A Study to Examine Teachers’ Classroom Time Management Strategies At Secondary School Level

Effective classroom management strategies can play an important role in teaching learning process. Classroom management encompasses many factors including management of subject matter, environment, discipline and time. These all are the byproducts of teacher’s effective classroom management strategies. This study was focused to investigate the teacher’s Classroom Time Management Strategies (CTMS) at secondary school level. All secondary school teachers of Khyber Pukhtunkhwah (KP) were considered as the population of the study. A sample of 480 teachers form 80 schools of five (5) districts (96 teachers to each district) was randomly selected. The sample was further distributed into eight (8) strata of male/female, urban/rural, science/arts, and public/private through stratified random sampling techniques such that the number of teachers in each stratum remains 240. The data was collected through a self-prepared questionnaire of reliability 0.87 and was analyzed through statistical tools. The analyzed data reflected that mostly teachers (62.7%) were in practice to utilize time management strategies. Further it was found that: male teachers were superior to female teachers; urban teachers were superior to the rural school teachers; science teachers were superior to the arts teachers; and public school teachers were superior to the private school teachers in classroom time management strategies CTMS; and. Classroom management oriented refresher courses for female teachers may be arranged to abridge gender gap in various CTMS and these strategies should be stressed more frequently in curriculum and pre-service teacher trainings.

How K-12 Teachers Adapt Problem-Based Learning Over Time

Teachers adapt their instructional strategies over time based on a variety of contextual constraints. In response to these challenges, teachers often have to make changes to their PBL approaches. While the literature has documented generally positive results of initial PBL implementations, less is known about the degree to which teachers adapt their usage of PBL over time. Some adaptations include a refined approach to teaching strategies, while others include significant diversions from the original PBL model. A better understanding of the changes teachers enact provides important insight as to fidelity and thus the expected learning outcomes of PBL. To address this gap, this research conducted semi-structured interviews with experienced K-12 educators who employed PBL over multiple years. In terms of preparing for PBL, themes that emerged from the interviews included more emphasis on reimagining the problem scope and design thinking. During classroom time, teachers described shifting perspectives in terms of the following: problem-solving skills over content knowledge, student control and teacher facilitation, and embracing failure. Relating to technology, teachers described more adoption trends towards collaborative tools, while also describing opportunities and challenges with digital literacy. Finally, teachers described strategic approaches to assessment in light of the ill-structured problems posed by PBL. Implications for practice and theory are discussed.

Comparison of Classroom-Based Sedentary Time and Physical Activity in Conventional Classrooms and Open Learning Spaces Among Elementary School Students

European children and adolescents spend most of their daily life and especially their school hours being sedentary which may increase their risk for chronic non-communicable diseases later in life. After the curriculum reform of Finnish basic education in 2014, most of the new or renovated comprehensive schools in Finland incorporate open and flexible classroom designs. Their open learning spaces may provide students opportunities to reduce sedentary behavior during school hours. Thus, waist-worn accelerometers were used to assess classroom-based sedentary time (ST), the number of breaks from sedentary time (BST), and physical activity (PA) among cross-sectional samples of 3rd and 5th grade students during two separate academic years in a school that underwent a renovation from conventional classrooms to open learning spaces. The cohort of 5th grade students before renovation had a smaller proportion of ST from total classroom time (56.97 ± 12.24%, n = 42 vs. 67.68 ± 5.61%, n = 28, mean difference = 10.71%-points, 95%CI = −15.65 to−5.77, p < 0.001), a greater number of BST per 60 min of classroom time (7.41 ± 1.16 breaks/h vs. 9.19 ± 1.59 breaks/h, mean difference = −1.78 breaks/h, 95%CI = −2.486 to −1.079, p < 0.001) and a greater proportion of light intensity PA (28.66 ± 9.99% vs. 22.56 ± 4.59%, mean difference = 6.10%, 95%CI = 2.56 to 9.64, p = 0.001) than the 5th grade cohort assessed after renovation. The cohort of 3rd grade student had a greater proportion of moderate-to-vigorous intensity PA (MVPA) after the renovation compared to the cohort assessed before the renovation [Mean Rank (Before) = 27.22, Mean Rank (After) = 37.58, U =524.0, p = 0.033]. Despite the greater ST found in 5th graders, schools with open learning spaces may facilitate BST or MVPA as observed in the 5th and 3rd grade cohorts in open learning spaces compared to the cohorts in conventional classrooms, respectively. Future studies should seek to investigate and develop teacher practices to capitalize the potential of open classrooms to reduce ST, since classroom renovation alone may not be a sufficient intervention as of itself. Longitudinal studies utilizing randomized controlled trials are warranted.

Using Content Acquisition Podcasts to Improve Preservice Teacher Use of Behavior-Specific Praise

With increasing demands for teacher accountability, today’s teachers are tasked with meeting both the academic and behavioral needs of their students. Being able to efficiently manage classroom behavior can maximize classroom time for instruction. In a multiple-probe across participants design study, we investigated the effects of content acquisition podcasts (CAPs) plus video along with coaching feedback on preservice teachers’ use of behavior-specific praise statements. Preservice teachers in elementary, intermediate, middle, and high school settings participated during their final internship in a special education preparation program. Direct observations over a 9-week period showed an increase in the use of behavior-specific praise statements across participants. Implications for research and teacher education are discussed.

Randomized controlled studies comparing traditional lectures versus online modules

ABSTRACTWe assessed the efficacy of traditional lectures versus online modules with respect to student learning in an undergraduate introductory biochemistry course in two successive years. In the first year, students had the options of attending live lectures by the course instructor and viewing online modules pre-recorded by the instructor, with the lectures and modules covering identical content; in addition, all students had a mandatory weekly application session. Utilizing pre-course and post-course tests as an instrument with which to measure learning during the course, we observed significantly increased learning (0.7 standard deviations) with attendance of traditional lectures and decreased learning with use of online modules, even after adjustment for grade point average. In the second year, the course had the same curriculum, but students were randomized to either live lectures or online modules for the first half of the course, crossing over to the other modality during the second half. With randomization, no difference in learning was observed between the two groups. Furthermore, we found that students self-reported greater engagement when viewing online modules than when attending lectures in person. These findings suggest some aspects of the lecture experience can be shifted to online modules in STEM courses without impacts on student learning so as to use classroom time more fully for application-based active learning interventions.

POWERPOINT IN HIGHER EDUCATION: DEVELOPMENT, TRANSFORMATION AND THE PRESENT STATE

PowerPoint appeared over 35 years ago and has taken a firm place in education. The massive use of the program began in the mid-90s. The program has gone from an interesting technological novelty to an irreplaceable element of a modern lecture. Such a rapid introduction into ed-ucation took place without extensive empirical studies of a positive impact of this program, the initial scope of which was the marketing environment, on the education process. The article in-dicates that PowerPoint already in the late 1990s was subjected to certain criticism, the initial reasons for which were its technological imperfection, problems of its technical application. Over the decades, the program has undergone a number of modernizations, which, together with the development of demonstration technologies, has brought it today to a qualitatively new level. However, even today PowerPoint continues to raise questions from researchers. A sepa-rate problem was the question of the expediency of such massive use of the program, which today seeks to fill 100% of the classroom time. Most of the guides for using the program do not take into account the specifics of the use of slides and are aimed at the implementation of design rather than pedagogical tasks. The problem of stimulating audience activity at lectures using this program has not been solved yet.

The pedagogy of stylistics: Enhancing practice by flipping the classroom, using whiteboards and action research

This article describes how teaching in a second-year undergraduate stylistics workshop was transformed in my attempt to increase student attendance and engagement, and the strategies that were put in place to achieve this outcome. The personal account describes how I changed my teaching pedagogy to facilitate learning through collaborative strategies and how I evaluated the impact this had on student learning using action research (Bradbury, 2015 (ed) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research. London: SAGE) as the investigative approach. Using the model of Plan-Act-Observe-Reflect process (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988 The Action Research Planner. 3rd edn. Geelong: Deakin University Press) and with data from a short questionnaire given to students, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of the value of the activities as perceived by students. The flipped classroom, where materials were given to students in advance to prepare, became critical for participation in the workshop and allowed for classroom time to be optimised for discussion and feedback. This article also presents photographs of the stylistic analysis produced on whiteboards as part of the collaborative activities with a summary of responses by students to the questionnaire which evaluated the impact that this approach to teaching had on their learning, confidence and preparation for the assessment.

La clase invertida: el papel de las actividades previas en el rendimiento final del alumno

The flipped classroom model consists on a re-arrangement of the traditional instructional model, in the sense that the lectures are placed out of the classroom whereas the classroom time is devoted to promote a more active and deeper learning in the students. This innovation was aimed to study the impact of viewing videos with questions embeded along it on the final achievent of the students. Results showed that there is a marginal relationship between watching videos and the score on the final test of the course. In addition, a possitive correlation between the scores obtained on the questions of the videos and the score on the final test was obtained. This results are in accordance with the idea that embeding questions along the videos leads to a more profound proccessing of the information, and therefore, a better learning.

Student Smart Attendance Through Face Recognition using Machine Learning Algorithm

In today’s competitive world, with very less classroom time and increasing working hours, lecturers may need tools that can help them to manage precious class hours efficiently. Instead of focusing on teaching, lecturers are stuck with completing some formal duties, like taking attendance, maintaining the attendance record of each student, etc. Manual attendance marking unnecessarily consumes classroom time, whereas smart attendance through face recognition techniques helps in saving the classroom time of the lecturer. Attendance marking through face recognition can be implied in the classroom by capturing the image of the students in the classroom via the camera installed. Later through the HAAR Cascade algorithm and MTCNN model, face region needs to be taken as interest and the face of each student is bounded through a bounding box, and finally, attendance can be marked into the database based on their presence by using Decision Tree Algorithm.