31,091 research outputs found
The language teacher’s development
This paper provides a commentary on recent contributions
to the subject of teacher development and growth, focusing
particularly on our understanding of some of the processes
and tools that have been identified as instrumental
and supportive in teacher development. Implicit in the
notions of ‘reflective practice’, ‘exploratory teaching’,
and ‘practitioner inquiry’ is the view that teachers
develop by studying their own practice, collecting data
and using reflective processes as the basis for evaluation
and change. Such processes have a reflexive relationship
with the construction of teacher knowledge and beliefs.
Collaborative and co-operative processes can help sustain
individual reflection and development
Formative interaction in online writing: making disciplinary expectations explicit
About the book: How to provide appropriate feedback to students on their writing has long been an area of central significance to teachers and educators. Feedback in Second Language Writing: Context and Issues provides scholarly articles on the topic by leading researchers, who explore topics such as the socio-cultural assumptions that participants bring to the writing class; feedback delivery and negotiation systems; and the role of student and teacher identity in negotiating feedback and expectations. This text provides empirical data and an up-to-date analysis of the complex issues involved in offering appropriate feedback during the writing process
Peer mediation for conflict management: a Singaporean case study
The burgeoning interest in conflict and its management has recently begun to impact on schools and school systems worldwide. Motivated by a concern for increasing levels of violence in schools and student�student conflict, many school administrators are looking at conflict management programs as a means of dealing with the problem. Most of the more widely used programs have their origins in the United States; their appropriateness and effectiveness in other countries and cultures is, at best, unknown, and in some respects open to conjecture. In this paper the cultural appropriateness of a peer mediation program in a primary school in Singapore is the subject of investigation. The study also addresses, in an exploratory manner, the effectiveness of peer mediation as a mechanism for student�student conflict management
Qualitative software engineering research -- reflections and guidelines
Researchers are increasingly recognizing the importance of human aspects in
software development and since qualitative methods are used to, in-depth,
explore human behavior, we believe that studies using such techniques will
become more common.
Existing qualitative software engineering guidelines do not cover the full
breadth of qualitative methods and knowledge on using them found in the social
sciences. The aim of this study was thus to extend the software engineering
research community's current body of knowledge regarding available qualitative
methods and provide recommendations and guidelines for their use.
With the support of an epistemological argument and a literature review, we
suggest that future research would benefit from (1) utilizing a broader set of
research methods, (2) more strongly emphasizing reflexivity, and (3) employing
qualitative guidelines and quality criteria.
We present an overview of three qualitative methods commonly used in social
sciences but rarely seen in software engineering research, namely
interpretative phenomenological analysis, narrative analysis, and discourse
analysis. Furthermore, we discuss the meaning of reflexivity in relation to the
software engineering context and suggest means of fostering it.
Our paper will help software engineering researchers better select and then
guide the application of a broader set of qualitative research methods.Comment: 30 page
Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?
Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to
support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the
question: is it worth the effort
Support of the collaborative inquiry learning process: influence of support on task and team regulation
Regulation of the learning process is an important condition for efficient and effective learning. In collaborative learning, students have to regulate their collaborative activities (team regulation) next to the regulation of their own learning process focused on the task at hand (task regulation). In this study, we investigate how support of collaborative inquiry learning can influence the use of regulative activities of students. Furthermore, we explore the possible relations between task regulation, team regulation and learning results. This study involves tenth-grade students who worked in pairs in a collaborative inquiry learning environment that was based on a computer simulation, Collisions, developed in the program SimQuest. Students of the same team worked on two different computers and communicated through chat. Chat logs of students from three different conditions are compared. Students in the first condition did not receive any support at all (Control condition). In the second condition, students received an instruction in effective communication, the RIDE rules (RIDE condition). In the third condition, students were, in addition to receiving the RIDE rules instruction, supported by the Collaborative Hypothesis Tool (CHT), which helped the students with formulating hypotheses together (CHT condition). The results show that students overall used more team regulation than task regulation. In the RIDE condition and the CHT condition, students regulated their team activities most often. Moreover, in the CHT condition the regulation of team activities was positively related to the learning results. We can conclude that different measures of support can enhance the use of team regulative activities, which in turn can lead to better learning results
Knowledge and information needs of informal caregivers in palliative care : a qualitative systematic review
Objectives: To review current understanding of the knowledge and information needs
of informal caregivers in palliative settings. Data sources: Seven electronic databases
were searched for the period January 1994–November 2006: Medline, CINAHL, PsychINFO,
Embase, Ovid, Zetoc and Pubmed using a meta-search engine (Metalib®).
Key journals and reference lists of selected papers were hand searched. Review methods:
Included studies were peer-reviewed journal articles presenting original research.
Given a variety of approaches to palliative care research, a validated systematic review
methodology for assessing disparate evidence was used in order to assign scores to
different aspects of each study (introduction and aims, method and data, sampling,
data analysis, ethics and bias, findings/results, transferability/generalizability, implications
and usefulness). Analysis was assisted by abstraction of key details of study into
a table. Results: Thirty-four studies were included from eight different countries. The
evidence was strongest in relation to pain management, where inadequacies in caregiver
knowledge and the importance of education were emphasized. The significance
of effective communication and information sharing between patient, caregiver and
service provider was also emphasized. The evidence for other caregiver knowledge
and information needs, for example in relation to welfare and social support was
weaker. There was limited literature on non-cancer conditions and the care-giving
information needs of black and minority ethnic populations. Overall, the evidence
base was predominantly descriptive and dominated by small-scale studies, limiting
generalizability. Conclusions: As palliative care shifts into patients’ homes, a more rigorously
researched evidence base devoted to understanding caregivers knowledge
and information needs is required. Research design needs to move beyond the current
focus on dyads to incorporate the complex, three-way interactions between patients,
service providers and caregivers in end-of-life care setting
Socialising Epistemic Cognition
We draw on recent accounts of social epistemology to present a novel account of epistemic cognition that is ‘socialised’. In developing this account we foreground the: normative and pragmatic nature of knowledge claims; functional role that ‘to know’ plays when agents say they ‘know x’; the social context in which such claims occur at a macro level, including disciplinary and cultural context; and the communicative context in which such claims occur, the ways in which individuals and small groups express and construct (or co-construct) their knowledge claims. We frame prior research in terms of this new approach to provide an exemplification of its application. Practical implications for research and learning contexts are highlighted, suggesting a re-focussing of analysis on the collective level, and the ways knowledge-standards emerge from group-activity, as a communicative property of that activity
Blogs: A tool to facilitate reflection and community of practice in sports coaching?
A reflective approach to practice is consistently espoused as a key tool for understanding and enhancing coach learning and raising the vocational standards of coaches. As such, there is a clear need for practical tools and processes that might facilitate the development and measurement of “appropriate” reflective skills. The aim of this preliminary study was to explore the use of online blogs as a tool to support reflection and community of practice in a cohort of undergraduate sports coaching students. Twenty-six students (6 females, 20 males) reflected on their coaching practice via blogs created specifically for reflection. Blogs were subjected to category and content analysis to identify the focus of entries and to determine both the emergent reflective quality of posts and the extent to which an online community of practice emerged. Findings revealed that descriptive reflection exceeded that of a critical nature, however, bloggers exhibited a positive trajectory toward higher order thinking and blogs were an effective platform for supporting tutor-student interaction. Despite the peer discourse features of blogs, collaborative reflection was conspicuous by its absence and an online community of practice did not emerge
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