Unterrichtsforschung und Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung: Das Überbrücken der Kluft zwischen Forschung und Praxis

A few thousand years ago, Aristotle pointed out a gap between academic (research) knowledge and practical knowledge. The former is abstract, a generalization based on careful reasoning from evidence. The latter is specific, context-specific. Consequently, factors other than research knowledge come into play when teaching and when preparing teachers. A brief history of research on teaching highlights some of its rich contributions to the understanding of teaching. However, its contribution to educating teachers has, following Aristotle, limitations. Much more is involved in contextualized decisions about teaching action than research can address. Research knowledge is limited, for example, in its ability to inform teachers when and how to act in a situation. It is also limited in its ability to inform teachers as to how they should act considering the moral and ethical consequences of that action. Teachers need and use practical knowledge. Imparting that kind of knowledge is central to educating teachers. The job of teacher educators is to bridge the research-practice gap in preparing new teachers and enhancing capacity of practicing teachers. In a sense, teacher-educators are brokers in a trading zone between research and practice. Brokers should be recognized and trained in that role to advance the education of teachers. This said, preparing brokers fluent in teaching practice and scientific research has its challenges. These challenges include convincing the public and policymakers that more than scientific evidence is needed in preparing and supporting teachers, and convincing higher education institutions that doing so is legitimate and should be respected along with other professional programs such as medicine, law, business, and architecture. (DIPF/Orig.)Vor einigen Tausend Jahren verwies bereits Aristoteles auf die Kluft zwischen akademischem bzw. wissenschaftlichem Wissen und praktischem Wissen. Ersteres ist abstrakt, da es eine sorgfältig vorgenommene Generalisierung von empirischer Evidenz darstellt. Letzteres hingegen ist (kontext)spezifisch. Infolgedessen spielen noch andere Faktoren als forschungsbasiertes Wissen eine Rolle, wenn es um Unterricht und die Aus- und Weiterbildung von Lehrpersonen geht. Ein kurzer Überblick über die Geschichte der Unterrichtsforschung soll ein paar ihrer bedeutenden Beiträge zum Verstehen von Unterrichtshandlungen hervorheben. Allerdings ist der Beitrag der Unterrichtsforschung zur Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung, Aristoteles folgend, insgesamt beschränkt. Denn kontextualisierte Entscheidungen, die sich auf konkrete Lehrhandlungen im Unterricht beziehen, umfassen mehr, als Forschung miteinzubeziehen vermag. Das in der Forschung generierte Wissen ist limitiert, weil es Lehrpersonen beispielsweise nicht sagen kann, wann und wie sie in einer konkreten Unterrichtssituation handeln sollen. Ebenfalls limitiert ist dieses Wissen in Bezug darauf, welches Verhalten angesichts der moralischen und ethischen Konsequenzen einer Handlung angemessen ist. Lehrpersonen benötigen Praxiswissen und wenden dieses an. Die Vermittlung dieses Wissens ist eine zentrale Aufgabe der Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung. Dozierende an Institutionen der Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung haben die Kluft zwischen Forschung und Praxis zu überbrücken, und dies sowohl in der Ausbildung als auch in der Weiterbildung von Lehrpersonen. In gewissem Sinne fungieren sie dabei als «brokers», die in einer Handelszone zwischen Forschung und Praxis vermittelnd tätig sind. Solche Brokerinnen und Broker sollten in ihrer Rolle anerkannt und geschult werden, damit sie die Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung weiterbringen können. Dies ist jedoch nicht ganz einfach, denn die fundierte Vorbereitung der Brokerinnen und Broker auf Lehre und wissenschaftliche Forschung ist herausfordernd. Diese Herausforderungen bestehen nicht zuletzt darin, die Öffentlichkeit und die politischen Entscheidungsträgerinnen und Entscheidungsträger davon zu überzeugen, dass Vorbereitung und Unterstützung von Lehrpersonen mehr erfordern als die Vermittlung wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse. Hochschulen wiederum müssen davon überzeugt werden, dass dieser Anspruch legitim ist und ebenso anerkannt werden sollte wie in Ausbildungsprogrammen anderer Professionen, z.B. in Medizin, Recht, Wirtschaft und Architektur

Steps in Designing an Indicator System

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What Are Educational Indicators and Indicator Systems?

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Modeling and Measuring Domain-Specific Quantitative Reasoning in Higher Education Business and Economics

Quantitative reasoning is considered a crucial prerequisite for acquiring domain-specific expertise in higher education. To ascertain whether students are developing quantitative reasoning, validly assessing its development over the course of their studies is required. However, when measuring quantitative reasoning in an academic study program, it is often confounded with other skills. Following a situated approach, we focus on quantitative reasoning in the domain of business and economics and define domain-specific quantitative reasoning primarily as a skill and capacity that allows for reasoned thinking regarding numbers, arithmetic operations, graph analyses, and patterns in real-world business and economics tasks, leading to problem solving. As many studies demonstrate, well-established instruments for assessing business and economics knowledge like the Test of Understanding College Economics (TUCE) and the Examen General para el Egreso de la Licenciatura (EGEL) contain items that require domain-specific quantitative reasoning skills. In this study, we follow a new approach and assume that assessing business and economics knowledge offers the opportunity to extract domain-specific quantitative reasoning as the skill for handling quantitative data in domain-specific tasks. We present an approach where quantitative reasoning – embedded in existing measurements from TUCE and EGEL tasks – will be empirically extracted. Hereby, we reveal that items tapping domain-specific quantitative reasoning constitute an empirically separable factor within a Confirmatory Factor Analysis and that this factor (domain-specific quantitative reasoning) can be validly and reliably measured using existing knowledge assessments. This novel methodological approach, which is based on obtaining information on students’ quantitative reasoning skills using existing domain-specific tests, offers a practical alternative to broad test batteries for assessing students’ learning outcomes in higher education

Research on teaching and the education of teachers: Brokering the gap

A few thousand years ago, Aristotle pointed out a gap between academic (research) knowledge and practical knowledge. The former is abstract, a generalization based on careful reasoning from evidence. The latter is specific, context-specific. Consequently, factors other than research knowledge come into play when teaching and when preparing teachers. A brief history of research on teaching highlights some of its rich contributions to the understanding of teaching. However, its contribution to educating teachers has, following Aristotle, limitations. Much more is involved in contextualized decisions about teaching action than research can address. Research knowledge is limited, for example, in its ability to inform teachers when and how to act in a situation. It is also limited in its ability to inform teachers as to how they should act considering the moral and ethical consequences of that action. Teachers need and use practical knowledge. Imparting that kind of knowledge is central to educating teachers. The job of teacher educators is to bridge the research-practice gap in preparing new teachers and enhancing capacity of practicing teachers. In a sense, teacher-educators are brokers in a trading zone between research and practice. Brokers should be recognized and trained in that role to advance the education of teachers. This said, preparing brokers fluent in teaching practice and scientific research has its challenges. These challenges include convincing the public and policymakers that more than scientific evidence is needed in preparing and supporting teachers, and convincing higher education institutions that doing so is legitimate and should be respected along with other professional programs such as medicine, law, business, and architecture

The complex relationship between students’ critical thinking and epistemological beliefs in the context of problem solving

The study utilized a multi-method approach to explore the connection between critical thinking and epistemological beliefs in a specific problem-solving situation. Data drawn from a sample of ten third-year bioscience students were collected using a combination of a cognitive lab and a performance task from the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). The cognitive-lab data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings showed that students’ epistemological beliefs were interwoven into their critical thinking: students used critical thinking as a tool (1) for enhancing understanding and (2) for determining truth or falsehood. Based on this classification, students could be placed in one of two qualitative profiles, either (1) thorough processing or (2) superficial processing. The results indicated that students who showed superficial processing palmed off justification for knowing on authoritative figures. In contrast to previous studies these students did not consider knowledge to be absolutely certain or unquestionable. The findings also show that students with thorough processing believed knowledge to be tentative and fallible, but did not share the relativist view of knowledge where any claim counts because all knowledge is relative. All ten students shared a fallibilist view of knowledge.Peer reviewe

Construct overlap in cross-national assessment: critical thinking in the teacher education curricula of two countries

Primary objective: The significance of critical thinking (CT) has grown worldwide in recent years. In teacher education, for example, educators are expected to impart this skill to students but we lack comprehensive international comparative research on CT in pre-service teachers. To begin to develop such assessments, we comparatively analysed CT in Colombia’s and Switzerland’s teacher education intended curricula. Research design and methodology: We examined 384 curriculum documents at the national (macro), institutional (meso), and course-specific (micro) levels. The documents included 73 from Colombia and 311 from Switzerland. We also conducted interviews with nine teacher educators, four from Colombia and five from Switzerland. Results: Our analysis revealed that while both countries provide similar opportunities for student teachers to acquire CT skills, there are differences in the percentage of documents that reflect CT or any of its facets, and few university courses include several CT facets. Conclusion: Our findings suggest the possibility for international CT assessment with appropriate cultural and contextual adaptations. However, the results also highlight the need for better alignment within training curricula and a more cohesive approach to CT, ensuring that CT is not only mentioned in official macro-level documents but is also comprehensively integrated into the micro level

Bostonia

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Bostonia

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

The effect of professional development on elementary science teachers’ understanding, confidence, and classroom implementation of reform‐based science instruction

Through a randomized controlled trial, this mixed‐methods study evaluated changes in elementary science teachers’ understandings, confidence, and classroom implementation of problem‐based learning (PBL), inquiry, and nature of science (NOS) instruction following participation in a professional development (PD) as well as the components of the PD that teachers perceived facilitated these changes. Results indicated that following the PD, treatment teacher (n = 139) understandings of and confidence for teaching inquiry, NOS, and PBL were significantly greater than control teachers (n = 98) after controlling for preunderstandings and confidence. The effect sizes were large. Treatment teachers also incorporated significantly more PBL, inquiry, and NOS into their instruction. Modeling, microteaching with feedback and reflection, and in‐classroom coaching facilitated teachers’ confidence, understanding, and intention to implement the reform‐based practices they learned. Implications for the understanding of the relationship between knowledge, confidence, and practice as well as elementary science teacher PD design are discussed