Using Ethnographic Approaches to Co-Construct Strategies for Success With Students With Dyslexia

This chapter takes a dual focus/lens to applying and performing research methods in inclusive and special education in a tertiary/post-secondary setting with a group of students with dyslexia. It links the core ideas of United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities Article 24, Inclusive Education to describing the development and implementation of a co-constructed, collaborative project to identify success strategies for students with dyslexia, utilizing both student and teacher perspectives and experiences, and examines the fit of utilizing ethnographic approaches in this. As practitioner –researchers, authors provide a narrative case study of a project which was developed/co-constructed to respond to a set of identified needs for a group of students presenting with dyslexia. Authors then examine how the project practices link to research methodology, particularly ethnography, and produce both a set of strategies to work inclusively in the future with students with dyslexia and also construct a methodological approach within the lens of new ethnography. This serves to theories both the project work and guidelines for future use of ethnographic approaches for research in the field of inclusive and special education.

Online translators for L2 writing: a comparison of student and teacher perspectives

This short paper reports on the preliminary findings of a study into the use of Online Translators (OTs) by university language students. Students of Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish and their teachers responded to comparative surveys on their respective use and evaluation of OTs for L2 writing in formal language learning contexts. Findings indicate that teachers have little awareness of the range of strategies students apply when using OTs as writing tools. Concerns of OT misuse for cheating or as a replacement for language learning seem largely unfounded. Students, however, perceive a lack of guidance for the appropriate use of OTs. Preliminary findings suggest that teachers need to review their assumptions about students’ OT practices and that both students and teachers would benefit from technical and pedagogical OT training.

Health and Land-Use Courses of Action for Education for Sustainable Development in Madagascar: Teacher Perspectives on Possibilities for Implementation

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) plays a key role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. However, the implementation of ESD in education remains a challenge, particularly for countries such as Madagascar. ESD needs to consider regional realities to be relevant to learners. An expert study identified health and land-use courses of action for regionally relevant ESD in northeast Malagasy primary education. However, what about teacher perspectives on the possibilities for implementing such courses of action? The present think-aloud study with 10 Malagasy primary teachers used the Integrated Behavioral Model for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (IBM-WASH) to analyze factors that teachers perceive to be relevant for implementing health and also—as an innovation—land-use courses of action. The IBM-WASH model is a tool for identifying opportunities and barriers to a desired health behavior. It turned out that the local school’s surroundings, shared values and attitudes, and existing habits are important for implementing health and land-use courses of action. Therefore, regionally adapted health and land-use teaching should consider community-contextual, community-psychosocial, and habitual-psychosocial factors. Additionally, teachers mentioned the costs and benefits of land-use practices. Thus, land-use teaching should take the individual-technological factor into account. This paper argues for a regionally adapted ESD in teacher and school education.

Accelerating teacher career through improving competence in scientific publications: Physics teacher perspectives

In promotion of teachers career to a higher level are required to write scientific papers. This study aims to describe the physics teacher’s perspective on the promotion process they have experienced so far and the obstacles they face. This research is a descriptive research, data collection through questionnaire and information deepening is done through interviews. The sample of this research is 73 physics teachers. Based on the results of data analysis, it can be seen that more than 65% of physics teachers have difficulty in fulfilling scientific publication requirements for promotion, 85% of respondents have done classroom action research (CAR), but only about 44% have published in the form of scientific articles. In general, teachers have experience in conducting CAR, but they still lack experience in writing scientific articles. Most physics teachers expect local schools and education offices to cooperate with universities to organize training and mentoring of scientific publications. This study can be concluded that the main obstacle to the promotion of physics teachers is caused by the low ability to carry out scientific publications. The results of this study are expected to provide consideration to stakeholders in making decisions and actions related to teacher promotion, especially regarding the mandatory requirements for scientific publications.