Teacher readiness in applying ATL skills in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme Schools

<p>This article aims to understand the challenges faced by teachers in implementing the Approaches to Learning Skills (ATL Skills) for the teaching of <em>Bahasa Melayu</em> (Malay Language) in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme Schools (MYPIB) in Malaysia. This qualitative case study employed purposive sampling that involved six resilient teachers who were directly involved in the implementations of ATL Skills consisting of four <em>Bahasa Melayu</em> teachers, a MYPIB coordinator and ATL skills coordinator. Triangulation was used to compare data from different sources using semi-structured interviews, story completion tasks, and document analysis. Using the ATLAS.ti software as an aiding tool, thematic analysis was carried out to identify the themes that emerged from the codes. Findings showed that teacher readiness is a challenge that needs to be addressed in the process of applying ATL skills in the MYPIB implemented by the Malaysian Ministry of Education. Teachers still need courses and training to improve their mastery in the ATL skills application. This study provided implications to teaching and learning, and recommendations to teachers as well as the Ministry to make improvements in the effort to apply ATL skills in the teaching-learning processes at the MYPIB schools.</p>

Challenges of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme: Insights for school leaders and policy makers

Policy makers in the US and several other countries are recommending that more schools offer an International Baccalaureate (IB) programme. However, little is known about the challenges that IB programmes present for teaching and learning particularly those meeting national curriculum. In this study, we examined the challenges of the IB’s Middle Years Programme (MYP), the least understood and researched of the IB programmes. Using a qualitative case study design, we conducted in-depth and semi-structured interviews with school leaders (n=7) and teachers (n=10) from three schools in Australia that previously offered the MYP. We used thematic analysis to generate the findings and the IB’s Standards and Practice framework to organize the reporting of findings. Participants shared perceived challenges related to philosophical factors, organizational dilemmas and complexities with integrating the MYP with Australia’s national curriculum. Understanding the organizational and leadership challenges that schools may face when offering the MYP can help policy makers promote the necessary conditions for successful program implementation.

Captain Vivian Hewitt and the fate of his collection of birds’ eggs and specimens

Vivian Hewitt was a little-known collector of natural history specimens (mainly birds and their eggs) during the early and middle years of the twentieth century. Although an obscure figure his influence on the museum world of his time – and later – was considerable and his collection of Great Auk material became almost legendary. Some of his story and that of his collection is a matter of published record but many elements remain obscure. In this study, we present previously unpublished details of Hewitt’s extraordinary life.

Middle Years Teachers’ Critical Literacy Practices as Cornerstones of Their Culturally Relevant Pedagogies

Critical literacy is widely accepted as an important element of culturally relevant pedagogy. In this article, we detail results of a study into how six teachers in rural Eastern Canada purposefully incorporated critical literacy into teaching and learning activities in their classrooms from a culturally relevant pedagogical stance. Findings highlight teachers’ intentional planning that embeds critical literacy, critical literacy in the wider community, and use of multimodal practices in teaching for critical literacy. The critical literacy practices of these teachers reflect their thinking about knowledge and knowledge construction as one key aspect of their culturally relevant pedagogy.

The Influence Of Learning Model Application of Discovery To The Results of The Study of Biology

This research was conducted in the upper secondary school Panai Middle years learning 2018/2019. This study aims to determine the influence of learning model application of Discovery to student learning outcomes on the material the human excretory system in class XI Science. This type of research is quasi-experimental. Population, all students of class XI Science high school Panai Tenga amounted to 32 people. The sampling technique is total sampling, where the entire population in the study sample. The instruments used are test, observation sheet and questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, test prerequisites and the test of hypothesis with the help of SPSS software version 22.From the results of the hypothesis test, t-test paired samples (Paired Sample t-test), obtained the value of tcount of 5, 422 and ttable with α = 0.05, df = 15, the obtained values ttable amounted to 2,131. The value of tcount > ttable or 5,422 > 2,131 can be concluded that H0 is rejected and Ha accepted. This means that there is significant influence of learning model application of Discovery to student learning outcomes in class XI Science high school Panai Middle years learning 2018/2019.

Revision, Origin, and the Courage of Truth

Henry James’s New York Edition prefaces contain multiple accounts of the genesis of the novels and tales that the edition collected: Some anecdotes tell of how the idea for the novel came to him, while others tell of the material circumstances of the text’s composition (where he was, for example, as he wrote). More often, the prefaces tell of the disappearance of the moment of genesis: of its having been forgotten, or there being no moment when the idea wasn’t somehow present in his mind. In the unrationalized relation among these different accounts, James implicitly theorizes the relation between art and life. Linking the prefaces to the autobiography, therefore, the chapter thus considers “revision” as a practice that maintains the potentiality of inception, seeking, in rereading, to return each text to incipience. Comparing James’s account of revision to Michel Foucault’s late turn to parrhēsia (as a mode of truth-telling) and to Gilles Deleuze’s account of the “act of creation,” the chapter links this potentiality to terms of ethical exhortation with which James ends the prefaces. Turning, finally, to James’s “The Middle Years,” the chapter ends with that story’s imagining of a life lived in the potentiality of revision.