The Impact of Block Scheduling on Student Motivation and Classroom Practice in Mathematics

2008 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin D. Biesinger ◽  
Kent J. Crippen ◽  
Krista R. Muis
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 368-384
Author(s):  
Lucinda Grace Heimer

Race is a marker hiding more complex narratives. Children identify the social cues that continue to segregate based on race, yet too often teachers fail to provide support for making sense of these worlds. Current critical scholarship highlights the importance of addressing issues of race, culture, and social justice with future teachers. The timing of this work is urgent as health, social and civil unrest due to systemic racism in the U.S. raise critiques and also open possibilities to reimagine early childhood education. Classroom teachers feel pressure to standardize pedagogy and outcomes yet meet myriad student needs and talents in complex settings. This study builds on the current literature as it uses one case study to explore institutional messages and student perceptions in a future teacher education program that centers race, culture, identity, and social justice. Teaching as a caring profession is explored to illuminate the impact authentic, aesthetic, and rhetorical care may have in classrooms. Using key tenets of Critical Race Theory as an analytical tool enhanced the case study process by focusing the inquiry on identity within a racist society. Four themes are highlighted related to institutional values, rigorous coursework, white privilege, and connecting individual racial and cultural understanding with classroom practice. With consideration of ethical relationality, teacher education programs begin to address the impact of racist histories. This work calls for individualized critical inquiry regarding future teacher understanding of “self” in new contexts as well as an investigation of how teacher education programs fit into larger institutional philosophies.


RELC Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 003368822095247
Author(s):  
Loc Tan Nguyen ◽  
Jonathan Newton

The role of teacher professional learning (TPL) in assisting teachers to teach pronunciation in English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) contexts has received little attention. The study reported in this paper extends this line of research by investigating how six EFL teachers at a Vietnamese university transform and integrate the pronunciation pedagogical knowledge they received from a TPL workshop into teaching practice. It then examines the teachers’ perceptions of the impact of the workshop on their knowledge gains and pronunciation teaching skills. Data were collected from seven lesson plans designed by the teachers, video recordings of 24 subsequent classroom observations, and six individual semi-structured interviews. The study adopted a content-based approach to qualitative data analysis. The findings show that the teachers were all able to translate TPL into classroom practice of pronunciation teaching. The findings further show that workshops designed and implemented in accordance with research-based TPL principles can be effective for promoting teachers’ knowledge of pronunciation pedagogy and refining their pronunciation teaching skills. The study has implications for ESL/EFL teachers’ professional development in pronunciation teaching.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Gregor James Fountain

<p>This case study takes an historical perspective to explore the curriculum decision-making of History teachers in New Zealand. It is argued that between 1986 and 2005, Year 12 History teachers were caught in-between curriculum reform on one hand, which encouraged teacher autonomy, and on the other hand, assessment reform which reduced teacher autonomy. While teachers in this study utilised the autonomy provided by internal assessment to develop engaging class and assessment activities, they largely avoided topics in Māori, Pasifika and Women’s history which were promoted through the syllabus. Factors which contributed to teachers' decisions concerning curriculum topics included teachers' perceptions of the nature of disciplinary History, personal interest and resource availability. The primary focus on this thesis is an assessment of the impact of changes to national assessment for qualifications on Year 12 History programmes. It argues that mandated assessment for qualifications is the single-most determining factor on classroom practice. It is also argued that the assessment style which emerged for Year 12 History through the National Certificate of Educational Achievement disconnected History assessment from the intentions of its written curriculum which emphasised disciplinary History's underlying and interconnected process of gathering, analysing and presenting historical information. In some cases, the NCEA hindered rather than enhanced the development of a school-based curriculum at this level.</p>


2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
Anita Muho ◽  
Gentjana Taraj

This study aimed at exploring the impact of formative assessment practices on student motivation for learning the English language. As Leahy, Lyon, Thompson, and Wiliam (2005) stated, education needs to change its function from collecting the results of right or wrong, and to encourage teachers in gathering information that will affect the educational decisions. This study is a non-experimental, correlational study, to describe the relationship between formative assessment practices and motivation for leaning. The instrument used was a questionnaire on high school students from public and private schools, who were selected randomly by stratified sampling. They belonged to three major high schools of Durres, Albania. The findings of this study showed that factors like strategic questions used by the teacher during formative assessment, student’s portfolio, self-assessment, and peer assessment affected positively the motivation for learning the English language. The results of the regression equation revealed that from four independent variables, the factor that had the greatest impact on motivation for learning were strategic questions used by the teacher during formative assessment, followed by self-assessment, peer assessment and student’s portfolio. This study identified ways of intervention to promote motivation for learning the English language. The study will contribute in the Albanian context showing how assessment practices made an impact on student motivation. It will help educational institutions and policy makers, foreign language teachers in improving the assessment practices to promote student motivation in learning the English language.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
Ahmed Alghamdi

This study aims to explore the pedagogical beliefs of Saudi instructors of English as a foreign language (EFL), and the extent to which they apply the values of the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach in their classroom practice. The study was conducted with 42 Saudi EFL teachers and employed a mixed methods approach. A descriptive analysis of classroom observation data was conducted. The results showed that teachers hold positive views of CLT, but that there are some discrepancies between their beliefs and their implementations of the approach. For example, most of the instructors continued to apply traditional teaching methods (i.e., grammar translation and the audio-lingual approach). The study concludes that it is essential in the Saudi EFL context for teachers to cultivate relations between their beliefs and practices to assure better language learning outcomes. The key contribution of this study lies in disclosing the reasons for the discrepancies between Saudi EFL teachers&rsquo; beliefs and practices to help them develop congruence, and in highlighting the pedagogical implementations. &nbsp;


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-87
Author(s):  
Mila Bulić ◽  
Ines Blažević

The research aimed to check for difference in learning motivation between students learning online and students participating in modern classroom instruction. The study participants included students attending grades 5 to 8, divided into experimental (online classes) and control groups based on pre-testing. The results show that there is no statistically significant difference in motivation between the tested sub-samples. Student motivation for learning natural sciences declines with their years of schooling, but this is not statistically significant. It can be concluded that online teaching of Science and Biology as a learning tool can be as motivating as modern teaching using active classroom methods.


2018 ◽  
pp. 583-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Hanus ◽  
Carlos Cruz

Gamification continues to grow in popularity, and has significant application to education and student motivation. Because gamification is a large, encompassing concept it may be best to assess its effects by breaking down its composite features and assessing the positive and negative effects of these features. This chapter takes features including immediate feedback, use of narrative, tailored challenges, and displays of progress, and discusses popular current theories in communication and psychology to discuss the potential benefits and drawbacks of each feature, placing a focus on student motivation, comparison, and self-perception. This moves to discuss practical ways to best employ gamification features, and discusses the impact of digital technology on gamification in the classroom and should be useful for researchers interested in the topic and for teachers considering how to best gamify their classrooms.


1996 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-99
Author(s):  
Colin Symes

The material practices of school, as they relate to the child, have not figured prominently in the repertoire of educational inquiry. They have been examined only in so far that their understanding might result in optimising the conditions of learning or provide systematic explanations as to why school processes are inadequate. Any idea that the practices themselves might encode and instantiate visions of childhood and pedagogy contingent on broader schemes of social planning and ideas of the public good, does not appear to have entered the purview of those writing about education. Under the impact of thenouvelle histoireof Philippe Ariès and Michel Foucault, this situation is being redressed and there is an evolving body of literature devoted to the genealogy of classroom practice, with a specific focus on its origins and underpinning logics. Of special significance to such practice is the venue in which it takes place, namely, the school, which is a specialised form of architecture, housing a range of furnishings and facilities designed to enhance the positions of teacher and child in such a way as to advance the cause of education.


Author(s):  
Samantha Jiménez ◽  
Reyes Juárez-Ramírez ◽  
Víctor H. Castillo ◽  
Juan José Tapia Armenta

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