The use of levelled assessment tasks and their impact on teaching and learning in science education

The use of Levelled Assessment Tasks (LATs) in secondary science in England has been increasing over the past five years in response to attempts to encourage more Assessment for Learning (AfL) strategies in the science classroom. This empirical study investigates how LATs are used by teachers and the extent to which such tasks support teaching and learning. An online survey of 106 teachers was used. It showed that teachers did find that the LATs supported their teaching using AfL strategies, but revealed that a majority of teachers do not use the tasks as formatively as they could be used. From the online questionnaire, a descriptive framework for how the LATs support teaching and learning is proposed. Five case studies where teachers used a LAT were observed. The data collected included a post-lesson pupil questionnaire, an interview with a group of pupils and an interview of the teacher. From these cases, a theory seeking approach to educational case studies through fuzzy propositions (Bassey, 1999) was used to develop a model of the relationship between teacher values and pupil values to assessment tasks. The fuzzy generalisations proposed from the case studies were that: (1) Teacher attitudes to the LATs may influence pupil attitudes to the LATs, (2) Teachers with a „big picture of levels‟ may be more likely to use LATs formatively and (3) Teachers who engage pupils with the notion of „levelness‟ may be more likely to improve conceptual development of pupils. The notion of „levelness‟ is explored. This evolves into three issues being explored: whether grades should be shared with pupils, the LATs relationship with summative and formative assessment practices and why such tasks have become popular with science teachers. The latter is considered in the context of the current target-driven culture of schools in England. Finally, the future of assessments like the LATs is discussed in relation to current policy and recommendations for their use and development are considered

New Pathways: evaluating the implementation of a major work- related programme in Northern England

The evaluative research upon which this paper is based is focussed on the implementation of a three-year programme “Pathways to Success” (usually shortened to “Pathways”) in South Yorkshire, England. It is part of a much larger regional regeneration project funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) from 2001-2004. The Pathways programme is concerned with developing innovative curricula for the 14-19 age range in four Local Education Authorities (LEAs)1 and is taking place in 76 secondary (high) schools. A team from Sheffield Hallam University was responsible for evaluating the success of the Pathways programme and our findings reported here refer to the first year of implementation.</p

Evaluation of the flexible learning in the community (FLIC) project

The Flexible Learning in the Community project (FLiC) was set up by the City of Edinburgh to take advantage of the potential of the City's information and technology network to support flexible learning and teaching within and across its schools, colleges and community learning centres. An evaluation of the project was commissioned by the Scottish Executive Education Department, which had provided some funding for FLiC, through the Future Learning and Teaching (FLaT) programme. The evaluation was carried out during 2003-04 by a team from the Quality in Education Centre, the University of Strathclyde. The FLiC project had three main strands: video-conferencing, multi-media presentations (Kar2ouche1) and a virtual learning environment (digitalbrain2). Support and training for both teachers and pupils were provided by the Information Technology Support Team (ITSU) alongside a considerable investment in hardware, software and networking. Following a year of pilot work the initiative was launched by the Minister for Children and Young People in March 2003

The Unique Study of Talent Cultivation for English Major in Private Universities of China

The paper focused on the research of talent cultivation for English major in the universities of China, especially in private universities. It is often criticized that the English major makes no difference from public English or English training. The main problems of English major at present in China Universities are in its personnel cultivating program, and course design. These problems are shown in the paper mainly by case studies, literature research from the authors’ teaching experience. To solve these problems, the traditional English major must make some tentative innovation and improvement. For the personnel cultivating, it must make a balance between specialists and generalists. For the major setup, it should make refinement in different fields and aspects to let the students make a choice according to their own interests and characteristics, so the paper proposed the mechanism of general enrollment and stratified cultivating. For the course design, it is necessary to make a change from “learning English” to “learning in English”. Learning English mainly lies with students. The learning process, especially the skill-based learning, mainly lies in the learners themselves, while the task of the teacher plays the role of mentor and supervisor. Learning in English is the main direction of English teachers’ efforts. It is the main mission of the teachers of English major to teach humanities courses in full English, cultivate students’ critical thinking in teaching, and let students actively participate in classroom interaction. With these changes, the English major can strive to achieve its own development by being unique and new

Hastening slowly: insights about teacher development from an evaluation of courses at the WCED’s Cape Teaching and Leadership Institute

AbstractIn the area of teacher professional development, South African education administratorsface the challenge of reconciling two imperatives that have entirely different implicationsfor programme time frames and budgets. On the one hand, there is an urgent need toimprove the pedagogic content knowledge of many teachers to improve the overall standardof teaching and learning in the public school system. Considering the scale and urgency ofthe matter, centralised course-based in-service training seems to be the only affordablealternative. On the other hand, researchers have long warned that once-off course-basedtraining on its own has limited impact on teachers’ practice, and has to be accompanied byfurther professional support in the school and classroom, or be abandoned in favour of moreenduring professional learning communities. The Western Cape Education Department(WCED) has grappled with this dilemma in the Department’s various professionaldevelopment initiatives for teachers, a mainstay of which is the training offered by the CapeTeaching and Leadership Institute (CTLI). This paper presents some of the data andfindings from an external evaluation that ORT SA CAPE conducted in 2011–2012 ofcourses offered by the WCED at the CTLI. The hierarchy of INSET outcomes proposed byHarland and Kinder (1997) was applied to record changes in the practice of 18 teachers ateight schools. The progress of five of the teachers is discussed to illustrate the interplaybetween school-level factors and the experiences of individual teachers which influencedthe impact of CTLI training on their teaching.Introductio

What teachers see as creative incidents in elementary science lessons

Teachers are often urged to nurture creativity but their conceptions of creativity in specific school subjects may have limitations which weaken their attempts to do so. Primary school teachers in England were asked to rate lesson activities according to the opportunity they offered children for creative thought in science. The teachers could, overall, distinguish between creative and reproductive activities but, as predicted, there was evidence of narrow conceptions of school science creativity, biased towards fact finding, practical activity, and technological design. Some teachers saw creativity in essentially reproductive activities and in what simply stimulated interest and on-task talk. Some implications and recommendations for teacher training and professional development are discussed

Theory on Teaching Effectiveness at Meta, General and Partial Level

This chapter focuses on theories in the context of educational effectiveness research. Three levels of theory are distinguished: (1) The meta-theoretical level uses a multi-level framework of measurable facets of educational quality to provide a structure into studying teaching and its effects on student learning. (2) The general theory of teaching effectiveness focuses on major substantive dimensions of pro-active, interactive, and retro-active strategies as well as “structured independence”. (3) Partial theories are more specific in being closely tied to empirical outcomes, with “direct teaching” and tentative explanatory mechanisms in the realm of providing emotional support in classroom teaching being two examples. The three levels are considered to discuss the value of theories for research on teaching and its effects on student learning.</p

The portrayal of the nature of science in early childhood instructional materials

One issue plaguing science education and science teaching is the way in which the nature of science is portrayed in science classrooms. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which the nature of science is presented in early childhood instructional materials and the accuracy of those NOS portrayals. This study demonstrates that the current representation of NOS is accurate but implicit in most instances. The researcher describes several implications and suggestions for further research in this area