Teacher knowledge

... Debra A. Myhill a * , Susan M. Jones a , Helen Lines a & Annabel Watson a Available online: 16 Nov 2011. ... View all references; Elley, Barham, and Wylie 197514. Elley, WB, Barham, IH, Lamb, H. and Wylie, M. 1975. The role of grammar in a secondary school curriculum. ...

The term “best practice” is widely used throughout education despite the lack of evidence or consensus for what practices are “best.” The pervasive use of this term promotes superficial selection and use of teaching methods, discourages continuous improvement of teaching, and prioritizes activity over achievement. Rather than highlighting “best practices,” teaching requires a research and development process for accumulating and sharing knowledge related to specific learning goals and particular students. Such improvement activity is more likely to foster advancements in teaching and learning than short-lived attempts to imitate loosely defined exemplars. Contact author to request a copy of the article or visit the ASCD website at: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may15/vol72/num08/%C2%A3Best-Practice%C2%A3%E2%80%94The-Enemy-of-Better-Teaching.aspx

This article focuses on a conceptual approach to understand how qualified teachers in England, with occupational experiences, use pedagogic and occupational knowledge and experiences in their teaching practices. The conceptual approach consists of two parts: a. ‘Putting Knowledge to Work’ (PKtW), a generic concept which uses ‘recontextualisation’ processes to investigate how learners apply knowledge in different settings, and b. a structure for applying PKtW to teachers.

This article is based on the qualitative findings of a project, which consisted of eight qualified teachers. In addition to the discussions, the complexities of applying the conceptual framework to teachers with occupational experiences and a typology of knowledge sources and recontextualisation approaches are also offered. The last section refers to the implications for teacher training, work settings, continuous professional development and for other teaching professionals in different pedagogic settings.

The aim of this study is to investigate teachers’ perceptions of their practice of values education, and to explore their degree of professionalism in this matter. Qualitative interviews with 13 teachers have been conducted and analysed by a comparative analysis. According to their view, values education is (a) most often reactive and unplanned, (b) embedded in everyday school life with a focus on students’ everyday behaviour in school, and (c) partly or mostly unconsciously performed. Furthermore, professional knowledge appears to be missing in the domain of values education among these teachers.

Recent reports and reviews of teaching and education in Australia, have stressed the need for research to clarify relationships between teacher knowledge and teaching practice and student experience and learning in classrooms. Although findings of research over the past twenty - five years have consistently demonstrated effects of teacher quality on school-student outcomes, researchers are just beginning to develop approaches

Teachers’ understandings of second language learning influence their practices in the classroom. This paper analyzes interview and classroom data collected during a year-long ethnographic study of two high school English language development classes to identify (1) what the teachers understood about second language (L2) development and L2 academic writing, and (2) to what extent these perspectives manifested in the teachers’ writing instruction. Analyses suggest that both the teachers felt that language could be learned inductively through exposure to models and that writing instruction should focus on essay structure and correctness. Their teaching, however, was also constrained by accountability pressures from high stakes writing assessments. I argue that the teachers’ approaches reflected a restrictive understanding not aligned with a situated perspective on language and writing development and therefore denied their multilingual students’ opportunities to learn academic language for writing.

This paper describes a framework for mathematics lesson observation and illustrates the ways that this framework is being used in practice, for mathematics teaching development. The research which led to the development of the framework drew on videotapes of mathematics lessons prepared and conducted by elementary pre-service students towards the end of their initial training. A grounded theory approach to data analysis led to the emergence of the framework- a ‘knowledge quartet’, with four broad dimensions, through which the mathematics-related knowledge of these teachers could be observed in practice. We term the four units: foundation, transformation, connection and contingency. This paper describes how each of these units is characterised, and analyses a fragment of one of the videotaped lessons, showing how each dimension of the quartet can be identified in the lesson.

This field attachment report is an attempt to record the experiences of developing reading resources for the schoolteacher. It is informed by the belief and observation that reading resources are scarce for teachers in India, and that teachers as a group are at the bottom of an intellectual class hierarchy with respect to the access to, and production of, knowledge that contributes to and draws from, modern educational thought. The central argument is that there is an urgent need to rethink the role of the teacher as a ‘transformative intellectual’ who through reading and writing develops critical awareness. In the teacher’s hands, a text that incorporates a language of affect, reason and possibility becomes a powerful instrument for critical awareness and praxis. Moreover, the text directly interacts with the teacher, thus largely bypassing structures that stultify teacher agency.

This article is the explanation and manifestation of a proposed method for teacher reflection. This form of reflection finds its foundation in the teacher practical knowledge movement and more specifically the work of William Pinar (2004) on educational autobiography and the concepts and methodology of narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, 1996). The method that I will explain and employ here includes four steps. Though the concept of a “step” necessarily implies a distinction between each (with a fifth step not included here), I prefer to think of these steps as continuous and flowing into and out of each other and not necessarily occurring sequentially.

Critical thinking or higher order thinking has been recognised as a key skill needed in school leavers in many global educational reforms in the 21 st century. While policy makers seem to have put in place initiatives and policies to drive schools to teach critical thinking, this chapter argues that such initiatives require a systemic and systematic approach in which teacher knowledge is key in ensuring the successful development of students' critical thinking. Findings from a study on one of the world's leading educational systems initiatives in developing critical thinking indicates that teacher knowledge needed to teach critical thinking effectively is an aspect that seems to have received little attention in terms of teacher learning and preparation. One of the key factors that can be attributed to the gaps in knowledge in this area among teachers is the conspicuous lack of teacher preparation at pre-service education and the lack of effective professional development among in service teachers.

Although many researchers have studied teacher collaboration, few have focused on what and how experienced teachers learn when they co-plan daily lessons. This study examines how mathematics teachers’ conversational patterns in co-planning meetings shape their opportunities to learn. Preliminary findings suggest that different features of collaborative conversations, such as their agreements and disagreements, their use of students as conversational resources, and their methods of justifying their suggestions, support teacher inquiry about specific lessons or about teaching more broadly. This has implications for teachers’ professional growth.

As the key agents of change in educational reforms, it is teachers who are seen as central to effecting change; this is no different in the curricular aim of developing critical thinkers found in numerous educational reforms across the world. One of the key assumptions behind such curricular reforms aimed at developing critical thinking in schools seems to be that teachers would somehow have the required knowledge and capacity to teach critical thinking successfully as envisaged in educational policies. However, research suggests that this is not necessarily the case and that teachers’ knowledge in critical thinking teaching has to be developed in an explicit and systematic manner. Stemming from a qualitative case study on teacher knowledge in the context of implementing a curriculum that explicitly aims to develop critical thinking, a revised framework of teacher knowledge is proposed. This framework, which was emergent in the analysis of the study data, offers possibilities as a more complete heuristic and analytical tool to help understand the complexity and dynamics of teacher knowledge in teaching critical thinking.  Moreover, it could help pave the way to better understand the various knowledge domains that need to be purposefully and systematically developed by schools and teacher education institutions to support teachers in their vital work of developing critical thinkers in the classroom successfully for life and work in the 21st century.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in education are increasing in profile as countries grapple with serious challenges of educational access and quality—and as donors such as the World Bank turn to this approach as they advise countries on potential solutions to these barriers. Evidence is still limited on the impacts of this policy approach, however, and the academic literature that looks at equity and inclusion raises profound concerns.

This study seeks to understand the impact of the PPP initiative in Punjab province, Pakistan, on key dimensions of equity, education quality, and democratic and social accountability. It was conducted over a period of two months, through field visits in a sample of 31 schools across five districts of the province (in both rural and urban/slum areas) and all four programs run by the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF).

The study provides an in-depth view of how the sample schools are operating and are incentivized within the framework of the PEF programs, raising serious concerns about equity, quality, and accountability that need to be considered more broadly in the push to expand PPPs

This literature review was conducted as part of a dissertation research study. The review examines what scholars have studied in relationship to educators’ implementation of technology and instructional practices relating to digital citizenship. Additionally, the review examines the knowledge and beliefs of educators to include pre-service and current service teachers and students in K-12 education. Often research, as well as educational institutes, have emphasized the negative aspects of technology or the misuse of technology by users. Alternatively, this review highlighted the knowledge, beliefs, and professional practices of educators in order to ascertain what gaps exist to understand what needs to be addressed in promoting digital citizenship instruction in preparing students to use technology appropriately, responsibly, and ethically.

The aim of the current study was to examine Swedish and Turkish teachers’ perspectives on values education. Qualitative interviews with 52 teachers were conducted and analyzed. Values education was mostly about compliance with societal values and norms. The learning goals or values in values education were mainly on how to treat others and on self-responsibility. Teachers did not take a critical approach. A main method of values education reported by the teachers was to be a good role model in everyday interactions with students. Values education was largely described as an everyday practice embedded in the stream of social interactions. Furthermore, an everyday language was used when the teachers described values and values education. There was a lack of professional knowledge in this domain.

The case study research sought to explore whether school managers and teachers possessed knowledge of models of staff development and which models were in use in the private high school chosen for the study. Interviews of the Headmistress and teachers were conducted using semi-structured interview guides and then thematically coded. The f indings revealed that the research participants possessed no knowledge of the development models. If fact, the training model and the individually guided staff development model were used minimally without any conscious knowledge. The study highlighted the need for staff development if the quality of education was to improve.

This paper reviews evidence on the interplay between professional standards for teachers, the content of teacher education and educational sciences, and provides three case studies to illustrate these interactions from Estonia, Australia and Singapore. In particular, it investigates what aligning teacher education programmes to standards really mean; and what conception of educational sciences is reflected in the standards and the curriculum. Analyses suggest that alignment, as an explicit, direct and consistent correspondence, is difficult to achieve, in part due to different conceptualisations of professional knowledge. However, this paper argues that the main value of standards as policy tools lies in their capacity to create mutual dialogue between different artefacts (standards’ requirements, curriculum, course descriptions, accreditation standards, etc.), as well as among stakeholders. Regularly renegotiating the standards as a result of such dialogue and reflections should be a crucial part of the policy process.

The quality of teachers’ knowledge about how people learn influences students’ learning outcomes. Similarly, the quality of students’ knowledge about how they learn influences their engagement in self-regulated learning and consequently, their learning achievement. There is a gap between research findings that support these two premises and teaching–learning practices in classrooms. In this paper we describe attempts to reduce this gap. In Study 1 we surveyed early adolescent students’ cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and demonstrated that students’ cognitive and metacognitive strategy knowledge has substantial room for improvement. In Studies 2 and 3 we collaborated with teachers to embed explicit cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction, using learning protocols, into regular class lessons. Studies 2 and 3 showed that the learning protocols slipped readily into teachers’ typical lesson designs, scaffolded teachers’ delivery of strategy instruction, and scaffolded some students’ acquisition of strategy knowledge, although progress was sometimes slow. Recommendations are presented for supporting teachers and students to engage with cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction.

... and pedagogy; the emotional understanding of PCK in a context embedded in power relations, ideology ... ecology model serves as a guide for understanding how multiple factors interact and ... the role of school emotional climate was in influencing her own emotional ecology over ...

One of the learning aims for Civics and Citizenship (CC) in the Australian Curriculum (AC) is the development of “reflective, active and informed decision-makers, who will be well placed to contribute to an evolving and healthy democracy that fosters the wellbeing of Australia as a democratic nation” (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs [MCEETYA], 2008, p. 8). In this regard, CC also provides an excellent platform for the development of one of the AC’s key general capabilities, “critical and creative thinking” (ACARA, n.d.), which is also “fundamental to effective learning” (ACARA n.d.). The basic pedagogical question that arises is how the development of critical and creative thinking can be achieved successfully through CC. Some studies in critical thinking suggest that teachers who incorporate critical thinking in their teaching usually do so unconsciously or without making it explicit to learners. Based on an examination of the literature on critical thinking, this paper aims to draw out the pedagogical implications for CC teachers to successfully develop students’ capacities to be critical thinkers.

Although the number and diversity of emergent bilingual students is rising, this population is viewed as homogeneous rather than vibrant and eclectic. This case study explores how two secondary English as a New Language (ENL) teachers uncover the diversity of their recently-arrived emergent bilingual population through implementing translanguaging pedagogy, a strength-based vision of student language development. The findings indicate that teachers’ shifts in how they conceive of their
students are intertwined with meaningful pedagogical changes.

The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) has recently moved from norm-referenced to standards-referenced assessment, including the incorporation of a substantial school-based summative oral assessment component into the compulsory English language subject in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE). Starting in Form 4, teachers now assess their own students' oral English language competencies through a range of classroom-embedded activities over 2 years (SBA Consultancy Team, 2005). This high-profile assessment initiative marks a significant shift in policy as well as in practice for the HKEAA. Although school-based assessment (SBA) is in line with the Education and Manpower Bureau's general move to align assessment with curriculum reforms, in the early stage of implementation the reforms raised a number of concerns in the wider school community, including sociocultural, technical, and practical concerns. This article first describes the specific content and structure of the HKCEE English Language SBA component. It then reports on the result of the initial analysis of teachers' and students' responses to the initiative in the first stage of its implementation, including the perceived benefits for learning and teaching. The article concludes with a brief overview of how this initial analysis led to the development of a number of subsequent research studies aimed at monitoring and developing teacher knowledge and skills and evaluating more systematically the impact of the reform on teachers, students, and schools in Hong Kong.