Context Of Secondary Education Research Articles

The global pandemic and a shift in research methods

World-wide responses to the global pandemic, such as travel restrictions, border closures and lockdowns, have posed new challenges to researchers. For qualitative researchers conducting fieldwork, gathering data in person can be inapplicable (Howlett, 2021). My research investigates English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pre-service teachers’ beliefs and negotiation of meaning in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) within the Thai secondary education context. Because of the pandemic I was unable to travel to Thailand to gather data, so I had to change my data collection methods to video conferencing interviews and classroom video observations. This article discusses this unexpected shift in research methods through my reflections on conducting digital-based research during the Covid-19 pandemic. It focuses on two main aspects: 1) grappling with emotional distress caused by the unprecedented phenomenon, and 2) redesigning research methods for digital fieldwork. Ethical issues regarding digital-based research are also discussed. The implications highlight the importance of resilience, flexibility and proactivity to surmount unexpected situations during a research journey.

Teaching, Learning, and Exploring the Geography of North America with Virtual Globes and Geovisual Narratives

Amid the shift to virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, educators across disciplines were faced with developing new strategies for active learning. This article discusses findings from a case study of using Google Earth for virtual field trips and projects in an undergraduate Geography of North America course, assessing the process of incorporating Google Earth and student perspectives on their engagement with this technology. With broader applications to secondary and post-secondary education contexts, findings suggest increased student engagement and an appreciation for the opportunity to work with a geospatial technology mapping platform without needing prior coding, software, or mapping experience.

Personas Characterising Secondary School Mathematics Students: Development and Applications to Educational Technology

Information technology plays an increasingly prominent role in our personal and professional lives. It also plays an important role in schools, and especially in mathematics education. To realise their full potential in education, technologies should be designed in a way that addresses the characteristics of the target students. In the context of learning mathematics, students often experience anxiety with regard to the content that needs to be learnt; therefore, this work considers mathematics anxiety as a characteristic that should be particularly relevant when designing technologies that assist with teaching and learning mathematics. The development of personas, i.e., prototypical and simplified user descriptions, is a widely used tool in user experience (UX) research that supports design processes. In this methodological paper, we combine this UX methodology with a grounded theory approach. This combination of methodologies could facilitate the establishment of guidelines for developing personas representing secondary school mathematics students, which constitutes the goal of this paper. We review existing persona development techniques in other fields and adapt them to the context of secondary mathematics education using qualitative secondary data. Our aim is to provide a research approach that produces a better understanding of students’ characteristics, needs, and fears. Despite limitations in terms of the amount of data included in developing and piloting this methodology, this work forms the basis for increasing the usability of educational technologies and for adapting them to individual learning styles to reduce mathematics anxiety.

Anticipation Guides: A Tool to Highlight Knowledge and Promote Reflection on Learning.

Anticipation guides (AGs) are an active learning tool with broad benefit for both learners and instructors. Though AGs have been more extensively studied in the primary and secondary education contexts, their development and implementation, as well as the benefits that they offer to medical education are not as well understood. The objective of this study was to explore the benefits that AGs afford to resident learners and instructors in the resident-led didactic conference setting. We performed a qualitative study of the use of anticipation guides in the resident-led didactic conference setting. Participants included 47 resident learners and three chief resident instructors. Data included learner response sheets, instructor reflective journals, and field notes from nonparticipant observation. Data analysis followed guidelines for content analysis. Results indicate that AGs highlight changes in knowledge and thinking, prompt learners to reflect on their learning, and offer valuable insight into learner achievement and uncertainty to instructors. This input promotes formative assessment of learners and encourages instructors to improve their practice. Anticipation guides are an easy-to-implement active learning strategy with multiple benefits in the resident didactic conference setting. Their use helps learners recognize strengths and weaknesses and identify gaps in knowledge-behaviors consistent with the goals of residency as espoused by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Including AGs in instruction also benefits instructors in that they provide insight into learners' thinking and knowledge development and allow educators to assess the efficacy of their instruction.

Escaping the cell: virtual reality escape rooms in biology education

ABSTRACT Individuals’ conceptual knowledge of contemporary biological issues influences ethical attitudes and life decisions around health, as evidenced by the recent worldwide debate on vaccinations. The reasons for which the public opinion is so critically divided can be partially explained from the didactic approaches used in biology education. In view of the rapid evolution of Virtual Reality (VR) as well as the increasing interest that youths have shown toward Escape Rooms (ER), an unexplored research and development avenue is identified. In this experimental study, we present the design and development steps as well as the evaluation of a VRER dedicated to biology education. For comparison purposes, an educational instructional video utilising the storytelling technique was also prepared. Both approaches were examined in the upper secondary education context with participants (N = 50) emerging from the Applied Sciences academic path. The key-findings suggest that the active learning approach leads to increased knowledge acquisition, in the short term, as opposed to the passive learning approach but no significant differences were identified in the long term (knowledge retention) across the methods. Based on the instructional decisions made and the key-findings emerged we provide implications and guidelines for the design, development, and integration of VRER in education.

Validation of the Cooperative Learning Scale and Cooperation Global Factor Using Bifactor Structural Equation Modelling

Cooperative learning has been found to be more productive in academic, personal, and social variables than individualistic or competitive settings, but there is a lack of adequate assessment instruments. The goals of the study were two: a) adapt and validate the existing Cooperative Learning Scale Spanish version for English-speaking secondary education contexts and b) obtain a cooperation global factor. A total of 778 secondary education students, within the 11-15 age range, enrolled in five different schools in Wales (year seven = 301, year eight = 276, year nine = 201) participated in the study. The original instrument, designed and validated for Spanish contexts, underwent a process of double debugging: a) experts trial and b) pilot study. The Cooperative Learning Scale English version included five factors with three items each: interpersonal skills, group processing, positive interdependence, promotive interaction, and individual accountability. Novel bifactor exploratory structural equation modelling (B-ESEM) was used. Results showed well-defined factors corresponding to a-priori expectations and a G-factor, a cooperation global factor.

Creating Space for World Englishes Perspectives in the ELT Classroom: Voices of High School Students in Japan

This paper reports on teacher research which explored the practicality and potential of World Englishes (WE)-informed pedagogy in the Japanese secondary education context. Based on qualitative data from written reflections and post-unit individual interviews with seven high school students in Japan, this paper presents students’ perceptions of the English language, their learning of it, and its use, detailing the impact the instructional unit had on these students. The data showed that the unit enabled the students to critically reflect on ideologies surrounding the English language, heightening their awareness of the multiplicity and complexity of its use and users. In addition, increased desire to learn about different Englishes and improved perceptions toward students’ own English were observed. The data also revealed an unexpected effect on one student’s perception toward English, implying that the instructional unit might have stressed the significance and power of English over other languages. Drawing from these findings, pedagogical implications as well as future directions for English language education are discussed.

Synthesizing Different Aspects of Content and Language Integrated Learning(CLIL)

Though Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach is not new to teaching - learning process, yet there is dire need to explore different aspects of CLIL intensively for withstanding results. This paper reviews research in primary, secondary and higher education contexts from 2015 to 2020. A review of methodologies, findings, their impact on teaching - learning process and the assessment criteria used, are discussed. This paper may help to outline CLIL research in European context up till now, highlighting the gaps which need to be explored for enhancing CLIL as a second language acquisition approach through content learning.

The ecological approach to construct entrepreneurship education: a systematic literature review

PurposeThe research effort on entrepreneurship education has been mainly for the higher education settings and on the individual level of analysis. On the contrary, this research urges scholars to expedite attention to the secondary education settings, especially in the emerging economies in Asia and Africa. This paper aims to reveal the existing landscape of literature development on the topic and promote ecological approaches of constructing entrepreneurship education programs in schools. It advocates the “incubator” role of schools for students and the necessity of establishing socially embedded entrepreneurship education as the playground for future entrepreneurs.Design/methodology/approachThis study followed the systematic literature review as its research design. It obtained 1,555 publications from six academic databases and 60 more publications from expert consulting and backward snowballing technique. Data screening resulted in a total of 101 relevant publications with the upper secondary education as their research context. The qualitative integrative synthesis method was then applied to integrate research evidence to the five circles of systems according to Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory.FindingsThis study contributes to the entrepreneurship education and youth career development literature, especially in the developing countries. Results discovered that entrepreneurship education programs, when interacting with ecological systems, resulted in training success. The most frequently studied systems were microsystems; here, there was a dominant focus on program-level reporting and analyzing. There was less focus on other systems such as mesosystems, exosystems or macrosystems. Moreover, only one study was associated with chronosystems, suggesting a significant research gap regarding the longitudinal studies. However, this review validated the different approaches to delivering entrepreneurship education in emerging and developed economies.Research limitations/implicationsOne limitation of this research lies in the methodology. The inclusion criteria limited the studies to the context of upper secondary education and excluded those of secondary education in general. The sampling method limited the power of this research to analyze and discuss policy-level studies because policies most likely embrace the whole secondary education level as its target. Another limitation is associated with the lack of experimental studies in assessing the comparative advantages of following the ecological approach when constructing entrepreneurship education. It, therefore, remains an undiscussed matter within this study regarding whether following the ecological approach means empirically a better educational choice or not.Practical implicationsThis study discusses the implications for policymakers, especially in emerging economies, and suggests that awareness, attention and funding are needed to empower youth entrepreneurship education from an ecological systems view.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of few studies that use the ecological systems theory in the context of entrepreneurship education with the purpose of focusing on environment-level analysis instead of individual-level analysis. Through the systematic literature review, this study proposes an ecological approach to comprehend, guide, evaluate and improve the design and implementation of entrepreneurship education programs in schools based on well-articulated research evidence. The research can inform both researchers and educators by offering a holistic perspective to observe and evaluate entrepreneurship education programs and their levels of social connectedness.

Augmented Reality Application: Current status, opportunities, and challenges of Indonesian secondary education context.

This article aims to investigate the studies about the implementation Augmented Reality (AR) in Education, particularly to have a closer look at the opportunities and challenges of AR application in Indonesian educational context. Finding of this study were analyzed through a synthesis research. The current empirical studies related to AR implementation in education were descriptively analyzed, and carefully synthesized. AR is one of the emerging technologies which has a big promise on teaching and learning. This study reveals that AR may offer a meaningful and engaging learning experiences because AR based learning can provide critical thinking activity with problem solving tasks. Furthermore, well-designed AR may situate a collaborative learning which can enhance students’ positive behavior and attitude. However, this essay also reveals some limitations of AR application need to be taken into consideration, especially when it comes to technological and learning issues. Consequently, AR may not be the ideal solution for all learning settings, yet the ongoing development of AR technology on handheld mobile devices offers a big optimism for future learning. It is highly expected that the vast development of AR may positively influence learning and become more significant in the future.

Basketball Common Content Knowledge Instrument Validation

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable basketball common content knowledge (CCK) instrument for preservice teachers (PSTs; BB-CCK-T) in secondary physical education contexts in the United States. The research team used four steps to develop the BB-CCK-T. In the first step, two content experts determined the scope and weight of the items using a table of specifications. Second, the experts developed the test questions and answers based on the table of specifications. Third, physical education in-service teachers reviewed the test and checked the content validity. Fourth, a group of PSTs took the test for pilot testing. After content validity and face validity were established, the BB-CCK-T was administered to 76 physical education PSTs to examine the validity and reliability of the instrument using the Rasch analysis. The results of unidimensionality indicated that all items were within the range of −0.4 to 0.4. Both infit (0.7 to 1.3) and outfit (0.6 to 1.5) MNSQ were in the criterion range of 0.5 to 1.5. The result of the item separation index was 4.01 (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.94), and the person separation index was 1.89 (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.78). The wright map confirmed that the items on the BB-CCK-T contain wide levels of question difficulties with little gaps. These results verified that BB-CCK-T is an instrument with robust psychometric properties. Continuous efforts of exploring how we can best teach CCK in our limited curricular space as teacher education programs are vital from both practical and research perspectives.

Design-Based Research on Teacher Facilitation in a Pedagogic Integration of Flipped Learning and Social Enquiry Learning

This design-based research (DBR) project aimed to develop apt in-class and out-of-class teacher facilitation strategies to be employed in a pedagogic integration of flipped learning and social enquiry learning, viz., FIBER (Flipped Issue-Based Enquiry Ride), with respect to upper-, average-, and lower-academic classrooms. The research was conducted in the formal learning and teaching context of senior secondary social humanities education in Hong Kong, involving nine teachers (from nine different schools at three different academic bands) and their Secondary-5 (Grade-11) classes (with a total of 610 students) in two consecutive school years. Apart from delineating the evidence-based teacher facilitation practices that we designed, enacted and evaluated in the DBR process, this paper also discusses the principles that we derived in accordance with these practices. The present work provides both researchers and educators with new insights into developing adequate teacher facilitation strategies when adopting flipped learning in social humanities education and upon different formal schooling settings.

‘I realised I only knew the word partly’: student beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and learning in different grades and proficiency levels

ABSTRACT Given the significant role vocabulary plays in second language acquisition, how to help learners acquire vocabulary has always been a concern for educators. Despite the general consensus that beliefs influence learners’ behaviour, limited research effort has been devoted to the exploration of English as a second language (ESL) learners’ beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and learning in the secondary education context and how their beliefs are affected by such factors as grades and proficiency levels. This paper reports on a convergent mixed-methods study that addresses the research gap with the use of a questionnaire administered to 556 ESL students in a Hong Kong secondary school. Results revealed that while students in general perceived vocabulary learning as important, their beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and learning were found to be related to their grade and proficiency levels. Open-ended responses provided further insights into learners’ beliefs qualitatively about the difficulties faced by learners and their perceptions of the effective ways to tackle these difficulties. Overall, this paper broadens the understanding of L2 learners’ beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and learning. It complements existing literature on L2 vocabulary learning and sheds light on issues related to vocabulary learning and teaching.

‘EMI Is a War’ – Lecturers’ Practices of, and Insights Into English Medium Instruction Within the Context of Sri Lankan Higher Education

English Medium Instruction (EMI) is a growing educational praxis in the world. Sri Lanka also practises EMI in primary, secondary and university education contexts. Nevertheless, EMI is not adequately researched: the existing scholarship alludes to the significance of its context-dependency (e.g., Snchez-Prez, Maria del Mar 2020). Moreover, there is a lacuna of scholarly knowledge of how EMI works in Sri Lankan educational contexts. Hence, this exploratory study examined lecturers’ practices of, and insights into, EMI within the context of Sri Lankan higher education. The data were drawn from in-depth qualitative interviews with ten lecturers who teach Social Sciences through EMI at three state universities in the country. Interviewees – encompassing males and females and belonging to varying age groups – have a range of EMI teaching experience and different professional and educational qualifications. Qualitative thematic analysis was utilised to uncover themes related to EMI in the data. Findings disclose a few issues and problems associated with EMI. They underscore the belief that EMI enhances L2 (Second Language) proficiency, thus creating a space for job opportunities for undergraduates, and higher education and professional development for both lecturers and students. Nevertheless, EMI is problematic mainly due to (i) low L2 proficiency in both lecturers and students, (ii) lecturers’ inconsistent praxis in assessing and teaching students, (iii) the shortage of training programmes on EMI, and (iv) arbitrary administration issues including the recruitment of EMI lecturers. The paper provides insights into EMI implementation in English as L2 contexts and adds new vocabulary to EMI praxis and research.

School-Aged Students’ Sustainable Online Learning Engagement during COVID-19: Community of Inquiry in a Chinese Secondary Education Context

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread all over the world, many educational institutions have shifted to a full-time online teaching mode. Although online teaching has been widely explored, the unprecedented initiatives of mass-scale full-time online education at the secondary school level are yet to be unravelled. By using a qualitative approach and drawing on the conceptualisation of learning engagement and Community of Inquire model as conceptual frameworks, this study explored how secondary school students in China engaged with online education during the COVID-19 pandemic and what factors influenced their sustainable online learning engagement. This research examined the perspectives of twenty-four students and five teachers through semi-structured interviews and observations of online classes. Findings indicate that the students’ online learning engagement involved three inter-related categories: emotional, cognitive and behavioural engagement. Contextual factors influencing the sustainability of students’ online learning engagement were identified by the participants, including teacher presence, parental involvement, and a supportive learning environment/community. The findings in this paper have implications for teacher development, family support and establishment of e-teaching platforms in emergency remote teaching for young students. Finally, the study puts forward best practices for the sustainable development of the emergency remote teaching in the future public crises.

Exploring ESL Teachers’ Insights on Corrective Oral Feedback in a Malaysian Secondary Education Context

Feedback is one of the most significant elements in the process of teaching and learning. It serves as a tool to enhance students’ second language proficiency. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate how oral feedback is viewed and how it has been maneuvered to assist second language learner’s linguistic competence from the viewpoint of English teachers. Teachers’ perception of feedback is very important because it will determine the amount of feedback used in the process of teaching and learning. This is a qualitative study employing case study research design. It was conducted to 10 English language teachers from secondary schools in Malaysia The instrument used in this study was a semi-structured interview. Data collected from the interview were analyzed using thematic analysis. Several themes have been found during data analysis such as feedback as tool for motivation, oral feedback and learning from mistakes, students’ acceptance of teachers’ oral feedback and feedback as a medium to develop language proficiency. The result indicated that English teachers in Malaysia generally showed positive perception of oral feedback. Furthermore, teachers also reported to have noticed improvement in students’ language competence by listening to teachers’ feedback. Therefore, appropriate measure should be taken to ensure that teachers can provide effective oral feedback during teaching and learning.

Gene-environment interactions and school tracking during secondary education: Evidence from the U.S.

There is much evidence to suggest that family background and the context of secondary education both contribute to the formation of educational inequalities. Meanwhile, our knowledge about the role of ability in generating class differences in educational outcomes is still limited. By deploying genetic data that allow us to measure at least part of “innate” ability inherited through biological mechanisms from parents, this study examines how such abilities are associated with educational tracking outcomes among U.S. high schoolers. This study also details our understanding of the role of nature and nurture in the educational attainment processes by testing for gene-environment interactions—that is, a joint, mutually moderating effect of one’s genetic potential and one’s environment (e.g., family background or school context) on phenotypic outcomes (educational tracking). Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health that collects a unique set of demographic, educational, and genetic characteristics of students, we report the following results: First, a positive association between the genetic potential for educational attainment and taking advanced courses holds even after controlling for previous course tracking measures. Second, results provide suggestive evidence that parental SES amplifies the association between one’s genetic potential for educational attainment and mathematics tracking. In contrast to the argument by some stratification scholars that places primary emphasis on the role of social background for the reproduction of educational stratification, the present findings imply that we need to fully consider the role of genetic inheritance for educational stratification in addition to social origin.

Syntactic and lexical features of adolescent L2 students’ academic writing

With a premium placed on academic writing in the U.S. secondary education context, adolescent L2 students are expected to develop advanced skills to analyze, interpret, and produce complex texts in a variety of content areas, which require proficiency in academic language. To enhance the academic literacy of developing L2 writers and to meet their linguistic needs, it is crucial to identify the unique language features of their academic writing. This study seeks to examine syntactic and lexical features of the text-based analytical essays written by Spanish-speaking L2 students (7th–12th grades) from a public school in a western state of the United States. Employing manual sentence coding and quantitative measures of selected linguistic variables from Coh- Metrix, we analyzed student texts (N = 86) to identify common linguistic patterns and to examine how these linguistic features predict writing quality. Our findings reveal that sentence boundary issues, lack of syntactic variety, the underuse of sophisticated subordination to show connections between ideas, and low use of advanced vocabulary are common in adolescent L2 students’ writing. The results of regression analyses show that syntactic complexity and lexical sophistication predict human-judged writing quality. Implications for pedagogy to address the linguistic needs of adolescent L2 students are discussed.

Sketching a motivational landscape

Abstract Studies of motivation in bilingual education settings often address questions of differences between learners in bilingual programmes and those in mainstream education. Problematic in this respect is our increasing awareness of the inherent differences between these two learner groups, as learners in bilingual programmes have often chosen or been selected for a bilingual route (Mearns et al., 2017). The study presented here therefore does not seek to compare learners in bilingual and non-bilingual programmes, but rather to explore the nature of language learning motivation within the context of bilingual secondary education (BSE) in the Netherlands. Using a purpose-designed tool reflecting the L2 Motivational Self System (Dörnyei, 2009), this study investigated trends in motivation across genders, academic tracks and year-groups of nearly 2000 learners. Findings suggest that, although these learners all have bilingual education in common, differences between the motivations of these groups should not be overlooked.

Assessment Practices in K–12 Physical Education in the United States: A Scoping Review of Research, 2000–2020

ABSTRACT Appropriate assessment practices are recognized as a critical part of the learning process and represent a key component of quality physical education. Recent shifts in school reform efforts toward more accountability in the United States and an emerging emphasis on student-centered approaches challenge historical approaches to assessment. Purpose: Therefore, the purpose of this review was to (a) identify research conducted on physical education teachers’ assessment practices during the years 2000–2020, (b) determine the impact of assessment practices on student outcomes, and (c) describe research that explores factors associated with the SHAPE America guidelines for appropriate assessment practices. Method: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-Sc) Checklist guided this review. All related empirical, peer-reviewed, English-language studies conducted in U.S. schools and published since January 1, 2000 qualified for inclusion. Results: A total of 17 articles met the inclusion criteria for this review. Most used non-experimental methods and were conducted in the secondary (grades 6–12) physical education context. Limited studies examined the relationship between assessment practices and learning outcomes. Recommendations for future research are provided based on the results. Conclusions: A diverse body of studies provides valuable, yet limited evidence related to teacher assessment practices. Systematic research is needed to better understand the impact of teacher assessment practices on student outcomes and to build a stronger foundation for evidence-based recommendations for practice.