Principals\u27 pedagogical knowledge of instructional practices

Recent federal legislation, Public Law 107-110 (No Child Left Behind Act of 2001), makes certain demands of schools and their instructional leaders, requiring schools to maintain an average yearly progress (AYP), proving student achievement over a recorded period of time. With a greater emphasis on student achievement, principals will need to be knowledgeable in the area of instruction in order to lead effectively their staffs in this age of accountability; The purpose of this study was to determine principals\u27 pedagogical knowledge of research-based instructional practices that improve student achievement. In addition, the study examined principals\u27 and teachers\u27 perceptions of principal practices related to the supervision of classroom instruction and the improvement of student achievement. This study looked at the practices of principals by examining three related areas: the research-based instructional practices proven to be most successful; the depth of principal knowledge regarding research-based instructional practices; and the degree to which principals apply their knowledge in supervisory practices; This study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods in what Creswell (1994) called a dominant-less dominant design. A questionnaire and telephone interview were utilized to gather data. The population for this study was one hundred principals and three hundred teachers working in public elementary, middle, and high schools. The principals were the recipients of the 2004 NAESP and NASSP Principal of the Year Award. They selected three teachers from their schools to participate in the teacher questionnaires and interviews; Results indicated that, in general, principals did have a sound pedagogical knowledge of research-based instructional strategies. Principals were able to identify many practices taken from research-based theories and seemed to encourage most of those practices. However, results also indicated that principals often encouraged certain conflicting practices. In addition, teachers\u27 perceptions of principals\u27 practices were sometimes in conflict with principals\u27 perceptions. This was particularly evident in results taken from secondary principal and teacher data. In light of these findings, this study suggested some discrepancies between principals\u27 perceived knowledge about research-based instructional practices and their actual pedagogical knowledge

SEMANTICALLY INTEGRATED E-LEARNING INTEROPERABILITY AGENT

Educational collaboration through e-learning is one of the fields that have been worked on since the emergence of e-learning in educational system. The e-learning standards (e.g. learning object metadata standard) and e-learning system architectures or frameworks, which support interoperation of correlated e-learning systems, are the proposed technologies to support the collaboration. However, these technologies have not been successful in creating boundless educational collaboration through e-learning. In particular, these technologies offer solutions with their own requirements or limitations and endeavor challenging efforts in applying the technologies into their elearning system. Thus, the simpler the technology enhances possibility in forging the collaboration. This thesis explores a suite of techniques for creating an interoperability tool model in e-learning domain that can be applied on diverse e-learning platforms. The proposed model is called the e-learning Interoperability Agent or eiA. The scope of eiA focuses on two aspects of e-learning: Learning Objects (LOs) and the users of elearning itself. Learning objects that are accessible over the Web are valuable assets for sharing knowledge in teaching, training, problem solving and decision support. Meanwhile, there is still tacit knowledge that is not documented through LOs but embedded in form of users' expertise and experiences. Therefore, the establishment of educational collaboration can be formed by the users of e-learning with a common interest in a specific problem domain. The eiA is a loosely coupled model designed as an extension of various elearning systems platforms. The eiA utilizes XML (eXtensible Markup Language) technology, which has been accepted as the knowledge representation syntax, to bridge the heterogeneous platforms. At the end, the use of eiA as facilitator to mediate interconununication between e-leaming systems is to engage the creation of semantically Federated e-learning Community (FeC). Eventually, maturity of the FeC is driven by users' willingness to grow the community, by means of increasing the elearning systems that use eiA and adding new functionalities into eiA

An Investigation Of The Relationships Between Learning Styles, Individual Characteristics, and Mathematical Strand Weaknesses.

This study focuses on 1 12 mid-western middle school sixth grade students who exhibit one or more of the following strands: mathematical reasoning, number sense; estimation and computation; patterns, functions, and algebra; data analysis statistics; geometry and spacial sense; or measurement. A series of 2,025 correlations were conducted between: The Measures of Academic Achievement Test (produced by Northwest Evaluation Association), The Dunn, Dunn, and price Learning Style Inventory, and a sixteen point classroom student characteristics survey. This yielded a total of 144 significant values, 10-15 within each weakness strand, indicating possible relationships between test scores and student preferences. Data analysis also supported the initial postulation of heterogeneous groupings (diverse population - ability, gender, ethnicity) within and across any given strand(s). Further results and implications for educators, of these findings are discussed

Perspectives of International Students Performing Service-Learning in the United States: A Case study With Amizade

Past research has demonstrated consequences of service-learning and impacts of service-learning experiences on students and community members in domestic and international settings. Researchers have this topic in developing countries; however, few have studied international students\u27 perspectives on doing service-learning in a developed country. This qualitative study aims to determine how students recognize their lives, and lives of community members in need are impacted as a result of their Amizade Global Service-Learning program in the United States. The investigation employs Cone and Harris\u27 (1996) conceptual framework of service-learning to examine interpersonal, sociocultural, and psychological components of the experience. Data were collected using three focus groups and two individual interviews with students, three interviews with adult youth workers, and three audio recorded reflection sessions. Participants included two separate groups from Ireland who did service-learning in the United States. Results indicated international service-learning in the United States positively influenced students\u27 relationship development, leadership, behavior, and tolerance. Students also dispelled stereotypes and subsequently partook in and planned future altruistic endeavors

Service engagement of the contemporary university: towards a new understanding through a comparative study of Middlesex University (UK) and the University for Development Studies (Ghana).

University institutions are becoming fluid with different missions and functions. It is argued that most universities mission statements involve teaching, research and service. While the teaching and research missions are clearly defined and situated within certain areas of the university activities, service is less clear and ambiguous, yet assuming an increasingly important and central slogan in many higher education institutions' publicity or 'marketing' strategies. The concept of service is understood differently in the university context. While it is understood in particular contexts as one of the functions of higher education apart from teaching and research; in others it is viewed as an 'inverted donut' supporting the core activities of teaching and research; administrative; customer service; civic duty or collegial support. This study examins the service concept through a comparative study of Middlesex University (UK) and University for Development Studies (Ghana) with the aim of understanding the place of service in the university, whether it is a function in addition to the teaching and research functions or not. it is also aimed at reinterpreting the concept within the current higher education delivery. Designed as a qualitative study using documentary sources, semi structured interviews and artefacts to generate data, two interrelated conceptual perspectives informed this research: the moderate constructivist and critical pluralistic perspectives that served as guides and a window through which the service concept is understood. An important methodological characteristic of the study is the use of two interrelated approaches: direct and indirect. The direct concerned understanding the views (direct opinion) of individual academics through interviews, and the indirect involved the use of interviews, national and institutional policy documents and artefacts to gain general information about the cases for further analyses. In addition, it is a comparative study, which uses data from three interrelated levels- macro, intermediary and micro; representing general, national/regional/local, and institutional sources respectively. The study concludes that service is a broad concept that covers the core activities of teaching, research and community engagement and entrepreneurial activities rather than occupies a place as a function. Based on the evidence, a coherent explanation and interpretation of the concept lmking it to higher education contexts, philosophies, shades of services, and suggested service university models has been presented. Despite this, the concept remains complex, its interpretation influenced by contexts, and difficult to generalise due to the acknowledgeably different and contrasting dimensions of interpretation ranging from Western/non-Western, Direct/Indirect and Public/Private to Rhetoric/non-Rhetoric dimensions. However, the question of what service is in the university context is likely to remain a debatable issue

A cooperative task-based learning approach to motivating low achieving readers of English in a Taiwanese University

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Student learning and cognition in cooperative small groups : towards a fourth metaphor of human learning

Research into the benefits of cooperative learning has focussed most attention onto a social psychological perspective with the result that the putative cognitive benefits of these strategies have not been thoroughly researched and clearly delineated. One consequence of this research focus has been that cooperative learning strategies are not always adopted by teachers and included permanently into their regular classroom practice, thereby possibly denying some students the potential for cognitive gain. This study was conceived originally as an investigation into the claimed cognitive benefits of small-group cooperative learning from a cognitive perspective but the investigation of the cooperative learning literature also led to an investigation of the general learning literature base. Recent research suggested that human learning might not have been described adequately by the earlier perspectives. Some authors contended that a fourth metaphor of human learning may be emerging from the socio-cultural perspectives. Investigating how students learn in cooperative situations was seen as a potential vehicle for the wider investigation of a fourth metaphor. It was against this background that the present study was undertaken. Learning was not seen in terms of a dichotomy between the main cognitivist and socially based perspectives so a pluralist approach was adopted in this study in an attempt to reconcile some of the differences between the main perspectives. Process-product research has been criticised for providing a narrow view of the classroom lives of students. Additionally, critics of laboratory-based research have argued for research to regain its connection with real classroom settings. Given the contentions of several authors, this study was conceived as non-positivist, naturalistic and pluralist within the post-modernist era. Five groups of students at two schools were recruited for this qualitative case study. The students\u27 learning from five purpose-designed lessons was tracked through their transcribed discussions and their recall in learning journals . Journal data were collected as much as twelve months after the last lesson was completed, enabling the longitudinal tracking of student learning. A major finding of the research was the strong mediational effects on student learning of the classroom context and the group within the classroom. The nature of student talk also impacted strongly upon student learning. Evidence was found of both individual and social construction of knowledge. Knowledge sometimes seemed to appear initially as a group construct but was later modified significantly by the students\u27 individual minds. Although all knowledge originated in socio-cultural contexts, usually through the ultimate human social semiotic of language, the final form of the knowledge appeared highly individual and idiosyncratic. The idiosyncratic nature of the students\u27 learning led the researcher to posit that knowledge resided in the individual neural structures of the brain. This mind-as-brain proposition was advanced as a contribution towards a fourth metaphor of human learning. The findings suggested several implications for teachers about the recommended procedures for small-group cooperative learning. Implications for research included further neuroscience investigations into human learning because of the potential for this kind of research to inform practice

Organisations as complex adaptive systems : implications for the design of information systems

Today a paradigm shift in the field of organisation and management theories is no longer disputed and the need to switch from the Command-and-Control to the Leaming Organisation Paradigm (LOP) in the area of organisational theory is well understood. However, it is less well appreciated that learning organisations cannot operate effectively if supported by centralised databases and tailor-made application programs. LOP emphasises adaptability, flexibility, participation and learning. It is important to understand that the changes in organisational and management strategies will not on their own be able to produce the desired effects unless they are supported by appropriate changes in organisational culture, and by effective information systems. This research demonstrates that conventional information system strategies and development methods are no longer adequate. Information system strategies must respond to these needs of the LOP and incorporate new information systems that are capable of evolving, adapting and responding to the constantly changing business environment. The desired adaptability, flexibility and agility in information systems for LOP can be achieved by exploiting the technologies of the Internet, World Wide Web, intelligent agents and intranets. This research establishes that there is a need for synergy between organisational structures and organisational information systems. To obtain this desired synergy it is essential that new information systems be designed as an integral part of the learning organisational structure itself. Complexity theory provides a new set of metaphors and a host of concepts for the understanding of organisations as complex adaptive systems. This research introduces the principles of Complex Adaptive Systems and draws on their significance for designing the information systems needed to support the new generation of learning organisations. The search for new models of information system strategies for today's dynamic world of business points to the 'swarm models' observed in Nature