scholarly journals Primary school teachers' use of digital resources with interactive whiteboards: The Australian context

Author(s):  
Damian Maher ◽  
Renata Phelps ◽  
Nikkita Urane ◽  
Mal Lee

<span>As interactive whiteboards appear in increasing numbers in primary classrooms, questions will continue to be asked about the effectiveness of these devices in supporting teaching and learning. It is not the board itself, however, which is likely to make a difference to student learning outcomes, but the resources which teachers choose to use in conjunction with their board. This study investigated what digital resources Australian primary school teachers </span><em>are</em><span> using when teaching with interactive whiteboards and the factors affecting their choice of such resources. Data were collected from 116 teachers from 13 primary schools in regional and metropolitan areas via an online survey and follow-up focus groups. While flipchart software plays an important role in delivery of lessons, a broad range of resources, particularly online, interactive and multimedia resources are utilised. National, pedagogical and curriculum relevance are critical influences on Australian teachers' resource choice and word-of-mouth plays a dominant role in influencing patterns of use. There are important implications from the study for teachers, school leaders, teacher educators and producers of digital resources.</span>

Author(s):  
Lawal Abdul Faragai

This paper is a conceptual approach that stimulate able scholars that failed to ponder carefully on dual-role conflict among female primary school teachers. Of course, female primary school teachers are experiencing dual-role conflict. Also, presently female primary school teachers has dominated our primary schools teaching our children, on the same vain experiencing dual-role conflict which needed urgent attention from all stakeholders. The essence of this paper was due to the relevance of work and family matters. Scholars are really trying their best for enlightening all stakeholders on the issue of work-family role conflict in many discipline. In Education, related researches are always carrying on but the background level of education primary school is somehow been put aside with little concern. Considering this will help in making the work-life balance of female primary school teachers more sustainable. With this teaching and learning of our younger children would be efficient and effective. The researcher has proposed a conceptual framework in studying dual-role conflict among female primary school teachers. However, the qualitative interpretivist approach using case study or grounded theory would be applicable in conducting such type of research respectively.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002205742098870
Author(s):  
Julie Shantone Rubbi Nunan

South African primary school teachers struggle curtailing student behaviors, therefore impeding teaching and learning. To understand this phenomenon, 15 primary school teachers were interviewed. Findings reveal that students’ negative family dynamics, displaced aggression, and social factors influenced challenging behavior. Social cognitive theory and general systems theory rationalized how behavior is learned and transferred within systems. Understanding the causative factors of student challenging behavior will benefit teachers to understand the student before addressing their behavior. Future research should look into student challenging behavior from other perspectives. School intervention programs should be established that support vulnerable students to curtail their challenging behavior.


2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-87
Author(s):  
Lindiwe Rose Matsenjwa ◽  
S’lungile Kindness Thwala

The study purposed to find primary school teachers’ knowledge and skills of measurement and assessment and to elicit their views of teacher role of measurement and assessment. Within a descriptive survey, a questionnaire was used to collect data. The sample consisted of 72 primary school teachers randomly selected from 40 Swaziland schools. The findings revealed that primary school teachers had some knowledge of measurement and assessment, however lacked skills in using a variety of assessment techniques. The study further found out that as much as primary teachers view assessment as important in improving teaching and learning, they do not use it in planning for their lessons. The study also revealed that oral assessment and practical assessment has frequently been used in primary schools even though such observation and project techniques are rarely exploited. In light of these findings, the study concluded that mainly primary teachers assess learners to monitor learners’ progress instead of providing instructional planning. The study recommends that the teacher training colleges and the University of Swaziland should extend the scope of measurement and evaluation course to adequately equip the primary school teachers. Key words: assessment, knowledge, measurement, primary teachers, Swaziland.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7308
Author(s):  
Soon Singh Bikar ◽  
Balan Rathakrishnan ◽  
Mohammad Rahim Kamaluddin ◽  
Norruzeyati Che Mohd Nasir ◽  
Mohd Azrin Mohd Nasir

The Ranau Earthquake that struck on 5 June 2015, February 2018, and April 2021, were a new disaster in Sabah and caused many Sabahan to panic. The unpredicted disaster also caused a serious impact on all aspects of life in Sabah. The earthquake has caused severe damage to eight primary schools in the vicinity of the epicenter, although no casualties were reported. However, the disaster has deep passing psychological effects among students. In this study, we examine how the primary school teachers enabled the student to be resilient during and after the disaster. Based on the interviews with 16 primary school students, it was revealed that most of the teachers used WhatsApp to support resilience during and after the earthquake. Interviews with 16 primary school teachers revealed there were two main reasons for them to communicate with students, namely, delivering emotional aid and monitoring their stress. Based on student interviews, five content categories of emotional support were identified: caring, reassuring, emotion sharing, belonging, and distracting. The main contribution of this study is that social media can be used as a spontaneous and proactive tool for supporting the student’s resilience during and after the earthquake trauma.


Author(s):  
Sławomir Wawrzyniak ◽  
Krystyna Krzyżanowska

The aim of the studies was to gather the primary school teachers’ opinion about the „School Scheme” and its effectiveness, as well as children’s food preferences and the reasons, why some of the schools didn’t take part in the program. The empiric studies were conducted in 2017 and 6,413 teachers from primary schools took part in them. The results show that students prefer to eat fruits than vegetables. If some of them chose vegetables, they ate tomatoes, radish, carrot rather than kohlrabi or sweet pepper. When it comes to dairy products, they took: milk and cottage cheese. Some of the Polish schools didn’t take part in the program, because they claim not to have enough suitable place to store fruits and vegetables at their entities and children’s parents weren’t interested in that matter.


Per Linguam ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-44
Author(s):  
Anna Johanna Hugo

The teaching of reading is not as easy as it may seem. It requires specific knowledge and the use of reading methods by teachers. Learners’ reading needs and learning styles also have to be considered. According to the Progress in International Reading Literacy (PIRLS) results for 2016, the reading abilities of South African learners are far below the international standard as set out by PIRLS. There is a lack of research about the strategies and methods that primary school teachers use to teach reading. In this article, the feedback regarding reading methods – gathered from 36 primary school teachers in three provinces – is discussed. The data revealed that most of the Grade 1 to 7 teachers who participated in the research knew and used some of the six reading methods under discussion. However, the results did not indicate how well the teachers applied these methods and how versatile they were in using the different reading methods. The data revealed that Foundation phase teachers used some of the methods statistically significantly more often than the comparison group of Intermediate phase teachers in a nonexperimental static-group observational design study. According to Spaull (McBride 2019:1), a well-known researcher in South Africa, one of the three main reasons why Foundation phase readers are struggling with reading is that their teachers do not know how to teach reading systematically. Teachers do not know how to change and adapt the methods that they use to teach reading and not enough research has been done to address the problems with the teaching of reading in the classroom specifically. Often the reading problems experienced in the Foundation phase are carried over to the Intermediate phase.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 454-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khanyisile Brenda Nhlengethwa ◽  
Nadaraj Govender ◽  
Doras Sibanda

Teachers’ accurate understanding of Inquiry-Based Science Teaching (IBST) is crucial for the proper enactment of this pedagogical approach. In this research, a qualitative case study design was used to explore and interpret pre-service teachers’ understanding of IBST at the conclusion of their three-year primary diploma at a university in Swaziland. Data were collected using a semi-structured teaching scenario-based questionnaire in conjunction with individual semi-structured interviews. Thirty-four participants completed the questionnaire and eight of them were subsequently interviewed. The data were analyzed using a conceptual framework of IBST that outlines two dimensions of IBST; namely the cognitive and guidance dimensions. The results show that in the cognitive dimension, participants focused mainly on the procedural domain. With regard to the guidance dimension, they associated the pedagogical approach more with teacher-directed than learner-directed learning activities. This paper recommends that in training pre-service primary school teachers, teacher educators must broaden their focus from procedural aspects of IBST to include all its aspects; thereby developing their pre-service teachers’ holistic and deep experiences of IBST. Keywords: inquiry-based science teaching, primary school, pre-service teachers, scenario-based questionnaire, IBST understanding.


Author(s):  
Basem Essa Abozeed ◽  
Zakia Toma Toama ◽  
Amina Ahmad Mohamed ◽  
Alyaa Farouk Abd El-Fattah Ibrahim

Background: Disasters are a global problem, concern every community and no community is immune from it, schools all over the world suffer from disasters, which affect children health and safety. Teachers play essential roles in child protection so, teachers’ training is very significant for effective school disaster management. The study aimed to evaluate. The effectiveness of implementing a training program on the performance of primary school teachers in Al Malikeyeh regarding disaster management. Methods: Design: Quasi-experimental design. Setting: the current study conducted in six primary schools at Al-Malikeyeh distracts. Sample: 78 school teachers. Tool of the study: Teacher's knowledge and practice about disaster management structured interview questionnaire which contained three parts: part (I): Socioeconomic data, part (II): knowledge of the teachers, part (III): practice of the teachers .Results: about 35.8% of teachers had good knowledge pre program; meanwhile post and follow up the program this percent was increased respectively 87.2 % and79.5%. Also the findings observed that 30.8% of teachers had satisfactory practice, whereas, respectively 84.6% and 76.9 of them gained satisfactory disaster management practice post and follow up the program,. Conclusion: Implementing the training program had statistically significant improvement on knowledge and skills of primary school teachers in Al-Malikyeh regarding disaster management. Recommended: Training programs and workshops about disaster issues should be organized for the school teachers and key teams on regular basis, in addition to, awareness campaigns should be implementing with employing mass and social media technologies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 32-53
Author(s):  
Harriet Isaboke ◽  
Maureen Mweru ◽  
Gladwell Wambiri

Globalization and demand for twenty first century skills has led countries to adapt Competency Based Curriculum (CBC). Kenya embarked on curriculum reforms from content based to CBC in 2018. Studies have reported minimal use of CBC teaching-learning approaches in pre-primary schools in Nairobi City County. Teachers are the key implementers of the Curriculum, yet their preparedness to implement the Curriculum in public pre-primary schools remains unknown. Therefore, this study purposed to establish the preparedness of pre-primary school teachers in implementing the CBC in public pre-primary schools in the County. The Concern-Based Adoption Model by Hall, Hord and Rutherford (2006) was used in this study.  The study targeted a population of 900 comprising of 450 pre-primary school teachers, 225 ECD Center Managers and 225 head teachers in all the 225 public pre-primary schools in Nairobi City County. Twenty percent of the target population was sampled to participate in the study; therefore the study had a sample size of 180, which comprised of 45 head teachers, 45 center managers and 90 pre-primary school teachers. A Questionnaire, interview schedules, observation checklist and a document analysis guide were used to collect data. Pilot study was conducted in two public pre-primary schools in the County, validity of the research instruments was determined through expert judgment whereas reliability of the questionnaires was determined through split-half method and a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.799 was obtained. Qualitative data was analyzed thematically whereas quantitative data was summarized using percentages and frequencies and Chi-square test was used to test the hypotheses. This was facilitated by the Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 21. Findings showed that majority (65.9%) of the teachers had not received any training on CBC, whereas 34.1% of the teachers were trained. The study established a significant relationship between the teachers’ extent of training in CBC and their ability to implement the curriculum with a significance value of p=0.000<0.05. The study concluded that the teachers were not adequately prepared to implement the Curriculum. Thus, recommended that the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the Nairobi City County Government should adequately create a regular in-service training program to equip teachers with necessary knowledge and skills that will help them implement the curriculum effectively.


This study was carried out to identify the administrative role performances of headmasters of primary schools in Ebonyi state, southeast Nigeria. The study also identified the challenges faced the headmasters in performing their roles and strategies for handling these challenges. Three research questions were developed in line with the purpose of the study. Three null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The population of the study is 1471 headmasters and 10,188 teachers, and the sample comprised 150 headmasters and 1000 primary school teachers from the area of study. This sample was drawn using multi-stage sampling technique. A–21 item instrument termed “Headmasters’ Administrative Role Performance Assessment Questionnaire” (HARPAQ) was used by the researcher for data collection. The instrument was first validated by experts and reliability was determined using Cronbach Alpha Statistics and the reliability got was 0.85. The administration and retrieval of instrument were through direct contact and use of research assistants with the respondents. Data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation for the research question while z-test statistics were used for testing the null hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that all the 21 items were accepted by the respondents. Findings on the hypotheses tested revealed that there was no significant difference in the mean responses of headmasters and primary school teachers from Ebonyi state on the items presented. Adequate funding, prudency and accountability in fund management, regular leadership training of headmasters, formation of formidable umbrella union for the headmasters to always interact with government on issues of school funding and management, involving the PTA and community in school management among others were recommended.


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