Multigrade teaching in primary education as a promising pedagogy for teacher education in Austria and Finland

This chapter focuses on teaching practices used in multigrade classes and the importance of them being incorporated in teacher education as promising pedagogies for future use. Multigrade classes - defined as classes in which two or more grades are taught together - are common worldwide. Hence, there is a need for teacher candidates to become familiar with how to teach in split grade classrooms. However, research on multigrade teaching as well as its development in teacher education studies has been neglected, even though multigrade teachers need special skills to organize instruction in their heterogeneous classrooms. We argue that in successful multigrade teaching practices, the heterogeneity of students is taken into account and cultivated. Based on content analysis of teacher interviews conducted in Austrian and Finnish primary schools, we recommend teaching practices such as spiral curricula, working plans, and peer learning as promising teacher education pedagogies for future multigrade class teaching. We also suggest that the professional skills required in high-quality teaching practices in multigrade teaching should be further studied by researchers and educators.

Project based learning activities as a means of adapting conventional curricula to the demands of the 21st century aeronautical engineer: The design and building of the EYEFLY 1.

In this paper we report the process of designing and building the EYEFLY 1, a real UAS platform which has just performed its maiden flight. For the development of this aircraft, 30 groups of students from successive years at the Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Técnica Aeronáutica (EUITA) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) carried out their compulsory End of Degree Project as a coordinated Project Based learning activity. Our conclusions clearly indicate that Project Based Learning activities can provide a valid complement to more conventional, theoretically-based, teaching methods. The combination of both approaches will allow us to maintain traditional but well-tested methods for providing our students with a sound knowledge of fundamental engineering disciplines and, at the same time, to introduce our students to exciting and relevant engineering situations and sceneries where social and business skills, such as communication skills, team-working or decision-taking, can be put into practice.

How to measure healthiness in buildings: Experiences in teaching with BIM tools

Introducing teaching about healthy solutions in buildings and BIM has been a challenge for the University of Alicante. Teaching attached to very tighten study plans conditioned the types of methods that could be used in the past. The worldwide situation of crisis that especially reached Spain and the bursting of the housing bubble generated a lack of employment that reached universities where careers related to construction, Architecture and Architectural Technologist, suffered a huge reduction in the number of students enrolled. In the case of the University of Alicante, students’ enrolment for Architectural Technology reached an 80% reduction. The necessity of a reaction against this situation made the teachers be innovative and use the new Bologna adapted study plans to develop new teaching experiences introducing new concepts: people wellbeing in buildings and BIM. Working with healthy solutions in buildings provided new approaches for building design and construction as an alternative to sustainability. For many years sustainability was the concept that applied to housing gave buildings an added value and the possibility of having viability in a very complex scenario. But after lots of experiences, the approved methodologies for obtaining sustainable housing were ambiguous and at the end, investors, designers, constructors and purchasers cannot find real and validated criteria for obtaining an effective sustainable house. It was the moment to work with new ideas and concepts and start facing buildings from the users’ point of view. At the same time the development of new tools, BIM, has opened a wide range of opportunities, innovative and suggestive, that allows simulation and evaluation of many building factors. This paper describes the research in teaching developed by the University of Alicante to adapt the current study plans, introducing work with healthy solutions in buildings and the use of BIM, with the aim of attracting students by improving their future employability. Pilot experiences have been carried out in different subjects based on the work with projects and case studies under an international frame with the cooperation of different European partner universities. The use of BIM tools, introduced in 2014, solved the problems that appeared in some subjects, mainly building construction, and helped with the evaluation of some healthy concepts that presented difficulties until this moment as knowledge acquired by the students was hard to be evaluated. The introduction of BIM tools: Vasari, FormIt, Revit and Light Control among others, allowed the study of precise healthy concepts and provided the students a real understand of how these different parameters can condition a healthy architectural space. The analysis of the results showed a clear acceptance by the students and gave teachers the possibility of opening new research lines. At the same time, working with BIM tools to obtain healthy solutions in building has been a good option to improve students’ employability as building market in Spain is increasing the number of specialists in BIM with a wider knowledge.

Local impacts of global change: shifting range limits, advancing phenology, and communicating research

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Understanding sociocognitive space of written discourse: Implications for teaching business writing to Chinese students

Confronted with various issues in teaching business writing to Chinese students in New Zealand, this paper sees the need for bridging the gap between genre-based research and teaching in an intercultural context. Specifically, it develops an intercultural reflective model in the light of Bhatia's sociocognitive genre study as well as cross-cultural persuasion. As an important part of the model, New Zealand and Chinese experts' intracultural and intercultural reflections on business writing are solicited and compared and the theoretical implications for teaching and learning business writing are discussed. It has been found, through a case study of analysing English and Chinese business faxes, this model can offer an in-depth understanding about discursive competence across cultures, and provide a link between genre-based theory, teaching practice and professional expertise.

Inquiring how a lecturer keeps learning about their teaching:a personal case history on reflective imagination

In order to reverse the use of lecture-based teaching, it is argued that personal reflection can be used as part of the quality assurance process. This paper proposes one response to personal reflection - reflective imagination, which is summarised as an action plan with six activities. It combines two conceptual issues raised in the US, the need to think creatively about learning and the reflective mindset, and one issue raised in the UK, cultivating the entrepreneurial imagination. Reflective imagination is linked to wider social science research, the place of self and reflexivity in scholarship. Finally, a personal history case study is presented which records a visit to Harvard Business School. The visit implements the six activities associated with reflective imagination. This is a method paper exploring reflective imagination.

A strategy-as-practice approach to strategy research and education

This conclusion to the Dialog proposes a strategy-as-practice based approach to bringing strategy research and education closer to practice. Strategy-as-practice rejects the choice, proposed in the previous articles, between theory and practice. The authors argue for strategy research based rigorously on sociological theories of practice. Such research complements the parsimony and generalizability of economics-driven theory, extending strategy research to incorporate the messy realities of doing strategy in practice, with a view to developing theory that is high in accuracy. The authors suggest that practice-based research can also inform strategy teaching by providing students with rich case studies of strategy work as actually practiced, analyzed through such sociological lenses as ethnomethodology, dramaturgy, and institutional theory. Strategy-as-practice research does not aim to give students parsimonious models for analysis or expose them to cases of best practice but rather to help them develop practical wisdom through a better understanding of strategy in practice.

Learning to research - researching to learn

Learning to Research Researching to Learn explores the integration of research into teaching and learning at all levels of higher education. The chapters draw on the long and ongoing debate about the teaching research nexus in universities. Although the vast majority of academics believe that there is an important and valuable link between teaching and research, the precise nature of this relationship continues to be contested. The book includes chapters that showcase innovative ways of learning to research; how research is integrated into coursework teaching; how students learn the processes of research, and how universities are preparing students to engage with the world. The chapters also showcase innovative ways of researching to learn, exploring how students learn through doing research, how they conceptualise the knowledge of their fields of study through the processes of doing research, and how students experiment and reflect on the results produced. These are the key issues addressed by this anthology, as it brings together analyses of the ways in which university teachers are developing research skills in their students, creating enquiry-based approaches to teaching, and engaging in education research themselves. The studies here explore the links between teaching, learning and research in a range of contexts, from pre-enrolment through to academic staff development, in Australia, the UK, the US, Singapore and Denmark. Through a rich array of theoretical and methodological approaches, the collection seeks to further our understanding of how universities can play an effective role in educating graduates suited to the twenty-first century

Special education teachers' perspectives on teaching middle school students with severe emotional disturbance

The voices of special education teachers who educate middle school students with severe emotional disturbance (SED) have been largely unheard in the educational forum and in the discussion about raising the academic achievement of middle school students with SED. These students continue to have high attrition rates and low levels of academic achievement. This study described and analyzed the perspectives of five special education teachers regarding appropriate instructional strategies for educating middle school students with SED. It also explored these teachers' opinions concerning difficulties they experienced in raising the academic achievement of students with SED and some of the solutions for overcoming these challenges. The professional literature emphasizes the importance of teacher knowledge (Altrichter, Posch, & Somekh, 1996; Clandinin & Connelly, 1996) and also offers suggestions for appropriate instructional strategies for educating students with SED (Bauer, Keefe, & Shea, 2002; Heward, 2000; Kauffman, 2001; Polloway, Patton, & Serna 2001). ^ A qualitative case study was employed to describe and analyze the five participants' perspectives on teaching middle school students with SED. The sources of data collection were interviews, observations and analysis of documents. Data presentation was from the perspective of the participants in dialogue with the interpretations of the researcher and against the backdrop of the professional literature and the researcher's critical theory philosophy. One of the major themes that emerged from the analysis was the teachers' insistence on the students' need for discipline tempered with teacher nurturing and playfulness. One concern was the need for teacher training in current appropriate, research-based instructional strategies for educating students with SED. ^ As a result of this study, one of the recommendations made was for more rigorous standards of re-certification and professional development of certified teachers who educate students with SED. ^

A REPORT ON THE MITEP PROGRAM AND ITS IMPACT ON MY TEACHING

This report has two major objectives. First, the results of an action research project conducted at my high school concerning the use of graphic organizers and their effects on students' written expression abilities. The findings from this action research project indicate that the use of graphic organizers can prove beneficial to students. The second major objective of this report is to provide a reflection and evaluation of my experiences as a participant in the Michigan Teacher Excellence Program (MiTEP). This program provided middle and high school science teachers with an opportunity to develop research based pedagogy techniques and develop the skill necessary to serve as leaders within the public school science community. The action research project described in the first chapter of this report was a collaborative project I participated in during my enrollment in ED 5705 at Michigan Technological University. I worked closely with two other teachers in my building - Brytt Ergang and James Wright. We met several times to develop a research question, and a procedure for testing our question. Each of us investigated how the use of graphic organizers by students in our classroom might impact their performance on writing assessments. We each collected data from several of our classes. In my case I collected data from 2 different classes over 2 different assignments. Our data was collected and the results analyzed separately from classroom to classroom. After the individual classroom data and corresponding analysis was compiled my fellow collaborators and I got together to discuss our findings. We worked together to write a conclusion based on our combined results in all of our classes.

Adopting an active learning approach to teaching in a research-intensive higher education context transformed staff teaching attitudes and behaviours

The conventional lecture has significant limitations in the higher education context, often leading to a passive learning experience for students. This paper reports a process of transforming teaching and learning with active learning strategies in a research-intensive educational context across a faculty of 45 academic staff and more than 1000 students. A phased approach was used, involving nine staff in a pilot phase during which a common vision and principles were developed. In short, our approach was to mandate a move away from didactic lectures to classes that involved students interacting with content, with each other and with instructors in order to attain domain-specific learning outcomes and generic skills. After refinement, an implementation phase commenced within all first-year subjects, involving 12 staff including three from the pilot group. The staff use of active learning methods in classes increased by sixfold and sevenfold in the pilot and implementation phases, respectively. An analysis of implementation phase exam questions indicated that staff increased their use of questions addressing higher order cognitive skills by 51%. Results of a staff survey indicated that this change in practice was caused by the involvement of staff in the active learning approach. Fifty-six percent of staff respondents indicated that they had maintained constructive alignment as they introduced active learning. After the pilot, only three out of nine staff agreed that they understood what makes for an effective active learning exercise. This rose to seven out of nine staff at the completion of the implementation phase. The development of a common approach with explicit vision and principles and the evaluation and refinement of active learning were effective elements of our transformational change management strategy. Future efforts will focus on ensuring that all staff have the time, skills and pedagogical understanding required to embed constructively aligned active learning within the approach.

Building a supportive environment for teaching and learning : a reflective commentary

Universities are increasingly caught in the transition between college institutions of independant academics to become managed businesses of research and teaching and learning. This is introducing substantial issues with the work, approach and personal development needs of individual academics. It is causing even greater concerns for managers within universities. The developments in University Management have increasingly become driven towards issues of finance, quality and marketing. Organizational development in teaching and learning practices has been less commonly a point of focus. This paper outlines developments of this nature at the University of Salford. Through its combination of authors it does so at whole University, Faculty and School levels. It outlines the variety of ways in which teaching and learning developments can be supported within an organisation.

The link between policy and practice in science education : the role of research

Policy has been a much neglected area for research in science education. In their neglect of policy studies, researchers have maintained an ongoing naivete about the politics of science education. In doing so, they often overestimate the implications of their research findings about practice and ignore the interplay between the stakeholders beyond and in-school who determine the nature of the curriculum for science education and its enacted character. Policies for education (and science education in particular) always involve authority and values, both of which raise sets of fascinating questions for research. The location of authority for science education differs across educational systems in ways that affect the role teachers are expected to play. Policies very often value some groups in society over others, as the long history of attempts to provide science for all students testifies. As research on teaching/learning science identifies pedagogies that have widespread effectiveness, the policy issue of mandating these becomes important. Illustrations of successful policy to practice suggest that establishing conditions that will facilitate the intended implementation is critically important. The responsibility of researchers for critiquing and establishing policy for improving the practice of science education is discussed, together with the role research associations could play if they are to claim their place as key stakeholders in science education.

Humanistic science education : moves from within and challenges from without

For a number of years now it has been evident that the major issue facing science educators in the more developed countries of the world is the quantitative decline in enrolments in the senior secondary sciences, particularly the physical sciences, and in the number of higher achieving students applying for places in universities to undertake further studies in science. The deep malaise in school science to which these quantitative measures point has been elucidated by more qualitative studies of the students’ experience of studying science in secondary school in several of these countries (Sweden, Lindahl (2003); England, Simon and Osborne (2002); and Australia, Lyons (2005)). Remarkably concordant descriptions of these experiences can be summarized as: School science is: • transmission of knowledge from the teacher or the textbook to the students. • about content that is irrelevant and boring to our lives. • difficult to learn in comparison with other subjects Incidentally, the Australian study only involved consistently high achieving students; but even so, most of them found science more difficult than other more interesting subjects, and concluded that further science studies should be avoided unless they were needed for some career purpose. Other more representative confirmations of negative evaluations of the science curricula across Australia (and in particular states) are now available in Australia, from the large scale reviews of Goodrum, Hackling and Rennie (2001) and from the TIMSS (2002). The former reported that well under half of secondary students find the science at school relevant to my future, useful ion everyday life, deals with things I am concerned with and helps me make decisions about my health.. TIMSS found that 62 and 65 % of females and males in Year 4 agree with I like learning science, but by Year 8 only 26 and 33 % still agree. Students in Japan have been doubly notably because of (a) their high performance in international measures of science achievement like TIMSS and PISA and (b) their very low response to items in these studies which relate to interest in science. Ogura (2003) reported an intra-national study of students across Years 6-9 (upper primary through Junior High); interest in a range of their subjects (including science) that make up that country’s national curriculum. There was a steady decline in interest in all these subjects which might have indicated an adolescent reaction against schooling generally. However, this study went on to ask the students a further question that is very meaningful in the Japanese context, If you discount the importance of this subject for university entrance, is it worth studying? Science and mathematics remained in decline while all the other subjects were seen more positively. It is thus ironic, at a time when some innovations in curriculum and other research-based findings are suggesting ways that these failures of school science might be corrected, to find school science under a new demands that come from quite outside science education, and which certainly do not have the correction of this malaise as a priority. The positive curricular and research findings can be characterized as moves from within science education, whereas the new demands are moves that come from without science education. In this paper I set out these two rather contrary challenges to the teaching of science as it is currently practised, and go on to suggest a way forward that could fruitfully combine the two.