Real Classroom Research Articles

Developing and Validating a Video-Based Measurement Instrument for Assessing Teachers’ Professional Vision of Language-Stimulation Interactions in the ECE Classroom

This study reports on the development and validation of a video-based instrument to assess early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ professional vision (PV) of language-stimulation (LS) interactions. PV refers to noticing and reasoning about key classroom interactions, a skill that can be trained and distinguishes experts from novices. The instrument targets the PV of three language-stimulation (LS) strategies: language input (LI), opportunities for language production (OLP), and feedback (FB). The instrument measures noticing through comparative judgement (CJ) and reasoning through multiple-choice items. Construct validity was assessed using the AERA framework, using three samples: a sample of professionals (n = 22), a pre-service teachers’ sample (n = 107), and a mixed sample with in- and pre-service teachers (n = 6). Reliability and validity were confirmed, with strong reliability scores for the CJ master rank orders (SRR: 0.827–0.866). Think-aloud procedures demonstrated that respondents’ decisions during CJ were mainly based on LS-relevant video features. Decisions unrelated to LS require further study. Multiple-choice reasoning items were developed from professionals’ open-ended feedback. Pre-service teacher reasoning scores showed no significant predictors. Using real classroom videos, this instrument provides an ecologically valid, scalable tool for assessing teachers’ professional vision of LS interactions. This validated instrument offers a foundation for professional development programs aimed at addressing the theory–practice gap in early language education.

Investigating the Use of Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) for Listening Instructions in SMAN 5 Tanjungpinang

Listening is essential for effective communication but often poses challenges in traditional teaching settings, where exposure to authentic materials is limited (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). However, Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) provides mobile access to interactive audio content, enabling adaptive learning experiences (Burston, 2014) and continuous exposure to varied accents (Godwin-Jones, 2017). This study explores the implementation of MALL for listening instructions in SMAN 5 Tanjungpinang, focusing on the research questions: “Has SMAN 5 Tanjungpinang incorporated MALL into their teaching practices?” and “How does MALL contribute to improving SMAN 5 Tanjungpinang students' listening skills?” This qualitative research employs observation and semi-structured interviews to examine MALL's application in real classroom settings, aligning with the (Creswell, 2014) emphasis on context and utilizing thematic analysis to identify emerging patterns (Braun & Clarke, 2013). Findings reveal that while SMAN 5 Tanjungpinang has started incorporating MALL, there is significant potential to enhance its integration further and positively impact students' listening skills. These results highlight the importance of integrating mobile technology into educational curricula to enhance language learning outcomes.

Functional Pragmatic Analysis in Building Students' Contextual Understanding of Literary Works

This study aims to analyze the role of a functional pragmatic approach in developing students' contextual understanding of literary works. The functional pragmatic approach emphasizes the importance of context in interpreting text meaning, considering the social, cultural, and situational backgrounds that influence communication in literature. In literature education, this method helps students go beyond understanding the literal content of a text. It encourages them to explore the deeper layers of meaning by considering the relationship between the author, the reader, and the broader societal context in which the text was produced. The research employs a qualitative case study design, engaging literature students as participants to examine how this approach is implemented in real classroom settings. The study utilizes several data collection techniques, including observations, interviews, and document analysis. These methods allow the researcher to comprehensively understand how the functional pragmatic approach is applied during literature lessons and its impact on students' comprehension. The findings indicate that this approach significantly enhances students' ability to critically analyze the meaning of texts and deepen their understanding of the social and cultural contexts embedded in the literature.Additionally, it fosters an appreciation for the values and messages conveyed through literary works. The study's implications suggest that incorporating a functional pragmatic approach in literature instruction could powerfully support the development of students' contextual understanding and critical thinking skills. By emphasizing the importance of context in literary analysis, this approach can help students engage with texts on a deeper level, making literature more meaningful and relevant to their lives.

Immersive Haptic Technology to Support English Language Learning Based on Metacognitive Strategies

One of the most widely used strategies for learning support is the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), due to the variety of applications and benefits they provide in the educational field. This article describes the design and implementation of an immersive application supported by Senso gloves and 3D environments for learning English as a second language in Ecuador. The following steps should be considered for the app design: (1) the creation of a classroom with characteristics similar to a real classroom and different buttons to navigate through the scenarios; (2) the creation of a virtual environment where text, images, examples, and audio are added according to the grammatical topic; (3) the creation of a dynamic environment for assessment in which multiple choice questions are interacted with, followed by automatic grading with direct feedback. The results showed that the interaction between the physical and virtual environment through navigation tests with the glove in different 3D environments achieved a complete activation and navigation rate. Teachers showed a clear interest in using the application in their classes as an additional teaching tool to complement the English language teaching process, given that it can increase motivation and memorization in students, as it is an easy-to-use application, and the 3D environments designed are attractive, which would make classes more dynamic. In addition, the availability of the application at any place and time represents a support for the current academic community as it adapts to the needs of today’s world.

Gendered Discourse in Pakistani Classrooms: A Critical Discourse Analysis

The objective of this study is to analyse how gendered discourses are constructed in context of Pakistan classrooms via critical discourse analysis. Based on realistic classroom narratives from various educational contexts, the study examines how gendered scripts and roles emerge, are reinforced or resisted in pedagogical arenas. This study is qualitative in nature to capture gendered discourse patterns in a learning environment. CDA is chosen as the main theoretical framework for enquiring how gender ideologies and relations regulate and are realised in the text of an IELTS institute in Karachi. Through the analysis of the observed and recorded teacher-student and student-student interactions, this study analyzes the linguistic features, power relation, as well as other micro affirmative and micro aggressive acts that rehearse or challenge gender normativity. The paper also focuses on the relationship between language, culture and ideology and shows how students, especially girls, can be excluded from learning and education. The study concludes that classroom discourse is a reflection of existing power relation in the society, thus shaping the student’s perceived power relations including gender power relations in educational settings.

Tiny Steps, Giant Leaps: The Place of Micro-Learning in Language and Literature

This study investigates the impact of microlearning on language and literature education at the university level, addressing a significant gap in existing research. The traditional approaches to teaching these subjects often lead to overwhelming experiences for students, hindering retention and engagement. This research explores how microlearning, defined as small, easily digestible learning units, can enhance student retention, creativity, and engagement in real classroom settings. Conducted over six weeks, the study involved 100 undergraduate students and 10 instructors across two English and literature courses. Participants engaged in daily microlearning tasks, such as analyzing poetry, practicing grammar, and experimenting with sentence structures, each designed to be completed within 10–15 minutes. Data collection included focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations. The findings reveal that microlearning significantly enhances student retention and engagement while fostering creativity in linguistic tasks. However, challenges related to task coherence and content development were identified. This study underscores the transformative potential of microlearning in language and literature curricula, highlighting the need for careful implementation that is aligned with educational objectives. The results provide valuable insights for educators aiming to integrate microlearning effectively into their teaching practices.

Drawing meaning from student-generated drawings: exploring chemistry teachers’ noticing

This study explored experienced chemistry teachers’ noticing when using student-generated drawings as evidence. While drawings of chemical entities and processes may offer valuable information on student thinking, little is known about how teachers draw meaning from student drawings. To explore this area, we investigated three experienced chemistry teachers’ noticing. Teacher noticing refers to the processes through which teachers pay attention to certain observable information, and interpret what they attend to. In this study, we examined what types of drawing features stood out to teachers, and what analytic approaches (or stances) they used. We collected data on teachers’ in-the-moment noticing (within their active classrooms), and on their delayed noticing (when teachers reviewed drawings after class). The findings demonstrate teachers’ ability to attend to chemistry-specific details in students’ drawings in both noticing settings. Teachers recognised several visual forms in student drawings, depictions of quantities, chemical entities at different length scales, and various chemical properties and behaviours. Findings furthermore showcase how two common analytic approaches (i.e. evaluation and sense making) can manifest in a drawing context. The study's results, tied to real classroom settings, yield ways of looking at student drawings that may help (beginning) chemistry teachers to leverage drawing activities as a window into student thinking. The study's analytic framework and detailed characterisations could furthermore be used by teacher educators and researchers who are seeking to support or examine teacher noticing as a key aspect of (chemistry) teacher expertise.

Analysis of Politeness Strategies Used by the Main Character of “Wonder” Movie

The research was examined an analysis of politeness strategies used by the main character of “Wonder” movie. A qualitative descriptive method was employed to analyze the politeness and expressive illocutionary acts depicted in the movie. The data were collected by following Brown and Levinson's strategies, by watching the movie and analyzing its transcript and utterances, focusing on the politeness strategies was the three main characters in that movie. By finding the main character's utterances, the data found 46 positive politeness, 19 negative politeness, 17 bald on record, and 6 off records. The most apparent from the utterance was a positive politeness strategy of asking for a reason. In conclusion, the result is expected to facilitate the English teacher to take the movie as one of the alternative ways to educate skill of good communication. Educators can adopt the politeness strategies as depicted in the “Wonder” movie as same as the other movie in the teaching and learning process in the real classroom.

Hard and Soft Engineering Skills in Designing an Energy Systems’ Functioning Module for 1st Graders

Given the importance of both hard and soft skills in the range of engineering skills, this study concerns the design of a teaching module for 1st graders about the energy systems’ functioning. The research question is “When teaching the concept of energy as an engineering subject in elementary school, what are (a) the conceptual and methodological content, and (b) the pedagogical context?”? To answer this question, the study follows an engineering pedagogy framework. Based on this analysis, we propose a teaching module for 1st graders, applied in a pilot phase. This phase is used to assess the feasibility of implementation of the teaching module in real classroom setting.

Virtual Reality Assisted Microteaching For Improving Teaching Skills of Prospective Teachers

Education serves as a cornerstone in building a high-quality society, where teachers play a pivotal role in creating effective learning environments and delivering instructional content. However, many prospective teachers face limitations in gaining adequate practical experience before entering real-world teaching scenarios. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Virtual Reality (VR)-assisted Microteaching as an innovative approach to enhance the teaching skills of future educators. Employing a quantitative research design, the study adopts descriptive verification methods through ex post facto and survey approaches. The findings indicate a significant improvement in teaching skills, classroom management, and self-confidence among participants utilizing VR-assisted Microteaching compared to traditional methods. VR technology facilitates realistic and interactive teaching simulations, allowing prospective teachers to engage in diverse scenarios without the stress of real classroom environments. This research underscores the transformative potential of integrating VR technology into teacher education programs to address gaps in conventional training methods and better prepare educators for the complexities of contemporary teaching challenges.

Does teachers’ self-reported growth mindset ensure growth mindset-oriented feedback practices in the classroom?

This study examined the congruence/incongruence between teachers’ self-reported mindset beliefs and their actual teaching practices within the framework of implicit theories of intelligence. A total of 226 middle school teachers (65.90% female, average age = 31.70 years, SD = 5.03; average education year = 16.23, SD = 1.49; average teaching experience = 6.52 years, SD = 4.17) from Shanghai City, mainland China, completed the growth mindset inventory (GMI) for measuring self-reported growth mindset beliefs and underwent classroom observations, which recorded the frequency of their growth mindset-oriented feedback practices while teaching. Subsequently, the 20 teachers with the most extreme GMI scores (i.e., the 10 teachers with the highest scores and the 10 teachers with the lowest scores from this initial pool) were invited to take part in semi-structured interviews to understand the reasons behind the possible congruence/incongruence. Interesting results were found. First, the results of the spearman correlation and multiple regression analyses suggested incongruence between teachers’ self-reported mindset beliefs and their actual feedback practices in real classroom settings for those with growth and neutral mindsets but congruence for those with fixed mindsets. Second, the results of the semi-structured interviews further illustrated that whether teachers demonstrated congruence/incongruence in their growth mindset beliefs and actual growth mindset-oriented feedback practices in the classroom was influenced by contextual factors such as institutional policies, cultural orientations, community expectations, and the general educational competition environment. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the factors influencing the alignment between mindset beliefs and teaching practices, which highlight the need for addressing these discrepancies in teacher development programs.

The Neurophysiological Costs of Learning in a Noisy Classroom: An Ecological Virtual Reality Study.

Many real-life situations can be extremely noisy, which makes it difficult to understand what people say. Here, we introduce a novel audiovisual virtual reality experimental platform to study the behavioral and neurophysiological consequences of background noise on processing continuous speech in highly realistic environments. We focus on a context where the ability to understand speech is particularly important: the classroom. Participants (n = 32) experienced sitting in a virtual reality classroom and were told to pay attention to a virtual teacher giving a lecture. Trials were either quiet or contained background construction noise, emitted from outside the classroom window. Two realistic types of noise were used: continuous drilling and intermittent air hammers. Alongside behavioral outcomes, we measured several neurophysiological metrics, including neural activity (EEG), eye-gaze and skin conductance (galvanic skin response). Our results confirm the detrimental effect of background noise. Construction noise, and particularly intermittent noise, was associated with reduced behavioral performance, reduced neural tracking of the teacher's speech and an increase in skin conductance, although it did not have a significant effect on alpha-band oscillations or eye-gaze patterns. These results demonstrate the neurophysiological costs of learning in noisy environments and emphasize the role of temporal dynamics in speech-in-noise perception. The finding that intermittent noise was more disruptive than continuous noise supports a "habituation" rather than "glimpsing" hypothesis of speech-in-noise processing. These results also underscore the importance of increasing the ecologically relevance of neuroscientific research and considering acoustic, temporal, and semantic features of realistic stimuli as well as the cognitive demands of real-life environments.

The VR-AI–Assisted Simulation for Content Knowledge Application in Pre-Service EFL Teacher Training

Pre-service teachers (PSTs) of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) need extensive training, preparing them for challenges encountered in real classrooms. Such challenges include presenting the target content knowledge in front of the class and promptly responding to students’ questions on the content. High-immersion virtual reality (VR) is increasingly seen as technology facilitating teacher training. When integrated with Artificial Intelligence (AI), VR simulations can enhance teacher education by providing real-world practice opportunities. Drawing on cognitive flexibility theory (CFT), this case study investigated how pre-service EFL teachers (N = 17) in Poland interpret the VR-AI–assisted simulation designed to facilitate their content knowledge application. The results suggest that such simulations are valuable for professional development and reflective practice regarding content knowledge in pre-service EFL teacher training. The findings contribute to the broader understanding of the integration of VR and AI technology in language teachers’ training programs aiming to support the application of content knowledge in real-life classrooms.

Pre-service teachers' understanding of teaching L2 French interactional competence through TBLT: Insights from task design processes and post-implementation reflections

This paper reports on a university seminar for pre-service teachers (PST) of L2 French in which a conversation analytic concept of language use was combined with the methodology of task-based language teaching (TBLT) to teach L2 interactional competence (L2 IC). In the course, participants carried out a needs analysis, designed pedagogical tasks that focused on teaching L2 IC and trialed them in real classrooms before evaluating both their tasks' success and their own learning process. In a post-hoc study, data gathered from the course including pre-design comments, written design rationales, audio recordings of the group design meetings, oral and written feedback and post-implementation comments were analyzed using Qualitative Content Analysis to find out in what respects the PST's cognition with regard to teaching L2 IC changed during the seminar. The results show that there were some dynamics in the PST's cognition, particularly regarding their view of learner factors in task accomplishment and the targeting of specific social actions. Other aspects of PST's cognition remained more stable as their initial beliefs were confirmed by the task design process.

Enhancing preservice teachers’ noticing via adaptive feedback in a virtual reality classroom

BackgroundDespite the relevance of adaptive performance feedback in teacher education, it remains unclear if it improves preservice teachers’ noticing abilities. AimsThis study aimed to investigate the influence of feedback on teachers' noticing abilities, specifically in the context of visually attending to disruptions within a virtual reality (VR) classroom. We examined the effect of feedback conditions (adaptive/static/no feedback) on three aspects of teachers’ visual attention performance (VAP): selective visual attention, visual scan scope, and visual sensitivity to significant events. SampleThe sample consisted of 98 preservice teachers who were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. MethodsWe used linear mixed-effects modeling to examine feedback effects in a VR classroom with eye tracking. VAP was measured by both subjective (self-report) and objective (the number of fixations on students versus on objects; the degree of dispersions of fixation locations; the number of seen disruptions and the average time to first fixate on a disruption) measures. Adaptive feedback was based on real-time process data from eye tracking and provided participants with individualized evaluations of their actions, while static feedback only offered generic recommendations. ResultsWe found that participants in both feedback conditions perceived their (subjective) VAP to be improving compared to the control group. But the actual objective VAP only improved for teachers receiving adaptive feedback. ConclusionsThis study provides empirical support for using adaptive feedback systems based on real-time process data in enhancing preservice teachers’ professional competence in noticing significant classroom events.

Longitudinal effects of a scenario-based learning intervention on preservice teacher self-efficacy

We explore how an online ‘scenario-based learning’ (SBL) intervention is associated with the teaching-related self-efficacy of 1261 preservice teachers recruited from an initial teacher education (ITE) program in the UK. Participants completed four 1-hour online sessions involving realistic classroom scenarios and received real-time feedback on their responses. Results showed a positive upward trajectory for self-efficacy with some variation among the self-efficacy subdomains. Results from open-ended responses following the intervention showed how reflection on scenarios and feedback played a role in preservice teachers' self-efficacy. The findings highlight the benefits of providing preservice teachers with low-risk, authentic classroom experiences bolstered by expert feedback and opportunities for reflection.

LCANet: a model for analysis of students real-time sentiment by integrating attention mechanism and joint loss function

By recognizing students’ facial expressions in actual classroom situations, the students’ emotional states can be quickly uncovered, which can help teachers grasp the students’ learning rate, which allows teachers to adjust their teaching strategies and methods, thus improving the quality and effectiveness of classroom teaching. However, most previous facial expression recognition methods have problems such as missing key facial features and imbalanced class distributions in the dateset, resulting in low recognition accuracy. To address these challenges, this paper proposes LCANet, a model founded on a fused attention mechanism and a joint loss function, which allows the recognition of students’ emotions in real classroom scenarios. The model uses ConvNeXt V2 as the backbone network to optimize the global feature extraction capability of the model, and at the same time, it enables the model to pay closer attention to the key regions in facial expressions. We incorporate an improved Channel Spatial Attention (CSA) module as a way to extract more local feature information. Furthermore, to mitigate the class distribution imbalance problem in the facial expression dataset, we introduce a joint loss function. The experimental results show that our LCANet model has good recognition rates on both the public emotion datasets FERPlus, RAF-DB and AffectNet, with accuracies of 91.43%, 90.03% and 64.43%, respectively, with good robustness and generalizability. Additionally, we conducted experiments using the model in real classroom scenarios, detecting and accurately predicting students’ classroom emotions in real time, which provides an important reference for improving teaching in smart teaching scenarios.

Digital ambitions vs. classroom reality in Norwegian lower secondary schools: What digital competencies are students developing over time?

Despite high political ambitions, the increased use of digital technology in lower secondary school has resulted in little indication of the advanced use of digital skills. Drawing on video-recorded lessons (N = 29) from five schools in Norway over time and across two national curricula, this study mapped the opportunities students had to develop digital skills in English classrooms. The findings provide nuanced insight into the instruction of digital skills in highly digitalised schools. Despite a slight increase in digital skills after the 2020 reform, our findings indicate that digital ambitions in the curriculum were not reflected in classroom reality.

The influence of emotions on science teaching: a case study with three early childhood education teachers

Teaching science in early childhood education (ECE) is crucial for fostering essential scientific thinking skills, which are vital for young learners’ development and formative trajectories. While this educational level presents exciting opportunities for integrating science teaching, it also poses challenges related to teachers ́ cognitive, pedagogical, and emotional constraints. Recognizing the pivotal role of teachers’ emotions in shaping their practices, we aim to specifically examine the influence of teachers’ emotions on science teaching in ECE, an area that remains underresearched. We conducted a multiple case study involving three ECE teachers in La Plata, Argentina, who demonstrated a strong interest in improving their pedagogical practices despite acknowledging their difficulties and insecurities in teaching science. We explored their emotions and how they relate to science lesson planning and implementation through surveys, in-depth interviews, and observations. Data collection was designed in three stages: pre-active, interactive, and post-active teaching. First, we surveyed the range of negative and positive emotions that teachers experienced toward sciences, rooted in their personal and formative prior experiences, and examined how these emotions influenced their planning (pre-active stage). Subsequently, we investigated the emotions associated with science teaching in the interactive stage and recorded classroom observations to document how they implemented their plans. Finally, we conducted in-depth interviews with the teachers while they watched the recorded class videos, allowing them to reflect on their decision-making and implementation characteristics (post-active stage). Our findings reveal a dichotomy: negative emotions derived from past experiences reduce engagement, while positive emotions enhance motivation and enrich the learning environment. Negative emotions arising from the implementation of science activities in real classroom contexts may lead to canceled classes, whereas positive emotions foster persistence and optimism. We discuss the significance of emotional awareness in teaching practices, emphasizing the importance of understanding and managing negative emotions through teacher training and professional development programs. This approach can enhance teacher confidence and satisfaction, ultimately contributing to improved early childhood science education.

A Machine Learning Framework for Classroom EEG Recording Classification: Unveiling Learning-Style Patterns

Classroom EEG recordings classification has the capacity to significantly enhance comprehension and learning by revealing complex neural patterns linked to various cognitive processes. Electroencephalography (EEG) in academic settings allows researchers to study brain activity while students are in class, revealing learning preferences. The purpose of this study was to develop a machine learning framework to automatically classify different learning-style EEG patterns in real classroom environments. Method: In this study, a set of EEG features was investigated, including statistical features, fractal dimension, higher-order spectra, entropy, and a combination of all sets. Three different machine learning classifiers, random forest (RF), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), and multilayer perceptron (MLP), were used to evaluate the performance. The proposed framework was evaluated on the real classroom EEG dataset, involving EEG recordings featuring different teaching blocks: reading, discussion, lecture, and video. Results: The findings revealed that statistical features are the most sensitive feature metric in distinguishing learning patterns from EEG. The statistical features and RF classifier method tested in this study achieved an overall best average accuracy of 78.45% when estimated by fivefold cross-validation. Conclusions: Our results suggest that EEG time domain statistics have a substantial role and are more reliable for internal state classification. This study might be used to highlight the importance of using EEG signals in the education context, opening the path for educational automation research and development.