Teachers’ visual processing of children’s off-task behaviors in class: A comparison between teachers and student teachers

As teachers are responsible for responding instantaneously to students’ statements and actions, the progress of the class, and their teaching purpose, they need to be able to engage in responsive teaching. Teachers obtain information about students’ learning by observing them in the classroom, and subsequently make instructional decisions based on this information. Teachers need to be sensitive to student behaviors and respond accordingly, because there are students who follow the teacher’s instructions and those who do not in every classroom. Skilled teachers may distribute their gaze over the entire class and discover off-task behaviors. So how does a teacher’s visual processing and noticing ability develop? It is important to clarify this process for both experienced teachers and student teachers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is a difference in visual processing and the ability to notice off-task behaviors in class between teachers and student teachers through gaze analysis. Using an eye tracking device, 76 teachers and 147 student teachers were asked to watch a video, and gaze measurements were collected. In the video, students exhibiting off-task behaviors in class were prompted by their classroom teacher to participate in the lesson. After the video, the participants were asked if they could identify the students who had displayed off-task behaviors and whom the teachers had warned. The results showed that teachers gazed at students engaging in off-task behaviors in class more often and noticed them at a higher rate than student teachers did. These results may be attributed to differences in the experiences of visual processing of relevant information in the classroom between teachers and student teachers. Thus, the findings on teachers’ visual processing by direct measurement of gaze will be able to contribute to teachers’ development.

Cognition in Teaching Grammar and Actual Practices of Experienced and Less-Experienced Filipino ESL Teachers

Though studies in the Western and Asian settings have already provided ample evidence in the symbolic relationship between teacher cognition and classroom teaching, such relationship has remained unexplored in the Philippine setting. Hence, this study aims to describe the beliefs in the teaching of English grammar of experienced and less experienced Filipino ESL teachers in a senior high school. It also compared their beliefs and actual classroom teaching to establish if there is match between what they think and practice. Reasons for divergence from their beliefs were also explored. Results revealed that teachers’ personal theories become the basis for their personal knowledge, thus have strong influence on their planning, instructional decisions and classroom practices. While both teachers share similarities on their cognition and practice on grammar teaching, minimal differences were documented. Experienced teacher has a greater tendency to translate stated beliefs to actual practice. Contextual factors such as time, curriculum, efforts to improve one’s practice and the learners themselves were the cited reasons for teachers’ divergence.

The Skills of Mathematics Teachers with Different Professional Experiences to Notice the Evidence of Student Thinking

There are different types of evidence that reflect students' thinking in classroom interactions. Student discourse, gestures, actions can be shown among these. The aim of the current study is to reveal the skills of secondary mathematics teachers with different professional experiences to notice different types of evidence of student thinking. For this aim, the study was designed within the context of a case study, one of the qualitative research methods. The data of the study were obtained through video-based interviews with five secondary mathematics teachers. Six video episodes containing different types of evidence for video-based interviews were shown to teachers. In the interviews, targeted questions were asked to reveal what types of evidence the participating teachers took into account in the videos they watched, how they interpret these types of evidence, and what kind of instructional decisions they suggested. The types of evidence that teachers noticed in the videos and how they made sense of the evidence were analyzed qualitatively. Various findings have been revealed depending on the different professional experiences of the teachers. First, experienced (5 years and above) teachers paid more attention to the types of verbal evidence of student thinking. Student statements and questions were more visible to experienced teachers, especially among oral evidence. Second, the evidence-based comments described by the experienced teachers were aimed at drawing more conclusions. However, it is noteworthy that teachers who make inferences based on student's cognitive thinking also attend postgraduate education or professional experience courses. Third, the instructional decisions of experienced teachers who attended postgraduate education and professional experience courses, based on student thinking, were mostly related to specific mathematical subjects.

Support and Enrichment Experiences in Mathematics (SEE Math): Using Case Studies to Improve Mathematics Teacher Education

This article describes an innovation in an elementary mathematics education course called SEE Math (Support and Enrichment Experiences in Mathematics), which aims to support teacher candidates (TCs) as they learn to teach mathematics through problem solving while promoting equity during multiple experiences with a child. During this 8-week program, TCs craft and implement tasks that promote problem solving in the context of a case study of a child’s thinking while collecting and analyzing student data to support future instructional decisions. The program culminates in a mock parent–teacher conference. Data samples show how SEE Math offers TCs an opportunity to focus on the nuances of children’s strengths rather than traditional measures of achievement and skill.

Instructional improv to analyze inquiry-based science teaching: Zed’s dead and the missing flower

In inquiry-based science lessons teachers face the challenge of adhering to curricular goals while simultaneously following students’ intuitive understandings. Improvisation (improv) provides a useful frame for understanding teaching in these inquiry-based contexts. This paper builds from prior work that uses improv as a metaphor for teaching to present a translated model for analysis of teaching in an inquiry-based, elementary school science lesson context. We call our model instructional improv, which shows how a teacher spontaneously synthesizes rules of improv with teaching practices to support student learning, engagement, and agency. We illustrate instructional improv through case study analysis of video recorded classroom interactions with one teacher and 26 first and second grade students learning about the complex system of honey bee pollination in a mixed reality environment. Our model includes the following defining features to describe how teaching happens in this context: the teacher 1) tells a story; 2) reframes mistakes as opportunities; 3) agrees; 4) yes ands; 5) makes statements (or asks questions that elicit statements); and 6) puts the needs of the classroom ensemble over individuals. Overall, we show how instructional improv helps explain how teachers can support science discourse and collective storytelling as a teacher (a) shifts power and agency to students; (b) balances learning and agency; and (c) makes purposeful instructional decisions. Findings have immediate implications for researchers analyzing interactions in inquiry-based learning environments and potential future implications for teachers to support inquiry learning.

Steps for Success: Making Instructional Decisions for Students’ Essay Writing

The process of analyzing student data to determine an appropriate instructional decision is crucial for student academic growth. This article details how teachers can make data-driven decisions to carefully design writing instruction. Steps are presented for teachers to follow throughout the data driven decision-making process in order to meet students’ specific needs when they are writing an essay. A case study is provided throughout the article to illustrate how students and teachers may navigate through this process while using a technology-based graphic organizer.