Including Grade Level Research Articles

Schoolhouse Teacher Educators

While few would disagree that a key component of educating teachers to teach happens on the job, research rarely explores the schoolhouse as a site for teacher education. This study thus focuses on inservice as distinct from preservice teacher education and explores how beginning teachers’ learning about mathematics and literacy instruction was supported within 24 elementary schools in two midwestern school districts. A mixed methodology was used in this exploratory study, including social network and interview data analysis, to examine beginning teachers’ advice- and information-seeking behaviors related to mathematics and literacy. Findings revealed that formal organizational structures inside schools were critical for shaping beginning teachers’ opportunities to learn about instruction, including grade level teams and formal leadership positions.

Classroom Management and Loss of Time at the Lesson Start: A Preliminary Study

<p style="text-align:justify">Lesson starts are transitional events which may cause management problems for teachers. In this study 131 lesson starts of equally many teachers were observed in primary and secondary schools in Finland. The results indicated that, in general, the problems were minimal. However, for various reasons lesson starts were delayed by an average of about six minutes. Calculated on this basis, the total loss of instructional time in the whole school year was about five weeks of schooling. No statistically significant relationships were observed between disturbances in the classroom and any background variable studied including grade level, classroom type,(special or mainstream), group size, presence of classroom assistant, sex of the teacher, weekday, time of day of the lesson, or subject of the lesson. In order to maximise instructional time more attention should be paid in future to starting lessons promptly.</p>

E-character education among digital natives: Focusing on character exemplars

This study focused on open online character education implemented in e-HO, a holistic learning environment embedded with a character exemplar video-on-demand (VOD) system. E-HO, designed to use the Internet to enhance holistic and character education's efficacies in a way that is fitting for and favored by digital natives, also aimed to counteract the negative impacts of the mass media. A comprehensive investigation of a survey conducted among 1013 university students for this e-character education program is presented with a detailed study on students' preferences referring to various demographic variables including grade level, gender, discipline and the number of exemplar exposure instances concerning the five scales extracted in this particular survey. In accordance with previous studies, this study suggested that grade level differences could be explained by cognitive ability. Gender differences and discipline differences both emerged because of differences in ''people-things'' orientation between genders and also between disciplines with distinct, long-term professional foci and practices. Compelling counterbalancing effects were witnessed between the developments of discipline differences and grade level differences, which were greatly enhanced by consistently implementing holistic education. A preliminary ''cognitive threshold'' of VOD exposure within a semester among the female participants appeared at 10 viewings, beyond which substantially more effective pedagogical efficacies emerged.

Teacher expertise and the development of a problem representation

This study examined ways in which expert and novice teachers mentally represent classroom problems in matters of instruction, assessment, and curriculum planning. A triad judgement task was administered to expert teachers (n=20) and novice teachers (n=98) to determine whether deep, structural features (i.e. the theoretical underpinnings associated with the problem) and/or surface features (narrative characteristics of the problem including grade level and subject) were used to interpret and represent a problem situation presented in a classroom context. Findings were consistent with results from previous studies examining problem representation among experts and novices in other domains. That is, the experts in this study primarily relied on the deep features to form a mental representation of a problem situation whereas the novices tended to rely on surface structures to do so. However, findings also revealed that novice teachers relied on the deep, structural features of the problem under certain conditions.

Nutrition Education in Minnesota Public Schools: Perceptions and Practices of Teachers

A random sample of 1890 elementary and secondary teachers in Minnesota public schools was surveyed to determine their perceptions and practices regarding nutrition education. The survey response rate was 47% (n = 894). Data were analyzed using cumulative frequencies and chi-square procedures. Seventy-nine percent of the teachers taught nutrition. Teachers with previous training in nutrition were more likely to teach nutrition than those without training. Teachers who had taken a college course were more likely to teach more than 10 hours of nutrition per year. Other factors related to the amount of nutrition education taught included grade level, subject area, and whether or not nutrition was taught as a separate subject, integrated into other subjects, or both. Less than one-third of teachers collaborated with community resources to provide nutrition education, while 26% collaborated with school food service and 45% tried to involve parents. Barriers to nutrition education included lack of time, training, curriculum materials, and administrative support. Recommendations for increasing nutrition education and collaboration included providing college course work in nutrition for all teachers and providing joint nutrition training programs for teachers and school foodservice staff.