Primary Classroom Teachers Research Articles

Reading Comprehension and Autism in the Primary General Education Classroom

Reading comprehension is a critical building block for effective early literacy development. Many students with autism spectrum disorder demonstrate difficulties in reading comprehension. These difficulties may be attributed to deficits in Theory of Mind, Weak Central Coherence, and Executive Functioning. Given the rise in the number of students with this disability participating in the general education setting, practitioners need to acquire the background knowledge on how to effectively teach this population. The purpose of this article is to introduce practitioners to a step-by-step guide for teaching reading comprehension, the characteristics of autism spectrum disorder that may impede students from acquiring reading comprehension, and evidenced-based practices that can be used to improve their comprehension abilities.

Débat historiographie sur la Grande Guerre et étude de cas en histoire : des références pour la classe ?

We take advantage of a course on World War I to question the links between scientific history and the history classroom. To do this we not only deal with the transposition of content knowledge and of inquiry and writing practices, but we also deal with collective work organization in both contexts. This course was built and implemented with teachers in several primary and secondary school classrooms.

From initial teacher education through induction and beyond: a longitudinal study of primary teacher beliefs

A better understanding of the relationship between beginning teachers' beliefs and the pedagogies of teacher education (TE) programmes that support their learning across time can enhance TE programme effectiveness. This 6-year longitudinal study examined the development and change of beginning primary classroom teachers' (n = 6) beliefs about learning to teach. Data sources included reflective writings and semi-structured interviews. These data were generated over a 6-year period from the beginning of a 3-year TE programme to 3 years post-graduation. Inductive analyses of the participants' writings illustrate the nature of the change that occurred in their beliefs about their teacher learning and provide insight into the experiences that shaped these changes. The beginning teachers valued practical and applied pedagogies most in supporting their learning to teach. They reflected retrospectively that TE programme pedagogies promoted a prescriptive approach and restricted them in how they directed their learning to teach. Given the rarity of data-set such as that in this study, this paper asserts the importance of incorporating beginning teachers' retrospective beliefs about their learning in TE programmes as a basis for the design of impactful TE programmes and as a guide to support and direct learning in the induction phase.

Measuring up? The discursive construction of student subjectivities in the Global Children's Challenge™

International concern about ‘alarming’ levels of childhood obesity has seen a proliferation of interventions filtering into school physical education programmes that are designed to influence children's health practices and attitudes. This article addresses one such obesity-prevention intervention, the Global Children's Challenge™, a 50-day pedometer-monitored event, aimed at children and involving their parents and teachers. Our research problematises the effects of the GCC pedometer exercise regime. We demonstrate how the pedometer measurement imperative made available in the GCC not only enables exercise to be measured for potential health benefits but also makes available tools inextricably linked with antagonistic body relations that could propel some students into a self-monitoring world dominated by numbers. We illustrate how the emphasis on measurement allows for comparisons (dividing practices), self-surveillance and surveillance of others in the formation of particular kinds of subjectivities. This study of the discursive construction of student subjectivities in the GCC took place in one strategically chosen Australian primary school. In-depth interviews were conducted with one teacher, four Year-6 students and a parent of each child in order to produce rich contextual data. Foucauldian concepts of power, knowledge and ‘technologies of self’ underpinned the study and Gore's methodologies for analysing ‘techniques of power’ and ‘regimes of truth’ were used to explore the functioning of power and the formation of subjectivities in the GCC. Our analysis suggests a need to move away from the constraining construct of measurement in the primary physical education (PE) classroom and promote self-reflective mindful physical activity rather than telling students when, where and how to move their bodies.

Evaluation of Ethics Perceptions’ Primary School Teachers

In this study, ethical opinions of primary classroom teachers are evaluated. The assessments include: the ownership levels of teachers’ on knowledge of ethics and moral concepts, their views on the concept of virtue, to what extend their awareness of being model towards students, their views on teaching values. Qualitative research method used in this research design was used scientific facts. The population and sample of the study are created by primary classroom teachers located in Van province, Turkey. From that area, 15 classroom teachers consist of this study's sample. Semi- structured interview form is used in the research. The obtained data is analyzed with descriptive and content analysis method from the data analysis techniques of the qualitative research. In the line of analysis and findings, teachers’ not having the knowledge of concept of ethics, their expressing the ethics as concept of morality and their not able to express the difference between two concepts, their explaining the features of individuals who are virtuous rather than knowledge of virtue concept, their having consciousness related to being a model teacher but their confusion about the references of what is supposed to be in the terms of being a model, cause of different family types existing in the society, a possibility of conflict between the school and the family in terms of transferring the religious values so the necessity of giving priority to universal virtues in transferring the values, the necessity of school's having a role in value transferring are resulted in the research.

Notebooks, blogs and commercial video games as evocative objects in classrooms

From the theoretical perspective offered by socio-cultural psychology and the concept of evocative objects, the main goal of this paper is to explore what happened in a primary education classroom where digital objects (commercial video games and blogs) coexisted with more traditional objects such as notebooks. Adopting an ethnographic and action research point of view, we explored the conversations and practices that took place during the school year, when three consecutive workshops were organised around three commercial video games. We focus on one second year elementary school group and their teacher. Three main results were obtained. First, the number of references to notebooks, the internet and video games made by the participants differed depending on the role they played in the workshop. Second, mediated by evocative objects the children, the teacher and the researchers created several innovative scenarios in which specific abilities emerged in relation to particular video games. Finally, evocative objects were mediators in the collaborative situations arising in the classroom.

The impact of including children with intellectual disability in general education classrooms on the academic achievement of their low-, average-, and high-achieving peers

Background This study aimed at assessing the impact of including children with intellectual disability (ID) in general education classrooms with support on the academic achievement of their low-, average-, and high-achieving peers without disability.Method A quasi-experimental study was conducted with an experimental group of 202 pupils from classrooms with an included child with mild or moderate ID, and a control group of 202 pupils from classrooms with no included children with special educational needs (matched pairs sample). The progress of these 2 groups in their academic achievement was compared over a period of 1 school year.Results No significant difference was found in the progress of the low-, average-, or high-achieving pupils from classrooms with or without inclusion.Conclusions The results suggest that including children with ID in primary general education classrooms with support does not have a negative impact on the progress of pupils without disability.

Predicting Weight Status Stability and Change From Fifth Grade to Eighth Grade: The Significant Role of Adolescents' Social-Emotional Well-Being

The primary objective of this study was to predict weight status stability and change across the transition to adolescence using parent reports of child and household routines and teacher and child self-reports of social-emotional development. Data were from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), a nationally representative sample of children who entered kindergarten during 1998-1999 and were followed through eighth grade. At fifth grade, parents reported on child and household routines and the study child and his/her primary classroom teacher reported on the child's social-emotional functioning. At fifth and eighth grade, children were directly weighed and measured at school. Nine mutually-exclusive weight trajectory groups were created to capture stability or change in weight status from fifth to eighth grade: (1) stable obese (ObeSta); (2) obese to overweight (ObePos1); (3) obese to healthy (ObePos2); (4) stable overweight (OverSta); (5) overweight to healthy (OverPos); (6) overweight to obese (OverNeg); (7) stable healthy (HelSta); (8) healthy to overweight (HelNeg1); and (9) healthy to obese (HelNeg2). Except for breakfast consumption at home, school-provided lunches, nighttime sleep duration, household and child routines did not predict stability or change in weight status. Instead, weight status trajectory across the transition to adolescence was significantly predicted by measures of social-emotional functioning at fifth grade. Assessing children's social-emotional well-being in addition to their lifestyle routines during the transition to adolescence is a noteworthy direction for adolescent obesity prevention and intervention.

The primary schoolteacher and physical education: a review of research and implications for Irish physical education

This article reviews research on primary physical education (PE). In primary schools around the world PE is taught by the classroom teacher rather than by a PE specialist. Most classroom teachers feel poorly prepared to teach PE programmes that are meaningful to pupils and provide the types of experiences that lead to lifelong participation. This had led some scholars to suggest that PE taught by non-specialist teachers in the early years may impact upon the broader state and status of PE. There has been much research related to PE and the primary classroom teacher; however, this body of literature has not been critically reviewed to identify important findings, significant challenges, and promising practices. We reviewed international research published between 1990 and 2010, highlighting emerging issues and implications for Irish PE policy and research.

The effect of mathematical games on on-task behaviours in the primary classroom

A challenge for primary classroom teachers is to maintain students’ engagement with learning tasks while catering for their diverse needs, capabilities and interests. Multiple pedagogical approaches are employed to promote on-task behaviours in the mathematics classroom. There is a general assumption by educators that games ignite children’s on-task behaviours, but there is little systemically researched empirical data to support this claim. This paper compares students’ on-task behaviours during non-digital game-playing lessons compared with non-game-playing lessons. Six randomly selected grade 5 and 6 students (9–12 year olds) were observed during ten mathematics lessons. A total of 2,100 observations were recorded via an observational schedule and analysed by comparing the percentage of exhibited behaviours. The study found the children spent 93 % of the class-time exhibiting on-task engagement during the game-playing lessons compared with 72 % during the non-game-playing lessons. The game-playing lessons also promoted greater incidents of student talk related to the mathematical task (34 %) compared with the non-game-playing lessons (11 %). These results support the argument that games serve to increase students’ time-on-task in mathematics lessons. Therefore, it is contended that use of games explicitly addressing the mathematical content being taught in a classroom is one way to increase engagement and, in turn, potential for learning.

Las condiciones ambientales en las aulas de Primaria en Iberoamérica y su relación con el desempeño académico

El clima escolar y de aula es uno de los factores que mejor explican el desempeño académico de los estudiantes; sin embargo, hay unos elementos del clima poco estudiados pero que juegan un importante papel en el aprendizaje: las condiciones ambientales del aula. En esta investigación se estudia la relación de la iluminación del aula, su ventilación, su aislamiento, y la adecuación de su tamaño, así como del orden y la limpieza de la misma, con el logro escolar. Para ello se observan 248 aulas de 9 países de Iberoamérica, y se contrastan los resultados con lo que los niños y niñas han aprendido en un curso escolar en Lengua y Matemáticas mediante Modelos Multinivel de 4 niveles de análisis. Para recoger la información se utilizaron los siguientes instrumentos: Guía de observación del aula para el investigador, Pruebas de Rendimiento en Matemáticas y en Lengua, y Cuestionario para los docentes del aula, para los estudiantes y para las familias. Los resultados muestran que los factores ambientales de proceso tales como el orden y la limpieza del aula, inciden en el desempeño de los estudiantes; sin embargo, no se han encontrado relaciones estadísticamente significativas con factores más estables como la iluminación, la ventilación, el ruido o el tamaño del aula, probablemente porque, como se demuestra, la gran mayoría de las aulas se encuentran en unas condiciones aceptables en estas variables.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH on SPATIAL PERCEPTION

In this study, an experimental study was conducted with 4th grade students at classroom teaching department in Turkey in an attempt to describe the ideal classroom space for primary education students. In the research, photographs (images) of 20 different primary education classrooms were evaluated by 4th grade 100 students. The students evaluated the images by means of surveys in which they were asked questions on four concepts: belonging, like (partiality), learning and safety. Reliability analyses of numeric data obtained from student surveys were made and they were subjected to various statistical analyses. In the second part of the study, the students' preferences for the classroom spaces were evaluated by means of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) method, by using numerical data obtained from the student about concepts as well as the classroom space photos. Levenberg-Marquart (LM) back-propagation algorithm has been used to train ANN model. Numerical data were treated and test procedures were performed to ensure that ANN makes decisions in the name of 4th grade students at classroom teaching department. It has been seen that ANN has been successful on solving complex problems such as user-perception evaluations thanks to its dynamic structure.

Collegial mentoring for effective whole school professional development in the use of IWB technologies

<span>The focus of this chapter is the provision of teacher professional development as needed - just in time. The specific context is the application of peer mentoring in teaching and learning with interactive whiteboards. Data was gathered from two research projects that investigated aspects of teachers mentoring colleagues in Australia. In both projects lessons were video recorded and the teachers interviewed about their perceptions of ICT use in the lessons. In one project two teachers were appointed as half-time mentors to assist colleagues in classroom use of IWBs. This appeared to result in improved levels of success for all the stakeholders. The aim in the other project was to explore how to prepare primary classroom teachers to become mentors within their school. One recommendation arising from the research is that education systems should fund ICT mentor positions to help overcome immediate teacher needs as quickly as possible.</span>

The effect of perceived social support on subjective well-being

The aim of this study is to determine whether perceived social support is a meaningful predictor of subjective well-being. 87 students registered to primary classroom teacher training department joined to this survey. In the phase of data collection, “Subjective Well-Being Scale” and “Multi-Dimensional Perceived Social Support Scale” were used. It was discovered that perceived social support predicted 43 per cent of subjective well-being. In addition to this, it was determined that perceived family support predicted subjective well-being, and on the other hand the support which was perceived towards a special person and perceived friend support did not predicted subjective well-being.

Creativity in the Hong Kong classroom: What is the contextual practice?

A review is offered of Hong Kong's current education reform that sites a key role for creativity. This key role leads us to ask “Creativity in the Hong Kong Classroom: what is the contextual practice?” To address this question 27 Primary classroom teachers across three subject areas were observed and rated using the Classroom Observation Form [Furman, A. (1998). Teacher and pupil characteristics in the perception of the creativity of classroom climate. Journal of Creative Behavior, 32(4), 258–277]. The creativity potential of these teachers was then measured against the Creativity Fostering Teacher Index [Soh, K. C. (2000). Indexing creativity fostering teacher behavior: A preliminary validation study. Journal of Creative Behavior, 34(2), 118–134] and the Creative Personality Scale [Gough, H. G. (1978). A creative personality scale for the adjective check list. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(8), 1398–1405]. Their class students then completed the Chinese Creativity Tests [Wu, J. J., & Chen, F. X. (1998). A study on the new creativity test. Taiwan: Education Bureau and Foundation for Scholarly Exchange]. Findings support and extend current understandings of both system and componential theory [Csikzentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Collins; Amabile, T. M. (1996). The social psychology of creativity. New York: Springer–Verlag; Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in context. Boulder: Westview Press]. Instrument limitations and a need for interpretative cautions are discussed and their significance for further research indicated.

‘You can’t buy love’: trivializing and the challenge for religious education

While there has been an increase in empirical research which explores the spirituality of children, few studies have explicitly named and described factors which may inhibit children’s expression of their spirituality. This paper, emanating from the author’s own research into children’s spirituality in Australian Catholic primary schools, presents and describes one such factor, which has been termed trivializing. An example of hermeneutic phenomenological writing—the text—in which trivializing was revealed is presented, followed by a reflection upon the text guided by van Manen’s lifeworld existentials (lived body, lived time, lived space, lived human relations). In the light of this reflection some initial implications for nurturing the spirituality of children within the primary religious education classroom are presented.

Linking teaching and learning: a Masters level programme for primary and secondary classroom teachers

Linking teaching and learning: a Masters level programme for primary and secondary classroom teachers

Students as ‘catalysts’ in the classroom: the impact of co‐teaching between science student teachers and primary classroom teachers on children's enjoyment and learning of science

This study is an investigation of the impact of collaborative teaching by student‐teachers and classroom teachers on children’s enjoyment and learning of science. The paper describes findings from a project in which undergraduate science specialist student‐teachers were placed in primary schools where they ‘co‐taught’ investigative science and technology with primary teachers. Almost six months after the student placement, a survey of children’s attitudes to school science revealed that these children enjoyed science lessons more and showed fewer gender or age differences in their attitudes to science than children who had not been involved in the project. The authors discuss how this model of collaborative planning, teaching and evaluation can both enhance teacher education and improve children’s experience of science.

Bridging the gap between health and education: words are not enough.

When using specific terminology for childhood developmental disorders, paediatricians make assumptions about what teachers know and believe. If these assumptions are incorrect, collaborative management may be compromised. We surveyed primary school teachers in North Brisbane regarding their beliefs about developmental disorders and their views on collaboration between medical and educational professionals. A survey questionnaire was written specifically, and then piloted with professional colleagues and 40 teachers. Questions examined teachers' opinions about, and personal experience with various developmental disorders. Free comments addressed barriers to collaboration with doctors, and how this might be improved. Responses were analysed using descriptive statistics. Responses were received from all of the 41 schools surveyed. Overall, completed questionnaires were obtained from 297 of 397 (75%) primary classroom teachers surveyed. Several apparent misconceptions were held, either by the majority (e.g. 70% felt dietary modification is commonly successful treatment for ADHD), or by a significant minority of teachers (e.g. 23% believed autistic spectrum disorder is not a permanent neurological condition). Responses to many questions concurred with the authors' assumptions. Teachers reported high levels of concern about lack of training and resource support for managing special-needs children. Over three-quarters of teachers did not access doctors for information, relying instead on special education professionals (96%) or parents (94%). Few group differences were noted by age, sex, years teaching experience, or system (Catholic, State). Free comments identified significant barriers to the collaboration process, and suggested strategies to address these. Doctors cannot assume teachers' beliefs about developmental disorders are similar to their own. Furthermore, doctors should recognize constraints that teachers work under, and can take the initiative to improve collaboration with topic-based as well as child-specific information.

Regular teachers’ attitudes to the need for additional classroom support for the inclusion of students with intellectual disability

This study examined regular classroom teachers' attitudes to additional classroom support, both curriculum and personnel, for students with mild and severe intellectual disability integrated into regular classrooms. The dependent variables were levels of desired curriculum and personnel support. The major independent variables were ability and effort. Seventy-two female, primary classroom teachers from eight east metropolitan Catholic primary schools in Perth, Western Australia, were interviewed. Each was randomly assigned a vignette describing a hypothetical male student. Ability (average, mild, severe) and effort (low, moderate, high) were systematically varied to create a nine-cell design. Teachers responded to a seven-point Likert scale and a magnitude scaling instrument. A multivariate analysis was completed using the seven-point scale and magnitude scale as dependent variables. The multivariate analysis yielded a main effect for ability for both dependent variables. The teachers perceived a significant difference between the need for additional personnel support for students with mild and severe intellectual disability. There was no difference between the level of required curriculum support for those with mild and severe disability. Regular classroom teachers did not perceive student effort as being important to their judgements of desired support.