How to form shared objects to enhance university-school collaboration? A cultural-historical activity theory perspective

Introduction

University-school (U-S) collaboration has proven to be an effective approach for teacher professional development, but it could be hampered by the lack of shared objects. To understand how shared objects are formed in U-S collaboration, this research established a university-school collaborated Change Laboratory in W primary school based on cultural-historical activity theory, which is under the background of Chinese teaching research activity.

Methods

Recordings of meetings throughout the year were transcribed into texts and coded, and then analyzed via the method of grounded theory and contradiction analysis.

Results

The findings reveal that, in comparison to previous studies regarding shared object formation process, this study identified an special phase named "experimental object," which highlights the significance of experimentation in U-S collaboration. Also, multiple contradictions are recognized as the driving force for shared object formation which would gradually transform into fundamental conflicts between tools. The main contradictions identified include those between scientific and daily concepts, university culture and school culture, as well as new experiment and old routine.

Discussion

The current study implicates that U-S collaboration is an expansive learning process to acquire unknown knowledge, which necessitates both parties engaging in exploration and experimentation together. Furthermore, shared object formation within U-S collaboration requires participants to focus on developing teaching tools while consciously undergoing changes in aspects such as logic of thinking, culture and routine.

Investigating the employment motivation, job satisfaction, and dissatisfaction of international high school teachers in China: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

International education has become increasingly challenging to manage in an unpredictable world beset by pandemics, regional disputes, and evolving market practices. The last few decades have seen a huge demand for international education in China, and numerous acclaimed international brand names set up operations in China's K12 schooling sector. However, the COVID-19 pandemic exerted a noticeably negative impact on international high schools and their staff in China, and exacerbated a difficult period of management for these institutions. Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the actual operation of these educational workplaces remains under investigated in academic studies. This paper therefore attempts to examine international high schools in China by focusing on their teachers and their associated employment motivation, job satisfaction, and dissatisfaction which has been perceptibly influenced by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a qualitative, case-study approach which adopted semi-structured interviews, an acclaimed British high school, now closed, was investigated. The study found that international high school teachers were driven by diverse work motives such as the school's reputation, values, salary, environment, and chances for career development. Their job satisfaction was also multi-faceted, and their dissatisfaction in certain areas concerning. That is, they derived an early satisfaction from a range of facets, such as the students, class sizes, initial workloads, autonomy and collegiality. However, these early feelings were replaced by a sense of dissatisfaction and noticeable unhappiness resulting from leadership changes and subsequent management practices, increased workload, unmet employment package expectations and obligations, as well as limited professional development opportunities. This study highlights the importance of recruiting well, generating the right starting and longer-term conditions, retaining key staff and managing astutely. The work will be of interest to policy makers, investors, leaders, managers and staff alike. It will also extend educational research in the areas of teacher motivation, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and in particular in China in international K12 settings.

Experiences from a balint group intervention with urban public school teachers

Background: U.S. teacher shortages have more than tripled since the 2012-2013 school year, to over 110 000 teachers needed in 2016. At the conclusion of the 2011-12 school year, 13.8% of public-school teachers left their position. Approximately 50% of the public-school teachers cited the inability to manage their roles as the primary factor for leaving. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of participation in a 6-month Balint group experience on a novice teacher's self-efficacy, experience with burnout, and intentions to persist in the classroom. Research Design: A converged mixed-methods approach was used. Each question was explored with a corresponding qualitative and a quantitative dataset. Data Collection: Qualitative data included (a) a semi-structured focus group; (b) field notes shared from the co-facilitator and Balint group leader; (c) semi-structured debriefs with the Balint group leaders; (d) open-ended questions on the pre and post-test reflection forms, and (e) semi-structured interviews with 3 participants that served as a form of member checking. Quantitative data included pre and post-test and monthly reflection forms that were collected at the conclusion of each meeting. Teacher's self-efficacy, experience with burnout, and intentions to persist in the classroom. Study Sample: Eight teachers volunteered for the group after an email solicitation to all the teacher development program's members. Results: This article examines sources of stress for new teachers, themes that came up in the Balint group that reflect the stress and its impact, and changes in felt burnout, self-efficacy, an intent to persist in teaching. Teachers faced similar stressors to professionals in the medical field. Conclusion: Balint offers an opportunity to addres the social and emotional needs teachers face.

Secondary school teachers' use of online formative assessment during COVID-19 lockdown: Experiences and lessons learned

Introduction

During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, teachers had to shift their teaching and assessment to online. Formative assessment (FA) can help teachers to engage, guide and monitor students' (online) learning. However, more knowledge is needed of how teachers could use the full FA process online.

Methods

In this study data from 50 secondary school teachers, who taught different grade levels and subjects and joined a FA learning network that started before and continued during the lockdown, were collected. The study investigates how they used online FA practices differently than face-to-face FA, what challenges and opportunities they experienced in online FA and what lessons they learned and intended to keep. This mixed methods study used data from a questionnaire, interviews and webinars that were segmented, coded and analysed.

Results

Results showed that many teachers implemented new FA strategies and adopted, more often than in their face-to-face practice, all the five phases of the FA process in an aligned matter in online FA. Teachers indicated opportunities in stimulating student engagement and guiding and monitoring student learning more at an individual level in the online FA process, but also experienced challenges, mainly in lack of interaction online.

Discussion

The sudden and necessary shift to online FA, due to the COVID-19 lockdown, challenged teachers to more fundamentally reconsider their assessment practices and assumptions. Teachers intended to make use of these learned lessons to improve their future (blended) FA practice.

The Implications of EFL/ESL Teachers' Emotions in Their Professional Identity Development

The leading implementers of the curriculum and educational system are teachers, so the success and failure of the educational system depend mainly on its teachers. If teachers have an established professional identity, it leads to the success of the educational system. Professional identity, like other aspects of the teaching and learning process, is influenced by various factors. Investigating this concept requires identifying the factors affecting it. One of the most important factors that influence teachers' professional identity is teachers' emotions. Teachers' emotions also can have a significant impact on teachers' performance. After searching the databases, this review article examines the role of teachers' emotions and their professional identities in English as a foreign language (EFL) or English as a second language (ESL) classrooms. This review paper unpacks that factors such as teachers' pedagogical beliefs, their positive and negative emotional experiences, their environmental and cultural factors, and their perceptions and expectations of these conditions could affect their emotions as well as their professional identity. Teachers' identity is shaped through ongoing negotiation and interaction that encompasses their personal and professional lives. Taking these factors into account in teacher training courses might notify teachers of the challenges that they might have in their classrooms and provide them with practical solutions.

Understanding ESL Teachers' Agency in Their Early Years of Professional Development: A Three-Layered Triadic Reciprocity Framework

Drawing upon the Triadic Reciprocity Framework, this longitudinal qualitative multiple-case study examined how three Hong Kong secondary English as a second language (ESL) teachers exercised their teacher agency to take control of their teaching and professional development. More specifically, the study aimed at exploring how teachers’ intentions and actions for the establishment of their professional identity were afforded and constrained by their workplaces. Findings reveal that these ESL teachers exercised different degrees of proactive, reactive, and passive agency. The four properties of human agency, i.e., intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness, influenced the teachers’ proactive, reactive, and passive agency when they responded to personal, behavioral, and environmental determinants. The findings shed light on a three-layered Triadic Reciprocity framework on teacher agency and contributes to a systematic and comprehensive discussion about the various internal and external factors that might exert influences on agency of early career teachers. This study offers pedagogical implications for school teachers, school leaders, and policy makers in Hong Kong and beyond.

Using the Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Teaching Assessment Criteria (MBI:TAC) in Supervision

The Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Teaching Assessment Criteria (MBI:TAC) is a useful framework for supporting teacher development in the context of mindfulness-based supervision (MBS). It offers a framework that enhances clarity, develops reflexive practice, gives a structure for feedback, and supports learning. MBS is a key component of Mindfulness-Based Program (MBP) teacher training and ongoing good practice. Integrating the MBI:TAC within the MBS process adds value in a number of ways including: offering a shared language around MBP teaching skills and processes; framing the core pedagogical features of MBP teaching; enabling assessment of developmental stage; and empowering supervisees to be proactive in their own development. The paper lays out principles for integrating the MBI:TAC framework into MBS. The supervisor needs awareness of the ways in which the tool can add value, and the ways it can inadvertently interrupt learning. The tool enables skills clarification, but the learning process needs to remain open to spontaneous experiential discovery; it can enable structured feedback but space is also needed for open reflective feedback; and it can enable conceptual engagement with the teaching process but space is needed for the supervisee to experientially sense the teaching process. The tool needs to be introduced in a carefully staged way to create optimal conditions for learning at the various stages of the MBP teacher-training journey. Practical guidance is presented to consolidate and develop current practice. The principles and processes discussed can be generalized to other forms of reflective dialogue such as mentoring, tutoring and peer reflection groups.

Can Principals Promote Teacher Development as Evaluators? A Case Study of Principals' Views and Experiences

PURPOSE

New teacher evaluation systems have expanded the role of principals as instructional leaders, but little is known about principals' ability to promote teacher development through the evaluation process. We conducted a case study of principals' perspectives on evaluation and their experiences implementing observation and feedback cycles to better understand whether principals feel as though they are able to promote teacher development as evaluators.

RESEARCH METHODS

We conducted interviews with a stratified random sample of 24 principals in an urban district that recently implemented major reforms to its teacher evaluation system. We analyzed these interviews by drafting thematic summaries, coding interview transcripts, creating data-analytic matrices, and writing analytic memos.

FINDINGS

We found that the evaluation reforms provided a common framework and language that helped facilitate principals' feedback conversations with teachers. However, we also found that tasking principals with primary responsibility for conducting evaluations resulted in a variety of unintended consequences which undercut the quality of evaluation feedback they provided. We analyze five broad solutions to these challenges: strategically targeting evaluations, reducing operational responsibilities, providing principal training, hiring instructional coaches, and developing peer evaluation systems.

IMPLICATIONS

The quality of feedback teachers receive through the evaluation process depends critically on the time and training evaluators have to provide individualized and actionable feedback. Districts that task principals with primary responsibility for conducting observation and feedback cycles must attend to the many implementation challenges associated with this approach in order for next-generation evaluation systems to successfully promote teacher development.

A systematic review on critical thinking in medical education

BACKGROUND

Critical thinking is the ability to raise discriminating questions in an attempt to search for better ideas, a deeper understanding and better solutions relating to a given issue.

OBJECTIVE

This systematic review provides a summary of efforts that have been made to enhance and assess critical thinking in medical education.

DESIGN

Nine databases [Ovid MEDLINE(R), AMED, Academic Search Premier, ERIC, CINAHL, Web of Science, JSTOR, SCOPUS and PsycINFO] were searched to identify journal articles published from the start of each database to October 2012.

RESULTS

A total of 41 articles published from 1981 to 2012 were categorised into two main themes: (i) evaluation of current education on critical thinking and (ii) development of new strategies about critical thinking. Under each theme, the teaching strategies, assessment tools, uses of multimedia and stakeholders were analysed.

DISCUSSION

While a majority of studies developed teaching strategies and multimedia tools, a further examination of their quality and variety could yield some insights. The articles on assessment placed a greater focus on learning outcomes than on learning processes. It is expected that more research will be conducted on teacher development and students' voices.

Can Professional Environments in Schools Promote Teacher Development? Explaining Heterogeneity in Returns to Teaching Experience

Although wide variation in teacher effectiveness is well established, much less is known about differences in teacher improvement over time. We document that average returns to teaching experience mask large variation across individual teachers and across groups of teachers working in different schools. We examine the role of school context in explaining these differences using a measure of the professional environment constructed from teachers responses to state-wide surveys. Our analyses show that teachers working in more supportive professional environments improve their effectiveness more over time than teachers working in less supportive contexts. On average, teachers working in schools at the 75th percentile of professional environment ratings improved 38% more than teachers in schools at the 25th percentile after 10 years.

Strategies for Improving Power in School-Randomized Studies of Professional Development

OBJECTIVES

Group-randomized designs are well suited for studies of professional development because they can accommodate programs that are delivered to intact groups (e.g., schools), the collaborative nature of professional development, and extant teacher/school assignments. Though group designs may be theoretically favorable, prior evidence has suggested that they may be challenging to conduct in professional development studies because well-powered designs will typically require large sample sizes or expect large effect sizes. Using teacher knowledge outcomes in mathematics, we investigated when and the extent to which there is evidence that covariance adjustment on a pretest, teacher certification, or demographic covariates can reduce the sample size necessary to achieve reasonable power.

METHOD

Our analyses drew on multilevel models and outcomes in five different content areas for over 4,000 teachers and 2,000 schools. Using these estimates, we assessed the minimum detectable effect sizes for several school-randomized designs with and without covariance adjustment.

RESULTS

The analyses suggested that teachers' knowledge is substantially clustered within schools in each of the five content areas and that covariance adjustment for a pretest or, to a lesser extent, teacher certification, has the potential to transform designs that are unreasonably large for professional development studies into viable studies.

Student apathy for classroom learning and need of repositioning in present andragogy in Indian dental schools

BACKGROUND

In the world of technology, when today's student is approaching the on-line /distance learning in the open universities and doing on-line self-assessment, the classroom learning is vanishing slowly. Globally, teachers are taking efforts to improve the pedagogy by implementing effective methods to retain the classroom teaching and student attendance. The present study aims at shedding some light on the need of changing the adult education strategies (andragogy), which can effectively improve the student attendance for lectures.

METHODS

It is an observational study, and the conceptual framework of it is based on beliefs, opinions and personal experiences of the respondents. Triangulation method is used for collecting the data. The data is achieved from three groups of concerned population who could provide valid results to support the study. It is collected by interviewing 10 senior faculty members who are/were the 'education experts' in the universities, while the main concerned groups of present educational stream, i.e. 'institution-teachers' and the 'students', were given questionnaires. 570 teacher respondents and 200 student respondents are the main participants of this study.

RESULTS

As per data, it has been observed that senior faculty (90%) and students (93.25%) feel need of student motivation more than the institutional teachers (52.44%). P-values were obtained using Chi-Square test for testing the significance of difference between agreement and disagreement for a specific question.

CONCLUSIONS

In India, Universities have already sensed the need of 'teacher development programmes'. But teachers in dental colleges, demand more efforts to be taken by universities and managements in this regard and expect better educational policies to give them accessibility to prove themselves.