A novel practical pedagogy for terminal assessment

The present paper reports upon the design and implementation of a novel practical work pedagogy that is shown to increase students’ retention of practical procedures. The chemistry exams, for 15 to 16-year olds in England, will be assessed entirely through terminal examination questions from 2018. Longer term retention of learning is critical if these students are to minimise any discrepancy in attainment that may arise from following curricula with a coursework component. The novel design, underpinned by Cognitive Load Theory and Social Constructivism, involves pre-laboratory preparation and employs oracy to promote thinking during practical work. Three equivalent chemistry groups within the same school undertook neutralisation and crystallisation practical tasks and their practical work exam question attainment data is analysed. The novel pedagogy is trialled as a neutralisation task with one group and affective outcomes are determined through Likert scale activity feedback questionnaire. Attainment data shows a statistically significant higher mark in practical exam question attainment for the intervention compared to the control group when tested ten weeks after the teaching episode.

The sequential organization of text and speech in multimodal synchronous computer-mediated communication

This study uses conversation analysis to describe the sequential and functional relationship between text and speech turns in an English conversational lesson conducted in multimodal synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) involving text and speech modes. Focusing on repair sequences, I examine the relative timing of turns in each mode, the interactional practices that participants employed to handle timing discrepancy, and how both modes were utilized to maintain the pedagogical and interpersonal purposes of the encounter. The analysis shows that synchronous timing between text and speech turns was rare. In time lags between text and speech turns, if the repair was a self-initiated other-repair initiated by the tutee, speech turns did not seem to orient to the time lag. In other types of repair, the tutor utilized a range of practices to accommodate for the time lags, such as extreme slow speech tempo, pivot turns, and topic pursuits. The tutor also used the silent and visual features of text to insert and project an upcoming teaching episode in the midst of unfolding topical talk. The findings suggest that multimodal SCMC is a holistic process in which the affordances of modes can be employed dynamically and integratively to achieve social actions.

The Teaching Episode of a Released Prisoner. František Křelina at the School in Český Dub in January 1966

The writer František Křelina (1903-1976) graduated from the teaching institute in Jičin. He first taught at village elementary schools in the Nova Paka and Turnov regions. From the mid-1930s, he was a special subject teacher at the council school in Česky Dub. After the town was occupied following the Munich agreement in 1938, he worked at schools in Prague, where his family had also moved. He considered his teaching profession to be a mission. His success and his popularity are evidenced by the extant correspondence with his former students until the end of his life. His teaching activities were terminated by force in 1951, when he was arrested and subsequently, in 1952, sentenced in a political process to 12 years in prison. He was released on amnesty in 1960, but he was not allowed to return to his profession. He thus worked as a construction labourer, retiring in 1964. In 1965, he was given an unexpected opportunity to work as a substitute teacher at his former school in Česky Dub. Since his rehabilitation proceedings had not been completed, however, he had to leave the school again three days later. In order not to cause problems for the headmaster, he excused his leaving by a pretended illness. Nevertheless, the three days were enough for his personality to leave a deep and lasting impression on the hearts of both his students and his teacher colleagues - their correspondence is full of respect and admiration. The history of the teaching activities of František Křelina, who was not allowed to achieve his full fulfilment, hence demonstrates the violence, malevolence and crimes of Communist totalitarian power.

Comparing episodes of mathematics teaching for higher achievers in England and Germany

To illustrate similarities and differences in lower secondary level mathematics teaching with higher achievers and thereby explore privileging processes, we contrast a teaching episode in Baden-Württemberg, Germany with one in South West England. These have been selected from a larger study as typical within each region for higher achieving students in the school year in which they become 12 years old. These episodes reflect the dominant discourses and recent policy initiatives in each country. Descriptions of the episodes are linked to wider debates about the ways education practices benefit some student groups, and potential areas for further exploration are identified.

Aspects of Students' Reasoning About Variation in Empirical Sampling Distributions

Sampling tasks and sampling distributions provide a fertile realm for investigating students' conceptions of variability. A project-designed teaching episode on samples and sampling distributions was team-taught in 6 research classrooms (2 middle school and 4 high school) by the investigators and regular classroom mathematics teachers. Data sources included survey data collected in 6 research classes and 4 comparison classes both before and after the teaching episode, and semistructured task-based interviews conducted with students from the research classes. Student responses and reasoning on sampling tasks led to the development of a conceptual lattice that characterizes types of student reasoning about sampling distributions. The lattice may serve as a useful conceptual tool for researchers and as a potential instructional tool for teachers of statistics. Results suggest that teachers need to focus explicitly on multiple aspects of distributions, especially variability, to enhance students' reasoning about sampling distributions.

Formative Dialogues in Teaching

Teaching universities, while claiming to value good teaching, do little to help individual faculty members improve learning in their classrooms. One effective way to help teachers reflect on their teaching and improve their teaching skills is to have a colleague observe and discuss the teaching episode, yet these dialogues seem to be rare. Visits to the classroom, if they occur at all, are usually summative, with little or no discussion, and typically used for the purposes of evaluation. The formative dialogues program, however, provides opportunities for faculty members to request a collegial, nonthreatening observation and discussion of a teaching session. The program is easy to administer and promises to provide opportunities to enhance the learning environment of the health professional classroom.

Discussing a teacher MKT and its role on teacher practice when exploring data analysis

This article considers teacher knowledge in managing mathematically critical situations and the role of what can be termed a mathematical summary in the analysis of a teaching episode, viewed from the perspective of Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT). The analysis is based on an episode of content review, from a perspective which aims to understand the teacher’s logic rather than merely identify gaps in their knowledge. We discuss the importance of approaching mathematically critical situations in order to contribute to eradicating mathematical innumeracy (statistics) and to promote a kind of practice which is "mathematically demanding" as well as "pedagogically exciting". Discusión del conocimiento matemático para la enseñanza de un profesor y su papel en la práctica docente cuando se explora el análisis de datosEste artículo considera el conocimiento del profesor al gestionar situaciones matemáticamente críticas y el papel de lo que puede denominarse un resumen matemático en el análisis de un episodio de enseñanza, visto desde la perspectiva del conocimiento matemático para la enseñanza. El análisis se basa en un episodio de revisión del contenido, desde una perspectiva que trata de comprender la lógica del profesor en vez de simplemente identificar lagunas en su conocimiento. Discutimos la importancia de abordar las situaciones matemáticamente críticas con el fin de contribuir a erradicar la incompetencia en matemáticas (estadística) y promover un tipo de práctica que sea "matemáticamente exigente" así como "pedagógicamente interesante".Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10481/ 19520

Planning a Teaching Episode

The ability to teach as a doctor in general practice (GP) is not only a requirement for the GP curriculum but is increasingly being recognized as a key skill for any doctor in the modern National Health Service (NHS). The recent guidance document from the General Medical Council, ‘Duties of a doctor’ clearly states: ‘Teaching, training, appraising and assessing doctors and students are important for the care of patients now and in the future. You should be willing to contribute to these activities’. Long gone are the days when doctors were expected to know all they needed to know simply because they were doctors. New models of working and the drive for all new alternative providers of medical services practices to offer training mean that the ability to teach is also an attractive skill for you to offer to future employers. The types of people involved in teaching and learning in primary care are now more diverse than ever before. Working in a multidisciplinary team with other colleagues brings unique challenges that could see you feeling out of your comfort zone. This article will help you to feel more prepared to teach others, using the example of teaching about asthma.

Symbolizing as a Constructive Activity in a Computer Microworld

In the design of computer microworlds as media for children's mathematical action, our basic and guiding principle was to create possible actions children could use to enact their mental operations. These possible actions open pathways for children's mathematical activity that coemerge in the activity. We illustrate this coemergence through a constructivist teaching episode with two children working with the computer microworld TIMA: Bars. During this episode, in which the children took turns to partition a bar into fourths and thirds recursively, the symbolic nature of their partitioning operations became apparent. The children developed their own drawings and numeral systems to further symbolize their symbolic mental operations. The symbolic nature of the children's partitioning operations was crucial in their establishment of more conventional mathematical symbols.