Re-Envisioning Pedagogy in the Lens of Asychronous and Synchronuos Learning in Higher Education Amid Covid 19 Pandemic in Kenya

Higher Education institutions have faced many challenges since the onset of COVID 19 pandemic with closures that extended to more than three months. Coronavirus pandemic pushed universities to switch to online classes from the conventional traditional pedagogies. While the work to transition face-to-face instruction to online environments would mean a lot of technological preparedness among lecturers, students, infrastructure; these initiatives have at the same time lead to established familiarity with the necessary technological tools, and teaching approaches with online learning. Universities have taken up the initiative to re-plan, re- design and re-develop in-house capacity building structures and develop off campuses courses and distance learning in order to meet the diverse learning needs of the students and pedagogical needs of the faculty. Among these initiatives is re-envisioning pedagogy in the lens of asynchronous and synchronous learning in higher education amid COVID 19 Pandemic. This paper has analyzed reflections on asynchronous and synchronous pedagogies and learning during faculty capacity building sessions from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Out of these reflections are recommendations that other universities in the global arena can apply for quality in the teaching-learning processes in institutions of higher learning.

Socially Just Education: A Theoretical Insight into School Leadership

The socio-economic changes and neoliberal trends of the twenty-first century have been creating many profound impacts in the education industry, provoking the emerging need for an integrated environment where all individuals and organizations from different classes, backgrounds or communities are expectedly empowered with equal opportunities in order to develop to the fullest. Toward the ideals and goals of social justice in education, the function of leadership practitioners has been strongly challenged and critically redefined for a couple of decades. By theoretically investigating how the global research community has addressed this issue from various angles of view, this article hopes to remind current leaders of educational institutions to grow more sensitive to possible unjust occurrences and build up an inclusive schooling culture by putting learner-related values into the center of their work, addressing existing stereotypes in education, boosting active interactions with socially disadvantaged groups, adopting the perspectives of various stakeholders, as well as delivering other timely administrative reforms during their leadership practices.

Approaches to Pronunciation Instruction in Communicative Language Teaching Classrooms

One of the main factors that affects pronunciation instruction in the classroom is the educators’ teaching approach. Various elements like L1 (first language), cultural backgrounds, et cetera would influence teaching pronunciation, making English teachers deploy different pedagogical approaches for the learning process to occur. This article aims to provide insights into the pedagogical approaches used by EFL (English as a Foreign Language) and ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers in their CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) classrooms. It will also explore the influencing variables on these approaches. For this purpose, five English teachers (two EFL and three ESL teachers) provided the needed data through a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview for this qualitative study. The results showed that the participants used two teaching approaches for delivering pronunciation lessons, and two types of variables (i.e., student-related and teacher-related variables) influenced their choice of approach in the pronunciation classroom. Although this study does not intend to be generalized, it provides language teachers with a view of pedagogical approaches used by a number of EFL and ESL teachers for teaching pronunciation.

Socially Just Education: A Theoretical Insight into School Leadership

The socio-economic changes and neoliberal trends of the twenty-first century have been creating many profound impacts in the education industry, provoking the emerging need for an integrated environment where all individuals and organizations from different classes, backgrounds or communities are expectedly empowered with equal opportunities in order to develop to the fullest. Toward the ideals and goals of social justice in education, the function of leadership practitioners has been strongly challenged and critically redefined for a couple of decades. By theoretically investigating how the global research community has addressed this issue from various angles of view, this article hopes to remind current leaders of educational institutions to grow more sensitive to possible unjust occurrences and build up an inclusive schooling culture by putting learner-related values into the center of their work, addressing existing stereotypes in education, boosting active interactions with socially disadvantaged groups, adopting the perspectives of various stakeholders, as well as delivering other timely administrative reforms during their leadership practices.

Surveying Hungarian Teachers’ Beliefs about Digital Game-based Learning

This study examines Hungarian teachers’ beliefs and affective variables (confidence and motivation) in the context of digital game-based learning (DGBL). Our research questions were: How well does the Game-based-learning Teaching Belief Scale (GTBS) work among Hungarian teachers? What are Hungarian teachers’ beliefs about DGBL? To what extent do background variables (teaching level, gender, age, teaching experience) influence teachers’ beliefs about DGBL? We adapted the Game-based-learning Teaching Belief Scale to Hungarian. Primary and secondary school teachers (N=102) participating in our research completed the questionnaire online, in an anonymous form. Based on the results of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), we recommended deleting one item from the original questionnaire. The analyses were performed after deleting the item. Fillers have positive beliefs about DGBL, feel confident in applying DGBL, and are self-confident in their commitment to DGBL. Based on our results, teachers are happy to use digital educational games. Derived from the independent t-test, there is no significant difference in teachers’ beliefs about DGBL by teaching level and gender. Furthermore, determined from the ANOVA, there is no significant difference in the Hungarian teachers' beliefs about DGBL by age and teaching experience. The results highlight that the teachers are open to reform their teaching practices and to apply new methods. This could be an important aspect of teacher training.

Visible Results, Invisible Factors: Impact of Socio-economic Factors on Improving English Language Achievement in Sri Lankan Schools

This paper presents the findings of a study that investigated the nexus between the parental level of education and the level of the English language achievement at the Ordinary Level (O/Level) Examination. Determining how socio-economic factors affect the achievement level of English, exploring what socio-economic factors affect the achievement of the English language, and identifying the primary socio-economic factors were the objectives. A non-experimental cross-sectional research design was used in conducting the study. The sample consisted of 291 volunteer participants from six schools in the western province. We administered a research-team designed Likert scale type questionnaire to gather the data. The instrument was pilot-tested with 74 participants. In a statistical approach to data analysis, a regression analysis was run in SPSS (version 26). Findings showed that the English language proficiency of the participants increased by 0.691 for each education level of the father, and it was increased by 0.789 for each education level of the mother. Equitable teaching of the English language, availing more time and classwork to improve the achievement levels of the English language, and using quality inputs to give more support to the students who receive lower grades were suggested as part of recommendations.

Covid-19 Pandemic; Is This an Opportunity for an Educational Big-Bang?

This article intends to investigate the impact of the pandemic on the Greek educational community and the opportunity to review the existing educational system. It consists of 4 main axes. The first part presents the pandemic chronicle to the educational community, the second analyses the challenges that the members of the educational community were called to face, the third analyses the pandemic as an opportunity to review the existing educational system, while the latter summarizes the main implications of the above. There are several reasons to review the Greek education system, most importantly the unequal provision of learning opportunities to students from low socio-economic backgrounds. The article comes to raise the question of whether the pandemic is an opportunity to review the educational system and provide equal learning opportunities for all. This article came to highlight the role of participants in the educational process and the challenges they faced with due to emergency.

Teachers' Perspectives about Distance Education for Refugee Students Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic in Greece: Challenges and Implications

This article presents a small scale qualitative study which aims to investigate the teachers' perspectives, practices and experiences regarding distance teaching and learning among refugee students in Greece during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the teachers' voices, we attempt to initially map and frame the context of distance education for refugee students, as it was implemented during the first lockdown (March-May 2020) and understand the experiences, challenges and changes involved for both refugee students and teachers. The study was conducted through open-ended online questionnaires, which were completed by 27 participant teachers, teaching students with a refugee/migrant background in their classes and implementing distance teaching during the first COVID-19 school closure. The findings provide insights into the ways teachers and students responded to and experienced distance education as well as the challenges and possibilities involved. Implications are drawn for supporting vulnerable groups with (language) teaching/learning in crisis.

The Comparisons between Ethnicity and Poverty Level on Eight Graders’Science Performance

The purposed of this study was to examine the relationships between ethnicity and poverty level with eight graders’ science performance. This study utilized the 8th grade data file (2006 - 2007) from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) and had the sample size of 7,305 students. A full 2-way ANOVA model was applied to test the ethnicity and poverty level effects on the students’ science performance. Results indicated that ethnicity and poverty had significant effects on students’ science performance. White students have the highest mean score, followed by Asian, but African American students have the lowest mean scores. The gap on the mean scores between the highest and the lowest group was 20 points. White and Asian students do better on science performance, while Hispanic and African American students have lower scores. The impact among the interactions of ethnicity and poverty persisted within the breakdown of 10 subgroups’ outcomes. The subgroup of Asian “at/above poverty” had the highest mean scores, while the subgroup African American “below poverty” had the lowest scores. Future studies should continue to investigate African American students in conjunction with science performance.

A Systematic Review of Research Exploring Stakeholder Views on the Kindergarten-school Transition

A smooth kindergarten-school transition is till problematic, even thoughit has been receiving attention from researchers as well as education professionals (e.g. Heckman, 2011). It is clear to everyone that children, kindergarten teachers, primary school teachers, and parents are all greatly affected by the kindergarten-school transition (e.g. Correia & Marques-Pinto, 2016). Therefore, the goal of my study is the systematic review of research exploring the kindergarten-school transition related views and opinions of the stakeholders. A search was conducted for English language studies that were published in peer reviewed journals between 1 January 2016 and 1 September 2020, in the ERIC, Scopus and the Web of Science databases. The expressions „kindergarten school transition”; „transition into primary school”; „transition to school”; „starting school”; „beliefs concerning school transition” were used as search terms. A total of 646 publications were identified, of which 21 complied with the inclusion criteria. Those papers were included that present such empirical work that explore the views and opinions of stakeholdersregardingthe kindergarten-school transition of normally developing children. The present review considers six aspects: (1) the country where data were collected; (2) the phase of transition when data were collected; (3) the issue of transition studied; (4) participants; (5) data collection methods; (6) main results. The review showed that numerous questions regardingthe kindergarten-school transition are researched worldwide. My study can serve a basis for understanding the problems of starting school in different countries, as well as to formulate further research questions, and to design further research.