Teaching Episodes Research Articles

Medical ethics curriculum for surgical residents: Results of a pilot project

This study sought to develop and evaluate a medical ethics curriculum designed specifically for surgical residents. The learning needs of surgical residents relevant to ethics were determined by using a structured literature review and synthesis strategy. We identified 5 primary areas of importance for ethics education for surgical residents: withdrawing and withholding treatment, advance directives, do-not-resuscitate orders, informed consent, and communicating bad news. Learning objectives were developed, and teaching plans were designed for four 90-minute interactive teaching episodes on the basis of adult learning principles. We surveyed residents using a published survey instrument modified for surgery to identify residents' beliefs about the usefulness of ethics training, confidence in addressing ethical issues, and factual knowledge of ethics questions. Twenty surgical residents at a single institution completed the pretest and posttest close-ended surveys. Results showed that although 88% had formal ethics exposure in medical school, 93% considered ethics education at the resident level to be a "very important" or "important" topic. Residents' confidence in addressing ethical issues showed statistically significant improvement between pretest and posttest surveys for 13 of 23 items. There were no statistically significant linear relationships between postgraduate year of residency and the pretest confidence items or the number of correct responses on the pretest multiple-choice items. Despite the prevalence of ethics education during medical school, surgical residents welcome formal instruction on numerous ethical issues pertinent to surgical practice. A focused curriculum can be developed that has a measurable impact on residents' confidence in addressing ethical issues.

On Exhibit: Assessing Future Teachers' Preparedness

Assessment is an essential consideration in revising a secondary teacher education program. The restructured program at Northern Arizona University is described, with special attention given to the final exhibition students perform. This exhibition consists of a visual display of artifacts, a videotaped teaching episode, an oral presentation of the student's view of an “ideal classroom,” and a question-and-answer session. Following the description of the exhibition, the article explores lessons learned in evaluating students through final exhibitions. Key considerations include the impact of the exhibition on student grades and learning experiences, relationships with other education professionals, and the incorporation of teacher standards as an evaluative criterion appropriate for the exhibition.

A process for understanding how a field‐based course influences teachers’ beliefs and practices

This study examined changes in teachers’ beliefs and practices using video to enhance self‐evaluation and guided reflection. Participants (N = 11) were enrolled in afield‐based intensive reading methods course that included a practicum component. Pre‐ and post‐data were collected from four sources: (a) a teaching‐beliefs questionnaire, (b) videotapes of two teaching episodes, (c) videotapes of two post‐teaching reflective conferences, and (d) a videotaped portfolio presentation. Analysis followed the method developed by Menges and Rando (1989) to categorize espoused and implicit theories of teaching. In addition, four cases were analyzed for in‐depth descriptions of the change process (Merriam, 1988). Multicase analysis provided insight into how teacher change occurred through opportunities for guided reflection.

Quality of Adolescent Mother‐Infant Interactions and Clinical Determinations of Risk Status

Thirty‐seven low‐income adolescent mother‐infant pairs who were participating in a short term early intervention program were observed during teaching episodes two times over a six month period. Independent of teaching and play assessments, clinical determinations of maternal risk status were made based on detailed home visitation notes and observations. Consistently, maternal risk status was significantly associated with more sensitive parenting behaviors including responsiveness to infant cues and to infant distress, social and emotional growth fostering behaviors and cognitive growth fostering behaviors.

Low-income fathers and their infants: Interactions during teaching episodes

This study sought to explore low-income father–infant interactions in teaching situations. Forty-four biological fathers and infants, recruited from an ongoing study of early intervention, were observed using the NCAST Teaching Scale during a teaching task in the home. Results indicated that fathers who lived with their infants were more sensitive to infant cues during the interactions. Also, fathers identified as “lower risk,” based on a risk index created from demographic characteristics, were more sensitive to their infants during interactions, had higher total father NCAST scores and higher total NCAST scores during teaching interactions. © 1999 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health

The teacher's role in the transformation of students' understanding

The application of constructivist referents for teaching science has received some recent unwarranted criticism. To counter some of the pedagogical criticisms, the teacher's role and actions within a Year 6 science classroom learning community are described. In particular, my interpretation of two teaching episodes shows how the teacher helped a group of students transform their understanding of electrical circuits. The teacher in this study mediated learning by monitoring the transformation of student understanding and negotiating scientific practices—teaching practices which need to be illustrated more fully by researchers to avoid further confusion about the application of idea-based social constructivism. I argue that the teacher's role, from a social constructivist perspective, is to employ whatever strategies are needed to help students develop a deeper understanding of canonical science.

Elements of Epistemological Knowledge for Mathematics Teachers.

Epistemological knowledge of mathematics in social learning settings is an important type of professional knowledge for mathematics teachers because it refers to social and interactive processes of communication. This article focuses on one central aspect of epistemological mathematical knowledge, namely on the problematique of how mathematical signs and symbols gain meaning in the interactive social processes of teaching and learning. A teaching episode is presented and analyzed from an epistemological perspective. This analysis leads to the identification of three important components of epistemological knowledge that could be introduced into the education of mathematics teachers: the developmental nature of mathematical knowledge; interactive social processes of mathematical communication as autonomous systems; and the interdependence of social and epistemological constraints in mathematical communication.

Merging Naturalistic Teaching and Peer-Based Strategies to Address the IEP Objectives of Preschoolers with Autism

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of combining naturalistic teaching and peer-mediated tactics to address children's developmental skills. A multiple baseline design was used to compare three experimental conditions. In the first phase, 6 teachers used naturalistic teaching strategies to address the Individualized Education Program (IEP) objectives of 10 preschoolers with autism. In the second phase, teachers continued to employ naturalistic teaching but added the supplemental components of peer modeling, cooperation, and verbal exchanges (i.e., a combined intervention condition). Finally, teachers implemented sessions without any support or assistance during a four-session maintenance phase. A range of primary and corollary outcomes were collected to examine the effects of the two teaching procedures. Results indicated that teachers often conducted instructional episodes in a 1:1 fashion during the naturalistic teaching phase. With training and practice, however, all 6 teachers involved peers in instructional episodes during the combined intervention condition and continued to incorporate peer mediation during the brief maintenance phase. In comparison to naturalistic tactics only, the involvement of typical peers was also associated with a substantial increase in the duration and rate of skills addressed during each teaching episode. Finally, teachers addressed the same types of developmental skills with the two procedures and provided instruction within a similar range of stimulus contexts or classroom areas. These results are discussed with regard to their implications for future research and practice.

Epistemological Investigation of Classroom Interaction in Elementary Mathematics Teaching.

In everyday teaching, the mathematical meaning of new knowledge is frequently devalued during the course of ritualized formats of communication, such as the “funnel pattern”, and is replaced by social conventions. Problems of understanding occurring during the interactively organized elaboration of the new knowledge require an analysis of the interplay between the social constraints of the communicative process and the epistemological structure of the mathematical knowledge. Specific aspects of the problem of meaning development are investigated in the course of two exemplary second-grade teaching episodes. These are then used to develop and discuss decisive requirements for the maintenance of an interactive constitution of meaning for mathematical knowledge.

Conceptual maps and simulated teaching episodes as indicators of competence in teaching elementary mathematics.

Network representation was used to assess knowledge obtained during a teaching methodology course in elementary mathematics. Participants were the course instructor, 4 teacher educators, and 53 prospective teachers. Relatedness ratings on key terms were used to construct associative networks. Teacher educator networks shared significant similarities to the course instructor's network, and similarities between the teacher educator and prospective teacher networks were as predictive of course grades as similarity to the course instructor. Fourteen of the prospective teachers participated in a simulated teaching task. Network similarity predicted teaching for conceptual understanding, as did final course grade, and was more predictive than were either exams or lab scores. The advantage of associative networks may be in representing patterns of concept relations underlying mental models of teaching. Teaching for conceptual understanding has become one of the fundamental components of reform movements in mathematics education. Educational researchers and professional associations alike are advocating a greater emphasis

Symbolizing as a Constructive Activity in a Computer Microworld

In the design of computer microworlds as media for children's mathematical action, our basic and guiding principle was to create possible actions children could use to enact their mental operations. These possible actions open pathways for children's mathematical activity that coemerge in the activity. We illustrate this coemergence through a constructivist teaching episode with two children working with the computer microworld TIMA: Bars. During this episode, in which the children took turns to partition a bar into fourths and thirds recursively, the symbolic nature of their partitioning operations became apparent. The children developed their own drawings and numeral systems to further symbolize their symbolic mental operations. The symbolic nature of the children's partitioning operations was crucial in their establishment of more conventional mathematical symbols.

Conceptual maps and simulated teaching episodes as indicators of competence in teaching elementary mathematics.

Conceptual maps and simulated teaching episodes as indicators of competence in teaching elementary mathematics.

Using Peer Coaching to Enhance Preschool Teachers' Development and Refinement of Classroom Activities

This study examined teachers' development and refinement of classroom activities. An ABA design was used to compare three experimental conditions. Four teachers planned and conducted their activities independently during an initial phase, as well as evaluated the impact of their efforts with a structured checklist. Conversely, these tasks were completed with a partner during a coaching phase, as teachers observed one another's classroom activities and collaborated in the process of appraising their activities and planning new teaching episodes. Finally, these exercises were again conducted independently during a final maintenance phase. A wide range of outcomes were examined, including each teacher's procedural changes or refinements, corresponding measures of children's participation, teachers' appraisals of their activities and satisfaction with the peer coaching procedure. Four primary results are reported. First, all four teachers made procedural refinements in this study, and three individuals' chang...

The crafts of the classroom: teachers' and students' accounts of the knowledge underpinning effective teaching and learning in classrooms

Abstract This paper describes a qualitative study, funded by the ESRC, of teachers' and students' perceptions of effective teaching and learning in the first year of English secondary schools. The paper is concerned with the active sense making that teachers and students engage in when reflecting on episodes of effective teaching and learning. This sense‐making process, it is argued, underpins particular forms of craft knowledge that are possessed by students and teachers. The elements of teachers' and students' craft knowledge are identified and the patterns of interaction between them are explored. It is shown that the common‐sense theories of participants bear striking associations with the transactional theories of learning proposed by Bruner and Haste and Vygotsky.

Peer mentoring for reflective teaching: a model for nurses who teach.

Given the variety of forums and audiences that post-baccalaureate and masters-prepared nurses address, nurse educators need to introduce students to models for developing teaching expertise over the course of their professional lives. The authors introduce such a framework, called Peer Mentoring for Reflective Teaching. The framework enhances teaching skills through consultation with peer mentors to help nurses design relevant learning experiences and reflect on the planning and presentation of teaching episodes.

Middle School Teachers' Planning for Students with Learning Disabilities

The flow of the planning process model was used to investigate one science and two social studies middle school teachers' preplanning, interactive planning, and postplanning for students with learning disabilities who were mainstreamed into their general education classes. Data were collected from interviews, classroom observations, free-flowing commentary of their lesson plans (think alouds), teachers' planning, videotaped teaching episodes, stimulated recalls, rating scales, and open-ended questions. data analysis revealed that content coverage, classroom/student management, and interest/motivation of the individual student are themes that guide teachers' planning. Teachers' practices and comments reflected little discourse pertaining to knowledge acquisition or planning for students with learning disabilities.

An investigation of two chapter i teachers’ beliefs about reading and instructional practices

Abstract The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between two Chapter I teachers’ reader‐based beliefs about reading and their instructional decision‐making that took place as they planned instruction and during actual teaching episodes, as well as to identify possible constraints and opportunities that may have influenced the decision‐making process. For each participant, the researcher selected a pull‐out class (6–10 students) to observe during 10 separate Chapter I instructional sessions. During the observations, the researcher wrote field notes, audiotaped the lessons, collected relevant learning materials, and interviewed the teachers. All data were qualitatively analyzed by a research team that searched for meaningful patterns between and within the participants. Results indicated that, although the participants shared similar beliefs about reading, there was considerable variation in their instructional practices. The participants’ beliefs affected their decision‐making, how...

Following the Child’s Lead When Teaching Nouns to Preschoolers With Mental Retardation

The current study tested the effects of following the child's attentional lead on the efficiency of object-label teaching. Three preschoolers with mental retardation participated. An alternating-treatments design was used to test relative treatment effects. An elicited-production method of teaching object labels was used to present the words under two conditions. Two sets of 32 nonsense words and unfamiliar objects were randomly assigned to the two teaching conditions to create equivalent goal sets and to control for prior exposure to the words and objects. Under the "following-the-child's-lead" condition, teaching episodes occurred only when the child had sustained attention to a target object or intentionally communicated about the target object. Under the "recruiting-the-child's-attention" condition, the child's attention was recruited intrusively away from his or her object of interest and toward the target object before each teaching episode began. The number of teaching trials per item and per session was carefully controlled. Results indicated that object-label teaching was more efficient under the following-the-child's-lead condition for all three participants.

Using videotape instruction and feedback to improve adolescents' mothering behaviors

The effects of videotape instruction and feedback (videotherapy) on mothering behaviors were evaluated in this longitudinal study. In this study, 31 adolescents and their healthy infants were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. All subjects were videotaped during structured mother-infant teaching episodes in their homes at 1 and 2 months postpartum. Experimental group subjects reviewed the videotaped 1-month teaching episode and received feedback from a specially trained professional nurse who emphasized positive aspects of maternal behavior. Instruction was individualized according to the mother's needs. Results of a repeated measures MONOVA revealed significant differences in the pattern of change over time between subjects in the experimental and control groups on a measure of actual maternal behaviors. Adolescents receiving videotape instruction and feedback obtained significantly higher maternal behavior scores at 1 and 2 months postpartum.

Choosing among alternatives for tracing conceptual change

This study was designed to determine which of three measures would provide the most useful and economical information on changes over time in prospective teachers' conceptions of “effective teaching”. Subjects were 70 elementary and secondary education students in the second and fourth years of a 5-year teacher education program. Cognitive measures were: concept maps of effective teaching, computerized repertory grid interviews on characteristics of good teachers, and observations and critiques of a videotaped teaching episode. Concept maps proved to be the most productive measure, showing both meaningful qualitative changes and statistically significant quantitative changes over time in prospective teachers' conceptions.