Teacher observations of programming affordances for K-12 mathematics and technology

With future shortage of professionals with programming and computing skills, many countries have made programming part of kindergarten – grade 12 curriculum (K-12). A possible approach is to make programming part of an already existing subject. Sweden has chosen this approach and in 2017 programming was integrated in the subject content of K-12 mathematics and technology. Integrating programming is at the expense of extra workload on teachers. Teachers affected by these changes will face new challenges in their teaching and learning activities. The aim of the study is to examine K-12 teachers’ use and perceived affordances of programming as a tool for teaching and learning activities in mathematics and technology. Data were collected through focus group discussions with three teacher teams in mathematics and technology from three K-12 schools in the mid Sweden region. 21 teachers participated in the study. Thematic analysis with a mixture of deductive and inductive coding were used to analyse the data. Theory of affordances was used to structure findings in themes of interests and answer the study’s aim and research questions. Results show that the teachers use a variety of programming tools in their teaching and learning activities. The use of programming in mathematics and technology can be understood in five main perceived affordances: 1) Play, 2) Discovery, 3) Adaptation, 4) Control, and 5) Freedom; which relate to both student motivation and subject content. Teachers also perceive obstacles and opportunities in using programming, that relates to different programming tools’ ability to support teaching and learning activities. The findings of this study can be drawn upon by teachers and other stakeholders in the integration of programming in K-12 education, and in the design of teaching and learning activities with programming.

An Investigation of the Influence of Disciplinary Distance in Interdisciplinary Education Through Faculty’s Experience

Interdisciplinary initiatives have been encouraged in higher education curricula, especially in mechanical engineering as a result of the industry’s calls for talent with multidisciplinary competencies to solve complex real-world problems. However, disciplinary distance, due to disciplinary differences, poses great challenges in interdisciplinary teaching and learning. How can interdisciplinary faculty members collaborate effectively in teaching? How can students with different backgrounds learn significant knowledge? Collaboration for interdisciplinary education across disciplines is challenging, as co-teachers are usually affiliated with different departments or even schools, and they tend to speak different disciplinary languages and value different disciplinary cultures. Similarly, students in engineering design teams come from different backgrounds. Consistent with Klein’s concepts of Wide Interdisciplinarity and Narrow Interdisciplinarity, we propose the concept of disciplinary distance to present the research findings of disciplinary differences and their implications on interdisciplinary teaching and learning. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of disciplinary distance, as manifested in interdisciplinary education from faculty members’ perspectives. From 13 semi-structured interviews, we find that disciplinary distance plays a vital role in interdisciplinary teaching and learning. It influences teamwork — both in co-teacher teams and student teams. Interdisciplinary course content and interdisciplinary co-teacher teams can also create a wide disciplinary distance that serves as a barrier for interdisciplinary learning. We further find that interdisciplinary collaboration may help to mediate the negative impact of disciplinary distance.

Innovative Practice and Promotion Countermeasures of Micro-major in Chinese Universities

Traditional talent training at universities can no longer meet the changing needs of talents brought about by rapid social and economic development. A more flexible, faster, and lower-cost talent training method of micro-majors is gradually introduced into the practice of talent training at universities. Micro-major has become an important means to make up for the lagging of majors setting at universities and a supplement to increase the supply of talents in emerging industries. The micro-major curriculum system simplifies theoretical teaching and emphasizes applied practice, which is conducive to better social training. Online and offline teaching methods are generally adopted, and the school-enterprise cooperation model is introduced, which alleviate the shortage of teachers for talent training in emerging industries to a certain extent. However, the development of micro-majors also needs to improve the actual effect of practical teaching, strengthen the construction of dual-qualified and dual-capable teacher teams, and take into account the relationship between micro-majors and general majors.

Teachers’ professional collaboration and trust relationships: An inferential social network analysis of teacher teams

In recent years, teachers around the world have been increasingly confronted with various expectations concerning the improvement of their classroom practices and school activities. One factor widely acknowledged to facilitate school and classroom improvement is a strong collaborative culture among teachers. As such, teachers are expected to work in teacher teams, to collaborate closely with colleagues, to co-construct classroom practices, and thus to strengthen trust relationships within the team. A growing number of researchers has analyzed how teachers address these expectations. They suggest that there is a link between teachers’ embeddedness in collaboration networks and teachers’ trust relationships. The present study seeks to contribute to the research literature by presenting results of Social Network Analyses (SNA) and exponential random graph models (ERGMs) on teacher collaboration in nine secondary schools in Germany (N = 366 teachers). We investigate how the involvement of teachers in co-constructive collaboration in schools, measured by the amount of team teaching (TT), relates to teachers’ trust levels. Results of our analyses suggest that a high amount of TT is not necessarily related to a higher degree of trust among teachers at the school level. However, a high involvement of teachers in TT is related positively to their being perceived as trustworthy. Furthermore, the emergence of trust relations in teacher networks depends on general network characteristics, such as homophily, reciprocity and transitivity.

Working beyond disciplines in teacher teams: teachers’ revelations on enablers and inhibitors

Introduction Health professions education faces transitions from monodisciplinary to integrated education and from soloist teachers to interdisciplinary teacher teams. Interdisciplinary teamwork has been found complex and prone to conflict. Teachers’ perceptions of why some teams work and learn as a real interdisciplinary team and others do not are lacking in this setting. We studied the factors that teachers perceive as enabling and/or inhibiting interdisciplinary team learning. Methods In this exploratory, qualitative study, we conducted 17 semi-structured, vignette-guided interviews with teachers recruited from diverse disciplines in undergraduate health professions programmes at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, through maximum variation sampling. Team learning research informed data collection and template analysis. Results We identified three themes representing the factors that teachers perceived to influence interdisciplinary team learning: ‘alignment/misalignment with the educational philosophy’ (regarding personal attributes, tendencies and motivation), ‘leadership practices’ (encompassing team vision, responsibility and reflection), and ‘involvement in organisational processes’ (covering organisational decision-making, support and learning opportunities). For interdisciplinary team learning in development of integrated education, teachers emphasised their personal ability to move beyond disciplinary boundaries. Shared team leadership enabled the creation of a shared vision, shared responsibility, and team reflection. Lastly, teacher involvement in educational management, peer support and learning was considered important. Discussion To work beyond disciplines in health professions education, teachers should take an interest in integrated education, share responsibility and work in an environment where people continuously learn from others. Organisations can facilitate this by involving teachers in decision-making processes and providing faculty development aimed to foster shared leadership and team reflection.

Improve the Teaching Quality of Electrical Engineering and Automation

At present, many schools have not yet established a complete electrical engineering and automation professional teaching system, and the construction of professional teacher teams is relatively lacking. Therefore, the quality of professional teaching is uneven. Under the background of new engineering courses, electrical engineering and automation majors put forward clear requirements for students’ application ability and comprehensive ability, and many schools have begun to reform professional practice courses. Based on an in-depth analysis of the current situation and problems of electrical engineering and automation majors, this article discusses methods to improve the quality of electrical engineering and automation majors.

Learning through communication: exploring learning potential in teacher teams lesson study talk

PurposeThis paper discusses findings from a four-year research and development project using lesson study in a Norwegian elementary school. There are only a limited number of studies which have investigated how talk mediates teacher learning in lesson study, whereas research has shown that the form communication takes is the key to whether or not collaboration leads to learning. Focus in this paper is therefore on the talk which takes place in teacher teams when they meet to plan the research lesson in lesson study. The article explores sequences of talk that afford opportunities for teacher learning in order to understand what triggers and characterizes these opportunities.Design/methodology/approachData consisted of audio recordings of four teacher teams made during planning meetings. Based on theoretical criteria, sequences of teacher talk which indicated potential for learning were selected for further analyses. These sequences were then coded with respect to what themes triggered this talk and what conversional routines were found.FindingsThe most frequent trigger of talk affording opportunities for learning was in relation to students and more specifically different needs of individual or subgroups of students. Didactic and purely curriculum-focussed issues triggered this kind of talk to a small degree. Conversional routines in the selected sequences concerned (1) taking a student perspective, (2) discussing impact on student learning behaviour and (3) generalizing (moving from specific accounts of classroom practice to general reflection on one's own practice).Originality/valueThis study aims to investigate what triggers and characterizes talk with learning potential in the lesson study work of teacher teams.