instructed foreign language learning. The results are discussed focusing on new hypotheses to inform future SLA emotion research and classroom practices.

Frictional matterings: (Re)thinking identity and subjectivity in the coming-to-be of literacies

The authors take up the guest editors’ invitation to address the difference that posthumanist and feminist ‘new’ materialist theories make and why this matters politically and ethically. Alongside events from an early childhood (kindergarten) classroom, the authors engage with current conversations which build on and extend Kimberlé Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality with post-philosophies by scholars who identify as Black feminist, Women of Colour feminist, queer theorist, Chicana and/or Indigenous scholars. In an iterative, slow thinking-making-with-reading, this contemplation brings intersectionality and post-philosophies into conversation to explore diffractive-affirmative possibilities for social and curricular (re)shapings. The authors create a philosophical playground to think identity and subjectivity when engaging with these theories both with/in classroom events and with/in their own co-constituted scholarly and teacherly becomings. The authors set forth several potentially generative frictions in teaching and researching environments.

Student Teachers’ Use of Language: Discourse Functions in Teaching-Based Reflective Writing

The value of reflective writing in teacher education is widely accepted and research has focused increasingly on investigating the quality of students’ reflective texts by assessing their reflective depth or breadth. Studies on student teachers’ professional vision have looked at processes of noticing relevant classroom events and reasoning about them, emphasizingthat thinking about teaching and learning is a strongly knowledge-guided process. While much empirical attention has been given to assessing students’ writing, little insight has been gained into how reflective thinking actually unfolds. The aim of this study is to examine student teachers’ discursive practices as they engage in reflective writing in the context of a teaching practicum. Data consists of reflective essays which were analysed using linguistically based qualitative coding in order to identify discourse functions in students’ texts. Findings allow a detailed description of verbal actions carried out in guided reflective writing. They also indicate that due to the situated nature of their writing, student teachers engage in affective appraisal and reasoning processes which are verbalized by using everyday as well as academic language depending on students’ zone of proximal development and their developing pedagogical content knowledge.

Vibrancy and stillness in talking school discourse: examining embodied talk in a primary classroom

Vibrancy and stillness in talking school discourse: examining embodied talk in a primary classroom

Using Semantic Pathways to Reveal the “Depth” of Pre-Service Teachers’ Reflections

During teacher preparation programmes, pre-service teachers need to reflect meaningfully on their classroom experiences. However, some pre-service teachers tend to provide narrative accounts of classroom events and interactions. Mentors and assessors urge them to “probe more deeply” but give little guidance about what this entails. This study reports on an intervention in which reflection guidelines were changed after noticing how guidelines asked questions that limited professional learning. The revised set of guidelines prompted pre-service teachers to make iterative links between the theoretical insights gleaned from coursework and their experiential learning in classroom settings. The Semantics dimension from Legitimation Code Theory is used to compare the reflections written in response to the original and revised guidelines. Using the revised guidelines, two thirds of participants drew more intentionally on theoretical insights to interpret and explain their classroom experiences. The article concludes by suggesting several conditions for enabling pre-service teachers to write “deeper” reflections that are both theoretically informed and contextually responsive. These conditions include access to relevant concepts, guidelines that make expectations visible and access to a language of practice for providing feedback about what “probing more deeply” looks like. I argue that the concepts from Legitimation Code Theory offer such a language.

Bridging the Gap Between Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment in Science Education Research with Machine Learning — A Case for Pretrained Language Models-Based Clustering

Science education researchers typically face a trade-off between more quantitatively oriented confirmatory testing of hypotheses, or more qualitatively oriented exploration of novel hypotheses. More recently, open-ended, constructed response items were used to combine both approaches and advance assessment of complex science-related skills and competencies. For example, research in assessing science teachers’ noticing and attention to classroom events benefitted from more open-ended response formats because teachers can present their own accounts. Then, open-ended responses are typically analyzed with some form of content analysis. However, language is noisy, ambiguous, and unsegmented and thus open-ended, constructed responses are complex to analyze. Uncovering patterns in these responses would benefit from more principled and systematic analysis tools. Consequently, computer-based methods with the help of machine learning and natural language processing were argued to be promising means to enhance assessment of noticing skills with constructed response formats. In particular, pretrained language models recently advanced the study of linguistic phenomena and thus could well advance assessment of complex constructs through constructed response items. This study examines potentials and challenges of a pretrained language model-based clustering approach to assess preservice physics teachers’ attention to classroom events as elicited through open-ended written descriptions. It was examined to what extent the clustering approach could identify meaningful patterns in the constructed responses, and in what ways textual organization of the responses could be analyzed with the clusters. Preservice physics teachers (N = 75) were instructed to describe a standardized, video-recorded teaching situation in physics. The clustering approach was used to group related sentences. Results indicate that the pretrained language model-based clustering approach yields well-interpretable, specific, and robust clusters, which could be mapped to physics-specific and more general contents. Furthermore, the clusters facilitate advanced analysis of the textual organization of the constructed responses. Hence, we argue that machine learning and natural language processing provide science education researchers means to combine exploratory capabilities of qualitative research methods with the systematicity of quantitative methods.

What does it look like? A window into classroom-based critical service learning

PurposeThis study aims to illustrate Mitchell’s (2008) theory of critical service-learning within elementary and middle school classrooms, looking specifically at classroom events, in which community partners visit classrooms to discuss student-selected social issues.Design/methodology/approachData from teacher interviews, classroom observations, teacher-recorded classroom videos and photos of student artifacts were collected and analyzed. Using deductive analysis, key observable events were identified, in which a teacher and their students navigated opportunities to take a social change orientation, redistribute power, or engage in authentic relationships. Classroom discourse analysis was used to examine these specific events to illustrate what critical service learning looks like in action.FindingsAnalysis revealed how core principles of critical service-learning play out in the classrooms. Two major themes that emerged were students engaging in systemic thinking and students taking on new roles as they operated in classrooms where traditional relationships among teacher, student and content were shifted from a banking model to a problem-posing model.Originality/valueMuch of the research on service learning has been conducted in university, high school or out-of-school settings or analyzes classroom practices based on traditional, individual civic actions. Very little empirical work explores practices in classrooms where teachers facilitate critical service-learning over the course of an entire school year. This study offers an image of the kinds of student thinking that becomes possible in elementary and middle school classrooms enacting critical service learning.

Onto/Epistemic Violence and Dialogicality in Translanguaging Practices Across Multilingual Mathematics Classrooms

Background: The focus on translanguaging practices in multilingual classrooms can be seen, by and large, as responding to risks of violence entailed in diverse contexts of language use, including the teaching and learning of mathematics. However, the practice of translanguaging alone cannot counteract the hegemonic authority of our relation to language curricula being present through interactions among teachers, students, and researchers, as well as material resources. Purpose: Drawing on Bakhtin’s philosophy of language, we discuss dialogicality as a critical and democratic organizing principle for the pervasive polyphony that characterizes every utterance constituting heteroglossia. Dialogicality reconstitutes our relation to language through the “other” and the need to see any utterance as a nonteleological process among subjects and objects. As such, the aim is to explore how acts of dialogicality may address the potential risks of onto/epistemic violence in translanguaging practices. Focusing on either emergent or orchestrated translanguaging in three European states: Greece, Catalonia and Sweden, we discuss how dialogicality allows for alternative accounts of language use in complex classroom events. Method: Methodologically, we start by encountering the sociopolitical context of monolingual and monologic curricula in Europe, where the three cases we theorize take place, along with our considerations for dialogicality in the realm of translanguaging. Our theorizing-in-practice unfolds a double effort in reading. First, what can we read today as risks of onto/epistemic violence in each of these cases? And second, what is the potential of dialogic translanguaging across the cases and within the boundaries of state monolingual policy and monologic discursive culture of school mathematics? Findings: The present article contributes by discussing dialogicality as a relational onto/epistemology toward addressing translanguaging practices. Concerning the first question, our theorizing-in-practice shares evidence of the inevitable presence of onto/epistemic violence in every utterance. The limited scope of a crude mathematisation process through language appears continuously in mathematics classrooms, serving to place either the object or the subject into fixed narratives. Regarding the second question, our dialogical reading of translanguaging denotes the importance of the importance of minor responding(s) to such moments of violent risk. We understand them as “cracks” in the authoritative status of monolingual and monologic mathematics curricula; we argue that such minor, yet crucial, cracks are of great significance for creating acts of dialogicality from “below,” disrupting the hegemonic authority of an assumed neutral mathematical language. Conclusions/Recommendations: The risk of onto/epistemic violence is inevitable in any discursive and embodied encounter in multilingual mathematics classrooms, including the translanguaging practices. The study suggests that acts of dialogicality become minor responses to violence in ways that both counteract oppressive monologic discourse and open toward a relational onto/epistemology with mathematics, children, teachers, material resources, and researchers. Remembering how Bakhtin insisted that “language is never unitary” and “dialogue” is not a panacea, we emphasize the need for a continuous focus on creating acts of dialogicality with language and discourse.

How Did Vietnamese Teachers Observe Lessons? Active, Passive, And Middle Voices in Classroom Observation

This study aims to identify the characteristics of Vietnamese teachers’ classroom observations. The analysis was conducted using data from the ten teachers who struggled to introduce the new curriculum during the 2000s. The analysis applied from the literature on the teachers’ video reflection revealed that those who participated in weekly sessions of Lesson Study for Learning Community (LSLC) tended to identify students’ knowledge formation better than those who did not participate in the lesson study. The second qualitative analysis, focusing on effective and attitudinal aspects in observation, indicated that the teachers in LSLC schools could accept and respond to the classroom event by positing themselves in the seat of actors. The discussion is devoted to the application of the concept of middle voice to the LSLC teachers’ observation, to examine a possible extension of the literature which mainly relies on teachers’ active cognitive processes.

Reconceptualization of Inclusion through Anti-Bias Curriculum

Tensions can arise when biased thoughts and practices are uncovered through discursive events in early years classrooms. This paper challenges the common practice of disregarding childhood curiosities in an attempt to ease tension and remove the risk of discomfort for some adults in caregiving and educating roles. Through a conceptual shift from a futurity of inclusion to an urgent call to action that problematizes the exclusion of nonhuman subjects within the curriculum, the construction and implementation of anti-bias curriculum is offered as a vehicle to the realization of holistically inclusive early learning spaces.

Exploring teacher effects on intensifying and minimizing mathematics anxiety among students in Sokoto State, Nigeria

<span>Mathematics anxiety is the feeling of tension and fear which interferes with the manipulation of numbers in ordinary life and academic setting. This study aimed at exploring students’ level of mathematics anxiety and teacher behavior and speech which intensifies and minimizes mathematics anxiety among secondary schools in Sokoto state, Nigeria. In total, 109 questionnaires regarding mathematics anxiety named the cognitive, emotion, physical-mathematics anxiety rating (CEP-MAR) were distributed to students and 102 were returned. From the responses in the questionnaire, 20 of the most mathematics anxious individuals were selected to participate in a photovoice project. These 20 students were given cameras and asked to capture classroom events, which impact on their mathematics anxiety. Afterwards, a one-to-one semi-structured interview was conducted with each student to discuss the photos. The findings disclosed that teachers’ behavior and speech such as being too quick in mathematics classroom lessons, giving too many notes, exercises, punishments and embarrassing/alarming statements have a significant effect in intensifying mathematics anxiety. The findings also showcased that quiz/competitions, good learning environment, intrinsic and extrinsic motivational statements help in minimizing mathematics anxiety. This study provides further evidence that teachers have both positive and negative effect on students’ mathematics anxiety.</span>

Teacher Artificial Intelligence-Supported Pedagogical Actions in Collaborative Learning Coregulation: A Wizard-of-Oz Study

Orchestrating collaborative learning (CL) is difficult for teachers as it involves being aware of multiple simultaneous classroom events and intervening when needed. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology might support the teachers’ pedagogical actions during CL by helping detect students in need and providing suggestions for intervention. This would be resulting in AI and teacher co-orchestrating CL; the effectiveness of which, however, is still in question. This study explores whether having an AI assistant helping the teacher in orchestrating a CL classroom is understandable for the teacher and if it affects the teachers’ pedagogical actions, understanding and strategies of coregulation. Twenty in-service teachers were interviewed using a Wizard-of-Oz protocol. Teachers were asked to identify problems during the CL of groups of students (shown as videos), proposed how they would intervene, and later received (and evaluated) the pedagogical actions suggested by an AI assistant. Our mixed-methods analysis showed that the teachers found the AI assistant useful. Moreover, in multiple cases the teachers started employing the pedagogical actions the AI assistant had introduced to them. Furthermore, an increased number of coregulation methods were employed. Our analysis also explores the extent to which teachers’ expertise is associated with their understanding of coregulation, e.g., less experienced teachers did not see coregulation as part of a teacher’s responsibility, while more experienced teachers did.

A Preliminary Study of Assessing Gaze, Interoception and School Performance among Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: The Feasibility of VR Classroom.

Children with developmental disabilities (DDs) have sensory modulation disorders that interrelate school performance. Virtual reality (VR) has demonstrated the potential to become a neuropsychological assessment modality. This study was conducted to explore the feasibility of the VR classroom for assessing their characteristics of gaze, school performance, and interoception. School-aged children were assigned to the DD group or control group. A VR classroom was designed to evaluate their gaze patterns to distracting events. Interoception was assessed using the Heart Rate Perception test and the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA). The DD group had a significantly longer gaze duration on the virtual teacher during 30–45 s of the VR classroom event (p < 0.05). The mean score of the quiz and the Heart Rate Perception test showed a significant tendency to be lower than the children of the control group. The DD group scored significantly lower in six of eight subscales of the MAIA. These results showed the potential of VR classroom to evaluate the difference of sensory modulation between school-aged children with DDs and typically developed children. Future research is necessary to investigate the validity of the VR environment used in this study.

Mathematics Teacher’s Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Learner-centred Approaches in Secondary Schools

This paper describes how mathematic teacher’s content knowledge informs teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in the use learner-centred approaches and decision when teaching mathematics. Two trained mathematics teachers in the use of learner-centred approaches who were teaching mathematics at ordinary secondary school level in Tanzania were involved. Data was collected through classroom observation, video recording of classroom events and teacher’s self-reflections. Thematic analysis procedure both at conceptual and manifest level was employed. The findings indicated that, teacher’s weak knowledge of contents as a component of pedagogical content knowledge in the use of learner-centred approaches led to teacher’s inability to help students’ construct knowledge of the subject matter that teachers taught. The trained teachers did not teach lessons that were learners’ focused and were unable to help students discover the relationship between contents they taught with other contents in the syllabus. Teachers’ lack of content knowledge led to teachers’ communication of their misunderstanding to students through teacher-centred teaching approaches. In addition, these experienced teachers were unable to help students describe the rationale for learning contents. It is recommended that cementing on leaner-centred approaches during teachers’ professional development programs should go hand in hand with capitalizing on teacher’s knowledge of contents.

Efficacy of an Enhanced Implementation Strategy to Increase Parent Engagement with a Health Promotion Program in Childcare.

Previous efforts to involve parents in implementation of childcare-based health promotion interventions have yielded limited success, suggesting a need for different implementation strategies. This study evaluated the efficacy of an enhanced implementation strategy to increase parent engagement with Healthy Me, Healthy We. This quasi-experimental study included childcare centers from the second of two waves of a cluster-randomized trial. The standard approach (giving parents intervention materials, prompting participation at home, inviting participation with classroom events) was delivered in 2016–2017 (29 centers, 116 providers, and 199 parents). The enhanced approach (standard plus seeking feedback, identifying and addressing barriers to parent participation) was delivered in 2017–2018 (13 centers, 57 providers, and 114 parents). Parent engagement was evaluated at two levels. For the center-level, structured interview questions with providers throughout the intervention were systematically scored. For the parent-level, parents completed surveys following the intervention. Differences in parent engagement were evaluated using linear regression (center-level) and mixed effects (parent-level) models. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.025 for two primary outcomes. There was no difference in parent engagement between approaches at the center-level, β = −1.45 (95% confidence interval, −4.76 to 1.87), p = 0.38l. However, the enhanced approach had higher parent-level scores, β = 3.60, (95% confidence interval, 1.49 to 5.75), p < 0.001. In the enhanced approach group, providers consistently reported greater satisfaction with the intervention than parents (p < 0.001), yet their fidelity of implementing the enhanced approach was low (less than 20%). Results show promise that parent engagement with childcare-based health promotion innovations can positively respond to appropriately designed and executed implementation strategies, but strategies need to be feasible and acceptable for all stakeholders.

Teacher noticing and its growth toward expertise: an expert\u2013novice comparison with pre-service\xa0and in-service secondary mathematics teachers

Although strong references to expertise in different theoretical approaches to teacher noticing have been made in the last decades, empirical knowledge about the development of teacher noticing from novice to expert level is scarce. The present study aims to close this research gap by comparing three different groups of mathematics teachers with different degrees of professional teaching experience—pre-service teachers at the master’s level, early career teachers, and experienced teachers—using data sampled in the frame of the research program from the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M). Furthermore, the construct of teacher noticing is assessed in a differentiated way by analyzing different noticing facets. Findings confirm that three facets of teacher noticing can be empirically distinguished—perception of important classroom events, their interpretation, and decisions regarding further developments. The results reveal a considerable increase in professional noticing between master’s students and practicing teachers. However, in contrast to other studies, among examples from East Asia, a stagnation or decrease in professional noticing between early career teachers and experienced teachers could be observed. Overall, the study highlights the cultural dependency of expertise development regarding teachers’ noticing.

Noticing and weighing alternatives in the reflection of regular classroom teaching: Evidence of expertise using mobile eye-tracking

Instructional videos are widely used to study teachers’ professional vision. A new technological development in video research is mobile eye-tracking (MET). It has the potential to provide fine-grained insights into teachers’ professional vision in action, but has yet been scarcely employed. We addressed this research gap by using MET video feedback to examine how expert and novice teachers differed in their noticing and weighing of alternative teaching strategies. Expert and novice teachers’ lessons were recorded with MET devices. Then, they commented on what they observe while watching their own teaching videos. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that expert and novice teachers did not differ in the number of classroom events they noticed and alternative teaching strategies they mentioned. However, novice teachers were more critical of their own teaching than expert teachers, particularly when they considered alternative teaching strategies. Practical implications for the field of teacher education are discussed.

Sensible or Stifled: What Public-school Teachers Know about Their First Amendment Speech Protections in the Classroom

ABSTRACT An increasing number of school districts encourage discussion of current events in classrooms. However, teachers’ ability and willingness to manage these conversations may be hampered by concerns about what they are or are not allowed to disclose, especially because their First Amendment speech protections do not fully extend into the classroom. We conducted a survey of public-school teachers to identify what they know about their rights, and how that relates to their teaching practice. Results suggest that although most teachers regularly discuss current events in the classroom, teacher legal literacy is relatively low. Teachers are generally uninformed about both caselaw relating to free speech for public employees, and district policies relating to classroom discussion. Despite this gap in legal literacy, teachers are most likely to turn to their peers for information, which leaves room for teachers to unknowingly cross the line between protected and unprotected speech in the classroom, and potentially face significant consequences as a result.

Pre-adolescents narrate classroom experience

Abstract This study applies sociocultural narrative theory and method to integrate children’s perspectives into research on classroom climate. Sociocultural narrative theory explains how individuals use expressive genres to make sense of environments, how they fit, and what they would like to change. This study incorporates such theory and method into a qualitative research design, applying quantitative analysis techniques to understand trends in student attention and expression. The main goal of this study is to examine whether and how students enact and express socioemotional and spatiotemporal (climate) sensitivities with their use of regular narrative elements. This study employs plot and character analyses to understand 22 sixth graders’ narrations of best and worst classroom experiences. These analyses reveal diverse patterns of focus on classroom events. Differences in the young narrators’ attention highlight areas for ongoing inquiry, with implications for mixed methods studies of classroom climate and related developmental research.