Eliciting Artistry

Chapter 4 addresses teaching techniques that draw artistry out of children. It describes the tender yet robust nature of children’s artistry and advises that how teachers prompt artistry can draw it out of children or send it into its shell. It identifies aspects of the musical context that are necessary for children’s artistry to thrive and encourages teachers to create the emotional as well as musical context within which children’s artistry can flourish. It also offers techniques for prompting the musical mind so that teachers can most effectively communicate with a developing sense of meter and sense of tonality, directing children’s mindset musically as well as emotionally for developing artistry. This chapter facilitates the application of concepts from previous chapters and builds on the motivation generated throughout this book, empowering teachers to uncover the artistry in their own classrooms and children’s choruses, and to champion children’s artistry in the field of music education.

Empowering Teachers with AI: Co-Designing a Learning Analytics Tool for Personalized Instruction in the Science Classroom

AI-based educational technology that is designed to support teachers in providing personalized instruction can enhance their ability to address the needs of individual students, hopefully leading to better learning gains. This paper presents results from participatory research aimed at co-designing with science teachers a learning analytics tool that will assist them in implementing a personalized pedagogy in blended learning contexts. The development process included three stages. In the first, we interviewed a group of teachers to identify where and how personalized instruction may be integrated into their teaching practices. This yielded a clustering-based personalization strategy. Next, we designed a mock-up of an AI-based tool that supports this strategy and worked with another group of teachers to define an `explainable learning analytics' scheme that explains each cluster in a way that is both pedagogically meaningful and can be generated automatically. Third, we developed an AI algorithm that supports this `explainable clusters' pedagogy and conducted a controlled experiment that evaluated its contribution to teachers' ability to plan personalized learning sequences. The planned sequences were evaluated in a blinded fashion by an expert, and the results demonstrated that the experimental group -- teachers who received the clusters with the explanations -- designed sequences that addressed the difficulties exhibited by different groups of students better than those designed by teachers who received the clusters without explanations. The main contribution of this study is twofold. First, it presents an effective personalization approach that fits blended learning in the science classroom, which combines a real-time clustering algorithm with an explainable-AI scheme that can automatically build pedagogically meaningful explanations from item-level meta-data (Q Matrix). Second, it demonstrates how such an end-to-end learning analytics solution can be built with teachers through a co-design process and highlights the types of knowledge that teachers add to system-provided analytics in order to apply them to their local context. As a practical contribution, this process informed the design of a new learning analytics tool that was integrated into a free online learning platform that is being used by more than 1000 science teachers.

Supporting teaching staff through data Analytics: A Systematic Review

Higher education institutions and its stakeholders are just about to catch up with the rapid pace at which educational data are being generated. While recent learning analytics research and applications are mainly focused on learning, there is an increased awareness that data analytics may provide teaching staff with evidence-based insights for enhancing teaching processes. The aim of this systematic review is to gain a deeper understanding on how data analytics in the educational context may play a role in helping teaching staff to leverage their own teaching A total of N = 18,723 articles were located and screened resulting in a final sample N = 35 key publications. Findings indicate that empowering teachers with data from educational contexts may support pre-active, interactive, and post-active reflection phases of teaching. However, teaching staff are required to further develop their educational data literacy in order to avoid biased pedagogical decision-making.

Professional Identity and Struggles of Basic Level English Teacher: A Critical Narrative Inquiry

Professional development is a continuous process of learning to empower professional competency and enable teachers to be strong and competent in their professional career. The study critically explores the struggles and professional activities of basic level English teachers in professional development. Critical narrative inquiry has been used in relation to long lived experiences of a participant with a semi – structured telephonic interview. The participant narrates three distinct phases of experiences in teaching profession. The result revealed that participant was innately interested in teaching profession before involvement. But the situated school system discouraged his ideology of teaching profession even he determined to continue his profession involving in different seminars, workshop and study. However, the study further suggests that there is lack of innovating teaching profession from critical perspectives focusing the interactive and transformative environment in classroom. Therefore, the basic level teachers need to re- examine and re – construct the professional activities to address the need, interest and level of learners. Similarly, the study contributes to apply language teaching activities in terms of transformative mood rather than structured model of teaching empowering teachers as an agency.

The authority of principals’ technology leadership in empowering teachers’ self-efficacy towards ICT use

<span>The application of information technology and communication (ICT) in education has a significant impact on teachers. Administrators pressure them to use ICT to improve the quality of teaching and to learn in the classroom. However, teachers are still skeptical of the ability to embody pedagogical strategies through the use of ICT. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between principals’ technology leadership and teachers’ self-efficacy. The study also determined the dimensions of technology leadership that are predictors to the empowerment of teachers' self-efficacy in using ICT. There are two instruments used, namely NETS-A and TSES. The respondents of the study consisted of 376 teachers in Malaysia. The study was conducted based on a quantitative approach, and respondents were selected through multi-level sampling. The results of the t-test found no significant difference for the gender of teachers on the improvement of self-efficacy. Through correlation testing, there was a moderate relationship between technology leadership and teachers’ self-efficacy. Even so, there is 24% of the influence of technology leadership that affects teachers' self-efficacy. Two contributing dimensions are excellence in professional practice and digital citizenship. In summary, principals can generate a revival of teachers' self -efficacy if they wisely encourage them to use ICT. Principals should be role models to teachers and students in ensuring that the concept of pedagogy in the classroom is always carried out through an ICT approach.</span>

Teacher empowerment and organisational citizenship behaviour in public schools in Saudi Arabia

This study reports on an investigation of the relationships between teacher empowerment and organisational citizenship behaviours. Data were collected from 457 teachers working in secondary schools in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The results indicated that teacher empowerment was positively correlated with organisational citizenship behaviours among teachers. Regression analysis indicated that teacher empowerment explained 48% of the variance in organisational citizenship behaviour scores. The results of the study revealed that decision making, professional growth, status and impact had the most contribution in explaining the variance of total organisational citizenship behaviours. These results indicated the significance of empowering teachers in the school settings. The more the teachers are empowered, the more they exhibit behaviors that go beyond their traditional roles towards the advantage of their students, colleagues, and schools. Directions for further research are discussed.

Kepemimpinan Kepala Madrasah dalam Memberdayakan Tenaga Guru di Madrasah Tsanawiyah Nurul Iman

This research aims to describe the leadership of madrasah heads in empowering teachers in MTs Nurul Iman Ulu Gedong Jambi City. This study uses qualitative methods. Data collection techniques using observations, interviews, and documentation. The results of the study found there are three forms of empowerment of teachers in MTs Nurul Iman Ulu Gedong Jambi City conducted by the principal, first, forming a teacher learning group so that each teacher can exchange experience, knowledge and information about learning. Second, include teachers in workshops, workshops, seminars, conferences, and trainings related to teaching methods/methods, making RPP, Syllabus, and implementing learning strategies. Third, conduct motivational training for teachers to always improve their learning and teaching skills.