Everyday Classroom Practice Research Articles

The attitudes, beliefs and anticipated actions of student teachers towards

Recognizing that teacher commitments are consequential for classroom practice, this research seeks to understand the beliefs, perceptions and attitudes among student teachers towards diversity in their classroom. Using evocative case studies drawn from everyday classroom practice, this study draws out the existing understandings and commitments of this group of white South African student teachers on a subject (diversity in education) that continues to occupy center stage in policy reforms twelve years after the legal termination of apartheid. There are three major research findings emanating from this study: first, that students do not enter pre-service training as ‘blank slates' with respect to diversity questions; second, that white student teachers are diverse in their attitudes, beliefs and strategies for dealing with diversity; and third, that teacher education program designs, correctly implemented, can challenge and change preexisting attitudes and beliefs of student teachers towards difference in South African classrooms. South African Journal of Higher Education Vol. 22 (3) 2008: pp. 692-707

Think Ahead to Red Penciling

There is something devilishly delightful about using a red pencil to slash through errata, bad grammar, or puffed-up sentences. So, when President-elect Barack Obama talks about going through the federal budget line-by-line to eliminate what's not working, I get inspired to think about what one could do to the federal budget for education. I know we are in an era of thinking ahead and being positive, but the temptation is too great. Almost immediately, however, one runs into a couple of dilemmas. Education programs, first of all, are particularly difficult to label as working or not working, due not only to the great diversity of needs and situations across the education spectrum but also to a weak tradition of using research. Consider the federal What Works Clearinghouse's attempt to impose strict evidence criteria on programs. The process has yielded so few candidates that Clearinghouse developers are changing names and procedures to try to make it more useful. On the other hand, when the evaluation criteria are so loose, the term successful has no meaning. Look at the highly qualified teacher/principal supports under Title II, Part A of the No Child Left Behind Act that is giving states almost $3 billion this year to provide grants for professional development and other activities. In the first place, the feds don't have a clear picture of how states are spending this money. The U.S. Department of Education web site says only 18 states submitted the required reports on this program, and a spot check shows that most are out of compliance in several features. However, the federal summary says professional development funding is doing what it is supposed to because more than 90% of teachers have participated in full-day workshops or after-school professional development. Some of these experiences undoubtedly were useful. Yet, most studies of professional development tell us that programs are embedded in everyday classroom practice, often through collaborative learning communities, and that workshops and after-school events aren't the best way to improve instruction. Another problem with deciding what isn't working in federal education funding is that often the program is the ultimate product of a flawed policy and wouldn't work well no matter how good the design. In a sense, this is the problem with a traditional view of professional development. The billions of dollars spent on Title II over the past six years ignores the research and common sense that is moving policy and practice toward improving quality rather than teachers. What is needed are high-quality management practices and supports for ordinary teachers. That means professional development for the system, such as good induction programs, challenging curriculum standards, ongoing mentoring, and the creation of collaborative responsibility for all students. Not your one-off solution. Diverting federal funding to bad solutions certainly was evident in the Reading First controversy. Every time in my memory that the federal government has entered into direct support for a curriculum, it has encountered political problems. No matter how beneficial the intervention may be--and for school systems that lacked a cohesive approach to teaching reading, Reading First was an improvement--it's going to get into hot water with politicians. …

A Meta-Analytic Review of Guided Notes

Research indicates that student achievement improves when teachers provide opportunities for active engagement. Guided notes have been suggested as a way to increase active student responding during teacher-directed lectures. The purpose of this review was to summarize research on the effectiveness of guided notes. Specifically, we sought to synthesize the research examining (a) the effectiveness of guided notes on various outcome variables and across different ages, (b) procedural variations in guided notes implementation, and (c) the social validity of guided notes. Results indicated that guided notes are an effective and socially valid method for increasing note-taking accuracy and improving academic performance, particularly for school-age students. Recommendations are made for everyday classroom practice and for future research.

How teachers navigate their learning in developing inclusive learning communities

his article presents the findings of an interpretive study on how exemplary teachers navigate their learning journeys when developing inclusive learning communities. We chose socio-cultural theory as a framework for understanding how the participating teachers learn from difference and diversity in their everyday classroom practice. The main source of data was individual semistructured interviews with five primary school teachers. The participants compared their learning process to that of an apprenticeship, and highlighted two themes: firstly, they identified their learning in the school context as intentional, self-directed and incremental; and secondly, they increasingly accessed and generated sources and opportunities themselves to support their learning process. They added insight into the interdependence of both individual sense-making and social collaborative learning. We argue that there is a close relationship between these teachers' personal and professional identities and that learning and cari...

Developing teachers, developing as a teacher: A story about a story

In this paper I reflect on my changing roles as a mathematics educator, that is, as a teacher educator and as a classroom teacher in a secondary school. This is a personal account of the challenge of translating my beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning into everyday classroom practice. The presentation I use is based on the work of Rowland − the account is presented in the form of personal reflections on a story written about playing the two different roles of teacher educator and classroom teacher. I use the process of writing to try to make sense of my experiences and to explore the use of story as a research methodology. Although the story is intensely personal, there are identifiable themes that run through the narrative, which I suggest may resonate with the experience of other mathematics educators.

The Iraq war as curricular knowledge

The paper deals with educational discourse concerning the recent Iraq war in an attempt to explore how broader political issues, such as the Iraq war, are materialised in everyday classroom practices. It analyses lesson plans, aimed to be used by US educators of primary and secondary schools, from two Internet sites: one supporting the official position of US to go to war and the other taking a position against the war. The paper suggests that the lesson plans in the two sites constitute materialisations of two general approaches to education, the dominant and the critical, which do not simply adopt opposing views concerning the war but which, most importantly, contribute to the construction of different pedagogic subjects: in one case, there is an attempt towards ‘compulsory patriotism’, whereas in the other an attempt towards a ‘compulsory’ challenging of the war. The ideals which are in fact recontextualised here are that of nation and justice, the pedagogisation of which seems to raise much more questions than to provide answers.

Classroom goal structures and hopelessness as predictors of day-to-day experience at school: Differences between students with and without learning disabilities

The purpose of the present study was to compare the everyday classroom practices of students with and without learning disabilities (LD) and attempt to predict those perceptions from classroom's motivational discourse and feelings of hopelessness. Two hundred thirty students with and without learning disabilities recorded their everyday classroom behaviours and affect over 5 consecutive days. Classroom goal structures were assessed with rating scales. Results indicated that a performance goal structure was associated with less positive affect and less engagement for students with LD. Study 2 attempted to replicate the findings of Study 1 with 120 students, 64 with learning problems and 56 typical peers. Results pointed to salient between-group differences across intercepts, with students with LD having lower levels of positive affect, higher levels of negative affect, higher perceptions of punishment, and lower engagement. Among classroom climates, a mastery goal structure was associated with enhanced reinforcement for both groups. The saliency of goal structures in influencing student behaviours was evident, as they moderated the relationship between hopelessness and students’ achievement-related behaviours. Overall the findings highlighted the importance of mastery goal structures for creating positive academic environments for students with and without LD.

RECONSTRUCTING TEACHER’S PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY IN A RESEARCH DISCOURSE: A PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY IN AN INFORMAL SETTING

Any researcher coming fresh into an environment has the potential for upsetting the local ecology. Grant et al. 1979:465 1. Introduction Professional learning occurs in many diverse ways. Educational research investigates teacher learning from diverse perspectives and focuses on its different aspects (the following analysis is based mostly on American research in the last two decades). It sways from delineating the content of professional knowledge (e.g. Shulman 1987) to identifying the mechanisms and conditions of learning (e.g. Carter 1990), to analyzing the ways in which knowledge is held and assessed (e.g. Fenstermacher 1994, 2000), to illuminating the processes of how professional knowledge develops in practice and informs it (e.g. Connelly & Clandinin 1999, Lieberman & McLaughlin 1992). For the most part, the wide range of pre-service and in-service events and everyday classroom practice bound the context of these researchers' investigations of teachers' learning. However, most of these studies do not account for informal learning that occurs in settings that are not specifically designed for teachers' professional development. Some aspects of informal learning have been analyzed (e.g. Kottler 1997). Nonetheless, little attention has been paid to researching informal teachers' learning in situations in which teachers are subjects of scholarly investigation. With this ecological study, I focus on teachers' learning in a research project and ask, whether and how a teacher learns as a participant of a study, and other related questions: Are educational researchers always aware of their influence on the situation when they are in the field? What do researchers leave behind after their intrusion? How do teachers respond to being researched? These and similar questions need attention because any interaction (in this case, between a researcher and a teacher) is a particular social experience that creates new learning opportunities. Researchers report on their experiences and findings. Teachers, however, leave the scene in silence. There are only a few studies (e.g. Rex 2002), in which teachers have a voice in expressing their learning from participation in an inquiry. This study, therefore, attempts to fill in the gap existing in understanding how teachers pursue professional growth in informal settings and how they position themselves to do that. The investigation is based on the assumption that research in which voices of teachers are heard can tell us about their learning in ways otherwise not accessible. Thus, I aim to draw attention to possible outcomes of teacher-researcher interaction. I do so by illuminating the trajectory of one teacher's learning as a reconstruction of her professional identity in the specific social situation. In other words, I explore how the teacher positions herself as a professional in the process of interaction with me as a researcher. This study encourages reconceptualizing the process of doing research with teachers. It aims at increasing awareness of all possible figures that engage in helping teachers become better professionals. Hence, researchers, policy makers, teacher educators and teachers, would benefit from knowing how teachers learn in informal settings, how teachers' understandings evolve under researchers' conscious or unconscious influence. In the first part of this paper, I explore theoretical perspectives of research on teachers' learning paying particular attention to how theories of learning represent teachers as learners in informal settings such as researcher-teacher relationships. The second part is an empirical account of the teacher's learning during the study. I investigate the relationship between the teacher's learning about her teaching and reconstruction of her professional identity. I do so by representing what the teacher does in order to learn in the research relationship. I treat the interview data as socially produced texts, which I analyze applying discourse analysis. …

Transforming teaching and learning: embedding ICT into everyday classroom practices

AbstractDrawing on socio‐cultural theory, this paper describes how teams of teachers and researchers have developed ways of embedding information and communications technology (ICT) into everyday classroom practices to enhance learning. The focus is on teaching and learning across a range of subjects: English, history, geography, mathematics, modern foreign languages, music and science. The influence of young people's out‐of‐school uses of ICT on in‐school learning is discussed. The creative tension between idiosyncratic and institutional knowledge construction is emphasised and we argue that this is exacerbated by the use of ICT in the classroom.

School disciplines, social representations, and the construction of the didactics of history, geography, and civics

The author presents a concept of the didactics of history, geography, and civics that seeks to link, through a single dynamic, the civic, political, and social goals of school knowledge with everyday classroom practice and pupils' learning. Two concepts occupy the heart of this construction: those of school disciplines and social representations. The concept of school disciplines addresses the fact that school knowledge is a creation of the school, designed to enable it to achieve the social goals it is assigned. A school discipline is thus a particular combination of goals, content (in the form of shared knowledge), methods, and practices. The concept of social representations is a tool serving to analyze knowledge as theories of the natural and social world, its production, and its reception by the different actors involved.

New approaches for teaching, learning and using information and communication technologies in education

Computers, especially when they are linked in networks, have the potential to dramatically change everyday classroom practice. The impact of the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in education will not be limited to the actors involved in the learning process (teachers and students), but will also change the institutional infrastructure, relations and patterns of behaviour within the education system, and even the content of education. For a good understanding of these educational changes it is necessary to look at the transformation industrialized societies are undergoing. Education is reacting to the emergence of the information society. Traditionally, schools provided the settings where individuals were prepared for the industrial society. In this society the focus was on 'making things', on industrial production. Today's edu

Preventing Reading Difficulties: Rhyme and Alliteration in the Real World

Summary Research on the predictive power of early awareness of the sound patterns in spoken words for children's later literacy development looks increasingly likely to influence attempts to prevent reading failure. The study reported here examines the potential ‐‐ and some of the pitfalls ‐‐ of attempts to translate this research into the realities of everyday classroom practice. It provides some limited evidence for the effectiveness of phonological awareness training, and draws pointers for the messages it is important to get across when working with schools to implement classroom work in this area.

Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Schools.

In this book the authors explore the factors that have shaped coeducation since its origins. The text is accompanied by contemporary photographs and photo-essays that add evidence about gender in classrooms. They address a number of provocative questions. Why did Americans choose to educate boys and girls together the very time they were creating separate spheres for adult men and women? How did beliefs about the similarities and differences of boys and girls shape gender policies and practices in schools? Why did criticisms of coeducation often have little impact on everyday classroom practices? To what degree did the treatment of boys and girls differ by class, race, region, and historical period? Why did policymakers alternatively see girls or boys as the group at risk? The authors show that the history of coeducation is not a unified tale of pathology or progress. Schools have reflected some of the gender inequalitities embedded in the larger society, yet they have in some degree been sheltered enclaves where children and youth were treated in ways that contrasted sharply with the lives of adult women and men. Debates over gender policies suggest that Americans have made public education the repository of their hopes and anxieties about relationships between the sexes. Thus the history of coeducation serves as a window not only on constancy and change in gender practices in the schools but also on cultural conflicts about gender in the broader society.

Baselines and Basics: some issues in the assessment of behavioural interventions in education

Abstract Teachers are increasingly making use of behavioural techniques in their everyday classroom practice. The need for empirical demonstration of effectiveness is integral to the behavioural approach and calls for the use of some sort of experimental design, both to show a relationship between the teacher's actions and change in the child's behaviour, and to discount alternative explanations of such change. The baseline, a measure of the behaviour to be changed, is seen as performing a key function in any such design. The advantages and disadvantages for applied research of group and single case experimental designs are examined. It is argued that the latter provide a particularly appropriate means for practising teachers to evaluate their own work. Five well‐established forms of single case design are discussed in detail and an actual example of each in use is given.