Real Schools Research Articles

Virtual School: Learning to Teach Physics in a Virtual Community of Practice

This research explores the impact a Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) within the international Virtual School pilot project aimed at providing future secondary-school physics teachers with authentic teaching experiences. The Virtual School serves as a platform to connect future teachers with real schools and pupils, creating a unique educational environment to develop professional identity and competencies. This paper reports on part of the project engaging eight preservice or early-career teachers, two mentors, three researchers, and forty-eight secondary school pupils. Pre and post semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data, exploring the participants' experiences and perceptions. The findings reveal significant impacts of the VCoP on the understanding of professional identity and the disciplinary teacher practices of participants. By participating in this digital community, they have developed expertise, bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-classroom dynamics. This study highlights the potential of VCoPs to shape the training of secondary-school physics teachers, offering new avenues for teacher education in the digital age.

Applying collective motion models to study discordant individual behaviours within a school of fish.

Computational models of collective motion successfully reproduce the most common behaviours of a school of fish, using only a few elementary interactions between individuals. However, their ability to also reproduce individual behaviours that are discordant from those of the group has not yet been adequately investigated. In this paper, a self-propelled particle model using three interaction zones is considered in relation to the counter-rotation of an individual: a phenomenon observable in real schools of fish milling in a torus, when an individual moves in the same torus but in the opposite direction for a certain period of time. This study shows that the interactions of repulsion, orientation and attraction between individuals moving at constant speed in a three-dimensional space, with asynchronous updating, can generate temporary counter-rotations. The analysis of such events sheds light on the mechanisms that start the counter-rotation and those that end it. Although the contribution of the repulsion interaction is often significant to start and terminate the counter-rotation, it does not prove to be decisive. Indeed, it is observed that even when interactions between individuals are limited to attraction alone, temporary counter-rotations of individuals occur, provided the fish density along the circumference is not uniform. Some of these conclusions, deduced from the simulations performed, are visually consistent with what is observed in some underwater video recordings of milling schools of fish.

The Ukrainian language in HALYCHYNA school system in the interwar period

The history of the Ukrainian literary language intertwines with the development of Ukrainian education. The establishment of Ukrainian schooling in Halychyna commenced in the late 19th century and persisted until the early 20th century. Throughout this period and until 1939, the Ukrainian population of Halychyna engaged in a relentless struggle for the right to receive education in their mother tongue across various types of schools, including public and private, primary, secondary, and vocational institutions. This struggle unfolded within the intricate framework of socio-political and socio-cultural conditions prevalent in Eastern Halychyna during the interwar period. During the First World War, the educational landscape underwent a period of total Russification. The occupying authorities imposed mandatory Russian language instruction in primary and secondary schools throughout Halychyna. This Russification agenda within the realm of education was reinforced by official documents explicitly proclaiming that “within the confines of Carpathian Rus, all higher, secondary, and elementary schools must promptly and exclusively adopt the Russian language”. During the years 1918-1919, the authorities of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic dedicated significant efforts to ensure the effective organization of the educational system. They emphasized the compulsory inclusion of the Ukrainian language in all educational institutions and made substantial investments in training an adequate number of educators. By early 1919, there were 20 Ukrainian gymnasiums, three real schools, and seven teachers’ seminary schools. The period from 1919 to 1939 witnessed a heightened struggle by the Ukrainians of Halychyna to preserve their right to education in their native language, despite the oppressive Polish occupation of the western Ukrainian lands. Unfortunately, during this time, the number of primary and secondary schools offering instruction in the Ukrainian language experienced a steady decline. By the end of the interwar period, approximately 420 Ukrainian primary schools, 2,500 Utraquist schools, and 1,229 Polish schools with compulsory Ukrainian language studies remained operational in Eastern Halychyna. Additionally, there were 20 Ukrainian private gymnasiums and lyceums, along with 7 vocational schools. The concept of schooling in the native language brought together a community of dedicated and influential individuals, including scholars, educators, politicians, and cultural figures. United by a common goal, they worked tirelessly to develop textbooks and dictionaries suitable for schools at various levels. Despite the challenging conditions of the 1920s and 1930s, pedagogical and scientific societies, as well as educational journals, actively opposed the policy of Polonization in the realm of education. They championed the advancement of Ukrainian school terminology and advocated for the incorporation of essential spelling rules into the Ukrainian language curriculum. Key words: the Ukrainian language, schooling system of Halychyna, an interwar period, Russification, Polonization.

School, Empire, and the Provincial Roots of Civil Activism in Late Nineteenth‐Century Russia

AbstractIn spring 1879, news reached the Russian Ministry of Education that students from several Real Schools in the Russian Empire’s western provinces were planning to send a coordinated petition to the Minister of Education, asking for permission to enroll in university. The petition initiative was arranged in secrecy and involved more than a dozen schools from Odessa in the south to St. Petersburg in the north. Drawing on materials from several archives, this article traces the evolution of the petition initiative and addresses three main questions. First, the article demonstrates that the petition initiative was understood by students and officials alike as a severe breach of school discipline, but not a political crime, and it explains how and why the initiative is representative of the limited yet distinctive space of legitimation created by the authorities for non‐radical student activism. Second, it contextualizes the petition initiative against the backdrop of the discussion on civil activism in Russia, highlighting how secondary students were influenced and inspired by the contemporary public discourse and the idea of public activism. Finally, the article analyzes the internal social mechanisms of the petition initiative, demonstrating how it combined local self‐organization with imperial networking, mobility, and imagination.

Real Schools in Poland.Pedagogical ideal and its practical implementation in the historical view

For several past years a new type of school has been noticeable in the Polish educational landscape real schools. The creators of this type of institutions refer to the idea of 18th-century real schools focused on training in practical areas that are useful to students in a life at the same time education should be engaging and interesting for students. However, the idea of creating of real schools should be sought two hundred years earlier, in Reformation era, when new concepts of education emerged, including the idea of school the real school. In this article I will present the educational ideal of real schools. I will scrutinize the concept of real schools created in 16th century as a result of a new way of thinking about the upbringing young people. I will reconstruct the educational ideal and sketch the pedagogical pattern created by the founders of real schools in 19th-century Poland.

Research on the future school development path based on artificial intelligence

In the field of education, the all-encompassing penetration of artificial intelligence has made new possibilities for the future school. This study analyzed the concept of the future school at first. Secondly, this study pointed out that the future education under artificial intelligence had three characteristics: the combination of virtual and real schools; the integration of human-computer environments; Learner-directed learning. Finally, this study pointed to strategies for government, school, and student improvement that were necessary to achieve effective integration of artificial intelligence with future school.

Philosophical Reflections on Child Poverty and Education

The harmful effects of Covid 19 on children living in poverty have refocused attention on the complex nature of child poverty and the vexed question of its relationship to education. The paper examines a tension at the heart of much discussion of child poverty and education. On the one hand, education is often regarded as essential for children’s flourishing and a means by which children can “escape” poverty; yet on the other hand, education systems, institutions, and practices, often reflect and entrench the disadvantages associated with poverty. Narratives concerning education as an escape from poverty tend not to deal in any depth with the injustices associated with poverty, stressing instead the transformative potential of education. By contrast, largely sociological analyses of the ways in which schooling reproduces inequalities tend to stop short of developing a normative account of how education can contribute to transforming the structural injustices related to poverty and its effects on children’s lives. In working to move beyond this analytic impasse, the paper shows how the cluster of concepts, which Robeyns (2018) locates as central to the capability approach, give insights which help to address these two different lacunae. The notion of conversion factors highlights the significance of taking account of existing relationships in education, while the distinction between capabilities and functionings helps guide practices regarding the education of children living in poverty. Drawing on literature on the heightened inequalities associated with poor children’s experience of lack of schooling during the COVID pandemic, the paper sketches some of the ways in which sociological analysis and normative evaluation can be linked in taking forward an “ethically engaged political philosophy” (Wolff, 2018) to discuss child poverty and education in real schools.

Schools and Screens: A Watchful History by Victoria Cain

Reviewed by: Schools and Screens: A Watchful History by Victoria Cain Richard Butsch (bio) Schools and Screens: A Watchful History By Victoria Cain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. Pp. 280. This book chronicles the history of the debate about the introduction of film, television, and computers into American classrooms through four periods of the twentieth century. It documents four "areas of tension" concerning media in classrooms and curricula: teaching citizenship, contributing to race inequality, growing dependence on private money and privatization, and distrust of teachers. The book narrates detailed accounts of the twists and turns, the promotion of and reactions to these media as an educational tool, and the fates of efforts to mediatize the classroom. The narratives themselves tell of groups who promote media use in classrooms, find funding, mount successful demonstration projects, meet resistance at implementation, experience at least partial successes, but in the end fade away, all of this aided or retarded by the zeitgeist of the moment. In each period, the hopes and expectations were overblown; lavishly funded pilot programs with well-prepared and staffed initial tests were initially [End Page 234] promising but finally disappointing when introduced to real schools with limited budgets and teachers with less preparation, fewer support staff, and inadequate facilities for the new curriculum. The narratives are well written and heavily researched, based on an exhausting amount of primary sources, and exceedingly well-documented (there are 70 pages of endnotes for 190 pages of text). The narratives do a remarkable job of weaving these numerous sources into a coherent story of media history. For all these outstanding qualities, the book does not fulfill the promise of the introduction, "to look not just to the histories of machines and teaching, but to social and cultural history." The chapters are filled with details of events but only an occasional mention reflecting on the cultural context and political moment. Similarly, the social history remains mostly at the microlevel of people and practices. For example, the brief bios of major characters, followed by their parts in events, lean more toward a "great man" approach rather than a structural and cultural approach. I would have liked to see more explanation to transcend the details and integrate the narratives into the larger portrait of American society, its institutions, peoples, and cultures through these decades. It would have been nice, for example, for the author to have explained how the dominant culture or variant cultures of the time abetted or obstructed widespread introduction of media in schools and with what consequences. Also, there was a missed opportunity in the introductions and conclusions—to each chapter as well as to the whole book—to discuss larger implications of issues and outcomes rather than just summarize events. Nevertheless, reading the narratives, one can extract some patterns. Among these is a lesson seemingly never learned: the educational innovation that works in a lab or field test, with lavish time, money, and staff, frequently cannot stand up to the impediments of real classrooms and budgets when broadly implemented. One educational innovation that has proven to be robust is Head Start, but few others are. The lesson, of course, is not that these innovations are failures but that many of our public schools are not funded nearly well enough to provide quality education, media notwithstanding. The narratives demonstrate this in citing the differential results in rich versus poor school districts. A second lesson that can be drawn from the narratives is the mistake of assuming that media and its messages are fixed facts, as if there were only one way (that of the reformers) to use a medium and to interpret and react to the messages. The narratives repeatedly reveal the unrealistic expectations of the reformers and their surprise that teachers and students often go a different way than expected. A third example is how much success teeters on whether the reform coincides with the particular political and cultural moment or not. One wishes that the book had elaborated more on these important lessons for which it has provided ample evidence. [End Page 235] Last, typos and other irregularities occur throughout the text and the notes, which I suspect are less the fault...

Ярослав (Павло) Нємец: помолог та освітянин — забуті сторінки чесько-української історії (до 180-річчя від дня народження)

Goal. To conduct a scientific-historical analysis of the life and creative ways of Ya.Y. Nemets, to generalize his creative achievements on certain issues of horticulture, pedagogical science, and organization of educational and research processes on the Ukrainian territory. Methods. General scientific (analysis, synthesis, induction, and deduction), historical (problem-chronological, comparative-historical, personification, biographical). Results. The reasons were established for the emigration of Ya.Y. Nemets to the Russian Empire. The main stages of his life and creative destiny were determined. It is proved that Ya.Y. Nemets contributed to the establishment and development of leading institutions of secondary education in the Ukrainian lands in the 19th century — Odesa, Rivne, and Vinnytsia real schools. He was a recognized method teacher, and the author of manuals for teaching the basics of drawing and drawing for secondary schools, which contributed to the further development of pedagogical thought in Ukraine. Ya.Y. Nemets made an expedition to the North American continent to study industrial horticulture and published the first monograph on this topic in the Russian Empire, creating a scientific basis for further study of the field. Conclusions. Ya.Y. Nemets, a Czech by origin, made a lot of efforts to develop the socio-cultural space of Ukraine in the second half of the 19th century, working as a teacher, organizer of the educational process, scientist, and public figure. For 33 years, he worked in the educational field, improving the pedagogical process, and adjusting the material and technical equipment of educational institutions. Ya.Y. Nemets was one of the organizers of agricultural research in Ukraine in the 19th century, having established his pomological garden. He is the author of the first in the Russian Empire analysis of the horticultural industry of the USA and Canada. Close contacts of Ya.Y. Nemets and Czech specialists contributed to the integration of domestic specialists into the European scientific space.

Scale-free behavioral cascades and effective leadership in schooling fish

Behavioral contagion and the presence of behavioral cascades are natural features in groups of animals showing collective motion, such as schooling fish or grazing herbivores. Here we study empirical behavioral cascades observed in fish schools defined as avalanches of consecutive large changes in the heading direction of the trajectory of fish. In terms of a minimum turning angle introduced to define a large change, avalanches are characterized by distributions of size and duration showing scale-free signatures, reminiscent of self-organized critical behavior. We observe that avalanches are generally triggered by a small number of fish, which act as effective leaders that induce large rearrangements of the group’s trajectory. This observation motivates the proposal of a simple model, based in the classical Vicsek model of collective motion, in which a given individual acts as a leader subject to random heading reorientations. The model reproduces qualitatively the empirical avalanche behavior observed in real schools, and hints towards a connection between effective leadership, long range interactions and avalanche behavior in collective movement.

Holidays and Evenings in the Gymnasiums and Progymnasiums of the Tomsk Province in the Second Half of the 19th — Early of the 20th Century

Modernization processes in Russia in the second half of the 19th — early of the 20th centuries led to significant changes in the education system. This was also evident in the daily life of secondary educational institutions: gymnasiums and progymnasiums. Holidays and evenings were an important part of the daily life of high schools during this period. The program of holidays, as a rule, they included a solemn part, often prayers, performances, reading poems, singing, performing musical works and distributing awards for academic success. Usually the holidays and evenings ended in an informal part, consisting of a treat, sometimes there could be dancing. Evenings in educational institutions were organized for the purpose of communication and entertainment and were less formal in nature. When arranging evenings and holidays, there could be certain difficulties. For financial help, they had to turn to benefactors, in the role of which merchants most often acted. Events could be organized jointly by different educational institutions, including gymnasiums and real schools. Holidays and evenings organized in educational institutions of secondary education (gymnasiums and progymnasiums) performed educational and socializing functions. The expanding practice of their implementation was a consequence of the modernization processes in the field of education of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th — early of the 20th centuries.

Maturzyści małopolskich szkół średnich z 1920 roku. Przyczynek do dziejów szkolnictwa średniego w Polsce w dwudziestoleciu międzywojennym

Since 1850, education in middle schools and real schools ended with Matura exams. The Matura exam was a pass into adult life, an important event for the local community and lists of graduates were published in school reports, as well as in the national and local press. This custom was successful in times of peace, but it was impossible to implement during hostilities. The most difficult year to recreate is 1920 due to the ongoing Polish-Bolshevik war. The article is a contribution to the organisation of information on secondary school graduates who passed the exam in this difficult year for Poland.

THE PROBLEM OF CULTIVATING DISCIPLINE AMONG STUDENTS OF SECONDARY EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN UKRAINIAN PROVINCES OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE AT THE TURN OF THE 20th CENTURY (on materials of the meeting of the curator’s council of Odesa educational district)

BALATSYNOVA Alla – PhD (Education), Associate Professor, Doctoral Student of Pedagogy Department, G.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University, 29 Alchevskykh Str., Kharkiv, 61002, UkraineE-mail address: alla.balatsynova@hnpu.edu.ua ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3247-0694 ResearcherID: https://publons.com/researcher/1763366/alla-balatsynova/To cite this article: Balatsynova, A. (2020). The problem of cultivating discipline among students of secondary education institutions in Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century (on materials of the meeting of the curator’s council of Odesa educational district). Human Studies. Series of Pedagogy, 11/43, 9‒21. doi: https://doi.org/10.24919/2413-2039.11/43.215969Article history Received: June 15, 2020Received in revised form: September 10, 2020Accepted: November 23, 2020Available online: December 30, 2020Journal homepage:http://lssp.dspu.edu.ua/p-ISSN 2313-2094e-ISSN 2413-2039© 2020 The Author. Human studies. Series of Pedagogy published by Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University & Open Journal Systems. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). The article, based on the analysis of historical and pedagogical sources and archival documents, reveals the position of the curator’s council of Odesa educational district on effective ways to cultivate discipline among secondary school students in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. It has been found that the secondary schools of Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire in the period under study functioned in conditions of significant social, economic and political changes associated, on the one hand, with the development of capitalist relations, on the other hand, with the economic crisis of 1901–1903 and activation of workers and peasants movements and the rise of political activity among liberal and democratic strata of population and the student youth. Against this background, the inconsistency of the existing system of secondary education, which comprised mainly grammar and real schools, with the economic and social needs of the state became more and more noticeable, forcing the Ministry of Public Education to raise the issue of the secondary education reform.It has been found that the Emperor Nicholas II, concerned about the growing political activity of students and pupils, identified the requirement of combining youth education with religion, faith, loyalty to the crown and the fatherland, respect for the family, and learning from early childhood to maintain order and discipline. In pursuance of this order, the Minister of Public Education H. Zenger sent to the curators of educational districts, including Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv, a circular “About Discipline in Secondary Education Institutions” (1903), recognizing the current state of affairs with students’ discipline and control over it by school authorities and pedagogical staff as unacceptable and demanded strict execution of the monarch’s will. The desired educational results were proposed to be achieved by both pedagogical and repressive methods. Effective methods and techniques for prevention of order and discipline violations by the students to be used by pedagogical staff were considered the following: pedagogical tact and friendly attitude to students; the content of studying and its educational nature (especially at the language, literature and history lessons); organization of extracurricular educational activities with the use of teaching, suggestion, persuasion of students; cooperation with parents; moral support for pupils living in student dormitories; appeal to the religious beliefs and feelings of students.It has been found that at the meeting on December 12, 1903, the members of the curator’s council of Odesa educational district, having studied in detail the state of affairs and having considered the circular proposal by the Minister of Public Education and the views of pedagogical councils of secondary education institutions of the district on discipline issue, expressed their opinion. In the decision of the council among the most effective ways to impose the discipline among students were identified as follows: reducing occupancy of classes; introduction the institute of educators; organization of student dormitories, boarding schools, home churches; use of educational potential of literature, religious and moral discussions; establishing good relationships with students’ parents. It also highlighted the need to improve the financial and official status of teachers as a guarantee of the quality of the educational process.Acknowledgments. The author is grateful to the staff of the State Archives of Odesa Region.Funding. The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Organization of Teaching New Languages in Real Schools (Based on Materials of Pre-Soviet Period Editions)

The study of the history of domestic foreign language education continues to remain relevant, since some aspects of this problem have not received their comprehensive description. In this regard, the activity of real schools is of undoubted interest, the understanding of the experience of which has practical importance in the context of improving the quality of teaching foreign languages, developing subject concepts and further improving the mathematical and natural science training of students. The issues of real education, which were the subject of special attention of state and public figures, representatives of the pedagogical community and entrepreneurship, received wide coverage in publications published in the pre-Soviet period. The theoretical analysis of historical and pedagogical editions demonstrates a certain specificity of teaching foreign languages in real schools. The study of ancient languages was the prerogative of classical gymnasiums, while in real schools the emphasis was on the learning of new languages. The training course was aimed at acquiring skills in various types of speech activity and provided for the achievement of not only developing and educational, but also practical goals. The program set tasks for each stage of training and contained recommendations on the organization of educational activities. Much attention was paid to reading. Awareness of the importance of foreign language education contributed to the search for the most effective forms of educational activity on the lesson.

ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ – ВОЗВРАЩЕНИЕ К РЕАЛЬНОСТИ

The post-socialist transformation of general and vocational education system has led to the loss of many positive gains that were already achieved earlier. The polytechnic character of our school and its practice-oriented foundations, based on a reasonable combination of basic education and professional and applied training, were seriously undermined. Modern Russian secondary schools have become something like pre-revolutionary classical high schools, without taking into account the significant fact that in pre-Soviet Russia, along with high schools, there was a wide network of real schools. They focused students on further mastering technical professions and active participation in the production sector of the country. Today we are witnessing a global revolution in the spiritual sphere, aimed at changing the very essence of a man. Note that natural science education is valuable not only for its formal method, but also for providing the basis for a correct understanding of the world. It fosters independence of thought and distrust of other people’s words and authorities. This is the best protection of the human mind from all sorts of superstitions delusions and mysticism.

Development of the postgraduate pedagogical education of bukovina of the first half of the XX century

The need for professional staff in the territory of Bukovina appeared immediately at the time of the formation of the system of physical education of students in the mid-nineteenth century. In the content of the «Organizational of High Schools and Real Schools in the Austro-Hungarian Empire», the law of May 14, 1869 declared the official recognition of «physical exercises» as a compulsory subject of teaching. In addition, the decree of the Minister of Religion and Education on the requirements for the procedure for admission of state exams to candidates for the post of teacher of gymnastics (1870) played an important role in the staffing of the system of physical education of Bukovina.It was the lack of professional staff that made public activists to organize various forms of training of gymnastics teachers, general physical training instructors. «Gymnastics-fire» courses, in which popularization the Bukovina press actively participated, were systematically held in the capital of the region. At the request of the system of physical education of all segments of the population of Bukovina in the region, a procedure for training and advanced training of specialists in this field was established. But to combine all forms of advanced training into a single state system, to create an institution that meets the requirements of time, pedagogical provisions became possible only in 40's of the twentieth century. The period of 1938-1939 was the stage of the formation of a system of methodical work with the managerial and pedagogical staff of education of the USSR. The main components of this became: school, shrub methodical associations, pedagogical offices at district departments of public education, institutes of teacher improvement at regional departments of public education.The Institute consisted of nine teaching and training offices, including: pedagogy, elementary classes, Ukrainian and Russian language and literature, foreign languages, history and geography, mathematics and physics, biology and chemistry, physical education, extracurricular education

Forecasted Size of Measles Outbreaks Associated With Vaccination Exemptions for Schoolchildren

Vaccine exemptions, which allow unvaccinated children to attend school, have increased by a factor of 28 since 2003 in Texas. Geographic clustering of unvaccinated children facilitates the spread of measles introductions, but the potential size of outbreaks is unclear. To forecast the range of measles outbreak sizes in each metropolitan area of Texas at 2018 and future reduced school vaccination rates. An agent-based decision analytical model using a synthetic population of Texas, derived from the 2010 US Census, was used to simulate measles transmission in the Texas population. Real schools were represented in the simulations, and the 2018 vaccination rate of each real school was applied to a simulated hypothetical equivalent. Single cases of measles were introduced, daily activities and interactions were modeled for each population member, and the number of infections over the course of 9 months was counted for 1000 simulated runs in each Texas metropolitan area. To determine the outcomes of further decreases in vaccination coverage, additional simulations were performed with vaccination rates reduced by 1% to 10% in schools with populations that are currently undervaccinated. Expected distributions of outbreak sizes in each metropolitan area of Texas at 2018 and reduced vaccination rates. At 2018 vaccination rates, the median number of cases in large metropolitan areas was typically small, ranging from 1 to 3 cases, which is consistent with outbreaks in Texas 2006 to 2017. However, the upper limit of the distribution of plausible outbreaks (the 95th percentile, associated with 1 in 20 measles introductions) exceeded 400 cases in both the Austin and Dallas metropolitan areas, similar to the largest US outbreaks since measles was eliminated in 2000. Decreases in vaccination rates in schools with undervaccinated populations in 2018 were associated with exponential increases in the potential size of outbreaks: a 5% decrease in vaccination rate was associated with a 40% to 4000% increase in potential outbreak size, depending on the metropolitan area. A mean (SD) of 64% (11%) of cases occurred in students for whom a vaccine had been refused, but a mean (SD) of 36% (11%) occurred in others (ie, bystanders). This study suggests that vaccination rates in some Texas schools are currently low enough to allow large measles outbreaks. Further decreases are associated with dramatic increases in the probability of large outbreaks. Limiting vaccine exemptions could be associated with a decrease in the risk of large measles outbreaks.

Perspektywa aksjologiczna w Wypisach polskich Stanisława Tarnowskiego i Franciszka Próchnickiego


 The purpose of the article is to present the world of values inscribed in Polish Extracts for the classes of lower secondary and real schools by Stanisław Tarnowski and Franciszek Próchnicki. After discussing the structure of the school textbook, there were presented ways of creating of the autors’ biographies with the presentation of their didactic message. Then attention was focused on the characteristics of the writers by Tarnowski. The statement ends with considerations that are the answer to the question to what extent the comments of the Krakow professor in Extracts… met the assumptions of such publications.

Beyond Practicum: Interplay between Prospective EFL Teachers’ Conceptualizations of Field Experience and Teaching Career

Becoming a teacher of English language requires both knowledge of theory and practice. Teacher candidates at the faculties of education in BA programs in Turkey practice teaching through observing real classrooms and doing micro-teachings in real schools during their four-year teacher training. This study was conducted at a foundation university in Turkey, in which senior pre-service teachers, before they enter the teaching profession and become novice teachers, go and experience teaching to fulfill the requirements of the practicum (school experience course) in their last semester. This course requires them to observe three different levels of classroom in real schools, write reflective papers, prepare lesson plans and practice teaching. The transition from pre-service to novice teacher can be facilitated via successful practicum programs offered by the faculties of education in Turkey. The impact of practicum tends to result in either entry into teaching or teacher retention. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the effects of this program on students’ decisions on entry into the profession. The data were collected in two stages: Before and after the practicum. At the beginning of the last semester, before they go practicum, five pre-service EFL teachers were asked the reasons for choosing teacher education programs, and their concerns related to practicum and the profession through an in-depth semi-controlled interview. Those pre-service teachers were also interviewed on the same topics at the end of the semester, after practicum. Results indicated that practicum or school experience has contributed positively to their perceptions regarding their entry into teaching because almost all of them wanted to enter teaching at the end of the program, and they are in-service teachers now. These findings suggest that teacher education courses should aim to develop students’ practical knowledge, and the relationship among the mentor teacher, the supervisor, and the student teacher should be valued and supported more in teacher education programs.

Promoting EFL Student Teachers’ Life-Long Learning through Microteaching Lesson Study

The success of lesson study as an approach for teacher professional development in improving students’ learning has inspired the works on microteaching lesson study which is designed for student teachers in microteaching course. Some studies show that microteaching lesson study brought about positive result to student teachers’ pedagogical ability and content knowledge. However, that microteaching lesson study influences student teachers in their teaching internship, that is the course taken after microteaching where student teachers teach real students in real schools, has not been revealed yet. This study aims at exploring the influence of microteaching lesson study on the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student teachers in teaching internship and to what extent the influence was to promote the EFL student teachers’ life-long learning to teach. It is a qualitative study with semi-structured group interview as the instrument of the research. The subject of the study was ten EFL student teachers who voluntarily participated in the study from twenty two student teachers. They had enrolled in a microteaching class that applied microteaching lesson study in the sixth semester and then took the teaching internship in the seventh semester. The finding of the study indicates that microteaching lesson study has considerably influences most of the EFL student teachers in gaining life-long learning to teach as they already implemented the steps of microteaching lesson study in their teaching internship initiatively. Finally, this study recommends teacher educators to adapt lesson study in microteaching course that can make the EFL student teachers to keep learning to teach.