The nature of spontaneity in high quality mathematics learning experiences

Spontaneity has been linked to high quality learning experiences in mathematics (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1992; Williams, 2002).This paper shows how spontaneity can be identified by attending to the nature of social elements in the process of abstracting (Dreyfus, Hershkowitz, & Schwarz, 2001). This process is elaborated through an illustrative example—a Year 8 Australian male student who scaffolded his learning by attending to images in the classroom that were intended for other purposes. Leon’s cognitive processing was not ‘observable’ (Dreyfus et al., 2001) in classroom dialogue because Leon ‘thought alone’. Post-lesson videostimulated reconstructive interviews facilitated study of Leon’s thought processes and extended methodological techniques available to study thinking in classrooms.

Assessing for work integrated learning experiences : a pre-service teacher perspective

A critical aspect of the debate about work integrated learning in the university context is the blurring of boundaries and responsibilities in terms of student learning. In an Australian pre-service teacher education program this blurring of boundaries is apparent in stakeholder tensions about the nature and role of assessment during the practicum. In the study reported in this paper students responded positively to the content of assessment tasks but maintained that their efforts to implement the associated planning in the workplace were stymied because of disparate understandings between university and school staff about the purpose of the task.

The Georgia homemaking curriculum; suggestions for planning learning experiences,

Bibliographies.

'I never imagined I'd have to teach these children': Providing authentic learning experiences for secondary pre-service teachers in teaching students with special needs

This article describes a collaborative and cross-curricula initiative undertaken in the School of Education at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. The project involved developing an integrated approach to providing professional year pre-service secondary teacher education students with experiences that would assist them to develop their knowledge and skills to teach students with special needs in their classrooms. These experiences were undertaken in the authentic teaching and learning context of a post-school literacy program for young adults with intellectual disabilities. In preliminary interviews pre-service teachers revealed that they lacked experience, knowledge and understanding related to teaching students with special needs, and felt that their teacher education program lacked focus in this field. This project was developed in response to these expressed needs. Through participating in the project, pre-service teachers' knowledge and understanding about working with students with diverse learning needs were developed as they undertook real and purposeful tasks in an authentic context.

Social software in Higher Education:the diversity of applications and their contributions to students' learning experiences

Higher education institutions are increasingly using social software tools to support teaching and learning. Despite the fact that social software is often used in a social context, these applications can significantly contribute to the educational experience of a student. However, as the social software domain comprises a considerable diversity of tools, the respective tools can be expected to differ in the way they can contribute to teaching and learning. In this review on the educational use of social software, we systematically analyze and compare the diverse social software tools and identify their contributions to teaching and learning. By integrating established learning theory and the extant literature on the individual social software applications we seek to contribute to a theoretical foundation for social software use and the choice of tools. Case vignettes from several UK higher education institutions are used to illustrate the different applications of social software tools in teaching and learning.