Creative Lesson Research Articles

Forming Readiness of Students to Implement Research Activities in Pedagogical Practice

The article discusses ways to increase the effectiveness of research competence during practice from the whole set of problems of developing students' research abilities. The process of developing the readiness of physics students to conduct research work during internships in schools in the city of Pavlodar is described. A step-by-step plan for preparing students for teaching practice in a modern educational environment is proposed. The relevance of this article lies in the need to prepare students of pedagogical universities to organize and conduct research study with schoolchildren. The purpose of the study is to prepare students to conduct research activities at school during teaching practice. The main signs of the development of research skills in future teachers should be, in our opinion, the ability to structure lessons with elements of research activity; skills in drawing up a research plan; preparation of creative lesson and home research assignments; increasing the level of knowledge of students in physics and developing research skills. The article also discusses the stages of preparation for the implementation of research skills that reveal the teaching abilities and professionally important personal qualities of students.

Investigating the Reading Preferences of Second-grade Pupils through Creation Lessons

It is unanimously accepted that reading activities have positive effects on children's development. Recent research has shown that pupils’ interest in reading activities could be enhanced by providing interesting and age-appropriate books. The purpose of the research is to determine whether it is beneficial to organize didactic activities in which pupils use their creativity to establish titles of attractive books for them. At the same time, we were interested in finding out whether pupils want to frequently participate in creative lessons based on story writing. All 54 second-grade pupils who have participated in our research mentioned that they enjoyed participating in the creation lessons, and would like to cooperate with other older peers in the process of writing the stories. The research revealed that could be beneficial to organize lessons based on stimulating students' creativity with the purpose of understanding the reading preferences of the primary school pupils.

Exploring the relation between teacher autonomy support and children’s musical creativity

In primary music education a key question is what teachers can do to stimulate students’ musical creativity. For the answer, delving into teacher-student interaction during the creative processes in the naturalistic setting of primary music lessons is required. Twenty-six music lessons from thirteen teachers and their classes of seven Dutch schools were recorded to explore the relation between teachers’ autonomy support and students’ divergent and convergent thought & action. Quantitative sequential analysis and thematic analysis were combined to examine this relation, using a framework offered by Complex Dynamic Systems theory and Enaction theory. In contrast to classical correlational analysis, sequential analysis focuses on the dynamics, and thus on the temporal relation in classroom interaction. The results show that mostly lower-level autonomy support was offered. Especially in creative lessons, higher-level autonomy support is more likely to lead to higher-level student divergent thought and action. For convergent thought and action, the results were less conclusive. An implication of the findings is that (research into) music education could benefit from interventions aimed at enhancing autonomy support in primary school music.

The Physical Education Teacher's Workbook As a Tool For Improving His Professional Competence

State requirements actualize the need to find some effective tools in the system of improving the qualifications of a modern teacher. This is especially intensified in the conditions of forced remote and mixed education of children and teenagers which is due to the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine. The article presents the workbook "STEP to a new Physical Education lesson", the content of which was tested during some educational trainings in the system of postgraduate teacher education. This latest development is positioned as a tool in the program of improving the professional competencies of a modern Physical Education teacher. It was used both by regional trainers and training participants in face-to-face and distance learning formats from October 2021 to August 2022. The training and, accordingly, the structure of the workbook consisted of the introduction and four main parts which according to their content submit to the mastering the methods of the new lesson of Physical Education at NUS according to the leading directions: 1 - competent, 2 - smart, 3 - healthy, 4 - creative lesson. The training included 21 interactive exercises. Learning according the content of each part of the training ended with online testing. All exercises in the workbook are presented in such a way that they can be performed both in distance and face-to-face learning formats. The effect of the training using the workbook was determined by online testing, which took place directly after the completion of each section of the training program. The second testing took place after several months of work of teachers, who completed the training, with fifth grade students of NUS. The positive dynamics proved the effectiveness of using the workbook during trainings and throughout teachers’ own pedagogical practice.

Pedagogical practices of grade 7 economics and management sciences teachers in teaching financial literacy component

The teaching of Economic Management Sciences (EMS) in Senior Phase (SP) classrooms, particularly in Grade 7, still needs to be researched. This paper examines the pedagogical practices of Grade 7 EMS teachers when teaching financial literacy (FL). We employed a qualitative research case study. Two schools were purposively chosen in the Chris Hani District, serving as the case under exploration. A data set of six participants were observed and interviewed for six months. The main findings of the study indicated that (i) the teachers adopt pedagogical practices that are based on experience and subject area content knowledge,(ii) teachers with experience and subject content knowledge were found to deliver learner-centered, creative lessons while emerging teachers relied on the textbook and taught in teacher-centered ways, (iii) lack of training on the relatively new content of FL in EMS, lack of resources and complicated language of FL concepts resulted in teachers relying on standard pedagogical practices. The study proffers recommendations and interventions that teachers could use to better their skills of pedagogic practices. Amongst these are training EMS teachers by higher education institutions, workshops, and induction of newly hired EMS teachers.

CREATIVE LESSON ON THE GENERAL COURSE OF PHYSICS ON THE TOPIC "RUTHERFORD'S EXPERIMENTS AND RUTHERFORD'S FORMULA"

This article provides the content of the creative lesson of the atomic physics section of the general physics course on the topic "Rutherford's experiments and Rutherford's formula" for students of higher educational institutions.

The Dispositions of Student-Teachers in Developing Competencies through Written Self-reflection Practice

This study aimed at investigating how student-teachers develop their competencies through written self-reflection. It is a case study of descriptive research that investigates how student teachers develop their dispositions through self-reflection practice in the classroom. The data were collected through written self-reflection made by the student-teachers. There were 40 English student-teachers at English Education Study Program were taken as the subject. Results show that written self-reflection has assessed English student-teachers ‘dispositions towards developing competencies. For Professional Competence, all English student teachers practice their language skills by doing the assignments given by lecturers regularly, seriously, collaboratively, and proudly. For Pedagogical Competence, all student teachers practice creative lesson plans, develop interesting teaching materials through peer teaching; whereas for Personality Competence all student teachers are aware of 18 indicators of personality and apply them in their daily activities by studying harder, respecting others, preparing for class, accepting to different opinions, being more patient and helpful. Similar to Personality Competence, English student teachers demonstrate positive dispositions towards social skills by doing real actions of 21 indicators of social skills such as greeting, speaking more politely, addressing lecturers/friends appropriately, engaging in a friendly dialogue in their daily activities. By written self-reflection, the student teachers have shown their performance of their dispositions and been aware of developing teacher competencies.

Contextualisation of Direct Instruction Method in Teaching Reading Comprehension Skills: The Literature Review

Direct Instruction is an approach where a teacher becomes the center of the teaching process. This teaching strategy is suitable to teach reading comprehension skills. In the process of using the Direct Instruction, a teacher needs to apply three basic concepts those are delivery, design, and documentation which means the teacher must prepare a creative lesson plan that can support students to adapt to a new concept during the ongoing process, the teacher must monitor students’ development using assessment. Some studies show that this method is effective by combining strategies or media and it can improve students’ skills. However, criticisms also hit this method. Some scholar proves from their study that this method is not always effective and is used only for students with low-level knowledge.
 Keywords: Direct Instruction, Reading Skills, Reading Comprehension

Virtual reality enhances active student learning

This paper describes the advantages of using virtual reality (VR) environments like Second Life (SL) and VR headsets to motivate and engage students into active learning. Two advantages of virtual reality are that it allows users to see and interact in a three-dimensional world. Research results for the use of VR are also presented and compared to those of the traditional textbook teaching method. In addition, the authors share their successful problem-based learning (PBL) activities carried out in SL and their creative lesson ideas for using VR headsets with students.

Enjoy creative lessons

The article talks about the artistic features of the book "Afterwords", the artistic creation of Usman Azim, artistic skills, relation to quality changes in the literary process, and the aesthetic and educational value of stories from the lives of famous wordsmiths. The author's impartiality and a deep sense of responsibility toward literature are analyzed.

SP2.2.17The leaning tower of pasta: lessons in team performance and creativity from a core surgical training boot camp design challenge

Abstract Aims Unity of effort is an important component of strategic leadership and management theory associated with Core Surgical Training (CST) outcome. The aim was to determine the impact of team diversity on task completion: a creative design challenge, during CST Boot camp. Methods Attendees (n = 44) at a single Statutory Education Body’s CST Boot camp were stratified into teams related to specialty theme, and set a design challenge as described by Peter Skillman, to build the tallest free-standing tower out of spaghetti (20 pieces), tape (1 m), and string (1 m), with a marshmallow on top in 18 minutes. Primary outcome measure was tower height. Results Five teams (50%) completed the task with the tallest tower measuring 70cm (median 51, range 0-70). Median satisfaction with the simulation exercise was 4 (2-5) on a scale of zero to five, with five corresponding with highest satisfaction. Successful task completion was associated with team surgical specialty (p = 0.032), ethnicity ratio (p = 0.010,), and gender ratio (p = 0.003), respectively. On multivariable analysis, only team gender ratio was independently associated with tower height (HR 0.515, 95% CI 0.350 - 0.759, p = 0.001). Conclusion Modern leadership theory emphasises the important dynamic relationship between individual team members, the team, and task completion. General surgery themed teams with a gender mix were most successful in completing the design challenge; whether relative simulation performance predicts strategic organisational skill and career progression will be the next question.

The role of spiritual lessons and creative arts for adaptation of international doctoral students: a lifelong education perspective

ABSTRACT This article reports a study on the impact of spiritual training lessons as compared to creative arts lessons with a cohort of Indian and Sri Lankan doctoral students immigrated to the US. The aim was to examine programme effectiveness in mitigating their acculturative stress, promoting self-efficacy, and wellbeing. Spiritual training lessons were more effective (p ≤ .01, Hedges’ g = −3.59–3.22); however, creative arts lessons also mitigated acculturative stress of participants (p = .006, Hedges’ g = −0.43). Post-test acculturative stress scores were lower and self-efficacy and wellbeing scores were higher for male students, with technical degrees, Hindu and Sikh students, ever-single, living alone, studying technical subjects, and whose doctoral research was practicum/practice-based. Spiritual training lessons attended and homework lessons mediated the association between significant socio-demographic and academic predictors and changes in outcomes. Creative arts homework lessons also mediated the association between gender, previous qualifications and acculturative stress scores. Spiritual training lessons can be incorporated into induction and continued support programmes for international doctoral students at US universities. Some modifications may be needed for female students, with postgraduate degrees in humanities/social sciences, Christian and Muslim students, currently married, cohabiting with spouse/children/dependents, studying humanities/social science subjects, and doing applied research.

The Impacts of a Face-to-Face Training in Combination with LINE Application and Professional Learning Communities on English Teacher Development

This study examines the impact of a teacher-training program on the development of teachers’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes towards English reading teaching. The training program was implemented in combination with the use of LINE (a message application) and the teachers’ participation in school-based professional learning communities. The framework supports the training of English teachers to teach students in accordance with the national core curriculum and its emphasis on reading skills. The participants of this study were 50 English teachers working in the central part of Thailand. Four research instruments were used to collect data: a 12-item pre-test and post-test on teaching English reading skills covering the content of the training, an open-ended form for recording emerging points from the implementation of the lesson plan and preparation of the video clip, a survey including 5-point Likert-scale options and an open-ended response field to assess teachers’ satisfaction with the training program, and an observation form of the teachers’ level of participation in the training program. The findings of this study revealed that participants had developed in three major areas: knowledge, skills, and attitude, and they indicated satisfaction with the training program in all areas. The participants’ post test scores was higher than the pre-test scores. With a statistical significance improvement (p=0.05). Participants demonstrated their skills in designing more creative lesson plans with suitable educational objectives. Finally, the participants reflected a positive attitude towards their participation in the PLC. The significance of this study is related to the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of teachers teaching English reading skills in an EFL context.

The Leaning Tower of Pasta: Lessons in Team Performance and Creativity From a Core Surgical Training Boot Camp Design Challenge

Unity of effort is an important component of strategic leadership and management theory associated with Core Surgical Training (CST) outcome. The aim was to determine the impact of team diversity on task completion: a creative design challenge, during CST Boot camp. Attendees (n = 44) at a single Statutory Education Body's CST Boot camp were stratified into teams related to specialty theme, and set a design challenge as described by Peter Skillman, to build the tallest free-standing tower out of spaghetti (20 pieces), tape (1 m), and string (1 m), with a marshmallow on top in 18 minutes. Primary outcome measure was tower height. Five teams (50%) completed the task with the tallest tower measuring 70 cm (median 51, range 0-70). Median satisfaction with the simulation exercise was 4 (2-5) on a scale of 0 to 5, with 5 corresponding with highest satisfaction. Successful task completion was associated with team surgical specialty (p = 0.032), ethnicity ratio (p = 0.010,), and gender ratio (p = 0.003), respectively. On multivariable analysis, only team gender ratio was independently associated with tower height (Hazard ratio 0.515, 95% confidence interval 0.350-0.759, p = 0.001). Modern leadership theory emphasizes the important dynamic relationship between individual team members, the team, and task completion. General surgery themed teams with a gender mix were most successful in completing the design challenge; whether relative simulation performance predicts strategic organizational skill and career progression will be the next question.

Teaching French During a Pandemic: Lessons in Innovation, Creativity, and Community

[...]in early March she requested to attend class online: I'm afraid that it is still a very, very optimistic belief to hold that smaller events are going to be safer […] While we could no longer visit local museums, go to theatre performances, or attend global music concerts (I am still mourning the fact that we missed the Coeur de Pirate concert at Berklee School of Music in May), I nevertheless wanted to offer them various possibilities for cultural exploration. Since many students had left their residence halls and returned home to live with their parents, they had access to a kitchen so I encouraged them to take advantage of this unique opportunity. [...]students produced wonderful pictures and videos of their culinary adventures making gâteau au yaourt, crepes, and tarte aux pommes. While one can easily identify intelligence and study skills in the traditional classroom, the unique circumstances of this semester provided me a glimpse into the patience my student displayed as he lovingly ruffled his younger brother's hair on the occasions when the child flitted in and out of our Zoom meetings.

Change, Challenge, and Complexity in the College Curriculum

This paper explores the growing need for integrated arts education at the college level. Specifically, the authors describe the need for an arts program which incorporates multiple disciplines and connects them to other, non-creative disciplines. Arts education affords students invaluable lessons in critical thinking, creativity, and communication, all of which are essential for the successful navigation of 21st-century challenges. The authors conclude that, contrary to current trends wherein arts education is being marginalized at the post-secondary level, an integrated approach to college arts education offers indispensable skill and enlargement of perspective for the general education of successful balanced individuals.

Social and Emotional Learning Through Creative Movement in the Physical Education Classroom

The five stages of grief curriculum and lesson outline demonstrate a connection of social and emotional learning (SEL) in the movement-based classroom. Although the focus of this article is on a dance-specific curriculum, the processes used can be adapted for a SEL-focused lesson in a physical education classroom and supports the various needs of the developing middle school student. The purpose of this article is to provide a sample creative movement lesson integrating SEL that can easily be used or adapted in a physical education classroom.

Developing Preservice Teachers’ Cultural Competency through Urban Immersion

This study examined how immersion experiences and a service-learning project influenced preservice teachers’ (PST) cultural competence.Questionnaires and focus group data were analyzed to measure changes in PST competency before and after experiences in NYC schools. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test revealed statistically significant improvements in pre- (M=59.18, SD=15.04) and post- (M=68.64, SD=14.41) scores for Cultural Competency Behavior; yielding a medium intervention effect (d =.306). Non-significant differences between pre- (M=63.47, SD=4.33) and post- (M=65.23, SD=5.50) scores for Cultural Awareness and Sensitivity were reported. Qualitative themes include urban culture shock;Teacherand student motivations; Creative lesson planning; and Perception of future teaching practices.

THE ROLE OF THE LANGUAGE LABORATORY IN LEARNING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE IN A UNIVERSITY CONTEXT WITH REFERENCE TO SRI LANKA

As per Sri Lankan university students, English is not just a language but also a cultural component. Most of the time it seems difficult to divert these passive learners into active and energetic language learners. Hence, the language laboratory in the Faculty of Science, University of Ruhuna was decided to incorporate into language learning as a new mechanism. In order to analyze the role of the language laboratory in learning English, closed ended questionnaires were distributed among 150 Science students. 30 students plus all the teachers who worked at the faculty of Science were also interviewed. Data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings revealed that the laboratory was a great motive. Students started attending lecturers. It provided them relaxation, exposure to authentic language, confidence, individuality, interactions, and immediate feedbacks. It was the best place to practice listening and speaking. Nevertheless, the laboratory was not successful in practicing reading and writing than the traditional classroom. In fact, it was neither a problem related to the laboratory nor a matter with the students. It was a problem with the teachers, who failed to implement creative lesson materials. Teachers’ creativity, up to date knowledge, and selection of software will decide the attainment. Language laboratory is not a substitution for a teacher. Traditional classroom is not a dull place either that we should forget. Therefore, a well-adjusted approach will make the language laboratory a perfect strategy in the long-term success of the language learning process.

Teacher professional development in the context of the “Open Discovery of STEM laboratories” project: Is the MOOC methodology suitable for teaching physics?

The “Open Discovery of STEM Laboratories” (ODL) project, funded by the European Erasmus+ KA2 program, was aimed at introducing the use of MOOCs in school curricula. In particular, it fostered teacher collaboration in creating and using micro-MOOCs for the inclusion of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) online remote or virtual laboratories in the everyday teaching practice. The project focused on teachers, educators and curriculum designers with the aim to strengthen their profile by supporting them to deliver high quality teaching practices and to adopt new methods and tools. Thanks to the project, in service and pre-service teachers had the opportunity to extend their knowledge about the inquiry-based science teaching approach, improve both digital skills and pedagogical competences, experience international collaborative work, explore attractive open education resources helpful to design creative lessons on STEM topics. In this contribution, we focus our attention on the results from the ODL teacher training in Italy, showing the valuable feedback collected by teachers on the impact of the ODL pedagogical approach on Physics education at secondary school, highlighting strengths and possible weaknesses of the proposed methodology. The feedback to the ODL experience provided by both teachers and students during the multiplier events, in the summer school and after the first pilot-studies in the classroom, was very positive. Experiencing micro-MOOCs’ approach has been reported by the teachers as a very effective strategy for increasing students’ motivation to learn physics more meaningfully. Thanks to the ODL methodology, student understanding of physics concepts has been achieved within a multidisciplinary learning context which also supports the development of transversal abilities, communication and reasoning skills. The ODL learning activities provided the students with the opportunity to develop a large range of complementary competencies, such as working in groups, interpreting and evaluating experimental data, designing models, facing and solving everyday problems, which are all very relevant in physics education.