Everyday Educational Practice Research Articles

Szkoła ogólnodostępna wobec inkluzji uczniów z niepełnosprawnością – diagnoza wybranych problemów

At the heart of inclusive education is ensuring that students with disabilities have access to high-quality education in a mainstream setting. The way to achieve this goal is to build a new model, a school better adapted to the needs of all students. The paper aims to present the school situation (educational and peer) of students with disabilities against the background of everyday educational practice implemented in many Polish mainstream schools. Adopting the position on the teachers’ fundamental role in designing the development and learning environment, the focus was mainly on their educational activities and attitudes towards inclusive education. Critical points of the didactic and educational process have been identified, which hinder the transition from school routine to education open to the diverse needs of all pupils, including those with disabilities. Significant obstacles to building cooperation, exchanging knowledge among students, and, consequently, increasing the level of social relations were identified, among which the legitimisation of individualistic values, often reinforced by the mechanism of competition, may be particularly important.

Recentering and claiming joy and radical love in education

ABSTRACT Too often joy and radical love are brushed off to the side while addressing intersectional forms of supremacies within teacher education does not get addressed. While it is important to name systematic and intergenerational trauma and violence, building interdependence joy and radical love must be done alongside. We cannot dismantle and build if we do not know how to value ourselves. Using insights from auto-ethnographic approaches, we 1) define what a disability justice radical love approach, which centers joy, radical love, and the humanization of personal, professional, and programmatic identities, 2) illustrate how we started and continue to build such networks, and 3) offer strategic suggestions for centering joy and radical love within everyday educational practice — both on a micro and macro level — in building resistance, push back, and disruption of dehumanizing practices within teacher development and educational policy and practices.

Dismantling the Dispositif: Social Science Experiments in the Classroom

The following is a case study of a series of pioneering tests with visual teaching aids in elementary and secondary schools in the United States, conducted between 1920 and 1923. As it happened, these tests coincided with similar experiments in the Netherlands. Although unbeknown to each other, the innovative aspect of both studies consisted in taking their research into the classroom. With this measure experimenters in both countries hoped to collect well-founded evidence to refute what appeared to them as unfounded or overstated claims about photography-based, visual teaching aids, film in particular. While the experimenters forwent a controlled lab situation, by entering the classroom they nonetheless introduced adjustments into everyday educational practice, whether it concerned the activities required of pupils, staff, the interactions between them, and/or the composition of test groups. Thus, they changed what today one would call the educational dispostif: the arrangement of a presentation (a lesson by staff) in a designated space (a classroom with its equipment) before an assemblage of attendees (a class of pupils). Although the term educational dispositif was not current at the time, the experimenters did comment on the elements that constitute it. And given elementary and secondary education’s time-honoured routines, they were bound to stumble upon these elements’ interdependence and reconsider, albeit not in so many words, their conception of what goes on in a class. I largely focus on the American experimentsbecause they are more numerous, more invasive, and more extensively discussed in the 1924 book Visual education. The Dutch experiments, on which I published elsewhere, consisted of two, less invasive series, conducted in one secondary school, and were reported on in two articles, in 1923, and one English translation, in 1924.

Creating Caring and Just Democratic Schools to Prevent Extremism

AbstractSecondary schools are well placed to avert radicalization processes toward extremism because such trajectories often begin in adolescence. Adolescents are in the process of forming their identities, and most adolescents are idealistic, which makes them susceptible to groups that passionately pursue utopian visions. To avert the path toward extremism, Doret de Ruyter and Stijn Sieckelinck propose to balance a prevention approach with a positive educative ethos that is sensitive to the emotions involved in students' quest for meaning in life and identity formation. This involves schools being places where all students experience that they matter and where they can express their passion for their ideals and experiment with their identities without being ridiculed; at the same time, schools must guide students in learning that not everything they value will be accepted and that they must also take into account the interests and rights of others. The schools' role is thus complex and precarious, and teachers are in a position of navigating a politically sensitive minefield daily. Therefore, any theoretical proposition regarding what schools can realistically do to prevent extremism must be informed by everyday educational practice.

Lesson Enactments: Maintenance in Everyday Educational Practice

Abstract This article explores lesson enactments as co-constitutive of human-technology relationality in everyday schooling, rather than neutral backdrops for educational activities. In doing so, the article introduces maintenance as its key concept, drawing on insights from maintenance studies and actor-network theory (ANT). Being both theoretically and empirically informed, maintenance means reconsidering lessons, and digital technologies, as part of lively and vulnerable objects achieved in sociomaterial practices and not merely stable in function and use. The empirical case of lesson enactments comes from fieldwork with an upper secondary school in Sweden during Covid-19. The article analyses situations of maintenance with online class calls and scheduling meetings. Herein, lessons turn into a topic of concern and mechanisms of maintenance enact educational order and prevent disorder. The article demonstrates how putting maintenance to work articulates and identifies so far neglected and mundane practices with digital technology in education. In light of this, the article argues for recognising maintenance in educational practice as too long overshadowed by use, reinforced by a persistent user-technology dichotomy. Finally, the article discusses how maintenance invites reconsiderations of the dominant before-after debate that the Covid-19 pandemic attracts and calls attention to the mundane maintenance of lessons regardless of breakdowns.

Hyper-Activity Books and Serious Games: How to Promote Experiential Learning beyond Distance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital tools for learning. Experiential learning, a crucial process in the educational pathway, can also be promoted at a distance. This paper describes HAB, hyper-activity books and serious games (SG) as methodologies to be used for assessment and training that overcome physical distancing due to COVID-19 in learning. We introduce some examples of these methodologies. The experiences and results represent a pool of resources for experiential learning in everyday educational practice and not merely for responding to emergencies caused by pandemics.

Educational interventions to promote adolescents’ mental health: A scoping review

Background:Adolescents often experience discomfort due to individual experiences and the influence of their environment. This discomfort sometimes leads to mental health problems. Education is pivotal in promoting adolescents’ mental health through dedicated prevention interventions and through everyday educational practice, both at school and in the community.Objective:To develop an overview of the types of educational interventions aimed at promoting the mental health of adolescents and young adults, providing helpful guidance and insights to teachers/educators.Methods:We conducted a scoping review developed through searches in the CINAHL, Eric, PsycINFO and PubMed databases. We summarised data using descriptive analysis, grouping educational interventions category according to their goals and purposes.Results:Of the initial 704 articles identified, 19 met the study inclusion criteria. Consistent with Dewey’s educational theory, most of the interventions reported in the selected studies can be viewed as genuine ‘educational’ interventions, in that they involved experiential and interactive activities such as discussion groups, role-play and art-based activities. Fewer interventions involved less participatory and more ‘information-based’ activities, such as lessons. However, in many interventions, the role of teachers/educators in promoting young people’s mental health was underestimated; indeed, in only a few cases were they the providers/co-providers of the activities described, and rarely was there continuity/alignment between the interventions and everyday school activities.Conclusions:Conducting a greater number of formal/informal educational interventions to promote adolescents’ mental health is imperative, especially in the current socio-historical context, but this enterprise must acknowledge, value and support the important role of teachers/educators as leaders and participants in this endeavour.

PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL EMPOWERMENT OF REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONER TEACHERS DURING THE COVID 19 PANDEMIC

Reflective practitioner teachers should critically review their own work and introduce innovations that should improve everyday educational practice. For this reason, the focus of the research is on the personal and professional empowerment of reflective practitioner teachers during the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. 355 teachers from the Republic of Serbia participated. The empirical research used descriptive methods and techniques of scaling and surveying with an instrument specially constructed for the needs of this research - Questionnaire with assessment scale (RP-COV-19). The results show that the most common form of empowerment is attending online seminars, while teachers rarely attended online classes of colleagues from the school where they work and colleagues from other schools. Teachers' perceptions on the use of the Internet in the aspect of personal and professional empowerment are very positive. Teachers generally rate their training and engagement during the pandemic with the highest marks (four and five), while there were no negative marks at all. Reflexivity accompanied by personal and professional empowerment must be given priority by teachers, because in today's process of education, reflective practitioners are considered successful teachers. Keywords: teacher reflective practitioner, professional empowerment, the Covid-19 pandemic, empirical research, improvement of educational practice.

Investigating the different facets of student engagement during augmented reality use in primary school

AbstractThis paper presents the results of a study into the different facets of student engagement during interactive augmented reality experiences presented on individual tablet computers to students in early primary school. The study was conducted as part of a pilot research project “SCOLLAm,” researching various approaches to learning with tablets in primary school in Croatia. To explore engagement in such an environment, an experimental approach based on an innovative digital lesson platform is taken, comparing augmented reality‐based digital lessons and multimedia‐based ones. In both approaches the contents are being shared, but presented differently, thus isolating augmented reality effects versus general technological intervention effects, an approach so far not explored in the early primary school context, but important, per existing literature. The data is analysed via video coding based on accepted engagement observational techniques and qualitative analysis. The results show that the AR‐based interactive learning experiences are in general more cognitively and overall engaging in the early primary school context, while having less non‐engagement or disengagement of the students than interactive learning experiences in multimedia digital lessons. Those findings are triangulated via teacher interviews and student focus groups, identifying likely reasons for such a difference, and examining how to best apply the results in everyday educational practice. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic The effects of Augmented Reality Learning Experiences (ARLEs) on students’ knowledge and achievement are a common field of research interest by educational AR researchers. Student engagement is often used as proxy for student achievement as it has shown correlations with it, both generally and in ARLEs, and is thus also commonly of interest. It is difficult to isolate the effects of AR versus the effects of the fact that a technological intervention occurred in general; often requested in recent literature, it has so far been only done in two studies, in early childhood learning and university‐level education contexts. What this paper adds The paper presents an experimental study on engagement of students during ARLEs in early primary school (ages 7–8), one of the contexts most interesting to researchers, comparing lessons using the same contents in ARLEs and multimedia digital lessons, thus isolating AR effects from general technological intervention effects. The study shows ARLEs in this context providing more cognitive and overall student engagement, while having less non‐engagement or disengagement. Student focus groups, composed of students exposed to both AR and non‐AR lessons on tablets, explain this engagement by their perception of ARLEs as educational play. Implications for practice and/or policy With the building up of the corpus confirming engagement benefits, researchers and teachers can more confidently assume their presence when preparing ARLEs in primary school contexts, making for a stronger case for the use of ARLEs in this context. The findings, triangulated with teachers’ and students’ focus group feedback, support deploying ARLEs for review and reinforcement of learned contents. Not originally targeted, the findings give underlying empirical support for further research into AR Game‐based Learning, a developing field.

Readiness of university teachers to organize student interaction in an electronic educational environment

The article aims to determine the components of the teachers’ readiness to organize student interaction in an electronic information and educational environment considering the difficulties that occur while planning the instruction and student interaction. The main research methods were the analysis of scientific and methodological literature, surveys, and correlation analysis. The practical significance of the study includes the development of recommendations for improving the teachers’ readiness to organize student interaction in an electronic information and educational environment, which is especially important not only during the pandemic, but also in everyday educational practice. The research findings determine the direction for further research on the modernization of the education system as a whole, and they may be used by the teachers of higher educational institutions when organizing learning under the conditions of intense digitalization of education and by the heads of educational institutions.

Digital game-based examination for sensor placement in context of an Industry 4.0 lecture using the Unity 3D engine – a case study

Due to the many advantages that digital teaching and testing methods have over traditional ones, they are increasingly finding their way into everyday educational practice. The current events of the COVID-19 pandemic have given these approaches an additional boost. In this paper, a first version of digital game-based examination for sensor placement is presented, which can supplement parts of a classical exam for an Industry 4.0 lecture designed for postgraduate engineering students. For the development of the environment the Unity 3D Engine as well as freely available models and plugins for Unity are leveraged. By doing so, an immersive virtual scenario is created in which complex problems can be depicted and solved by the student. To ensure the suitability of this exam type and the coverage of the desired learning objectives, an evaluation of the game-based examination environment will subsequently be conducted and the results are discussed.

Selective mutism and shyness. Differential diagnosis and strategies supporting child development

The article deals with the problem of differential diagnosis of extreme reticence or selective speech in a child, categorised as selective mutism and shyness. Selective mutism is an increasingly recognized disorder among preschool and school children. It manifests itself functionally in the sphere of speech and communication, but in relation to the anxiety factor. As an anxiety disorder, it is categorised in the latest medical classifications ICD-11 and DSM-5, and therefore, primarily psychological or psychiatric therapeutic intervention could be expected. The specificity of the pathomechanism of selective mutism, however, requires interdisciplinary activities, with a room for a speech therapist, a special pedagogue (e.g. at a public school as a supporting teacher), any other pedagogue working with the child (educator, teacher of integrated classes, subject teacher), other specialists (therapist pedagogue, physiotherapist), as well as the parents. The speech therapist may play a special role in the diagnosis of mutism in the conditions of inclusive education, as he will probably be the first specialist who will receive a child who is not speaking or very taciturn at a public school. In the article, the diagnosis of selective mutism is associated with the differential diagnosis of shyness, which may not be treated as a disorder, but only a certain personality trait, but with incompetent pedagogical support in everyday educational practice it can lead to more serious difficulties, including logophobia and mutism. The diagnosis of mutism requires specialised therapeutic measures, but with the awareness of the differences in the situations of a shy child and a child with mutism, it is worth learning some supportive strategies that are useful in both cases.

Quality Improvement in Teaching and Learning Science in Primary School Settings: Using a Metaphor to Approach the Concept of Light

The present study focuses on the approach of the concept of light by primary school students. The study explores how a teaching procedure founded on using the metaphor that light travels as a wave reflects on the concept of light as a distinct natural entity. The experimental method was used for the research. One hundred and fifty-two children aged between 7 to 8 years old (average age 7.59) from 9 different primary school classes in Colorado, USA, participated in the research. An experimental and control group was delineated. Following a socio-cognitive perspective, the experimental group took part in a teaching procedure based on using the metaphor that light travels as a wave. Following an empiricist perspective, the control group took part in a teaching procedure based on a description of the phenomenon without using a metaphor. Data had been collected through pre and post-test, which results were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney test. The quantitative analysis showed an essential difference between the two groups. The experimental group pupils achieve higher learning outcomes as they better understand light as a distinct entity. It is argued that using a metaphor allows children to make connections with their everyday life, wonder about, and conceptualize light in a more efficient and meaningful way. The study informs everyday educational practice by providing a quality improvement element for learning and teaching about the primary classroom light

Mapping teachers’ personal epistemologies – Phenomenographical approach

Although a considerable amount of research proved a causal relation between teachers’ conceptions of knowledge and the quality of their educational practice, personal epistemology still remains an under-investigated area in teacher professional development, both at the pre-service and in-service stage of career. The article presents the phenomenographic approach to investigating teachers' epistemological beliefs. Phenomenography offers unique tools to grasp the subjective dimension of human experience, especially valuable in trying to understand how teachers perceive and conceptualize their epistemological experiences grounded in everyday educational practice. The aim of the study was to reconstruct teachers’ conceptions of mind and knowing. The following research questions were formulated: How do in-service teachers understand their own mind and knowledge? What conceptions of mind do they use to explain their process of acquiring new knowledge? How are these conceptions of mind, knowledge and knowing interrelated? Several conceptions of mind were elicited and described following the rules of phenomenographic analysis. In conclusions, the consequences of neglecting personal epistemology in teachers’ education and professional development were discussed, furthermore methodological implications for future research were outlined.

Keeping track of the development of professional learning communities in schools: the construction of two qualitative classification instruments

ABSTRACT For investigating a comprehensive PLC framework, instruments are needed that capture the multi-layered PLC characteristics and that take into account the complex influencing educational context. Such instruments are currently lacking. This study aims at describing the development and validation of two qualitative classification instruments usable for systematically identifying changes in PLCs. The 11 characteristics and accompanying behavioural and attitudinal indicators of a recently designed PLC framework were converted into codes and measuring values. For this conversion the ‘directed content analysis approach’ was used. The result is two classification instruments that can be used to collect and classify behavioural and attitudinal data from interviews and observations. The instruments cover all the characteristics, respectively indicators of the PLC framework and are suitable for validation by triangulation. This study contributes to the methodology for investigating PLCs by presenting two theoretically grounded and validated sets of codes, and two sets of measuring values. The latter is important for systematically developing knowledge on PLCs in educational practice. In everyday educational practice the instruments can be used to determine the state of the PLC and steps can be taken to stimulate its development.

Individualization of Learning: An Investigation on Educational Technologies

The paper discusses various approaches to the concept of “individualization of learning” and their relevant changes in connection with the development of educational technologies. An analysis of the relevant literature shows that a more precise content of this concept in each specific case depends on what goals are meant when talking about individualization. There are large differences found in different countries, among different authors, and in everyday educational practice when this concept is used. More than that, the authors demonstrate that the very notion of “individualization of learning” is replaced by “individual learning,” i.e. by the concept of “independently performing learning tasks.” The research also clearly shows that a number of opportunities for better individualization of training are limited in conditions of traditional didactics, as well as in terms of group work and the existing system of lectures and seminars. The authors argue that “individualized learning” is a part of “personalized learning,” since personalization is the realization of a person’s desire to be a person. And personality is a systemic quality of an individual. This quality appears in three spaces, one of which is the space of a person’s individual life. Another claim is that full individualization of potentials existing in education can only be achieved through a didactic-technological paradigm based on web-technology and application of intelligent robots in education. The second requirement implies administration of both education and educational process management. The authors additionally provide a case study of the “LUNCH Intellectual Information System” in order to support their arguments.

How to enhance teachers’ professional learning by stimulating the development of professional learning communities: operationalising a comprehensive PLC concept for assessing its development in everyday educational practice

ABSTRACT Fostering the development of Professional Learning communities (PLCs) should be a priority for education because of their capacity to enhance teachers’ professional development. However, in everyday educational (school) contexts studying and supporting the growth of PLCs is a complex endeavour. As a consequence, there is a lack of instruments for extensively investigating PLCs on different levels of development as well as the factors that influence the development. This article describes the first steps of the construction of measuring instruments, suitable to investigate PLCs in the complex school context: a study of the operationalisation of PLC characteristics and influencing factors into attitudinal and behavioural indicators. The operationalisation is founded on relevant literature and on educational practice, the latter by focus groups consisting of educational practitioners. This study yielded indicators for the eleven characteristics of the PLC concept and two context factors, which were subsequently used for selecting and constructing instruments. This study contributes to the research methodology for investigating PLCs and to bridge the gap between educational research and educational practice. The latter by constructing instruments that are considered relevant, recognisable and practical by educational practitioners.

Making the Psychological Dimension of Learning Visible: Using Technology-Based Assessment to Monitor Students' Cognitive Development.

Technology-based assessment offers unique opportunities to collect data on students’ cognitive development and to use that data to provide both students and teachers with feedback to improve learning. The aim of this study was to show how the psychological dimension of learning can be assessed in everyday educational practice through technology-based assessment in reading, mathematics and science. We analyzed three related aspects of the assessments: cognitive development, gender differences and vertical scaling. The sample for the study was drawn from primary school students in Grades 1–8 (ages 7 to 14) in Hungary. There were 1500 to 2000 students in each grade cohort. Online tests were constructed from 1638 items from the reading, mathematics, and science domains in the eDia system. The results confirmed that the disciplinary, application and psychological dimensions of learning can be distinguished empirically. Students’ cognitive development was the most steady (and effective) in mathematics, where the greatest development occurred in the first years of schooling. Path models suggested that the psychological dimension of learning can be predicted at a moderate level based on students’ level of school knowledge consisting of the disciplinary and application dimensions of learning as latent constructs. The predictive power was almost the same in both dimensions. Generally, girls developed faster in the psychological dimension of reading, mathematics and science learning; however, the size of gender differences varied by age and domain. This study (1) provides evidence that the psychological dimension of learning can be made visible even in an educational context, (2) highlights the importance of the explicit development of the psychological dimension of learning during school lessons, and (3) shows that there are gender differences in the developmental level of the psychological dimension of learning in favor of girls but that this varies by grade and domain.

A graduate of early school education in the teachers' speeches Polish language in class IV

Recognition of the teacher's expectations towards a graduate of early school education was associated with an attempt to reach the pupil's picture, to that element of his individual theory, which translates into teaching practice, conditioning the type of educational environment created in which the adaptation process of the 4th grade students will take place. The phenomenological perspective assumed, assuming the unity of thinking and acting, made it possible to try to reveal how teachers of Polish language invited in the study in class 4 identify their own perception of the student's competences with everyday educational practice. Their comments on the image of a graduate of early school education also show the perception and assessment of the everyday educational practice of first-grade teachers. The presented research results indicate a tendency to maintain the deficits model. The teacher's expectations towards the student starting school in the fourth class clearly accentuate his poor resources, whose assessment is related to the depreciating perception of various dimensions of early school education. Thus, the image of an early education graduate will consist of his deficiencies, the completion of which will be the task of teachers of subject education. The teacher's expectations focusing on the shortages of children finishing early school education affect their adaptation at the beginning of the fourth grade, on the level of anxiety, frustration and passivity. The expectations of teachers of the fourth grade at the beginning of education constitute barriers for children, which for most students are insurmountable and will affect the further, school biography.

Readiness for School, Time and Ethics in Educational Practice

‘Taking time seriously’ is an enduring human concern and questions about the nature of time bear heavily on the meaning of childhood. In the context of the continuing debates on readiness for school, ‘taking time seriously’ has contributed to policies on ‘early interventions’ which claim to support children in reaching their full potential but limit this potential when enacted in practice. Much of current policymaking takes the meaning of time for granted within a ‘quantitative’ view of time as a neutral, standardised parameter. In everyday educational practice, this view of time may lead to an excessive preoccupation with assessing standardised characteristics of ‘school ready’ children, who are expected to follow a uniform path of development predetermined by their biological clock. However, the quantitative view of time has been challenged both in philosophical and scientific thought by an understanding of time as complex, irreversible and emergent in the present. George Herbert Mead’s ‘philosophy of the present’ and Ilya Prigogine’s ‘arrow of time’ point to important implications of a ‘complex’ view of time for readiness for school as an event rather than a fixed set of characteristics that children should possess upon entry to primary school. Engaging in educational practice as it unfolds in the present also calls for ethics that are not focused on adhering to fixed moral universals but on our actions ‘here and now’ and attending to the ethical meaning that arises in children’s responses to our actions.