Teaching Routines Research Articles

Gamification in Education and Demand for Acquired Skills: A Systematic Review

The main focus of the paper is to present a systematic review of research by analyzing the state of gamification in higher education and its connection to labor demand. 80 papers published in high-impact academic journals over the last decade are reviewed. This study contributes to the research by attributing embedded gamification to skills acquired for recruitment purposes. In terms of managerial implications, research findings in the area have encouraged educators to embed gaming elements in their teaching routines to not only increase students' levels of motivation, engagement, and knowledge retention, but also to release into the labor market a sought-after workforce with all the necessary skills. Therefore, this paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the universal learning model, which ensures improvement of learning tasks with a view to training competitive specialists. The results suggest that the skills acquired by students in an educational process with integrated game-based elements tend to be in high demand on the labor market. The novelty of the work lies in the taxonomy of theories and methods in the field related to the acquisition of essential skills.

Border crossing perspectives of prospective teachers’ first-time science microteaching experiences

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was on understanding and interpreting five minoritised pre-service teachers’ past educational experiences that impacted their first-time science microteaching experiences in a science teaching methods course. The study is unique because it illuminates and contributes to the literature on the importance of minoritised prospective teachers’ educational experiences in their pre-service preparation and how these experiences challenge or contradict the urgency of equitable science instruction in traditional teacher education instructional discourse. The study draws on the literature on border crossing as a guiding theoretical framework, and phenomenology as a guiding methodological framework to analyse first time science teaching experiences. Data included videos and written narratives of first-time science teaching experiences. Analysis indicated that past educational experience of being left out in doing science underscored minoritised pre-service teachers’ first-time science teaching experiences. Furthermore, they had created navigation strategies to counter the past educational experiences by challenging and modifying science teaching routines and devising equitable ways to use science teaching resources to cultivate a sense of belonging. The study suggests that future science education research would benefit from attention to minoritised pre-service teachers’ experiences used to challenge or contradict past educational inequities.

Stress among university lecturers with Online Teaching during COVID-19 Pandemic in Vietnam.

Background: Stress has different meanings for each person. It is a part of our daily human experience, but it is associated with several different problems and outcomes, during the COVID-19 pandemic which changed many aspects of our lives, including education. It is important to explore the lecturers' stress which contributes to their effective teaching. Methods: This study used an online questionnaire from April to May 2022. The convenience sample included 247 lecturers in universities in Vietnam, aged 23 to 50+ years. Demographic and stress-related information was measured using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS- 10) questionnaire. Chi-square tests were used to analyze the association between these factors and the stress level. Results: Most of the respondents were female (77.7%), the majority were aged from 31 to 40 years (45.7%), and most worked long hours. The survey found that 83.4% of participants had moderate levels of stress, and 8.1% and 8.5% with low and high levels of stress respectively. Findings demonstrated consistent associations among education level (p=0.025), working hours per week (p=0.00), teaching methods (p=0.036), and level of stress. Conclusions: The prevalence of lecturers with moderate stress levels was substantial. The changes in education had been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacted teaching routines and the stress of lecturers. Understanding the associated factors with stress could assist in reducing levels and improving the efficiency of education.

Online teaching dexterity-implications for post-pandemic higher education online teaching competencies

ABSTRACT Lecturers’ pandemic challenges with transitioning to online teaching indicate them needing better ‘online teaching dexterity’ or the ability to negotiate a range of online teaching situations. This kind of teaching competency needs to be better understood as institutions are seeking more educational flexibility through online learning beyond the pandemic. Using phenomenology, this study distils the meaning of online teaching dexterity from lecturers’ online teaching experiences during the pandemic. Semi-structured interviews with 19 lecturers from a university in New Zealand found that they manifested online teaching dexterity through continuously reshaping their seeing, communicating, juggling, and engagement strategies to changing circumstances. Lecturers established future practices through reconstructing teaching routines and practice-based learning. The study discusses how the lens of online teaching dexterity can be used to reframe post-pandemic online teaching competencies as different forms of adaptive expertise.

Fostering students’ peer relationships through the classroom-based intervention FRIEND-SHIP

ABSTRACT Social inclusion is a key factor in the well-being and mental health of students. This article describes the findings of the FRIEND-SHIP intervention study to promote social competences and social inclusion within classrooms. The data presented are drawn from teacher interviews conducted before and after the FRIEND-SHIP intervention with students in primary and lower secondary schools, as well as from entries in diaries that the teachers kept during the intervention. A thematic analysis suggests that the intervention improved both students’ social competences and their social inclusion. Furthermore, the program enhanced teachers’ awareness of their daily teaching routines. Suggestions for the program’s improvement based on its practical implementation are also presented and discussed.

Teachers Learning Classroom Sociology and Social Justice in Primary Education

Classroom sociology is a powerful discipline that helps students develop a sense of identity, achieve success, and experience well-being while building a strong community in the classroom. Teachers who can see beneath the surface and are aware of classroom sociology create a better and more just learning environment for learners, especially in primary education. This study focuses on improving teachers’ classroom sociology and social justice awareness. Researchers designed a four-week in-service classroom sociology program for primary school teachers. The program aimed to improve the teachers’ awareness and behaviours in terms of classroom sociology and social justice. This applied research was conducted using an in-service program intervention with 12 primary school teacher participants. Data was collected from in-class observations, teacher ethnography notes, participant evaluations, and classroom observations. Initially, participants were more focused on academic performance and teaching routines and largely ignored the social context of the classroom. At the end of the study, teacher participants’ awareness of classroom sociology and social justice increased, and both their attitudes towards their students and their teaching methods changed in a positive manner.

Teaching routines and student-centered mathematics instruction: The essential role of conferring to understand student thinking and reasoning

We compare two lessons with respect to how a teacher centers student mathematical thinking to move instruction forward through enactment of five mathematically productive teaching routines: Conferring To Understand Student Thinking and Reasoning, Structuring Mathematical Student Talk, Working With Selected and Sequenced Student Math Ideas, Working with Public Records of Students’ Mathematical Thinking, and Orchestrating Mathematical Discussion. Findings show that the lessons differ in the enactment of teaching routines, especially Conferring to Understand Student Thinking and Reasoning which resulted in a difference in student-centeredness of the instruction. This difference highlights whose mathematics was being centralized in the classroom and whether the focus was on correct answers and procedures or on students’ mathematical thinking and justifying.

The devil’s finest trick: routines that make teachers matter against their better judgement

ABSTRACT Once teaching-learning events are conceptualized as inter-discursive encounters, it becomes clear that mathematics classroom talk is rife with invisible pitfalls. There are many types of unacknowledged discursive gaps, some of them necessary for learning and some potentially harmful. Such gaps may exist also between the teacher’s intentions and her habitual moves, most of which are too brief and automatic to be controlled. Unbeknown to the teacher, her basic communicational routines may deprive her students of proper learning opportunities. Some seemingly innocent teaching routines may also constitute invisible crevices through which prejudice and injustice enter the conversation on mathematical objects. In this talk, I argue that if the devil is in the finest detail of classroom communication, it is the detail that must be considered in the attempts to exorcise the devil. I begin with illustrations of these claims and conclude with a reflection on what teachers can do to sensitize themselves to discursive pitfalls and to eradicate or change those routines that carry the greatest risks.

Toward a meaningful technology for instrumental music education: Teachers’ voice

In musical instrument training, researchers have gradually started exploring the potential of interactive technologies supporting learning processes and teaching methods. Although numerous technological tools have been proposed to enhance instrument learning and teaching, these methods rarely find their way into daily practice and teaching routines. In this study, we report data from an online survey study administered to violin and drum kit teachers. Results reveal distinct learning profiles of novice violin and drum kit students and exhibit a variety of teaching approaches toward adults and children. Furthermore, they provide more insight into teachers’ opinions on the use of virtual reality (VR) and smart wearable technologies in early instrumental training, as well as their attitudes regarding technology design. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of involving teachers in the initial stages of technology design to facilitate technology acceptance and adoption, prevent potential mismatches between requirements regarding technological functionality and actual user needs, and promote musical growth and skill acquisition.

Investigating teachers' experience and self-efficacy beliefs across gender in implementing the new standards-based curriculum in Ghana

The introduction of the new standards-based curriculum in Ghana required teachers to make adjustments, including teaching routines. Despite the challenges encountered in the introduction of this new curriculum, its passage was successful. Previous studies have revealed mixed reactions from teachers and how their experiences affect their efficacy during the implementation stage. This study examined whether teachers' experiences and self-efficacy beliefs influenced the implementation of the new curriculum reforms across gender in Ghana. The cluster sampling technique was used to survey 693 basic school teachers who responded to a questionnaire. Descriptive and regression-based inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. A preliminary assessment showed that teachers exhibited a moderate-to-high level of teaching efficacy in student engagement, instructional strategy, and classroom management. Furthermore, the study also revealed that teaching experience was positively related to efficacy. However, gender significantly moderated the relationship between teaching experience and teachers' efficacy in student engagement as well as teaching experience and efficacy in student engagement. Findings imply that even though teachers may be more likely to plan and deliver pedagogical content and carry out instructional activities, their sense of efficacy in managing their classroom is questionable. Emphasizing teaching experience in improving their efficacy in curriculum implementation is key, especially among female teachers. Programs or capacity-building training workshops that seek to improve teachers' ability to manage the classroom environment should be organized regularly to promote effective curriculum implementation.

Investigating opportunities for integrating methodology when teaching a life science topic (meiosis) to fourth-year pre-service teachers: A case study

Pre-service teachers (PSTs) are expected to effectively integrate their content knowledge with their knowledge of teaching when teaching classes after qualification. This integration can, however, be challenging for PSTs because the two components are often taught separately at teacher education institutions. This qualitative case study investigated the possibilities of integrating the teaching of the two components at a South African university educating future science teachers. Data in the form of video-recorded lectures, video-stimulated recall interviews with a teacher educator, and focus group interviews with 15 PSTs were collected. Data analysis was mainly deductive informed by the topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge conceptual framework. Many opportunities for integrating methodology were created by the teacher educator while teaching meiosis content. The study concludes that integrating methodology when teaching content courses is possible. However, the integration should include explicit discussion of the pedagogical reasoning behind the visible teaching routines.

Teachers’ Beliefs, the Concept of Face and Classroom Practices

Students who want to be English language teachers enter teacher preparation programs viewing, teaching and learning from their own experience as students as pointed out by many researchers (e.g., Curtner-Smith, Hastie, & Kinchin, 2008; Richardson, 1996; Russell, 2008, Schweisfurth 2015). They want to teach the way they were taught while they were at the universities. Often, they have a role model, a teacher who serves as a guide an inspiration for them. After they graduate and start working as English teachers, what they face, in reality, sometimes overlaps with the information they were given as students. So, their beliefs about teaching alter and change depending on their teaching contexts. Relating theory and practice enables pre-service teachers to transfer the necessary knowledge and skills gained at the university level on actual teaching practice (Bell & Robinson, 2004). Awareness and enhancing educational processes require an understanding of teachers' views and actions. They are closely linked to teachers’ strategies for coping with challenges and difficulties in their daily teaching routines and at the same time they influence students’ motivation about the learning process. The purpose of this paper is to address the importance of teachers’ beliefs and actual classroom practices about the importance of teaching prepositions in their classes. Also, the concept of face, loosing or saving face be it of the teachers or students is introduced in this paper. Cases when teachers’ beliefs converge or diverge with real class practices are discussed pointing out the factors that influence teaching practices. Teachers’ beliefs and current practices are important for understanding and improving the educational processes. The authors will compare the teachers’ beliefs and their actual practices in English classes and how is the concept of face employed in EFL classes. For the purpose of this paper, three English teachers out of 20 were randomly selected during a training seminar provided By British Council, Albania. The concept of face is examined through three English teachers who teach at a primary school and are observed how they provide explanation, regarding prepositions, to their students. The findings show that the concept of face is not introduced to students in any class or subject. It is recommended that students should be taught about the concept of face, types of face, how they are related to individuals and the influence that the concept of face has on teachers’ daily teaching routines. Moreover, there is no study on the concept of face in the Albanian context and especially in the EFL classes. So, in the future other studies are needed to stress the importance of the concept of face in the Albanian culture.

Validation of an original Behavioral Changes Scale on the Use of Digital Technologies During Social Distancing.

The social distancing (SD) adopted during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has transformed the internet from a convenience into a necessity. The behavioral changes caused by isolation range from adaptation of consumption, work, and teaching routines to altered leisure options to occupy idle time at home. Such transformations can be positive, expanding use of digital technologies (DT), but they can also have serious future physical and emotional consequences if there conscious use of technological devices is lacking. The study aimed to validate the Behavioral Changes Scale on the Use of Digital Technologies During Social Distancing (BCSDTSD), an instrument for assessing behavioral changes related to use of DT during SD. Validation of the BCSDTSD in five phases: 1. construction of an initial scale with 10 questions; 2. evaluation of the questions by a panel of experts; 3. application to 1,012 volunteers via the internet; 4. statistical analysis of the results; and 5. preparation of the validated final version of the BCSDTSD. Data were analyzed using the dplyr, psy , and paran packages and the REdaS statistical program. Three statistical criteria were used in the factor analysis (FA). FA confirmed that all 10 questions in the questionnaire should be maintained, confirming its robust construction, and Cronbach's alpha demonstrated its internal consistency with a value of 0.725, which is satisfactory for first-application questionnaires. The BCSDTSD instrument was validated for assessment of behavioral changes related to the use of DT during SD.

Beyond Brutality: Addressing Anti-Blackness in Everyday Scenes of Teaching and Learning

While scenes of incredible and troubling violence, such as that of Black children handcuffed or brutalized by school security officers, have sometimes been leveraged to highlight the anti-Blackness endemic in schools, Saidiya Hartman’s (1997) book Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America suggests that we must also attend to scenes in which terror can hardly be discerned to identify and unravel the subtle threads of anti-Blackness that pervade contemporary schooling. That is this paper’s aim: to look beyond the scenes of spectacular suffering and to locate the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness in the mundane routines of teaching and learning in schools. To do so, we bring Hartman's work to bear on recent theories of racism as an affective phenomenon, that is, as a relational and emotional phenomenon, as felt encounters with material consequences (Ahmed, 2004; Tolia and Crang, 2010; Zembylas, 2015), to consider the relationships between teachers and students in schools and how these relationships produce and are produced through anti-Blackness, relationships that, while not explicitly violent, nevertheless reinforce Black subjugation. Hartman’s work locates three particular forms of technologies of affect that produce and are produced through anti-Blackness: empathic identification; paternal benevolence; and the shame-mongering of burdened individuality. We argue that these affective technologies also circulate in contemporary schools, albeit in forms that are uniquely modulated to both education and to the particularities of our officially antiracist, multicultural moment. We conclude by exploring the implications of these findings for teacher education.

Teaching via Zoom: Emergent Discourse Practices and Complex Footings in the Online/Offline Classroom Interface

The COVID-19 pandemic caused educational institutions across the world to face a new reality: when teachers and students do not share the same physical space (fractured ecologies), drastic changes in the everyday procedures and routines of teaching become an immediate necessity. In this paper, we trace some of the effects of this new situation in online classes of three experienced university teachers in the early days of the pandemic. We zoom in on dimensions of the classroom interface such as: turn-taking procedures, socialization, peer scaffolding and feedback; strategic footing changes across institutional and conversational roles; joking and humor. Not surprisingly, we found that the systematic absence of multimodal contextualization cues like gaze direction and tracing the origin of sound/speech were a trouble source in these online multiparty settings. We also saw, however, that teachers and students were successful in reinventing themselves and in devising new ways to deal with the changed circumstances. We end the paper with a number of implications for research into the classroom interface, both online and offline.

Converting to inclusive online flipped classrooms in response to Covid-19 lockdown

The global Covid-19 pandemic caused havoc in higher education teaching routines and several residential institutions encouraged instructors to convert existing modules to flipped classrooms as part of an online, blended learning strategy. Even though this seems a reasonable request, instructors straightaway encountered challenges which include a vague concept of what an online flipped classroom entails within a higher education context, a lack of guidelines for converting an existing module, facilitating learner engagement as well as unique challenges for inclusion of all learners in a digitally divided developing country in Covid-19 lockdown. In order to respond, we embarked on a study to identify the distinguishing characteristics of flipped classrooms to understand the as-is and to-be scenarios using a systematic literature review. The characteristics were used to develop of design considerations to convert to an online flipped classroom for higher education taking our diverse learner profiles into account. We subsequently converted a short module in an information systems department and shortly report on our experience.

Students’ prejudice as a teaching challenge: How European history educators deal with controversial and sensitive issues in a climate of political polarization

ABSTRACT Growing polarization in European societies has changed not only political landscapes but also public debates about the past, which has, in turn, had an impact on the way history is taught and talked about in schools. This article explores how these trends are experienced by history educators across Europe and asks which issues history educators perceive to be controversial and sensitive and how they approach the prejudices they frequently encounter when addressing controversial and sensitive issues. Based on focus group discussions with 33 participants from 25 European countries, the article identifies three different forms of prejudice and describes how the focus group participants tried to undermine nationalism, counter xenophobia and fight anti-Semitism. Interpreted from a practice theory perspective, the examples shared by the focus group participants indicate that teaching strategies from the disciplinary approach “toolbox” can help to undermine nationalist stereotypical thinking if they are fine-tuned to the interests and emotions of the learning group and that history teaching routines shaped by the disciplinary approach need to be interrupted on occasion in order to reflect on and deconstruct xenophobic or anti-Semitic prejudice. Overall, the article argues that history teachers need to be aware of the affective dimension of historical learning, including underlying or open prejudices held by students, in order to support the teaching of democratic education goals such as respect and openness to cultural otherness.

35 Years on the Road from Research to Practice: A Review of Studies on Four Content Enhancement Routines for Inclusive Subject‐Area Classes, Part II

AbstractThis article is the second part of a two‐part article focusing on research that has been conducted on Content Enhancement Routines, instructional routines developed to be used during inclusive subject‐area instruction. Part I of this article (Schumaker and Fisher, 2021) reviews the original validation studies that were conducted on four Content Enhancement Routines. This second part of the article reviews 10 empirical studies that have been conducted comparing the effects of two professional development methods (i.e., a computerized workshop and a live workshop) for instructing teachers to use the same four teaching routines. In every study, teacher knowledge of the routine and teacher preparation for using the routine were measured. In four of the studies, teacher implementation of the routine within inclusive classes as well as student performance were also measured. Results were reported for the whole group of students in all four studies, and for students with LD in three of the studies. In all of the studies, teachers made large and significant gains in performance on all measures after both workshop conditions, representing large effect sizes. All in‐service teachers performed the routine at a high level of quality in their classes after 3 hours of instruction. In two studies, the teachers who participated in the computerized instruction earned significantly higher implementation scores than the teachers who participated in the live instruction. Regarding student performance across the studies, the whole group of students and the students with LD earned significantly higher scores on the posttests than on the pretests for both groups of teachers, again representing large effect sizes. Additionally, in two studies, the whole groups of students whose teachers used the software earned significantly higher scores on posttests than the whole groups of students whose teachers participated in live sessions. These studies replicate and extend the studies reviewed in Part I of this article; they show that quality teacher use of four Content Enhancement Routines results in increases in performance for all students, and for students with LD in inclusive classes.

What Early User Involvement Could Look Like—Developing Technology Applications for Piano Teaching and Learning

Numerous technological solutions have been proposed to promote piano learning and teaching, but very few with market success. We are convinced that users’ needs should be the starting point for an effective and transdisciplinary development process of piano-related Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (TaHIL) applications. Thus, we propose to include end users in the initial stage of technology development. We gathered insights from adult piano teachers and students through an online survey and digital interviews. Three potential literature-based solutions have been visualized as scenarios to inspire participants throughout the interviews. Our main findings indicate that potential end users consider posture and body movements, teacher–student communication, and self-practice as crucial aspects of piano education. Further insights resulted in so-called acceptance requirements for each scenario, such as enabling meaningful communication in distance teaching, providing advanced data on a performer’s body movement for increased well-being, and improving students’ motivation for self-practice, all while allowing or even promoting artistic freedom of expression and having an assisting instead of judging character. By putting the users in the center of the fuzzy front end of technology development, we have gone a step further toward concretizing TaHIL applications that may contribute to the routines of piano teaching and learning.

‘I like it’: Exploring teachers' motivation for using classroom-based physical activity in Danish public schools from a self-determination perspective. Results from a mixed methods study

In the context of a national physical activity policy, this study explores Danish school teachers' motivation for using classroom-based physical activity. Through a mixed methods approach, the study reveals a number of key motivational drivers such as supporting teachers’ autonomy, competence and collaboration. Reversely, the study also reveals barriers for integrating physical activity, such as a lack of time, lack of support and lack of appropriate training. Teachers are important facilitators in the integration of daily physical activity. However, work still needs to be done in order to support teachers to integrate physical activity into teaching routines effectively and successfully.