An International Study in Competency Education: Postcards from Abroad

Acknowledging that national borders need not constrain our thinking, we have examined a selection of alternative academic cultures and, in some cases, specific schools, in search of solutions to common challenges we face when we consider reorganizing American schools. A wide range of interviews and e-mail exchanges with international researchers, government officials and school principals has informed this research, which was supplemented with a literature review scanning international reports and journal articles. Providing a comprehensive global inventory of competency-based education is not within the scope of this study, but we are confident that this is a representative sampling. The report that follows first reviews the definition of competency-based learning. A brief lesson in the international vocabulary of competency education is followed by a review of global trends that complement our own efforts to improve performance and increase equitable outcomes. Next, we share an overview of competency education against a backdrop of global education trends (as seen in the international PISA exams), before embarking on an abbreviated world tour. We pause in Finland, British Columbia (Canada), New Zealand and Scotland, with interludes in Sweden, England, Singapore and Shanghai, all of which have embraced practices that can inform the further development of competency education in the United States

Implementing Observation Protocols: Lessons for K-12 Education From the Field of Early Childhood

Examines issues for implementing standardized observation protocols for teacher evaluations. Makes recommendations based on lessons from preschool, such as the need to show empirical links between teacher performance and student learning and development

A dictionary of Academic English: A further resource for students in higher education

The focal point of this article is the ‘Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English’ (OLDAE) published in 2014. The main purpose of the article is to describe the dictionary in some detail, especially since it represents a new type of learner’s dictionary: OLDAE was designed for a specific user group, described by the dictionary’s chief editor as ‘non-native-English-speaking students who are studying academic subjects at tertiary level through the medium of English’. It is especially, though not exclusively, designed to help students produce appropriate and natural sounding written English, and to that end, it was compiled with reference to a specifically designed corpus of academic writing. The article is divided into seven sections. The first four deal with, respectively: the field of English for Academic Purposes; the compilation and coverage of OLDAE; lexical entries in the print dictionary; the CD-ROM. Thereafter, shorter sections deal with guidance on how to use the dictionary, and ‘non-lexical’ data in the dictionary. Lastly, there is an evaluative summary, followed by a series of more general points relating to OLDAE’s place in the evolving field of monolingual pedagogical lexicography

Motivating EFL Students with Conversation Data

Motivating learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to improve their speaking fluency is challenging in environments where institutions emphasize reading and listening test performance. The focus tends to shift to strategic reading and listening first in order to attain acceptable test results, often at the expense of communicative competence. Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is well positioned to assess and develop communicative competence for EFL learners, and to motivate them to speak. This article introduces the Objective Subjective (OS) Scoring system, a CALL system which sets clear immediate goals on the path to better communicative competence with data from videoed conversation sessions. It motivates learners to improve on their data in every consecutive conversation session, whereby an environment is created which facilitates conversation practice as well as individual error correction

The Development of Chatbot Provided Registration Information Services for Students in Distance Learning

In recent years, chatbots have become crucial, particularly for assisting students with real-time registration information. This research focused on 1) synthesizing registry works related to information provided for students, 2) designing chatbots and conversation structures in the form of interactive conversations between students and robots for answering questions and providing information tailored to their needs, and 3) examining and evaluating the use of chatbots in providing information services to students, while analyzing the accuracy and suitability of the developed chatbot. This study, based on research and development, utilized a sample consisting of 16 staff directly involved in the provision of registration information to students and 255 undergraduate students from Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, with respondents being selected through a simple random sampling technique. The synthesis of the research results revealed the following findings: 1) A qualitative study revealed that the registration information related to students, called STOU Journey, consisted of 10 issues, and was required for the whole learning period. 2) The result of the design and development of the chatbot revealed that the developer chatbot could be used on both the website and the LINE application. It was also found that the chatbot could answer most questions correctly and completely. The chatbot responded quickly and was easy to use. The chatbot used language that was easy to understand and natural, while 3) satisfactory evaluation results from 255 undergraduate students showed that overall, students who had used the completed version of the chatbot were satisfied with the use of the chatbot at a high level (Mean = 4.19, SD = 0.98) while they also felt that the chatbot was easy to use (Mean = 4.33, SD = 0.95) and the using the chatbot felt like a natural conversation (Mean = 4.22, SD = 0.99)

Teaching English As a Second Language Students Literacy: a Comprehensive Literacy Model for Monolingual Educators

This research project, utilizing both primary and secondary sources, provides teachers with effective methods and activities to develop literacy in a monolingual classroom for English as a second language (ESL) students. The literacy methods and activities within this research project are broken into the five components of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension) and writing. The conclusion of this research project provides teachers with the necessary steps to enhance literacy instruction for ESL students

Historicising Material Agency: from Relations to Relational Constellations

Relational approaches have gradually been changing the face of archaeology over the last decade: analytically, through formal network analysis; and interpretively, with various frameworks of human-thing relations. Their popularity has been such, however, that it threatens to undermine their relevance. If everyone agrees that we should understand past worlds by tracing relations, then ‘finding relations’ in the past becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Focusing primarily on the interpretive approaches of material culture studies, this article proposes to counter the threat of irrelevance by not just tracing human-thing relations, but characterising how sets of relations were ordered. Such ordered sets are termed ‘relational constellations’. The article describes three relational constellations and their consequences based on practices of fine ware production in the Western Roman provinces (first century BC – third century AD): the fluid, the categorical, and the rooted constellation. Specifying relational constellations allows reconnecting material culture to specific historical trajectories, and offers scope for meaningful cross-cultural comparisons. As such a small theoretical addition based on the existing toolbox of practice-based approaches and relational thought can impact on historical narratives, and can save relational frameworks from the danger of triviality.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10816-015-9244-