Professional dialogues to foster dialogic pedagogy in mathematics: Design and test of a school-run teacher professional development programme

This dissertation is a mixed-methods study on the viability and impact of teacher-facilitated, school-embedded teacher professional development [TPD] programme to promote dialogue in primary mathematics in Chilean primary schools. Educational dialogue is conceived as a kind of talk that is both challenging and inclusive, giving students space to express and explore ideas collectively. Growing evidence supports its positive relationship with attainment, attitudes and reasoning. Still, internationally classroom talk patterns are usually non-dialogic, constraining students to a passive role. TPD is considered a key lever to bridge this gap. However, previous research often involves intensive, small-scale researcher-led interventions, which are costly and hardly scalable. This study aimed to (1) design and trial a programme to promote dialogic pedagogy in mathematics (2) understand its viability, and (3) assess its impact in teachers’ noticing, understanding and practices. The programme had built-in scalable features including semi-structured materials, low operational costs and local facilitators. Facilitators took part in an induction and then led 10-13 sessions with conceptual and practical components. Four schools initiated the implementation but only two of them finished (five participants in each). Data consists of pre-post lessons, pre-post video observations, interviews and teacher session recordings. Regarding viability, the programme was appreciated by participants, but two schools dropped out at different points in time. A tentative explanatory model indicated that these variations were linked to the leadership and research teams’ pressure and support, and facilitators’ ownership and commitment. In the meetings, facilitators’ actions were distinct from expert facilitation in the importance of management activities as well as their participation as peers. The peer-led TPD design tenets should, in consequence, be reconsidered to differentiate them from researcher-led models. Focusing on effectiveness, in the schools where the programme was implemented it led to positive results. Participants’ video observations shifted their focus towards dialogue. In the classroom and through interviews, participatory and elaborative aspects of dialogue were seen to increase, but not reasoning and challenging. Furthermore, teachers valued dialogue’s potential for improving inclusion and classroom climate. These results show that, where viable, the adopted TPD approach showed promise of being effective, while posing further questions about design and implementation conditions to favour scalability.Becas Chile/2015 - Nº 72160185 and the Cambridge Trus

Dialogische Unterrichtsgespräche als Core Practices? Lernen im Learning to Teach-Lab: Science

Alexander Gröschner, Elisa Calcagni, Susi Klaß und Florentine Hickethier fragen in ihrem Beitrag, ob das Führen dialogischer Unterrichtsgespräche als Core Practice gelten können und in einem Learning to Teach-Lab an der Universität Jena von Studierenden erlernt werden kann. Sie untersuchen ebenfalls in einem Interventions-Kontrollgruppen-Design, wie die Studierenden mit Hilfe videografierten Unterrichts fremder Lehrpersonen die Elemente dialogischer Gespräche wahrnehmen und analysieren können. (DIPF/Orig.

Process quality dimensions of teacher professional development events

Fortbildungen sind wichtige Ressourcen zur Professionalisierung von Lehrkräften. Die Forschung in diesem Bereich konzentriert sich bisher stark auf die Bestimmung verschiedener Merkmale wirksamer Fortbildungen, jedoch ohne sich dabei spezifischer auf die Qualität von Lehr-Lern-Prozessen zu fokussieren. Der vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt Dimensionen der Prozessqualität von Fortbildungsveranstaltungen für Lehrkräfte, die aus verschiedenen Bereichen des Bildungssystems abgeleitet werden. (DIPF/Orig.)Professional development is an important resource for teacher professionalization. Research in this field has so far strongly focused on identifying various characteristics of effective professional development programs, however, without specifically focusing on the quality of teaching-learning processes in a single professional development event. This article presents several dimensions for the process quality based on different fields of the educational system. (DIPF/Orig.

Qualität von Lehrkräftefortbildungen einschätzen. Ein Arbeitsbuch aus dem Projekt IMPRESS

Die Erhaltung und Weiterentwicklung der eigenen Kompetenzen ist neben dem Unterrichten ein wichtiger Bestandteil der beruflichen Tätigkeiten von Lehrpersonen. Für die Nutzung von formalen Fortbildungen können positive Wirkungen auf die professionellen Kompetenzen von Lehrpersonen, die Qualität des Unterrichts und das Lernen von Schüler:innen nachgewiesen werden. Die Forschung zur Fort- und Weiterbildung von Lehrkräften konzentrierte sich bisher weitgehend darauf, die inhaltlichen und strukturellen Merkmale wirksamer Angebote zu identifizieren und zu erfassen, während die Lehr-Lern-Prozesse der durchgeführten Fortbildungen noch weitgehend unberücksichtigt blieben. Die Universitäten Kassel, Jena und Potsdam haben sich in dem gemeinsamen Projekt „InstruMent zur Erfassung der PRozESSqualität von Lehrkräftefortbildungen“ (IMPRESS) zum Ziel gesetzt, ein Instrument zu entwickeln und bereit zu stellen, mit dem die Qualität von Lehr-Lern-Prozessen in Fortbildungen erfasst und daraufhin besser beschrieben werden kann. Das Projekt IMPRESS greift damit ein Desiderat auf und leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Erforschung der Qualität von Lehrkräftefortbildungen. Das vorliegende Arbeitsbuch stellt zunächst Hintergründe zu den Konstrukten der Prozessqualität dar und dokumentiert anschließend die neu entwickelten Erhebungsinstrumente. Es handelt sich um Befragungsinstrumente für die Fortbildungsteilnehmer:innen und die Fortbildner:innen sowie um ein Instrument für die externe Beobachtung. Die Qualität der Lehr-Lern-Prozesse wird in den Instrumenten durch insgesamt zehn Dimensionen konzeptualisiert und operationalisiert. Darüber hinaus werden in dem Arbeitsbuch zwei weitere Instrumente zur Verfügung gestellt, um sowohl inhaltliche und strukturelle Merkmale einer Fortbildung als auch das Auftreten und Handeln von Fortbildner:innen aus der Perspektive der teilnehmenden Lehrpersonen zu erfassen. (Autor*innen)Maintaining and developing one\u27s own competencies, besides teaching, is an important part of the professional activities of teachers. The use of formal professional development programs has been proven to have positive effects on teachers\u27 professional competencies, the quality of teaching, and student learning. Research on teacher professional development has thus focused mainly on identifying and assessing the content-related and structural characteristics of effective professional development programs, while teaching-learning processes of teacher professional development has hardly been investigated. The Universities of Kassel, Jena and Potsdam collaborated on the project "Survey for the assessment of the quality of teaching-learning-processes in teacher professional development" (IMPRESS), which aims to develop and provide an instrument for assessing the quality of teaching-learning processes in professional development programs. The IMPRESS project thus addresses a desideratum and makes an important contribution to research on teachers\u27 professional development. This workbook first provides a theoretical grounding on the constructs of process quality and then documents the newly developed instruments. These are questionnaires for the participants and the facilitators as well as an instrument for external observation. The quality of the teaching-learning processes is conceptualized and operationalized in the instruments by a total of ten dimensions. In addition, the workbook provides two instruments to measure both the content and structural features of a professional development program as well as the appearance and behavior of the facilitators from the perspective of the participating teachers. (Authors

Abnormal visual attention to simple social stimuli in 4-month-old infants at high risk for Autism

Despite an increasing interest in detecting early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), the pathogenesis of the social impairments characterizing ASD is still largely unknown. Atypical visual attention to social stimuli is a potential early marker of the social and communicative deficits of ASD. Some authors hypothesized that such impairments are present from birth, leading to a decline in the subsequent typical functioning of the learning-mechanisms. Others suggested that these early deficits emerge during the transition from subcortically to cortically mediated mechanisms, happening around 2-3 months of age. The present study aimed to provide additional evidence on the origin of the early visual attention disturbance that seems to characterize infants at high risk (HR) for ASD. Four visual preference tasks were used to investigate social attention in 4-month-old HR, compared to low-risk (LR) infants of the same age. Visual attention differences between HR and LR infants emerged only for stimuli depicting a direct eye-gaze, compared to an adverted eye-gaze. Specifically, HR infants showed a significant visual preference for the direct eye-gaze stimulus compared to LR infants, which may indicate a delayed development of the visual preferences normally observed at birth in typically developing infants. No other differences were found between groups. Results are discussed in the light of the hypotheses on the origins of early social visual attention impairments in infants at risk for ASD

New horizons for fundamental physics with LISA

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) has the potential to reveal wonders about the fundamental theory of nature at play in the extreme gravity regime, where the gravitational interaction is both strong and dynamical. In this white paper, the Fundamental Physics Working Group of the LISA Consortium summarizes the current topics in fundamental physics where LISA observations of gravitational waves can be expected to provide key input. We provide the briefest of reviews to then delineate avenues for future research directions and to discuss connections between this working group, other working groups and the consortium work package teams. These connections must be developed for LISA to live up to its science potential in these areas

Correction: Lung cancer multi-omics digital human avatars for integrating precision medicine into clinical practice: the LANTERN study

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Exploratory mathematics talk in a second language: a sociolinguistic perspective:

This paper illuminates challenges confronting teachers and students at the literacy/numeracy interface in contexts where students have not developed sufficient English language proficiency to be learning mathematics through English but, due to socio-politically and economically driven perceptions are being taught in English. We analyse transcript data of classroom talk in a South African grade 4 mathematics lesson on fractions. Together with interview data, the lesson data highlight some of the consequences students’ diminished access to their home language appear to have on their access to mathematical meaning-making

New horizons for fundamental physics with LISA

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) has the potential to reveal wonders about the fundamental theory of nature at play in the extreme gravity regime, where the gravitational interaction is both strong and dynamical. In this white paper, the Fundamental Physics Working Group of the LISA Consortium summarizes the current topics in fundamental physics where LISA observations of gravitational waves can be expected to provide key input. We provide the briefest of reviews to then delineate avenues for future research directions and to discuss connections between this working group, other working groups and the consortium work package teams. These connections must be developed for LISA to live up to its science potential in these areas