Evaluation of the implementation of curriculum materials for civics in the Netherlands

Discusses a study evaluating the implementation of curriculum materials for civics in the Netherlands. Pedagogical principles aimed at increasing students' social commitment; Central research question; Exploration of broad context for implementation; Actual use of teaching packages by teachers

Revisiting the link between teaching and learning research and practice: Authentic learning and design-based research

It has often been argued that research in teaching and learning has only a weak link to practice. Much educational research is criticised for having little relevance to the day-to-day learning experience of students in K-12 and higher education. This criticism is particularly relevant in relation to educational technology research. In this field, many researchers conduct studies that are designed to test the effectiveness of the delivery medium—to prove that one medium is better than another—rather than exploring ways to improve instructional approaches and tasks. With the current proliferation of exciting and innovative technologies that are likely to become more and more common in classrooms (such as cell phones, tablets, and other mobile devices), research needs to move beyond simple comparisons of these devices with each other or with the ‘traditional’ approach. In this presentation, I argue that educational technology research has largely failed to change educational practice and outcomes because of the predominant aim of such research to prove rather than improve. Online and mobile technologies afford the design and creation of truly innovative authentic learning designs, where the technology is both a tool and a platform for presentation of genuine products, and the focus is on learning with technologies rather than from them. Instead of comparative research, a more powerful and appropriate approach is design-based research, where researchers and practitioners work hand in hand to iteratively refine innovations until they get the results they seek. A description of the characteristics of design-based research is given, together with an argument for the more widespread adoption of this approach to enhance the quality and impact of research in teaching and learning

Influence of computer use on schools' curriculum: Limited integration

In the literature many claims are formulated about what might be accomplished in actual teaching practice when computers are used in a proper and intensive way. Therefore, in this study we analyse how three leading schools in the lower general secondary education sector in The Netherlands are using computers in their curriculum. The results show that these schools have hardly passed the stage of grassroot developments. To validate and possibly generalize these results we did, as a follow up study, a telephone survey with a larger group of leading schools. The survey confirmed the outcomes of the case studies

‘Do not block the way of inquiry’: cultivating collective doubt through sustained deep reflective thinking.

We provide a Camusian/Peircean notion of inquiry that emphasises an attitude of fallibilism and sustained epistemic dissonance as a conceptual framework for a theory of classroom practice founded on Deep Reflective Thinking (DTR), in which the cultivation of collective doubt, reflective evaluation and how these relate to the phenomenological aspects of inquiry are central to communities of inquiry. In a study by Fynes-Clinton, preliminary evidence demonstrates that if students engage in DRT, they more frequently experience cognitive dissonance and as a result improve their ability to engage in further and more frequent DRT. Sustained intellectual progress occurs when the inquiry reaches a point whereby students can thoughtfully move between the position of disequilibrium (doubt) and equilibrium (belief) whilst understanding the impermanency of any fixed belief, which, in turn, enables reconstruction of thinking and appropriation of learning in the context of collaborative philosophical inquiry

Humankind as the image of God: a cognitive-semantic application of Genesis 1:1-2:3 in the classroom

Searching for new methods to start a narrative dialogue in secondary school classrooms, cognitive semantics was used. The research focused on examining relationships between the exercises ‘exegetical reading’, ‘mystery’ and ‘concepts to work with’ and acquiring and applying the religious concept ‘image of God’ in Gen. 1:1-2:3 and, by means of writing an essay, entering into a narrative dialogue regarding this concept; five lessons in seven classes were analyzed in a qualitative cross-case analysis. During the exercise ‘essay’ the majority of the students entered into a dialogue with the text, while the minority changed their opinion about the question of life ‘Who is humankind?’. Due to the support of the teacher, the students were able to do the exercises

The development of an RME-based geometrycourse for Indonesian Primary schools

The aim of this study was to develop and implement a valid, practical, and effective RME-based geometry course for Indonesian primary schools using design research approach. The research activities were divided into three stages namely front-end analysis, prototyping stage, and assessment stage that were conducted in a four year period. The focus of the chapter is to present detail and rational regarding the three stages. The result of the study was a high quality RME-based geometry course for teaching geometry at grade 4 in Indonesian primary school consisted of teacher's guide and student book. In the products lies the local instructional theory for teaching geometry that was effective for improving pupils' understanding, reasoning, activity, creativity, and motivation

The development of an RME-based geometrycourse for Indonesian Primary schools

The aim of this study was to develop and implement a valid, practical, and effective RME-based geometry course for Indonesian primary schools using design research approach. The research activities were divided into three stages namely front-end analysis, prototyping stage, and assessment stage that were conducted in a four year period. The focus of the chapter is to present detail and rational regarding the three stages. The result of the study was a high quality RME-based geometry course for teaching geometry at grade 4 in Indonesian primary school consisted of teacher's guide and student book. In the products lies the local instructional theory for teaching geometry that was effective for improving pupils' understanding, reasoning, activity, creativity, and motivation

Systematically designed literature classroom interventions: design principles, development and implementation: an introduction

Intervention studies in L1 language arts and literature classrooms are pivotal to investigate the effects of instructional approaches that have been purposefully designed to achieve certain learning outcomes. Ideally, design principles, design procedures and the resulting interventions (i.e., lessons, projects, materials) would be comprehensively described in research papers. Unfortunately, intervention research in the education sciences are often focused on empirical intervention effects rather than the content and mode of instruction. Even now that journals provide more room for additional digital information about instructional materials and measurement, information on critical design choices made in interventions for reading and literary instruction remains underwhelming (see Schrijvers, Janssen, Fialho, & Rijlaarsdam,2016). Yet, it is important to shed light on the content and structure of evidence based instructional programs for reading and literary instruction, for two aims and audiences: research and practice. First, insight in the key elements of an intervention enhances the opportunities for both theory building as well as conducting replication studies in different contexts. Research that explicitly and coherently reports the theoretical, practical and contextual choices in the instructional design provides a deeper understanding about the relation between basic design principles (the instruction) and the desired and realized learning outcomes. These basic design principles, presented in an argumentative structure, must be judged by the research community from the perspective of construct validity: the perspective is then on the extent into which the basic principles in the study under review do represent the theory. The second layer of the report, on the contextual operationalizations – adaptations to specific aims, age group of students and cultural traditions – provides information that may prove invaluable in the evaluation of content validity: to which extent the operationalizations match the theoretical construct. These theories may serve as the steppingstones for other researchers, in other national, regional and cultural traditions, to establish studies in their particular context to improve literacy instruction. Such studies do not replicate the original study but adapt the theory to cultural contexts and contribute to the generalizability of instructional theories in literacy education.  Second, educational studies in the L1 domain do not serve further research only. Intervention studies are mostly set up with the same aim as all educational practices: to change something, somewhere, in someone. Teachers who prepare a literature lesson, considering which story to introduce – or which stories, because different students might be affected by different stories – are driven by a desire for accomplishing change in their students. A lesson is meant to contribute to a student’s new understanding, to new affect, or to check assumptions (De Groot,1980; see for an application Schrijvers, Janssen, Fialho & Rijlaarsdam, 2016, p. 9). According to De Groot(1980), education contributes to several types of learning experiences including the construction of rules and the exceptions to rules as they apply to the inside and outside world. Further, education is about affecting positive change in the life trajectories of students, and the education sciences, through intervention studies, explicitly aim to contribute to the improvement or enhancement of language arts and literature teachers’ daily practices, directly or via change agents like national in-service training institutes. To support further implementation of evidence-based, theoretically underpinned learning programs, mere availability of concrete instructional activities is insufficient. Teachers and teacher educators must understand these activities in the context of the theoretical framework: the design principles, embedded in research literature, in terms of key-learning activities that must take place; the instructional acts to generate these learning activities; and the changes in the learner that are intended. Practice must be fully informed, as providing materials is not enough to change teachers’ understandings and beliefs (e.g., Nieveen, 1999; O’Donnell, 2008). Although design research has built a certain tradition, reporting instructional designs and materials is not an easy task in doing research likely due in part to underdeveloped instructional theories in the literacy domain as well as the lack of generally accepted reporting formats. A research tradition of reporting intervention designs is yet to take hold

Designing digital technologies and learning activities for different geometries

This chapter focuses on digital technologies and geometry education, a combination of topics that provides a suitable avenue for analysing closely the issues and challenges involved in designing and utilizing digital technologies for learning mathematics. In revealing these issues and challenges, the chapter examines the design of digital technologies and related forms of learning activities for a range of geometries, including Euclidean and co-ordinate geometries in two and three dimensions, and non-Euclidean geometries such as spherical, hyperbolic and fractal geometry. This analysis reveals the decisions that designers take when designing for different geometries on the flat computer screen. Such decisions are not only about the geometry but also about the learner in terms of supporting their perceptions of what are the key features of geometry