Understanding Of Pedagogy Research Articles

Disappearing Acts

This article examines the disappearance of the student as a site for theoretical investigation. It considers the ramifications of this development for the disciplinary self-identification of composition studies and for a larger understanding of pedagogy as self-reflexive praxis.

The Refugee Action Support program: developing understandings of diversity

In a world increasingly globalised, it is crucial that preservice teachers are equipped with a range of pedagogical knowledges, understandings and practices related to diversity and difference. This paper reports on the implementation and learning outcomes of a teacher preparation initiative in an Australian university called Refugee Action Support, which seeks to develop and enhance such awareness. The initiative provides targeted training to preservice teachers in the vital areas of literacy and numeracy tuition, with the specific aim of preparing them to tutor humanitarian refugee students in high schools in Western Sydney, Australia. Drawing on key principles of academic service learning, the program promotes a context for reciprocal learning where young students are supported in their development of academic skills and sociocultural understandings while, simultaneously, preservice teachers gain an appreciation of the complex dynamics related to teaching, students and diversity.

Preparing Teachers to Make the Formative Assessment Process Integral to Science Teaching and Learning

Formative assessment provides a means to successfully scaffold learning. Unfortunately, few teachers understand the pedagogical implications of such scaffolding or their role in utilizing formative assessments. The purpose of our study was to develop an understanding of the experience of being a teacher that is seeking to improve learning through formative assessment and using that understanding to improve our practices in teacher education. Three categories emerged from the data analysis: (1) questioning the validity of tacit pedagogical understandings, (2) understanding the experiences of the students, and (3) exploring the need to develop a more reflexive classroom. The findings from this study are useful for persons seeking to prepare teachers to guide science learning.

Retrieval of ‘being’ in early childhood music education

The intention of this paper is to illustrate and illuminate how my teaching and learning experiences within my own pedagogical practice hold valuable and rich data. Information hidden within these experiences possesses vitality not only for self and professional development but for efficacy also. Disclosures through reflective accounts and retrieved memories from my 29 years of teaching and learning in the field of early childhood music education, simultaneously answer and question my thinking with respect to being in education and being educated. It is a reflective and human sensitive approach challenging me to look beyond traditional learning models and teaching methods. It also implicates ‘me’ in a pedagogic understanding that demonstrates the way my practice serves those who work within it and pass through it.

Supporting the transition from early childhood education to school: Insights from one Centre of Innovation project

Introduction This article presents some of the findings from a three-year (2005-8) Centre of Innovation research project at Mangere Bridge Kindergarten in Auckland. The Centre of Innovation programme, funded by the Ministry of Education, was designed to promote a deeper exploration of innovative teaching and learning processes already underway in early childhood services. The project built on a history of research by teachers at Mangere Bridge Kindergarten, which aimed to develop shared understandings between the early childhood and school sectors and support children's transition to school. Earlier research in 20 schools and 27 early childhood services in Auckland had painted a disturbing picture of the relationship between early childhood and schools (Timperley, McNaughton, Howie, & Robinson, 2003; Timperley & Robinson, 2002). Despite a commitment to collaborate, teachers from the two sectors (early childhood services and school) had very different expectations of each other, and most were dissatisfied with the current arrangements. A recommendation from the study was that early childhood-school teacher relationships need to be more focused on how well they achieve the task of a satisfactory transition (Timperley et al., 2003). Mangere Bridge Kindergarten's research was conducted at a time when the recently published The New Zealand Curriculum described an alignment between the strands of the early childhood curriculum and the key competencies at school (Ministry of Education, 2007), and the early childhood strategic plan, Pathways to the Future: Nga Huarahi Arataki, recommended that both early childhood and school teachers should have an understanding of pedagogy and curriculum in the other sector (Ministry of Education, 2002). These documents provide a framework and commitment towards more positive transition arrangements than was reported by Timperley et al. (2003). Nevertheless, as researchers we were aware that these policy documents only set the scene for transitions. As Peters (2008) discussed, the 2007 Curriculum provides a potential bridge to support children's learning across sectors, but the strength of the bridge depends on the connections that are deliberately made by both early childhood and school teachers. This project has provided new insights into the nature of these connections and how they can be strengthened. The New Zealand context Although primary schooling is not compulsory until a child reaches six years of age, in New Zealand most children start school on the day they turn five. This means that any day of the week a child may be leaving an early childhood service and beginning school the next day. The first class at school is usually called the new-entrant classroom, and beginning pupils are called new entrants. The New Zealand system contrasts with the more common annual, biannual or termly intakes that occur elsewhere. Overseas, cohort entry means a focus on transition often forms a specific aspect of the school year cycle, while in New Zealand new-entrant teachers are continually overseeing school entry. For children and families the experience can be very individualistic in nature as a child may be the only one beginning school at that time. The setting Mangere Bridge Kindergarten is situated in a South Auckland suburb, with a strong community focus. The community is culturally and economically very mixed. In 2008 the centre's records showed the children's ethnicities as 36 percent Pakeha, 27 percent Maori, 20 percent Pasifika, 10 percent Asian or South-East Asian and 7 percent Other, which includes Australian, South African, British, Czech and Spanish. The kindergarten is under the umbrella of the Auckland Kindergarten Association, with a parent/whanau group who support the running of the kindergarten. The kindergarten is sessional, with 43 children in the daily morning session programme and 43 children in the three afternoon sessions each week. …

How do children understand themselves as learners? Towards a learner‐centred understanding of pedagogy

This paper challenges notions that pedagogy is predominantly rational, conscious and deliberate. Drawing on two research projects about experiences of learning in primary and secondary schools, the paper explores pedagogic relationships and the ways these structure and enable different kinds of learning and knowledge creation. The data are read with (Felman, 1987) the psychoanalytic writings of Wilfred Bion to investigate the ways in which knowing and learning are bound up in the unconscious emotional flows of classroom relationships. A learner‐centred understanding of pedagogy is tentatively and critically developed. The desirability and some simultaneous difficulties of working with such notions of pedagogy are discussed.

Implementing Professional Experiences to Prepare Preservice Science Teachers

In the correlation between professional experiences of preservice science teacher and classroom managerial skills, professional experiences were designed to prepare science teacher in the future. The effects of program were described the result of implementing professional experiences of 67 preservice science teachers. Data were collected by using a set of questionnaire and post professional experiences seminar. The results showed that most of preservice teachers had gained more professional experiences, adapted instructional theory into practice, and learn how teach science. They need to prepare themselves in terms of pedagogical understandings and learn how to be a good teacher. Pre professional experiences seminar, workshop for learning innovation, classroom management, best practice for science teaching, and instructional media development were required.

Rehearsing to teach: content‐specific deconstruction of instructional explanations in pre‐service teacher training

Giving effective instructional explanations requires a special type of pedagogical content knowledge, that is, foreseeing where students could employ different assumptions in building their understanding of a specific content. This paper proposes the importance of rehearsing instructional explanations and fine‐tuning the coherence and meaningfulness of instructional explanations before pre‐service teachers start practice teaching, where many complex factors such as classroom management could occupy their minds, so leaving little room for focusing and reflecting on their instructional explanations. The current paper presents actual examples of such rehearsals in which the pre‐service teachers demonstrated the need for developing deeper pedagogical understanding of the ways their elementary school students construct their content knowledge. It concludes with the suggestion to provide pre‐service teachers with ample opportunities actually to practice explaining specific concepts and engage in post‐hoc pedagogical analyses of their explanations in teacher training programmes.

The rise and fall of comparative education in teacher training; should it rise again as comparative pedagogy?

It is argued in this paper that comparative pedagogy has a useful and relevant role to play in initial teacher training in England. The paper illustrates the national decline in the provision of a comparative dimension in both the study of education and in teacher training with a historical review of curricula in institutes in the Bristol area. Reasons for the decline are explored. Arguments are put forward to support the inclusion of comparative pedagogy in initial teacher training. It is held that comparative pedagogy is relevant to teachers whose careers may take them into pluricultural classrooms or across national boundaries, as well as teachers whose careers may be limited to monocultural classrooms. An empirical study is included, which explores the positive impact of comparative pedagogy on a small group of postgraduate primary English teacher trainees with a specialism in French. Their experience suggests that comparative pedagogy can give all trainee teachers a deeper understanding of pedagogy in general.

Development and Application of a Situated Apprenticeship Approach to Professional Development of Astronomy Instructors

Professional development for astronomy instructors largely focuses on enhancing their understanding of the limitations of professor-centered lectures while also increasing awareness and better implementation of learning strategies that promote a learner-centered classroom environment. Given how difficult it is to get instructors to implement well-developed and innovative teaching ideas, even when these instructors are supplied with significant and compelling education research data, one must wonder what is missing from the most commonly used professional development experiences. This article proposes a learner- centered approach to professional development for college instructors, which we call situated apprenticeship. This novel approach purposely goes beyond simple awareness building and conventional modeling, challenging instructors to actively engage themselves in practicing teaching strategies in an environment of peer review in which participants offer suggestions and critiques of each other’s implementation. Through this learner-centered teaching and evaluation experience, instructors’ preexisting conceptual and pedagogical understandings of a particular instructional strategy are brought forth and examined in an effort to promote a real change of practice that positively impacts both their core pedagogical content knowledge and their skills in successfully implementing these teaching strategies. We believe that the adoption of our situated apprenticeship approach for professional development will increase the frequency and success of college instructors’ implementation of research-validated instructional strategies for interactive learning.

Teachers’ conceptions of learning philosophies: discussing context and contextualising discussion

With the introduction of any new initiative into the mathematics classroom, there is often an assumption that it will produce visible and measurable effects in teaching approaches and pupil progress. Yet, there is a body of research that tempers such optimism, drawing attention to a series of mitigating factors, for example, the deep-seated nature of teachers’ practices, their implicit or stated beliefs and values, and their lack of detailed awareness of how they perform in the classroom. Rather than make associative links between these factors and the success of the initiative, our intention is to examine the ways in which teachers are trying to interpret what the new scheme requires of them and how in turn, engaging with it causes them to re-describe both their pedagogic understanding and classroom practices relationally to earlier approaches. Employing data from a small project, we seek to examine four teachers’ moves to grapple with this attempted shift from one teaching paradigm to another by considering how certain key terms serve to anchor the teachers’ conceptions of themselves during this transition and find that their responses can be idiosyncratic and varied depending on the approaches in which they have been previously embedded. By using theoretical ideas from some neo-Marxist writers we examine these discursive shifts and their relevance to conceiving curriculum change. We suggest that the individual’s teaching practice develops as a result of it being understood and enacted through a succession of ideological filters, each adding to the cumulative experience of the teacher.

Tapping into the Tacit: Reading Teacher Anecdotes to Tap into Tacit Pedagogical Understandings

Reading anecdotes about other teacher s experiences can assist beginning and experienced teachers to access their own tacit knowledge. Reading those anecdotes provides the opportunity to experience vicariously the events,feelings, outcomes and sometimes even emotions of the writer. The benefit of this process is magnified when the readers then begin to consider and apply their understandings of these 'minute passages of a private life' to their current, and sometimes past practices. This paper reports on the findings of a group of beginning and experienced Queensland teachers who were asked to read and then select one anecdote from a set written by beginning and experienced teachers. The 'tales' selected and the implications for exploration of personal pedagogy and practice were clearly linked to their perceived role in the classroom and their 'comfort' within that role now and in the future.

Portrait of Filipino teachers’ classroom practices: traditional or constructivist?

The intent of this qualitative study is to narrate (Brodkey, (1987a). Education Quarterly, 18, 67–76; Written communication, 4, 25–70; Qualitative communication research methods. (1987b). Lindlof, (1995). (pp. 172–174): London Sage Publications) the master teachers as aggregate sample subjects’ pedagogical understanding and classroom practices. A qualitative analysis of the classroom activities and journal entries of 13 teacher-participants in the Basic Education Curriculum core learning areas is included. Findings reveal that the subject participants’ pedagogical practices still verging toward the formal suggest a traditional inclination. However, the importance of change should be realized. Various concepts of teaching and learning, today, are imperative. Teachers must be resocialized on their new roles and make their students have a more active role in the teaching-learning process.

Enchanting a disenchanted child: revolutionising the means of education using Information and Communication Technology and e‐learning

The Department for Education and Skills currently shows a high regard for the potential of technology transforming the British education system. Government White papers demonstrate e‐learning‐based unification strategies that reinforce the message that introducing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will raise standards in schools. This paper examines the effect of these developments on teachers and pupils, and questions the government’s motivation for change. The introduction of ICT has not been complemented by increased levels of effective professional development for teaching staff in the pedagogy of ICT across the curriculum and may have merely served to reinforce the generational digital divide. In attempting to enchant the pupils, the government may have alienated the teachers. This paper suggests that the Department for Education and Skills should place more emphasis on developing strategies and providing funding for solutions to gaps in the professional development of teachers in their pedagogical understanding of ICT across the curriculum.

The Particularity of “Pedagogic Understanding”

So far, pedagogy has not formed its own unique visual angle and thinking mode to understand humans and the world in general; consequently, it is always counting upon other subjects, which is the root of the crisis in pedagogy. Focusing on the “visual angle” and “thinking mode”, this article puts forward a new proposition “pedagogic understanding” to make a concrete analysis of a basic hypothesis, some basic problems and some research ways. The purpose is to form pedagogy’s own way of understanding on the foundation of delimitation and integration with other subjects.

Developing a Partnership between the Riverina Environmental Education Centre and Charles Sturt University

AbstractA collaborative partnership has evolved between the Riverina Environmental Education Centre (REEC) and Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga. The Riverina Environmental Education Centre (REEC) is one of 24 Department of Education and Training environmental education centres in New South Wales (see www.reec.nsw.edu.au). As part of this partnership relationship, final year BTeach(Sec)/BSc students have worked with REEC and CSU staff on developing learning materials that support and enrich the programs offered through the REEC. In particular, these students have developed materials focussing on exploring student understanding about biodiversity and salinity. Additionally, the development of web based learning activities that use regional scientists as exemplars of current scientific research and possible career options (called Real Science) has occurred. Through this partnership arrangement, it has been a ‘win-win’ outcome for REEC staff, CSU staff and the CSU final year secondary science students with all participants gaining valuable insights and pedagogical understandings from the partnership.

The heart of pedagogy: on poetic knowing and living

In this essay I offer a series of autobiographical ruminations and poems for inviting readers to reflect on poetic possibilities for conceiving and fostering the well‐being of teachers. As an educator, I am confronted daily with challenges. In order to sustain my spirit and energy, I turn to poetry, both reading and writing poetry, and I find in poetry a location of wisdom, sustenance and hope. One of my great concerns about teaching is that the demands are so relentless that even the most dedicated teachers often experience burnout, dissatisfaction, ennui, hopelessness and despair. Therefore, I claim that teachers, both beginning and experienced, should learn to know themselves as poets in order to foster living creatively in the pedagogic contexts of classrooms and the larger pedagogic contexts outside classrooms. I invite both new and experienced teachers to consider the significance of a phrase like ‘living poetically’. I seek to contextualize the more practical and pragmatic considerations of teaching in an understanding of pedagogy as a poetic, emotional, personal, spiritual commitment and experience. My claim is simply that transformative learning can be effectively promoted by giving attention to poetry and poetic knowing and poetic living. I am learning to live poetically, and I am learning that the heart of pedagogy is revitalized and sustained by poetic knowing, being and becoming. Poetry engages us with language, nurtures the inner life, acknowledges the particular and local, encourages us to listen to our hearts, fosters flexibility and trust, and invites creativity and creative living.

Everyone a Winner - Towards Exceptional Achievement for All

This paper explores the implications of a model that works from the premise that all children may be capable of what is currently considered to be exceptional performance, in one or more areas of skill, talent or endeavour. In this scenario the role of the educator is to develop their pedagogical understanding and practice so that an increasing number of children have the opportunity to give expression to their exceptional ability during their life time. The paper goes on to introduce a framework I have been developing to enable me to reflect on and progress a learning environment which provides the experiences and support that will enable children and young people to develop the attitudes, attributes, understandings and skills of thought full and thoughtful learners, with informed aspirations, and the confidence, competence and understanding of themselves, necessary to realise them, to their own and society's benefit.

TRENDS IN COMPUTER-BASED SECOND LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

In the last 20 years, several authors have described the possible changes that computers may effect in language testing. SinceARAL's last review of general language testing trends (Clapham, 2000), authors in theCambridge Language Assessment Serieshave offered various visions of how computer technology could alter the testing of second language skills. This chapter reflects these perspectives as it charts the paths recently taken in the field. Initial steps were made in the conversion of existing item types and constructs already known from paper-and- pencil testing into formats suitable for computer delivery. This conversion was closely followed by the introduction of computer-adaptive tests, which aim to make more, and perhaps, better, use of computer capabilities to tailor tests more closely to individual abilities and interests. Movement toward greater use of computers in assessment has been coupled with an assumption that computer-based tests should be better than their traditional predecessors, and some related steps have been taken. Corpus linguistics has provided tools to create more authentic assessments; the quest for authenticity has also motivated inclusion of more complex tasks and constructs. Both these innovations have begun to be incorporated into computer-based language tests. Natural language processing has also provided some tools for computerized scoring of essays, particularly relevant in large-scale language testing programs. Although computer use has not revolutionized all aspects of language testing, recent efforts have produced some of the research, technological advances, and improved pedagogical understanding needed to support progress.

Perceived (Academic) Control and Causal Thinking in Achievement Settings.

CPA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology (2001) Prix de la SCP pour contributions remarquables a l'enseignement et a la formation en psychologie (2001) Abstract Striving to excel is a goal commonly shared by undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members in academic achievement settings. Periodically, however, their sense of personal control and mastery is undermined by low-control experiences arising from a greater emphasis on success and failure, heightened academic competition, increased pressure to excel, more frequent academic failures, unfamiliar academic tasks, new social networks, and critical career choices. In these situations, achievement-striving can lead to a paradox of failure in which seemingly bright, enthusiastic individuals fail in their quest, unable to fulfill the demand to augment self-initiative and independence. Many otherwise capable individuals quit during the transition from high school to college, college to graduate school, or graduate school to academic jobs. This article focuses on perceived personal control as an academic marker and on its use as a control-enhancing intervention for redressing failure, based on laboratory and longitudinal field studies conducted at the University of Manitoba during the last two decades. What began as my first attempt to teach Introductory Psychology, without the benefit of any formal training in pedagogy, has developed into a 30-year exploration of human motivation and performance. The ensuing quest into how to be a more effective instructor was precipitated by feelings of inadequacy about my teaching and by disappointing student ratings - no small concern for a freshly minted assistant professor! But these initial worries had notable payoffs for my teaching, and in the process, they spawned a deep interest in how human beings learn and in how teaching and learning processes unfold in the classroom. The direct result was the development of a research program on effective college teaching that, in turn, evolved into a complementary research program on human motivation and performance (Perry, 1985, 1991; Perry & Williams, 1979). Thus, it is an honour, both personally and professionally, to receive the CPA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in Education and Training. When my academic career began in the early '70s, there was no commitment to developing teaching skills as part of a graduate education in psychology and little information or resources available to assist a struggling new professor to master the craft of teaching (Perry, 1990a; Perry & Smart, 1997a). As a social scientist, my recourse was to consult the research literature on effective college teaching in an attempt to find practical solutions to my own difficulties. Not surprisingly, the basic research literature at the time was, and still is, largely inaccessible to faculty members -except perhaps those with a methodology background in the social sciences. Happily, the scientific literature had a profound impact on my understanding of pedagogy and provided me with some basic guidelines that have served me well throughout my career: Be expert on the material; be organized in presenting it; and, be enthusiastic about it. In response to this inaccessibility of the basic research on college teaching, I edited several volumes bringing together the top researchers in the field in an attempt to make such information more readily available to instructors, administrators, and researchers alike (Perry, 1990b; Perry & Smart, 1997b). Three Critical Issues Concerning Teaching and Learning Survival matters aside, the issues I struggled with as a novice instructor recur throughout the academic careers of university professors (e.g., Perry, Menec, & Struthers, 1999). As an assistant professor prepares to teach an introductory course for the first time, or a senior full professor contemplates tomorrow's upcoming graduate seminar, questions arise about student motivation, learning, and performance, and about how these relate to different instructional methods. …