An Exploratory Study on Teacher Training

Since 2012, the concept of “special training needs” in Italian ministerial legislation has been connected to the concept of inclusion. In the Italian school system, students with disabilities are fully integrated in standard school activities. They can take advantage of the presence of a teacher who is a supportive figure for the whole class, who has received training in inclusion and the management of teaching strategies for dealing with disabilities. In order to train teachers who will fit that profile, a specialization course is organized by Italian universities to train teachers at every level of instruction. The chapter is contextualized to the last course of academic year 2016-2017, which took place at the University of Macerata, addressed to preschool and primary teachers. Exploratory research using a qualitative approach was run to highlight, on one hand, student teachers' preconceptions and expectations about the effectiveness of technologies for inclusion; and, on the other hand, their opinions about the activities proposed during the technology course.

Business School Student Deception: Tracking and Learning from Actual Behavior

Business educators’ mission is to help students develop knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and skills that will help them be successful once they graduate. This is certainly true of ethical issues, including the use of deception. This study reports on an assignment that can increase students’ awareness of their own capacity for deceptiveness, self-reflection on what this means for them and the greater business world, and awareness of the different types of deceptiveness that can and do occur. Data is provided from 239 undergraduate/graduate students at two universities on three campuses who completed a five-day deception measurement exercise. Students measured and categorized their deception behavior and reflected upon the results. Results suggest the objectives were met regardless of school location, method of classroom delivery, level of instruction, or whether the assignment was mandatory or not. The fact that this exercise has been used at multiple universities under almost every class modality suggests it can be successfully replicated at other universities for many courses.

Digital Humanities and Virtual Reality: A Review of Theories and Best Practices for Art History

The technology of virtual reality (VR) has had proven educational benefits over the last three decades. Yet, most research conducted on these benefits has been confined to the sciences, especially in Computer Science. The application of VR technology for the Digital Humanities is only now beginning to receive attention, but more study needs to be conducted on its uses within various humanistic disciplines. In order to expand on the research at a pivotal time in education when modalities expand to incorporate more hybrid, distance education, and online learning, this study reviews the literature and theories behind the educational use of VR as a tool to reinforce learning outcomes in the field of art history. Through the review, theories and best practices are presented for practical adoption at various level of instruction at other institutions, as well as a list of recommendations for integrating VR technology specifically within art history instruction.

Special Education Teachers’ Knowledge of Using Assistive Technology with Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The aim of this study was to explore teachers' knowledge of using assistive technology (AT) with students with Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD) based on their gender, years of teaching experience, level of education, grade level of instruction, and training. A sample of 312 teachers were collected in this study. Multiple Linear Regression was conducted for data analysis. Results indicated that trained teachers showed more knowledge of the using of AT in classrooms for students with ASD. Teachers who have more years of teaching experience reported more knowledge of using AT in classrooms for students with ASD. The results support a greater need for further studies using AT for students with ASD from stakeholders and decision makers perspectives in Saudi Arabia.

Gender Violence in the Women of Azogues

- Gender violence is an issue that generates worldwide impact, in addition to being a public health problem, since there are high levels of patrimonial, psychological, physical and sexual violence that occur daily and are not reported due to fear, omission and Justification, that is why the importance of carrying out this research is born. Describe gender violence in women who attend the Health Center No. 1 of Azogues. Non-experimental study of descriptive, analytical, prospective and cross-sectional type with a quantitative approach. The participants were Women 15 to 49 years of age who went to an outpatient clinic. A survey was designed that included sociodemographic factors and consisted of 27 questions, which collected data on the types of patrimonial, psychological, physical and sexual violence. Results were obtained from 351 women who made up the established sample, where more than 50% belonged to the young adult population, they showed patrimonial violence 22.5%, Psychological 45.6%, Physical 20.8% and sexual 13, one%. There is a level of positive significance between age and patrimonial, psychological and physical violence, marital status with all types of violence and the level of instruction with a level of negative significance related to patrimonial, psychological and physical violence.

Bayesian metric and ordinal analysis of teaching to learn through the knowledge integrating project

The knowledge integrating project is part of interdisciplinary teaching, whose objective is integral training where the teacher must teach to learn. To evaluate the teacher and his methodology, Likert surveys are applied, however, his analysis by metric statistical methods can lead to errors in his interpretation. The objective was to know the perception of students regarding the knowledge integration project, for the acquisition of skills and abilities of learning to learn, and to compare Bayesian methods. Cross-sectional study, through a Likert scale survey, of students who completed the first level of instruction; the analysis using metric and ordinal Bayesian models. A significant percentage of students indicated that they had acquired aptitudes and skills of learning to learn and qualified the organization of the work method as appropriate; when comparing results between the studied methods, type I and II errors were found in the metric analysis model. The students’ perception regarding the organization and elaboration of the project with the acquisition of aptitudes and skills of learning to learn showed positive results; the use of Bayesian statistics with ordinal models is recommended for the proper interpretation of the results of questionnaires on Likert scales.

Comparing the Performance of ESL and English-Native Speaking Students in an Introductory Level Statistics Course

English as a second language (ESL) students often face more challenges than their English-Native Speaking (ENS) peers due to language and cultural barriers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the difference in performance between ESL students and ENS students in the introductory level statistics course, STAT150, at the University of Norther Colorado (UNC). Due to the dichotomous nature of the data and the large differences in sample sizes between ESN and ESL students, the Bootstrapped Logistic Regression model is used to analyze the data. Contrary to the findings of previously conducted studies, the results of this study suggest that ESL students who have been enrolled in STAT 150 at UNC are just as likely to receive a high mark in the course as their ENS counterparts. One explanation for this finding is that the level of instruction and quality of content provided throughout the course gave all students, including ESL students, all the information necessary to succeed in the course. If this explanation is accepted, the outcomecentric results found by this study reflect well upon the overall quality of instruction and English proficiency policies at UNC.

Critical thinking perspectives of undergraduate students

Today’s learners need support in not only developing capacity for a global mindset, but also for thinking critically about the world. Employers are seeking graduates who can enter the workforce prepared to work within agriculture with the ability to understand its complexities. Higher education institutions have been called upon to provide this to students and faculty are often charged with this responsibility. However, faculty are often unprepared to provide this level of instruction and need support in order to foster this in the classroom. Student participants in this study were exposed to scenarios, which are a tool used to provide multiple perspectives and outcomes to real-life scenarios. Faculty used the scenarios to complement course instruction with respect to the impacts of climate change on food security and hunger. Using Facione’s (1990) framework for critical thinking skill, statements submitted by students both prior to the scenario and post were analyzed. It was found that while students demonstrated critical thinking in both the pre and post, the post statements were much richer, in-depth, and thoughtful in how critical thinking was demonstrated. This showed that faculty support, combined with innovative teaching methods, like scenarios, will encourage students’ building of capacity for critical thinking.

Structural Variation of Directives in University Classroom Discourse: A Corpus-Based Investigation

ABSTRACT The present study examines structural variation of directives1 across different situational contexts in university lectures. The data comes from the lecture component of a large corpus of university discourse2. The following analytical steps were taken: 1) possible linguistic patterns of directives were manually identified in sample lectures; 2) five most-frequent lexico-grammatically explicit structural types of directives were selected for automatic analysis; 3)Python scripts were written to automatically identify directives with the five structural types; 4) structural variation of directives was analyzed in relation to three situational variables: level of interaction, level of instruction, and discipline. Results show that situational variables affect the use of directives in important ways.