Sharing education through schools working together

Outline of the Sharing Education Programme and its work in developing and evaluating collaborative networks of schools in Northern Ireland in order to promote more effectiuve education and reconciliation. The paper outlines the numbers of shared classes achieved in the first two and a half years of the programme and provides data on the first pupil and teacher surveys.

Think, code, succeed: The Programming Studio as a games-based collaboration:Paper published in the Proceedings of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe conference: Teacher Education through Partnerships and Collaborative Learning Communities, Glasgow, UK. ATEE, 2015

This paper investigates the profile of teachers in the island of Ireland who declared themselves willing to undertake professional development activities in programming, in particular to master programming by taking on-line courses involving the design of computer games. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), it compares scores for teachers “willing” to undertake the courses with scores for those who declined, and examines other differences between the groups of respondents. Findings reflect the perceived difficulties of programming and the current low status accorded to the subject in Ireland. The paper also reviews the use of games-based learning as a “hook” to engage learners in programming and discusses the role of gamification as a tool for motivating learners in an on-line course. The on-line course focusing on games design was met with enthusiasm, and there was general consensus that gamification was appropriate for motivating learners in structured courses such as those provided.

Teaching character education through literature : awakening the moral imagination in secondary classrooms.

Trata de cómo los profesores de secundaria y post-secundaria pueden ayudar a los alumnos a ser más receptivos en los temas y cuestiones éticas que surgen de los relatos literarios estudiados en el aula. Se ofrecen al profesor varias maneras de sacar ideas instructivas de las narraciones de ficción. El libro está dividido en dos partes, la primera tiene un enfoque teórico, mientras que, en la segunda se dan los casos para su estudio, que corresponden a cuatro personajes literarios de otras tantas novelas, así como, una serie de preguntas planteadas para despertar la moral y estimular la reflexión ética en los estudiantes. Aunque, este planteamiento se puede aplicar, tambien, a los protagonistas de otras obras narrativas del plan de estudios.

Teaching Intercultural Communication in Foreign Language Education through Video Conferencing

Since 1980s, Western linguists and specialists on second language acquisition have emphasized the importance of enhancing students’ intercultural communication competence in foreign language education. At the same time, the demand for intercultural communicative competence increased along with the advances of communication technology with its increasingly global reach and the process of globalization itself.In the field of distance language education, these changes have resulted in a shift of focus from the production and distribution of learning materials towards communication and learning as a social process, facilitated by various internet-based platforms. The current focus on learners interacting and communicating synchronously trough videoconferencing is known as the fourth generation of distance language education. Despite the fact that teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) faces the same or even greater challenges as teaching other languages, the intercultural communication perspective is still quite a new trend in CFL and its implementation and evaluation are still under development. Moreover, the advocates of the new trends in CFL have so far focused almost exclusively on classroom-based courses, neglecting the distance mode of CFL and leaving it as an open field for others to explore. In this under-researched context, Dalarna University (Sweden), where I currently work, started to provide web-based courses of the Chinese language in 2007. Since 2010, the Chinese language courses have been available only in the distance form, using the same teaching materials as the previous campus-based courses. The textbooks used in both settings basically followed the functional nationalism approach. However, in order to catch up with the main trend of foreign-language education, we felt a need to implement the cross-cultural dimension into the distance courses as well. Therefore in 2010, a pilot study has been carried out to explore opportunities and challenges for implementing a cross-cultural perspective into existing courses and evaluating the effectiveness of this implementation based on the feedback of the students and on the experience of the teacher/researcher.

Redefining teacher education through a `multiple space` model: examining the forgotten spaces that teachers work in

This paper maps the current debates surrounding school-based and university-based teacher education models, and presents a ‘multiple-space’ model of teacher education that both explores and values the many ‘forgotten’ spaces that teachers work in. It draws from a variety of research studies, including my own doctoral work, to argue for a new approach to teacher education programs. I suggest that in order for teacher education to move beyond separatist, binary models, we need to adopt a ‘multiple-space’ view of learning to be a teacher that embraces the notion that teachers do not learn about theory in a university space, nor do they simply work in a classroom space.

Improving primary school health education through action research : a case study

Limited research has been conducted concerning the actual practice of health education in Victorian schools. This study investigates the health education curriculum at a large primary school in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. The investigation involves a critical analysis of current practices in health education in the upper school through the development of a ‘small’ action research group. Data were gathered through document collection, questionnaires, interviews, discussions, diary and reflective journal entries. The action research group, consisting of the teacher-researcher and upper school teachers, developed, implemented and reflected upon units of work piloted with upper school students. Alternative approaches to health education were explored. The aim was to accommodate critically informed discourse amongst colleagues to promote self-reflective enquiry and facilitate improvements to existing pedagogic practices. During the course of the investigation, factors limiting and facilitating action research and curriculum change in health education, became evident. These included personal, practical, curriculum and organisational constraints operating externally and internally on the school and classroom environments. Despite these constraints, it was demonstrated in this study, that action research can contribute to the improvement of pedagogic practices in health education. Small ‘authentic’ action research projects may provide alternative internal professional development structures for teachers and consequently improve learning opportunities for students.

Re-engagement in education through community partnerships in south west Victoria

This case study provided policy direction for post-compulsory education. It highlighted the need for a mandated responsibility for the provision of on-going transition advice and re-engagement programs for young people who have left school. It confirmed the complexity of the work of networks formed in order to improve educational pathways.

Changing pre-service teachers' purposes of education through existential crises

This article considers changing the purposes of education held by pre-service teachers. It argues that purposes of education are inextricably linked to life meanings and purposes. Employing an existential perspective, mainly through Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Morris, the fundamental beliefs that one has regarding the meaning and purpose of life are understood to serve as the basis for formulating purposes of education. An attempt to change these purposes is recommended by drawing upon the existential crisis and Kierkegaard's doctrine of 'how'. Importance is placed not so much on the object or what of purposes and understandings, but on how the individual relates to them.

Teacher performance assessment in teacher education : an example in Malaysia

As part of a cross-cultural collaboration, a teacher performance assessment (TPA) was implemented during 2009 in three Malaysian institutes of teacher education. This paper reports on the TPA for graduating primary teachers in Malaysia. The investigation focused on the pre-service teachers’ perceptions about whether the TPA provided them with an opportunity to document successfully their professional learning and professional practice. Successful completion of the Malaysian TPA was closely aligned to successful relationships, support and collaboration between Malaysian lecturers and pre-service teachers, and between pre-service teachers and their classroom teachers. Overall, the TPA did provide pre-service teachers with an opportunity to focus on the connection between theory and professional learning during field-work, and to become reflective evidence-based practitioners. Recommendations for improving the assessment of pre-service teachers are discussed.