Pedagogical Choices Research Articles

Teachers’ Enactment of Equity in Alternative Schools: A critical discourse analysis

Purpose: Understanding the needs of at-risk students is thought to be an essential element for educators when they formulate and design alternative educational settings. Yet, it may be difficult for educators to distinguish between responding to the needs of an at-risk student and providing educational equity. The researcher applied equity principles and policy implementation literature to explore how alternative school teachers of at-risk students define, interpret and enact equity. Research Methods: This research was designed as a qualitative cross-case study focusing on five alternative schools in California and Texas. A qualitative thematic analysis was first applied to interviews from fifteen alternative school teachers, followed by a critical discourse analysis of government artifacts, and discursive and social practices. Findings: Teachers’ enactment of equity equated to opportunity; at-risk students were afforded equity by virtue of enrollment in the schools. Implicitly, teachers acted as gate keepers to their classroom and as such only certain students were entitled to attend. Equity arguments emerged when external forces were perceived as creating inequities. Implicit equity arguments emerged by how teachers defined success. Implications: Innovative design and practices used in alternative schools are insufficient for ensuring equity. Enactment of equity through pedagogical choices is reduced by policy procedures. Research is needed in areas: a) that will help teachers reflect on their values and priorities for at-risk students and b) of how efficacy is measured for the alternative school.

Assessing oral proficiency for intercultural professional communication: the CEFcult project

Technology has been part of the language learning process, both inside and outside the classroom, for decades, helping to bridge the gap between different contexts of learning. At the same time, the concept of lifelong-learning has widened our understanding of what learning is, what different forms it can take, and of the importance of considering the learning process as one that will continue once formal education is over and the learner has entered the world of employment. Learner autonomy has also taken a central role, and has brought with it a shift in the role of the teacher in the language learning process. Self-assessment is one aspect of learner autonomy, and is crucial in enabling learners to set themselves clear objectives and thus take responsibility for the leaning process itself. In addition, the importance of including the development of intercultural competence in the language classroom has been advocated by many linguists and educationalists (Kramsch, 1986; Byram et al., 2001; Byram, 2008; Corbett, 2003; Sercu, 2005). It is against this background that the European-funded project CEFcult (2009-2011) was developed. Its main outcome is the production of an online environment for the collaborative assessment of oral skills and intercultural competence in the foreign language. The target groups are language teachers, in-company trainers, those about to start or return to work, and undergraduates and graduates who are preparing themselves for first-time employment. The tool places side by side the widely known and standardised descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for spoken production and interaction, and the descriptors for intercultural competence in a professional setting, developed within the Intercultural Competence Assessment (INCA) project. CEFcult provides a set of authentic communication scenarios, each containing various tasks through which learners can assess their skills for intercultural professional purposes in different European languages. Although the tool can also be used autonomously, in a classroom setting, teachers can set the learners suitable scenarios, get them to perform the speaking tasks and record the oral communication activities. After uploading the samples onto the online tool, they can be assessed by the teacher, by other experts (including teachers in other countries), or by other learners. The tool can also be used for self-assessment. By encouraging self- and peer-assessment, CEFcult can positively engage learners in a process of reflexive learning that will lead to greater autonomy. However, it also enables the teacher to be an active part of this same process. After a brief introduction to the theoretical background and pedagogical choices underpinning the project, we will illustrate the pilots carried out at the universities of Dresden and Bologna, and discuss some of the implications for learners and teachers.

Formulaic Language and Language Teaching

This article reviews the concrete effects that the theoretical findings on the formulaic nature of language have had in instructed second language acquisition (SLA). The introductory section includes some terminological comments and a general discussion on the validity of adopting a formulaic approach in second or foreign language teaching. The second section discusses various points in time when instructional intervention is possible and presents the rationale adopted in the article to trace elements of formulaicity in instructed SLA. The next three sections each center on one aspect of foreign language teaching, namely, input, classroom activities, and feedback. The discussion broaches pedagogical choices, teaching materials, types of activities, and tools currently available to teachers and learners. The results show that the increasingly refined understanding of the formulaic nature of language has clearly impacted second language teaching but that a number of questions still remain unanswered. These questions pertain to the types of formulas that deserve teaching time and to the assessment of the actual learning outcomes of using a formulaic approach.

Looking in a science classroom: exploring possibilities of creative cultural divergence in science teaching and learning

Worldwide proliferation of pedagogical innovations creates expanding potential in the field of science education. While some teachers effectively improve students’ scientific learning, others struggle to achieve desirable student outcomes. This study explores a Taiwanese science teacher’s ability to effectively enhance her students’ science learning. The authors visited a Taipei city primary school class taught by an experienced science teacher during a 4-week unit on astronomy, with a total of eight, 90-minute periods. Research methods employed in this study included video capture of each class as well as reflective interviews with the instructor, eliciting the teacher’s reflection upon both her pedagogical choices and the perceived results of these choices. We report that the teacher successfully teaches science by creatively diverging from culturally generated educational expectations. Although the pedagogical techniques and ideas enumerated in the study are relevant specifically to Taiwan, creative cultural divergence might be replicated to improve science teaching worldwide.

Critical Indigenous Studies in the Classroom

Part of the mandate of most Indigenous Studies faculties/departments is to critically examine the historical and contemporary relationship between Aboriginal and settler societies. However, the multidisciplinarity of Indigenous Studies scholars and scholarship means that such critical examination can and does vary widely by institution and even between faculty members within the same institution. This article positions three pedagogical choices - studying ‘the local’, the use of primary evidence and the use of discourse analysis-as promoting the integration of disciplinary methodological differences while imbuing Indigenous Studies with a distinctive disciplinary trajectory. Moreover, I demonstrate how a particular emphasis on local Indigenous/settler relationships denaturalises the structures of racism anchoring the white privilege characterising power relations in colonial nation states like Canada.

A Portrait of Contemplative Teaching

The aim of this article is to investigate how a contemplative orientation to teaching may facilitate wholeness for teachers and students through a portrait of Diana, a kindergarten teacher working in a contemplative elementary school. The portrait, one of three portraits from a larger study, illustrates three central features of contemplative teaching: compassion, integrity, and mindful awareness. These three central features develop internally within individual teachers and are animated and influenced externally through their role as teachers. The context of their teaching, relationships with students, parents, and colleagues, and pedagogical choices, in turn influence the three central features. The emphasis on wholeness, unity, and integration of a contemplative orientation to teaching moves us toward a view of teachers and students as beings with not only minds and heads but also hearts and bodies. Contemplative teaching offers educational communities a path toward transformational, holistic, and integrative learning and teaching.

Teaching Human Rights and Rule of Law in Class: A Case Study of Two Secondary Schools in Hong Kong

Choosing two schools as a case study, the article reports how teaching approaches can differ and explains how teacher style, school ethos, and student expectation can shape pedagogical choice. Impact of the teaching and the difficulties teachers encountered are also reported. Whilst this article is probably one of the first to explore the issue of human rights and rule of law teaching in Hong Kong, the fact that it is a small case study needs to be noted when reviewing the outcomes and conclusions of the study. The writing of this article was supported by the findings obtained from a Quality Education Fund project which aimed at assisting Hong Kong teachers to teach human rights and rule of law as part of Liberal Studies, which is a new senior secondary subject.

CEFcult: Online assessment of oral language skills in an intercultural workplace

A lack of foreign-language and intercultural skills is often the cause of a significant lack of business opportunities. In this context, this paper presents the EU-funded CEFcult Project (2009-2011), which aims to develop an online environment for the assessment of oral language proficiency and intercultural competence against the CEF scales, as well as scales for intercultural competence. Here we present the developments made during the first year of the project, including an outline of the pedagogical choices made concerning frameworks and scenarios, and an evaluation of the pilot schemes for the new assessment tool.

Being in the hot spot: a phenomenological study of two beginning teachers’ experiences enacting inquiry science pedagogy

This phenomenological study demonstrates the influence that affective factors have on beginning teachers’ ability to enact inquiry science pedagogy. Through narratives shared in interviews and weblog postings, two beginning science teachers’ emotional engagement with their teaching practices, especially that of implementing inquiry-based instruction, and the resulting impact these emotions had on pedagogical choices were evidenced. Anxiety emerged as the emotion most significantly impacting participants. Through their stories, the two participants describe how their emotions and views of self-influence whether they choose to continue using inquiry pedagogy or alter their lesson to adopt more didactic forms of teaching. These emotions arise from their feelings of being comfortable teaching the content (self-efficacy), from the unpredictability of inquiry lessons (control beliefs), from how they perceive their students as viewing them (teacher identity). This research also demonstrates how intertwined these factors are, informing each other in a complex, dialectical fashion. By providing descriptions of teachers’ experiences enacting inquiry pedagogy, this study expands our understanding of factors influencing teachers’ pedagogy and provides a basis for reforms in science teacher preparation.

Os conflitos de licenciandos e o desenvolvimento profissional docente

Aprender a ensinar requer o desenvolvimento de atitudes, valores e conhecimentos próprios da docência por parte dos futuros professores, constituindo-se em um processo complexo a ser desencadeado pelas licenciaturas. Este estudo parte da premissa de que o licenciando vivencia conflitos ao longo de tal processo, os quais são possivelmente agravados pelas mudanças que a profissão docente tem sofrido, mudanças estas que, para alguns, configuram uma crise. Estudos anteriores, apoiados na teoria de Jean Piaget, indicam que a forma de perceber e resolver conflitos por professores em exercício é diferente entre os sujeitos, e que nem sempre o modo de lidar com as situações profissionais está relacionado ao tempo de carreira, mas sim a níveis de construção da docência. Assim, buscou-se saber se existem conflitos entre os professores em formação e se a forma de resolvê-los relaciona-se à aquisição da profissionalidade. Para tanto, licenciandos responderam a questionário e entrevista a partir de histórias hipotéticas envolvendo situações potencialmente geradoras de conflitos relativos a questões como autoridade docente, autonomia profissional e escolhas pedagógicas, entre outras. A compreensão da forma como os licenciandos interpretavam e enfrentavam - ou não - tais conflitos ofereceu indícios de níveis de construção da profissionalidade pelos sujeitos, mesmo que ainda não formados. Reconhecer a existência desses níveis abre caminhos para repensar a formação de professores nas licenciaturas, a fim de que se propiciem condições para que o licenciando desenvolva-se a um patamar superior de profissionalidade ainda durante a formação inicial.

Lesson planning guidelines for student teachers: A scaffold for the development of pedagogical content knowledge

Abstract Lesson planning for student teachers is often regarded in technical terms, merely as the means to ensure effective classroom performance. This approach limits the possibilities that the process of lesson planning offers to the development of professional competence among student teachers. In particular, student teachers need to begin to develop their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), the capacity to make pedagogical choices that are logically derived from content and contextual knowledge. This article reports on a Lesson Planning Guideline which is used to scaffold the construction of student teachers’ PCK individually by requiring them to consider the constituent parts of PCK individually and in relation to one another during the planning process. This guideline was developed in response to perceived limitations of existing guidelines used in our institution and found in texts for student teachers. Called a “Rationale for lesson design” the Guideline does not attempt to simplify the planning ...

High School Philosophy Teachers’ Use of Textbooks: Critical Thinking or Teaching to the Text?

Ontario is the only North American, English-speaking jurisdiction to include philosophy in secondary schools. In this first study to examine Ontario high school philosophy courses, we investigated what sorts of textbooks teachers used, how they used them, and the reasons for their pedagogical choices when using textbooks. Despite claims that philosophy promotes critical thinking, an online survey of 53 high school philosophy teachers and personal interviews with a subset of 14 revealed their use of textbooks did not match this ideal. Teachers cited insecurities with knowledge, a lack of pedagogical training, their own perception that students were incapable of challenging texts, and pressure to meet provincial curriculum policy demands as factors that contributed to their pedagogical choices.

Changing Pedagogical Practice in Teacher Education: Negotiating the spaces between realism and relativism

This article reports a self-study from a larger research project that explored the impact on pre-service and in-service teacher education of a new national curriculum in New Zealand and the conceptualisations of epistemological shifts signalled by that document. A pedagogical initiative to introduce inquiry-based learning into a graduate diploma course for pre-service primary teachers was the result of and the catalyst for further reflection on my practice and the (mis)alignments between my theoretical understandings and beliefs and my pedagogical choices. In this article I focus on the tensions and contradictions I encountered while attempting to enact, in a tertiary environment, a pedagogy that aligned with the underpinning principles of the new curriculum. I describe the model that I developed to understand those tensions and contradictions, which are characterised as the spaces between realism and relativism. I suggest that negotiating these spaces is part of the process of becoming a teacher and a teacher educator in the twenty-first century.

Le plaisir et l’ennui comme choix pédagogiques

La question du plaisir et de l’ennui à l’école est ici abordée par une comparaison franco-anglaise. Dans ces deux systèmes scolaires aux traditions éducatives contrastées existent des rapports distincts à l’enfance et au plaisir, aux savoirs, aux efforts. Cet article se penche sur les instructions officielles, sur l’organisation de la classe et sur les perceptions qu’ont les enfants de l’école primaire. Il explore ce en quoi l’opposition entre plaisir et ennui constitue une clé permettant de donner du sens à l’expérience des élèves et à la conception que les enseignants se font de leur métier. Il conduit à une réflexion sur les finalités mêmes de l’École.

A review of the role of information communication technology and course design in transitional education practices

An increasing number of higher educational institutes are offering remedial, bridging, preparatory or transitional courses in a blended and online format to remediate and enhance students' knowledge and skills. This article addresses how teachers and institutes design and implement these courses. The descriptions of transitional courses were collected by means of an online questionnaire and results were stored in a searchable online database. In the questionnaire consisting of 38 closed- and open-ended questions, teachers had to indicate their content, context, organisation, pedagogical approach, assessment method and information communication technology (ICT) use. During February–May 2009, 118 course descriptions and implementations were collected. These 118 course descriptions were analysed with the aim of describing their main educational scenarios using multiple correspondence analysis and two-step clustering analysis. The results indicate that courses can be explained by five dimensions: (1) ICT; (2) Mathematics versus language; (3) Lower versus higher Bloom levels; (4) Gamma sciences versus others; (5) Very small group size versus others. Afterwards, the courses were positioned into six distinctive clusters. An important finding of this study is that teachers seem to design and implement fairly similar course designs when content, context and pedagogical approach are given. Furthermore, teachers' choices about ICT use are not yet systematically and consensually linked to content and pedagogical choices.

Exploring how ESL teachers relate their ethnic and social backgrounds to practice

This study is an exploration of how English as a second language (ESL) teachers relate their ethnic and social backgrounds to instructional practices. Fifty‐seven ESL teachers from inner‐city junior high schools of Los Angeles responded to a questionnaire, interviews and provided self‐written perspectives on how their personal histories mediated their pedagogical practices. The teachers’ narratives were analyzed within the framework of critical reflectivity. Results indicated that teachers of different backgrounds interpreted their roles differently based on a complex interplay of diverse variables. The teachers also deployed diverse approaches and strategies to guide their practices and mediate their roles. The study recommended development of teacher education programs and curricula that incorporate explorations of prospective teachers’ social/ethnic background experiences, perspectives, assumptions, expectations, and attitudes as a way to ascertain how such teachers’ personal histories will shape their pedagogical choices. The study also recommended well‐designed community‐based immersion programs for all prospective teachers as a way to bridge social and cultural gaps between teachers and their students.

Distancing at close range: making strange devices in Dorothy Heathcote's process drama Teaching Political Awareness Through Drama

By refocusing traditions preoccupied with stimulating critical reflection, the article seeks to contribute to a rekindling of a socially oriented drama teaching and to add to the reservoir of teacher reflection in the field. A passage of a drama by Dorothy Heathcote is analysed, in which the theme of pollution is the concrete starting point, whilst the governing idea is concerned with a concept of politics: ‘to discourse about why it is that some people seem by right to be able to decide what shall happen to others’ (Heathcote, letter to author, 2007). But the main focus of the article is to investigate the notion of distancing in drama education; the analytical lens is rhetoric theory, and the method of analysis is a close reading of a three-minute video sequence. This article discusses aspects of distancing that can be regarded as rhetorical devices, thus regarding distancing as a more composite aesthetic device than it is commonly considered in drama teaching, where it is seen primarily as a tool for protection. In choosing a rhetorical perspective, the article sets out to demonstrate an analytical approach, which, in its attention to detail, discloses not only artistic and pedagogic choices made on a structural level but also in the exercise of language.

Using Japanese Curriculum Materials to Support Lesson Study Outside Japan : toward Coherent Curriculum

Lesson study (jugyou kenkyuu) has spread outside Japan in the last decade, providing opportunities to see how lesson study fares in countries where the instructional practices and curriculum materials differ from those in Japan. This study reports an elementary mathematics lesson study cycle from the United States. To investigate the nature of the support for teachers’ learning during the curriculum study (“kyouzai kenkyuu”) phase of lesson study, we first compared a U.S. and Japanese teacher’s manual in their treatment of area of quadrilaterals. The coding scheme captured features hypothesized to influence teachers’ learning from curriculum including information on student thinking, learning trajectory and rationale for pedagogical decisions (Ball & Cohen, 1996). While the U.S. teacher’s manual provided more correct student answers and more often suggested adaptations for particular categories of students (e.g., English-language learners), the Japanese manual provided more varied individual student responses and more rationale for pedagogical choices. We provided the Japanese curriculum and teacher’s manual to a U.S. lesson group and observed them during lesson study; U.S. teachers found some Japanese curriculum features useful (e.g., student thinking) and other features challenging (e.g., focus on a single problem). A comparison of the U.S. teachers’ preand post- lesson study cycle lesson plans suggested that the teachers more thoroughly anticipated student thinking after working with the Japanese textbooks and teacher’s manuals. We suggest that kyouzai kenkyuu on a welldesigned teacher’s manual may enable “coherent curriculum” at the policy level to be enacted in the classroom.

Expand and Contract: E-Learning Shapes the World in Cyprus and in California

Expand and ContractE-Learning Shapes the World in Cyprus and in California Nancy Strow Sheley (bio) and Carol Zitzer-Comfort (bio) In the spring of 2008, university students enrolled in courses at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), and the University of Cyprus (UCY) participated in a cross-cultural e-learning project in which they studied American Indian literature and history. All students followed the same six-week syllabus, which included shared readings and films. These common texts became the basis for dialogue via online discussion boards as students struggled to explain causes of prejudice, ethnic conflict, racial hatred, and genocidal acts. Their interactions and reactions with these materials brought to light the many guises of historical and contemporary cultural conflict and suffering: dominant groups marking Indigenous peoples for extinction, film and literature depicting such groups as prematurely “extinct,” religious factions often being responsible for past and present horrors, and societies and institutions perpetuating hatred through focusing on skewed histories. For American students, stories of American Indians and genocide deepened implications of their country’s history and exposed untold truths. Students in California, whose knowledge of American Indian history was nearly as nonexistent as that of their Cypriot peers, were appalled at the historical facts of forced sterilization of Native women, of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding schools, of extermination by smallpox, and of the US policies of “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”—all of these issues illustrated in reading materials and in the documentary The Canary Effect (2007). For students [End Page 71] in Cyprus, studying US policies that led to the persecution of American Indians not only gave them a more enlightened view of American history but also illuminated their own country’s past acts of genocide. In their analyses of these same materials, the Cypriots began to compare the historical mistreatment of American Indians to their own country’s “problem”—a thirty-five-year division between cultures, marred by wars, isolationist politics, prejudice, and fear—known worldwide as “the Cyprus Problem.” This project thus facilitated the expanding of students’ learning as their learning crossed national boundaries while encouraging them to also focus on their own country’s lesser-known histories. Background This international classroom and subject exchange project was developed after Professor Nancy Strow Sheley received a Fulbright Award to teach American Studies at UCY in Nicosia, Cyprus, in the spring of 2008. Her proposed course was titled “The Conflicted American Dream: Multiple Perspectives, Critical Views.” Also that spring, Professor Carol Zitzer-Comfort was scheduled to teach “American Ethnic Writers” at CSULB and planned to emphasize protest literature. We developed a six-week shared unit, digitally connecting UCY students with those at CSULB, in order to have students read the same materials, respond to the same prompts, watch the same visual media, and correspond online, via the Discussion Board (Black Board). As the project planning evolved, the following guiding questions emerged to frame teaching and research: • How can American Indian literature (film, popular culture, ideas) be used to examine cultural conflict and how such conflicts are maintained? How does protest literature focus on the issues, and when does it become effective in addressing conflict? • What similarities can be found among (a) the cultural divisions in America that result in the “conflicted” American dream, (b) the treatment of American Indian peoples past and present in [End Page 72] America, and (c) the social, cultural, political, and ethnic divides that currently exist in Cyprus? • How does digital technology inform pedagogical choices for this project? • How will two different cultural groups respond to the historical genocide and subsequent “survivance” of American Indian groups? • Does proximity to the issues of Native Americans, among students in the United States and Cyprus, suggest more empathy for the human situation, or can students a world apart find examples closer to home to relate to human suffering caused by political decisions? • Specifically, will Cyprus students allude to “the Cyprus Problem” and the divided country in their responses about cultural injustices, prejudice, and alienation? • How will the analyses of the issues surrounding Native American genocide and subjugation relate to major themes in the course: How is history written as “truth,” who writes it...

O silêncio de Foucault para o Alcebíades de Plutarco

We intend to relate Plutarch and Foucault through a character present in the work of both thinkers, namely, Alcibiades, the eugenés. A comparison between the two representations shows that the focus of interest differs in each case. Our reflection is based on the following questions: Why doesn’t Foucault discuss Plutarch’s Alcibiades in The Hermeneutics of the Subject? Would it be because, unlike Plato, the Greek moralist reveals the aristocrat as a failure, as the result of a mistaken pedagogical choice or as the portrait of his community?