PROMOTING TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES: PROPOSAL OF A FRAMEWORK-SYLLABUS

The aim of this research is the proposal of a framework-syllabus of teachers’ professional skills and competencies. It involved 207 Italian school teachers. The methodology used was based on different focus groups interspersed by individual moments of self-inquire and self-reflection carry out by the teachers. The methodology included the use of an online survey, too. The survey was used to determine the grade of importance assigned by the participants to the different competencies. The outcome of this study is a framework-syllabus composed of several skills and competencies that characterize the expert teaching profession. The framework-syllabus is structured in 3 macro-areas (professional, teaching and organizing) and 16 competencies expressed in 77 different behavioral indicators. These different competencies delineate four teacher’s profiles of “middle management” in the school’s context. The research also demonstrates the main important and relevant competencies for being an expert teacher

Thai EFL teachers and learners’ beliefs and readiness for autonomous learning

The emergence of the ASEAN Economic Community has spurred countries in the region to relook their English language teaching approaches to ensure it is in line with regional and global changes. This has resulted in Asian countries seeking to modernise their teaching and learning of the language to promote higher order thinking skills and pave the way for better learner autonomy. This paper examines Thai teacher and learner beliefs about autonomous learning within the Thai culture of learning to determine if both are ready for autonomous learning. Using a qualitative approach employing interviews with teacher and students data was created from 76 English language teachers and 116 lower secondary school students, subdivided into high performing and low performing groups from 41 schools in Bangkok. The overall results indicate that both teachers and students hold positive beliefs about autonomous learning. The findings further reveal that the teachers supported communicative language learning while the students emphasised their needs for mental support, that teachers from large schools have higher academic expectations than those from smaller schools, and that lower performing students struggle for more academic and psychological support than their higher performing peers. The exam system, students’ dependence on teachers, and a lack of understanding from families and surrounding communities make it difficult for both teachers and students to achieve a high degree of autonomy. The study sheds some light on the challenges facing policy makers, particularly the Ministry of Education, with regard to what they can do to promote autonomy in the Thai school system

Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum

The field of specialization known as the science of learning is not, in fact, one field. Science of learning is a term that serves as an umbrella for many lines of research, theory, and application. A term with an even wider reach is Learning Sciences (Sawyer, 2006). The present book represents a sliver, albeit a substantial one, of the scholarship on the science of learning and its application in educational settings (Science of Instruction, Mayer 2011). Although much, but not all, of what is presented in this book is focused on learning in college and university settings, teachers of all academic levels may find the recommendations made by chapter authors of service. The overarching theme of this book is on the interplay between the science of learning, the science of instruction, and the science of assessment (Mayer, 2011). The science of learning is a systematic and empirical approach to understanding how people learn. More formally, Mayer (2011) defined the science of learning as the “scientific study of how people learn” (p. 3). The science of instruction (Mayer 2011), informed in part by the science of learning, is also on display throughout the book. Mayer defined the science of instruction as the “scientific study of how to help people learn” (p. 3). Finally, the assessment of student learning (e.g., learning, remembering, transferring knowledge) during and after instruction helps us determine the effectiveness of our instructional methods. Mayer defined the science of assessment as the “scientific study of how to determine what people know” (p.3). Most of the research and applications presented in this book are completed within a science of learning framework. Researchers first conducted research to understand how people learn in certain controlled contexts (i.e., in the laboratory) and then they, or others, began to consider how these understandings could be applied in educational settings. Work on the cognitive load theory of learning, which is discussed in depth in several chapters of this book (e.g., Chew; Lee and Kalyuga; Mayer; Renkl), provides an excellent example that documents how science of learning has led to valuable work on the science of instruction. Most of the work described in this book is based on theory and research in cognitive psychology. We might have selected other topics (and, thus, other authors) that have their research base in behavior analysis, computational modeling and computer science, neuroscience, etc. We made the selections we did because the work of our authors ties together nicely and seemed to us to have direct applicability in academic settings

Cognitive apprenticeship : teaching the craft of reading, writing, and mathtematics

Includes bibliographical references (p. 25-27)This research was supported by the National Institute of Education under Contract no. US-NIE-C-400-81-0030 and the Office of Naval Research under Contract No. N00014-85-C-002

Impact of Explicit Failure and Success-driven Preparatory Activities on Learning

Unscaffolded problem-solving before receiving instruction cangive students opportunities to entertain their exploratory hy-potheses at the expense of experiencing initial failures. Priorliterature has argued for the efficacy of such Productive Fail-ure (PF) activities in preparing students to “see” like an expert.Despite growing understanding of the socio-cognitive mecha-nisms that affect learning from PF, the necessity of success orfailure in initial problem-solving attempts is still unclear. Con-sequently, we do not know yet whether some ways of succeed-ing or failing are more efficacious than others. Here, we reportempirical evidence from a recently concluded classroom PF in-tervention (N=221), where we designed scaffolds to explicitlypush student problem-solving towards success via structuring,but also radically, towards failure via problematizing. Our ra-tionale for explicit failure scaffolding was rooted in facilitatingproblem-space exploration. We subsequently compared thedifferential preparatory effects of success-driven and failure-driven problem-solving on learning from subsequent instruc-tion. Results suggested explicit failure scaffolding during ini-tial problem-solving to have a higher impact on conceptual un-derstanding, compared to explicit success scaffolding. Thistrend was more salient for the task topic with greater difficulty

The Impact Of A Peer-Teaching Instructional Approach On A Student’s Self-Confidence

This study examines a problem of practice stemming from students not given the same opportunities to use and develop self-confidence and take on higher levels of responsibility in the classroom as they prepare for the 21st century workforce in our society. Recognizing a problem of practice evident in our high school with low-selfesteem in students, this paper studies the effects of implementing a peer-teaching instructional approach to help develop students’ self-confidence and emerging leadership skills (Lockie & Van Lanen, 2008). The central research question addressed in this study is: what is the impact of implementing a peer-teaching instructional approach on a student’s self-confidence? This is a mixed method case study. The action research methodology used in this study was Mertler’s (2017) four stages of action research cycle. The planning phase resulted in the problem of practice, a review of literature, a targeted research question, and a research plan. The acting phase included collecting and analyzing data through a student survey, interviews, student questionnaire, observations, and student artifacts by a teacher-researcher. The developing phase involved the creation of an action plan based on the analysis of data. Finally, the reflecting phase involved the results and reflection of the study

Semiotics and Symbiosis – “Gap-Closing”: How Signs, Symbols, and Structure Impact the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics for Middle School African American Students

The purpose of this theory-building project was to generate a scientific platform through which society might stop using the data from standardized mathematics assessments to evaluate and scrutinize students and instead evaluate, scrutinize, and improve the processes and activities through which students engage in mathematics learning (Hilliard, 1994: Kozol, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1997; Martin, 2000; Steele, 1992). In particular, this project focused on the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics (Peirce, 1902; Saussure, 1908/1998) of mathematics situations and the activities through which students might leverage these tools to construct their own mathematics knowledge in an effort to achieve mathematics proficiency (Kilpatrick, Swafford, & Findell, 2001). The participants of this project were self-identified African American male and female middle school students located in the southeastern region of the Unite States. This theory-building project used a re-engineered teaching experiment methodology (Steffe, 1991) located within a sociocultural and radical constructivist ideological frame (von Glasersfeld, 1983; Vygotsky, 1930/1978). More specifically, the students were mentored through a cycle of exploration, introduction, application, and inquiry when given mathematical situations. Data from observations and Socratic inquiries were collected and analyzed using cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT; Vygotsky, 1930/1978) and a newly developed coding protocol in order to seek aspects of metacognition, cognition, and mathematics proficiency (Saldaña, 2016). The reporting and analysis of the data revealed that the students could demonstrate progressive acts in their pursuit of mathematics proficiency. How the students were able to make such achievements were to be found, in part, in how they understood the semiotic aspects of any given mathematical situation––its syntax, semantics, and problem-solving elements. In addition, the students gave deeper and intentional attention to the metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive skills necessary to emphasize these semiotic aspects (Veenman & Spaan, 2005). Consistently, the responses from and the observations of each student were unique representations of their experiential selves. In the end, the aim of this theory-building project was to capture these unique representations and determine the specifics that might serve as components of a preliminary mathematics learning model

Invention Pedagogy – The Finnish Approach to Maker Education

This collection, edited and written by the leading scholars and experts of innovation and maker education in Finland, introduces invention pedagogy, a research-based Finnish approach for teaching and learning through multidisciplinary, creative design and making processes in formal school settings. The book outlines the background of, and need for, invention pedagogy, providing various perspectives for designing and orchestrating the invention process while discusses what can be learnt and how learning happens through inventing. In addition, the book introduces the transformative, school-level innovator agency needed for developing whole schools as innovative communities. Featuring informative case study examples, the volume explores the theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological implications for the research and practice of invention pedagogy in order to further the field and bring new perspectives, providing a new vision for schools for decades to come. Intermixing the results of cutting-edge research and best practice within STEAM-education and invention pedagogy, this book will be essential reading for researchers, students, and scholars of design and technology education, STEM education, teacher education, and learning sciences more broadly