Teaching assistants and pupils' academic and social engagement in mainstream schools: insights from systematic literature reviews

The last 20 years have seen a huge expansion in the additional adults working in classrooms in the UK, USA, and other countries. This paper presents the findings of a series of systematic literature reviews about teaching assistants. The first two reviews focused on stakeholder perceptions of teaching assistant contributions to academic and social engagement. Stakeholders were pupils, teachers, TAs, headteachers and parents. Perceptions focused on four principal contributions that teaching assistants contribute to: pupils’ academic and socio-academic engagement; inclusion; maintenance of stakeholder relations; and support for the teacher. The third review explored training. Against a background of patchy training provision both in the UK and the USA, strong claims are made for the benefits to TAs of training provided, particularly in building confidence and skills. The conclusions include implications for further training and the need for further research to gain an in-depth understanding as to precisely the manner in which TAs engage with children

Practices, Challenges and Implications of Teaching and Assessment of Cognitive Skills in Higher Education

The key research questions of the study were to check understanding,practices and challenges in teaching and assessment of higher orderthinking skills to students enrolled in pre-service teacher educationprogram. Sequential mixed method design was applied to collectquantitative and qualitative data with the help of structured questionnairescale and semi-structured interview. Descriptive statistics were appliedby calculating percentages and means; and thematic analysis was carriedout by open coding, axial coding, analytical coding and selective coding.Quantitative and qualitative data was integrated to draw findings andconclusions of the study. The major conclusions of the study are thatfaculty in UK conceptualise Cognitive Skills (CS) as processinginformation, constructing understanding, application of knowledge,problem solving and thinking activity. They also incorporate CSs inteaching problem solving and reflective learning practices in whichlearners retrieve, generate, organise, and validate information. Theyassess CSs by open book examination, moderation of assignments,matching and comparing against Teacher Education Standards, and alsoprovide effective feedback. However, faculty do not focus on‘construction of theory’ and linking theory to practice in teaching andassessment

Lesson Study in initial teacher learning : key to the pedagogic black box

[First paragraph] Since the early 1990s, initial teacher education (ITE) in England has been largely school-based and characterised by school-university partnerships. Over the course of a one-year post-graduate programme, student-teachers typically spend 24 of 36 weeks in schools, the remainder based in the partner university. At the end of the training year, national surveys regularly report high levels of satisfaction that increase each year (Teaching Agency, 2012). Nevertheless, as in other countries, ITE is challenged because ‘what is taught in education classes is disconnected from teachers’ work in the classroom’ (Kotelawala, 2012: 67). Consequently, there is constant demand for change with successive Secretaries of State taking steps to shift responsibility for ITE to schools

A participatory approach to Lesson Study in higher education

Purpose – This Higher Education Academy funded study explored learning challenges faced by international students early in their post-graduate courses through the use of Participatory Lesson Study (PLS). The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach – Two approaches to PLS were explored. Students were interviewed after “research lesson seminars” about their learning experiences; before two seminars, groups of students participated in planning meetings to inform preparation of seminar content and activities. Findings – Results suggest that PLS encourages a deep consideration of pedagogy by lecturers. Observation of student learning and post-seminar interviews highlighted the complex nature of the learning that unfolds during seminars. In some cases, student explanation of learning was dissonant with observations. Research limitations/implications – This was a small-scale project which cannot offer generalised implications for practice. However, it should act as a starting point to develop PLS on a larger scale and in other pedagogic contexts. Practical implications – This project led to reassessment of lecturers’ pedagogic assumptions and to development of new approaches. Thematic analysis of pre- and post-seminar student responses highlighted several important issues: variation in approaches to participation in seminars, variable use of technologies to support learning, importance of differentiation for learning and task-types preferred by learners. Originality/value – Results suggest that PLS facilitates the study of learning in higher education and the development of pedagogy, informed by and responsive to the needs of international students. As such, it has the potential to support any tutors working in higher education, whilst having wider, general utility to other groups approaching the development of pedagogy through Lesson Study

Lesson study: A collaborative approach to scholarship for teaching and learning in higher education

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has become an important field of inquiry, focusing on the development of new and critical pedagogic approaches in higher education. It is a broad field leading to the emergence of a number of contrasting perspectives concerning the development of insights into teaching and learning. In this article, we explore the potential for Lesson Study to act as a framework for reflecting on and developing pedagogic practice in the university sector. Originating in Japan over a century ago, Lesson Study is a collaborative tool for analysing and developing understanding of student learning. This makes it an ideal tool for capturing and interrogating new and critical insights into teaching and learning. An outline framework is suggested for developing the use of Lesson Study in higher education and we discuss how it can form a positive methodology for extending the work of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Lesson Study and Pedagogic Literacy in Initial Teacher Education: Challenging Reductive Models

This paper argues that teacher learning is not reducible to lists of ‘performative’ standards. Funded by the Society for Educational Studies, we used ‘lesson study’ as a vehicle to develop new teacher expertise, following which we concluded that conceptualising ‘learning to teach’ as acquisition of standards is insufficient for understanding the process of teacher growth. We propose an alternative holistic vision

Adapting ‘lesson study’ to investigate classroom pedagogy in initial teacher education: what student-teachers think

This paper reports findings from a project that explored the use of a modified form of ‘lesson study’ in a one-year programme of secondary school initial teacher education (ITE). Twelve mentors and student-teachers worked in pairs to design and teach two ‘research lessons’ in the course of two eight-week teaching practice placements as part of a university–school partnership for the preparation of new teachers. Participating student-teachers reported that engagement in this form of lesson study with a mentor was an effective way to help them grow individual teaching skills, knowledge and confidence in teaching placements. In addition, in most cases, it enabled active and creative participation in a community of teacher learners. However, engagement in lesson study not only supported student-teachers to meet ‘qualifying to teach’ standards, but also offered opportunities for holistic study of teaching and learning, leading to growth in what we characterise as ‘pedagogic literacy’

Mentors and student-teachers ‘lesson studying’ in initial teacher education

Purpose An adapted version of lesson study was used with mentors and student-teachers in a one-year initial teacher education (ITE) programme for prospective teachers of geography and modern languages. In partnership with eight secondary schools, the effectiveness of the lesson study cycle was evaluated as a vehicle for exploration of approaches to aid student-teacher learning during school placements. Design/methodology/approach Twelve lesson study case studies were completed and analysed. Findings Three principal findings emerged: firstly, most collaborating mentors and student-teachers reported that they engaged in a reflexive process, exploring the complexity of teaching, each learning more about the characteristics of teaching; secondly, in cases where collaboration allowed student-teachers a degree of autonomy, lesson study provided a collaborative scaffold for understanding the complexity of teaching, contributing to professional development along a continuum which we tentatively term ‘pedagogic literacy’; thirdly and less positively, some mentors struggled to shed the shackles of traditional roles, dominating the discourse as advice-givers so that a traditional ‘parallel’ approach to mentoring continued. Originality/value The work expands the experiential base of lesson study efforts in ITE in the United Kingdom and elaborates a view of teacher learning that challenges reductive approaches to the preparation of new teachers. For the first time, it presents student-teacher and mentor perspectives on the use of lesson study in teaching practice in England