Instructional Performance Research Articles

A multiple criteria information system for pedagogical evaluation and professional development of teachers

Information systems for the evaluation of pedagogical practices aim to improve teaching activity and encourage the pedagogical development of teachers. The implementation of these systems has been interpreted in different ways, depending on each school’s administration board and/or the person responsible for the evaluation process. This ambiguity (and inherent subjectivity) is a barrier to the principles of transparency, equity and fairness in the pedagogical performance evaluation of teachers. From this premise, the main objective of this paper consists in proposing a multiple criteria information system to support the evaluation of pedagogical practices. By combining cognitive mapping and the measuring attractiveness by a categorical based evaluation technique (MACBETH), our framework allows for the conception of a more transparent evaluation system, bringing new insights to the pedagogical appraisal and professional development of teachers. The strengths and weaknesses of our framework are also discussed.

Relevancia ontológica de la formación humanística en el desarrollo profesional de los estudiantes de Comunicación Social de la Universidad de Pamplona, sede de Villa del Rosario

This qualitative research shows the ontological relevance of the humanistic component in the professional development of Social Communication students at the University of Pamplona, based in Villa del Rosario. We identified the perception of humanistic training that energizes teaching practices and learning processes; the research showed that students and teachers are linking this component to educative community interaction, more from the practical sites of the Program than from their own classes of humanities. Subsequently, we analyzed the humanistic capacities that currently need to orientate the professional development and we found out that there is sensitivity to the context, appropriation of the anthropologic elements that are transmitted by the teacher and, consequently, coherence in the pedagogical performance and social requirement. Finally, the research proposes conceptual tools to strengthen humanistic principles in professional training and development of the students, starting from input and output categories. The input category refers to the anthropological components and the output category reveals the necessity of retaking a pedagogy that transcends utilitarism and prepares not only for professional work, but also for ethics and anthropology in order to give answer to the necessity of adopting a sustainable development model.

Niewidzialne imperium albo o kłopotach w szkole

The article presents an interpretation of “school” scenes from Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke which was inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological method. The use of concepts such as ‘habitus’, ‘reproduction’, and ‘pedagogical authority’ allows one to see not only a satire on didactic ineptitude, but also a thorough and acute analysis of the functioning of the school as an institution in these scenes. From this perspective, the key function of school is not to teach, but to reproduce the structure of the social order and implement performative pedagogy which shapes this community’s members.

Improvement of Music Teachers’ Competence via Productive Activity

<p><em>Professional pedagogical performance is an important condition for a successful implementation of national education policy. Creative and understanding the evolving process of today – a competent music teacher is competitive both in the domestic employment market and abroad. Music as art is creative in its essence. However, in practice it is often found that reproductive activity often dominates the preparation of music teachers. Being the most creative of arts – music in the course of acquiring the art of playing music loses its inherent creativity. Primarily, the preparation of music teachers is focused on activities based on the quality of learning by heart and remembering. The matter of research is related to raising awareness of productive activity in the improvement of music teacher competency. The objective is to study opportunities for improvement of music teacher competences within productive activity.</em> <em>The research is developed by theoretical and empirical methods involving discussions and a questionnaire. In order to improve the professional competence of a music teacher via productive activity, a procedural – structural model titled “Improvement of Music Teacher’s Competence via Improvisation” was developed, the utility of which is evaluated on the basis of various specific criteria. An exercise system is also developed and approved. As a result of verifying the model, we assure the utility thereof in the improvement of the professional competence of music teachers. The developed improvisation exercises are useful for practical productive activities.</em></p>

Image of the University Faculty in the View of Student Teachers

<p><em>In the article "Image of the University Faculty in the View of Student Teachers", the methods of survey and analysis of performance results are used to explore the image of university faculty in the experience of students of teacher education and pedagogics. An illustrative example is one of the key tools of education in pedagogics. It is significant to investigate the image of university faculty in teacher education because the university teacher also serves as a model of the professional pedagogical performance for student teachers in teacher education. The article highlights the visual image of the university teacher and their most typical personality traits that might have impacts on the future professional performance of student teachers.</em> <em></em></p>

Eros and inquiry: the Feldenkrais Method® as a complex resource

This essay discusses the Feldenkrais Method® as a critical resource within performer training. The essay draws on performance research undertaken between 2004 and 2012 and on pedagogical practice within international dance and actor training contexts. It examines the development of Feldenkrais-informed performance pedagogies as means to facilitate conditions for embodied self-care, collaborative creative inquiry, and an embodied criticality through movement. There is a trend towards democratisation and collaborative practice in Western contemporary performance ecologies and training, calling for autonomous learners and reflective practitioners with a highly developed sense of agency, empathy and psycho-physical flexibility. The essay proposes that informing performer training through Feldenkrais processes and value systems can offer timely educational models that transcend notions of reductionist, discipline-oriented skills provision, by offering embodied modes of artistic questioning and aesthetic inquiry. It argues that the Feldenkrais Method (FM) offers emancipatory, empathy-forming, and agency-constituting processes which can support an open-ended and rigorous approach to performer training. By drawing on trans-disciplinary critical theory frameworks the article suggests that FM, as a bio-psycho-social practice, fosters improved mobility, creative inquiry skills and complex thought through inter-subjective de-conditioning processes. It argues that the Feldenkrais Method offers a pedagogical foundation for the vitalising and integration of the learners’ sexually potent self into training and performance processes.

Working-class girls and child-centred pedagogy: what are the implications for developing socially just pedagogy?

Existing international research suggests that widespread performative pedagogy has contributed to producing educational inequalities for ‘disadvantaged’ learners. There have also been calls for alternative pedagogies, which can be characterised as child-centred. This paper analyses pupils’ hierarchical positioning in a contemporary, mixed socio-economic, child-centred classroom using Bernstein’s theory of competence pedagogy and the concept of the ideal pupil. The ideal pupil’s central characteristics were perceived ‘intelligence’ and ‘good humour’, which were closely associated with middle-class boys. Middle-class and working-class girls were positioned against a female ideal pupil, who would take on a supporting role by creating a facilitating environment for boys’ learning. While middle-class girls were moderately successful in approximating these characteristics, working-class girls were positioned at the bottom of the class hierarchy. These findings have implications for these pupils’ self-perceptions, and raise questions about the implications of child-centred pedagogy for social justice.

Measurement and analysis of musical vibrato parameters

Vibrato is a fundamental feature of many musical sounds, with vocal, stringed instrument, and many wind instrumental performances employing vibrato as a principal device for conveying musical expression. In this paper, we describe a signal processing toolbox for extracting and analyzing vibrato-related parameters from audio recordings. In our method, sonic partials of a musical sound are separated first, followed by tracking of the instantaneous amplitude and frequency of each partial. A number of parameters that characterize vibrato can then be extracted from the tracked partials; these include the common frequency of the amplitude modulation (AM) and the frequency modulation (FM), the modulation depths, the relative phase between the AM and FM components of each partial, and the harmonic contents of the modulation components. This then enables a detailed comparison of the vibrato of various musical sounds, for example the relative amounts of AM and FM, the rate of vibrato, the correlation and phase between AM and FM vibrato components, and many other features. This framework provides a useful tool for applications such as music performance pedagogy and musicological studies.

Digital Storytelling and Youth: Toward Critically Engaged Praxis

This article explores how digital storytelling and applied theatre can help bridge the gaps between formally sanctioned knowledge (such as textbooks and other traditionally school-based forms and content) and the everyday interests and experiences of youth. The author examines elements of a digital storytelling residency to analyze how devised performance work can invite personal contexts into the classroom and help build active engagements with history. Through descriptive analysis and practice-based examples, the article theorizes how digital storytelling as an applied theatre praxis invites students to see and name the relevance of formalized curriculum content to their own lives. The author then theorized critical questions and challenges raised in and by her approach to applied theatre praxis and called for more critically engaged approaches to performance pedagogy and practices with youth that explicitly address identity, representation, and power.

Break a Leg: Raising the Curtain on Performance Pedagogy

This paper reports on an action research project designed to develop skills in musical performance pedagogy. The subjects were a group of undergraduate students enrolled in a degree course which included developing vocal and instrumental competence alongside training as music teachers. Despite this being a highly selective course and the level of musicianship high, it had been noted that students’ stagecraft was lacking. The situation was deemed unsatisfactory, as the participants would soon be working in schools where they would be expected to work with pupils in setting up musical performance. The project organised a series of lunchtime concerts staged within the university. These events were used to raise issues of performance management, both physical (space, audience, etc.) and aesthetic (musicality,etc.), and to prepare students in both group and solo contexts. Inputs were made to highlight key principles of performance. The students also kept reflective logs of their experience. A major aim of the research was to address musical principles and practice as a focus for pedagogy. The paper reports on the outcomes of the project in terms of participant experience and the theoretical framing for the study. It also outlines the principal components of performance pedagogy for development in future pedagogical contexts.

A vulnerable disclosure: Dangerous negotiations of race and identity in the classroom

Abstract This autoethnographic essay shares my experience as a teaching assistant, desiring to be more self aware of how my race informed my pedagogy in the classroom. Set in „Race and Cultural Diversity,“ an advanced undergrad writing course, I examine my commitments to racial and social justice within classroom happenings. Using critical performance pedagogy, this study explores my identity performance to identify and create effective strategies that further dialogue on the often charged and sensitive topic of race. Moreover, this essay reveals what I learned about myself and clarified my teaching/learning philosophy.

Collaborative Directing and Teaching

In this essay, the relationship between directing and critical approaches to pedagogy is considered as a starting place for theorizing directing as an act of critical performative pedagogy. Performance and directing create opportunities for relational, collaborative, and experiential approaches to students, learning, and the classroom. Connecting critical approaches to pedagogy with the act of directing offers new ways of conceptualizing both the act and the role of the director, as well as transforms the way we approach and work to enact critical performative pedagogy in our classrooms.

A Strategy for SNS-based Writing Practice to Leverage Less Proficient Students’ Participation and Pedagogical Performance

This study explores the influence of SNS (Kakao-Talk) writing practice on less proficient students` (LPSs) participation in class and illustrates a new trial to promote pedagogical transformation from the traditional approach. In this study, 62 LPSs were participating in a teacher`s guided writing class by using specific grammar templates through Kakao-Talk, a tool of an SNS writing platform. While re-making template sentences, students were automatically reminded of the contents they had learned. They were also offered multimedia-based content including reading supplementary materials and YouTube videos uploaded on SNS, which was recompiled from students` textbooks. The study employed a mixed method approach adopting qualitative and quantitative analyses (5-likert scale) by using SPSS 12.0. A post-survey was analyzed to calculate the students` presence on SNS, and the efficacy through SNS?writing activity (Kakao-Talk). The correlation between scaffolded input and students` writing strategy and the reliability coefficient of feedback factors were also reviewed. The results revealed that a number of teachers` strategic scaffolding should be prepared to induce learners` active engagement. While monitoring students` writing activity through Kakao-Talk, teachers` scaffolding ability to control the virtual-space was also considered to be as essential for LPSs as teachers` meaningful pedagogical roles and responsibility.

Shifting Perspectives and Collapsing Binaries: Critical Performative Pedagogy in the Performance Studies Classroom

Much as performance comes into being by the bodily co-presence of performers and audience, so teaching comes into being by the bodily co-presence of teachers and learners, by their encounters and interactions – their relationship. This paper traverses the process dimension of performative teaching and learning by exploring the productive intersections between critical performative pedagogy (CPP) and performance within the performance studies classroom. It does so by examining the power of performativity in the teaching-learning context where, it is claimed, its major characteristic lies in its ability to destabilise and even collapse the inhibitive binary oppositions evident in classrooms purveying a more traditional, conservative culture of the teaching-learning process.

Judges and Grammarians in Britain’s Liberal Pedagogic Performance: a Diglossic Approach to Colonial Bengal

Many citizens of our putatively unified world regard as serious discourse, rather than as symptoms of ideology, the west’s posturing about its colonial intervention in the countries of the south. Scrutinizing the cultural mission of some key imperial «modernizers», one finds that the first three British authors of grammars of Bangla (a.k.a. Bengali) massively neglected their language learning responsibilities and produced shoddy work, which their administrative colleagues uncritically admired. On these shaky foundations of cultural «knowledge» the British built a «rule of law» whose judges, before they descended on Bengal, «studied» its language and culture from «textbooks» that reflected the low standards set by their predecessors in the cultural sector of the colonial enterprise. Unacceptable asymmetries in cultural study continue to this day. Until a critical number of western academics make amends by attaining adequate proficiency in the languages of the south and manifesting such serious literacy in the writing that they inflict on their public, the claim that western «academics» have established any bias-free «science» of languages, cultures or societies must be dismissed as premature.

Performance as Critical Posthuman Pedagogy

In this essay, I argue that performance studies practitioners are well positioned to participate in, as well as educate the public about, discourses of science and technology. Arguing that technoscientific conditions create the need for alternative pedagogical practices, I turn to critical performative pedagogy (CPP) as one way to begin moving toward technoscientific literacy. Drawing lessons from a collaborative performance installation in which I embodied a cyborg persona, I highlight connections between CPP and cyborg/posthuman pedagogies, demonstrate some of the dynamics of these approaches, and argue for their value as public pedagogical practices for a technoscientific, posthuman world.

Drama in SPRACHPRAXIS at a German University English Department: Practical Solutions to Pedagogical Challenges

This article describes the initial phase of incorporating drama-in-education classes into the practical language curriculum of a German university English department. It offers a brief overview of drama in (higher) education, before focusing on some recent developments in Germany and the UK: specifically the current increase of interest in Theaterpädagogik in Germany, and the incorporation of performative pedagogy in UK higher education, with the example of an initiative at the University of Warwick. The practical language curriculum of the University of Tübingen English Department, within which the drama classes are being run, is introduced. A report on one of the classes is provided, with a short example of a student-led presentation session. After investigating some student feedback from the class, the article concludes by suggesting that a drama approach offers solutions to some challenges posed by the curriculum, and explains a brief rationale for its further development in this context.

Locating the difference: A comparison of pedagogic strategies in high and low performing schools

A number of research studies have suggested that specific pedagogic strategies can have a positive impact on learning, and in turn, have a positive impact on school performance, in particular for children being schooled in disadvantaged contexts. This analysis describes and measures how four of these pedagogic strategies identified in research – the pacing of a lesson, the sequence and coherence of a lesson, cognitive demand and the nature of feedback within a lesson – are displayed in higher and lower performing schools located in lower-income communities in the Western Cape. The analysis forms part of a broader research project, SPADE (Schools Performing Above Demographic Expectation), and is based on fifteen video-recorded Grade 3 numeracy lessons. The analysis suggests a relationship between specific pedagogic strategies and higher performance for individual learners and for schools. The analysis also identifies further effective pedagogic strategies in higher performing schools in lower-income communities.

A percepção dos princípios educacionais da universidade corporativa de uma instituição financeira da cidade de Mossoró/RN

As grandes organizações têm percebido o diferencial competitivo que as pessoas possuem no ambiente empresarial e investido fortemente em ações educacionais estruturadas com o objetivo de melhorar o seu desempenho e atingir patamares mais elevados de lucratividade. A Educação Corporativa, foco do nosso trabalho, emerge como solução nova diante dessa realidade. A problemática nasce de uma reflexão da Proposta Político-Pedagógica para atuação em Gestão de Pessoas de uma Instituição Financeira (2008) e seus 05 (cinco) Princípios Educacionais: o aluno como sujeito da aprendizagem, diálogo e conscientização, problematização da realidade, abordagem complexa e visão multirreferencial e aprender a aprender. O objetivo geral é analisar a percepção dos funcionários que atuam na Instituição Financeira sobre os princípios educacionais que fundamentam a atuação pedagógica de sua Universidade Corporativa. Os resultados do nosso estudo sinalizam que a atuação da Universidade Corporativa da Instituição Financeira é eficaz, seus princípios pedagógicos são aceitos, assimilados e percebidos pela maioria dos funcionários e o grau de satisfação geral com a atuação da Universidade Corporativa é elevado.

Deconstructing Global Markets Through Critical Performative Experiences in Puerto Rico

AbstractCritical Performative Pedagogies, the idea that “The nature of drama as a once removed creative experience turns non‐critical implicit classroom identity formation into explicit identity performance as it asks participants to actively reflect upon how identity is created and engaged within fictional social interactions.” (Weltsek and Medina, 2007) is used to explore English language learning as a political act. Using critical ethnographic research conducted with and on two different groups of students in Puerto Rico, one elementary and one University, as their launching point Gustave Weltsek and Carmen Lillian Medina struggle with the ways in which personal, community and institutionalized literacy education is negotiated within colonial spaces. IN this Water Cooler chat they explain that “When students see themselves as actively involved in the creation/performance of any communicative event, especially one situated as ‘educational’, aware of how they construct their actions the opportunity exists for them to take a more conscious ownership of their education. When applied to literacy learning ‘literacy’ becomes the way multiple sign systems are used to outwardly perform emergent identities. Drama then become an ideal way to observe and articulate how personal, community and institutional literacies are negotiated and created within the performance of self. It is this observation and articulation which ultimately empowers and drives student learning.”