Search Results (10)

The value of discourse in the mathematics classroom is evident across standards, policy documents, and research. The quality of discourse is associated with students’ mathematical understanding and achievement. Productive mathematical discourse includes students providing explanations and critically listening to and evaluating the ideas of others. Such high-level discourse takes time to develop and is impacted by how teachers structure lessons and interact with students (e.g., talk moves). The present case study reports on an incremental professional development, S³D Approach, that guides teachers through a two-phase process to enhance small-group, student-to-student discourse. One middle school mathematics teacher implemented the incremental stages of the S³D Approach with support from a mathematics teacher educator, who conducted weekly observations and debrief meetings. Qualitative analyses revealed that, despite initial challenges, the S³D Approach became integrated into the teacher’s practice, enabling the teacher to identify and build upon incremental improvements in the small-group discourse. Overall, the findings demonstrate how through a reframing of starting points and the definition of success, incremental PD supports sustainable changes in a teacher’s practice and student engagement in productive mathematical discourse. Full article

This paper examines the extent to which an initiative in India, namely EdTech Tulna, has been able to move towards decolonization of EdTech by shaping the discourse around the adoption and use of good quality and contextual educational technology solutions for Indian learners. Set up as a collaboration among researchers, practitioners, teachers and governments, EdTech Tulna aims to encourage the selection of EdTech solutions that are appropriate for the community they are designed for, rather than adopting solutions that market themselves or those that have been successful in Western countries. The paper adopts the lens of justice-oriented design and first critically examines the design of the EdTech Tulna index. Then, it examines the success and hurdles of the collaborative efforts towards the implementation of contextualized and evidence-based solutions in the ecosystem. By analyzing stakeholder interviews and meeting notes, this paper addresses two questions. First, how does Tulna assist in identifying quality contextual solutions that are likely to enhance the learning of children in India? Second, how do state government officials and practitioners collaborate with researchers to use research-based standards for selecting such solutions? The discussions outline the progress and draw a broad contour of the road ahead. Full article

This article is about how negative discourses of teacher education position teacher educators and how they might influence or inspire action. We use self-study methods to investigate the political dimension of teacher education in two national contexts: Sweden and the USA. More specifically, we examine the emotions stirred by the positioning related to being a teacher educator and how those emotions can be used to take a line to and resist boundaries that limit us within the profession in the two contexts. We aim to contribute to the self-study field by emphasizing a political dimension, in addition to the personal and professional dimensions of teacher education more often studied by scholars. Using the concepts of positionality, emotions, liminality, and action, we conclude that the liminal spaces offered us time to think about the emotions we have experienced due to the derisive discourses that position us in negative ways as teacher educators, and with that thinking came opportunities to reflect on our identity as teacher educators and what we look to accomplish as teacher educators. A new understanding of liminality as a space of possibility has boosted us to take action. An important conclusion is that emotional labor can be a hindrance in relation to teacher educator action, while emotions can act as clues for opportunities of growth and action. Telling our stories opened space for us to use our emotions to take a line to and resist the derogatory discourse, engage in the political, and move closer to becoming teacher educator activists. Full article

During combatting the COVID-19 pandemic, the most widespread change in Spanish as a foreign language instruction is imperative online teaching. It demands that language teachers move all teaching activities to virtual platforms, facilitating the construction of their digital identities. However, there is scarce attention on Spanish teachers’ professional development, given the necessity of understanding the evolvement of their identities across virtual learning platforms. Through the lens of a case study, this research explores the digital identities of Spanish as a foreign language teachers during the school lockdown in 2022. The data includes semi-structured interviews, virtual classroom discourse, lesson plans, and reflective writing. The results show that Spanish teachers formed multiple digital identities, including curriculum innovators, vulnerable actors, involuntary team workers, overseas returnees, and academic researchers. Among them, the first three are core identities, while overseas returnees and academic researchers are peripheral identities. Regardless, they were formed and negotiated under the influence of teachers’ past experiences, the exercise of agency, emotional vulnerability, and social context. In addition, a contradictory belief in teaching was also identified during the formation of Chinese Spanish teachers’ digital identities. Full article

Eliciting and interpreting students’ ideas are essential skills in teaching, yet pre-service teachers (PSTs) rarely have adequate opportunities to develop these skills. In this study, we examine PSTs’ patterns of discourse and perceived learning through engaging in an interactive digital simulation called Eliciting Learner Knowledge (ELK). ELK is a seven-minute, chat-based virtual role play between a PST playing a “teacher” and a PST playing a “student” where the goal is for the teacher to find out what the student knows about a topic. ELK is designed to be a practice space where pre-service and in-service teachers can learn strategies for effectively eliciting their students’ knowledge. We review the implementation of ELK in eight teacher education courses in math or science methods at six different universities and assess (a) patterns of interaction during ELK and (b) PSTs’ perceptions of ELK and their learning from the simulation. Our findings suggest that PSTs engage in effective practices such as eliciting and probing more often than less effective practices such as evaluating and telling. Results suggest that PSTs gain experience in practicing talk moves and having empathy for students’ perspectives through using ELK. Full article

The capacity to make effective argumentation in English writing is considered as a crucial ability in the field of second language writing. Currently, Chinese teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) adopt the product approach to teach argumentative writing, in which they stress the mode of learners’ written production and show little concern with cognition. For students’ sustainable development in argumentation skills, teachers are encouraged to employ a genre-based approach to cultivate students’ knowledge about different elements in argumentation. However, few empirical studies have investigated the efficacy of such classroom-based instruction on learners’ comprehensive development in EFL writing, including their knowledge about writing and performance in producing argumentation. This is particularly the case with reference to Chinese students learning to write argumentative texts in EFL. To fill the research gap, this quasi-experimental study was conducted with 74 EFL sophomores, who were randomly allocated to either an experimental group or a comparison group. The experimental group received a genre-based writing approach, while the comparison group experienced their conventional writing instruction. Students’ changes were analysed using pre- and post-writing test measures, open-ended questionnaires, and stimulated recall interviews. Our findings revealed more changes in the experimental groups’ knowledge about argumentation following the genre-based writing treatment than the comparison group. Specifically, the experimental group’s progress was obvious in the way they displayed their knowledge of the structure of discourse moves and of language features specific to the argumentative genre. They began to express their knowledge of the content, process, intended purposes, and audience awareness towards producing more genre appropriate texts in argumentation. They also showed enhanced self-reflection on their knowledge of argumentation. In addition, the genre-based approach had a positive effect on the experimental group’s argumentative writing development, as evidenced in their use of discourse move structures and their overall writing quality improvement. The conventional writing approach was not as effective in helping students to write an argumentation. Writing proficiency effects were observed in terms of the extent to which the students were developed. Pedagogical implications and limitations are also discussed. Full article

The professional development of experienced teachers has received considerably less attention than that of novice teachers. This study focuses on four experienced secondary mathematics teachers in Shanghai, China, with two participating in a year-long professional development program (treatment teachers) and the other two received conventional knowledge-based professional development (comparison teachers). The program introduced productive classroom talk skills which can facilitate teachers’ formative assessment of student learning during class. To encourage teachers to reflect on their classroom discourse when reviewing recordings of their teaching, we used visual learning analytics with the treatment teachers and theorized the use of this technology with activity theory. After completing the program, the treatment teachers were better able to use productive talk moves to elicit student responses and to provide timely formative feedback accordingly. Specifically, the percentage of word contributions in lessons from students and the length of their responses increased noticeably. Qualitative findings suggest that the use of visual learning analytics mediated the treatment teachers and improved classroom discourse. Based on these findings and activity theory, we provide recommendations for future use of visual learning analytics to improve teachers’ classroom talk and designing professional development activities for experienced teachers. Full article

In Cantos 17 and 18 of the Purgatorio, Dante’s Virgil lays out a theory of sin, freedom, and moral motivation based on a philosophical anthropology of loving-desire. As the commentary tradition has long recognized, because Dante placed Virgil’s discourse on love at the heart of the Commedia, the poet invites his readers to use love as a hermeneutic key to the text as a whole. When we contextualize Virgil’s discourse within the broader intention of the poem—to move its readers from disordered love to an ordered love of ultimate things—then we find in these central cantos not just a key to the structure and movement of the poem, but also a key to understanding Dante’s pedagogical aim. With his Commedia, Dante invites us to perform the interior transformation which the poem dramatizes in verse and symbol. He does so by awakening in his readers not only a desire for the beauty of his poetic creation, but also a desire for the beauty of the love described therein. In this way, the poem presents a pedagogy of love, in which the reader participates in the very experience of desire and delight enacted in the text. In this article, I offer an analysis of Virgil’s discourse on love in the Purgatorio, arguing for an explicit and necessary connection between loving-desire and true education. I demonstrate that what informs Dante’s pedagogy of love is the notion of love as ascent, a notion we find articulated especially in the Christian Platonism of Augustine. Finally, I conclude by offering a number of figures, passages, and themes from across the Commedia that provide fruitful material for teachers engaged in the task of educating desire. Full article

Vocabulary instruction is a critical component of language and literacy lessons, yet few studies have examined the nature and extent of vocabulary activities in early elementary classrooms. We explored vocabulary activities during reading lessons using video observations in a sample of 2nd- and 3rd-grade students (n = 228) and their teachers (n = 38). Teachers spent more time in vocabulary activities than has been previously observed. In the fall, 28% of their literacy block was devoted to vocabulary in 2nd grade and 38% in 3rd grade. Our findings suggest that vocabulary activities were most likely to take place prior to reading a text—teachers rarely followed-up initial vocabulary activities after text reading. Analysis of teachers’ discourse moves showed more instructional comments and short-answer questions than other moves; students most frequently engaged in participating talk, such as providing short, simple answers to questions. Students engaged in significantly more talk during vocabulary activities (including generative talk such as initiating an idea) in the spring of 3rd grade than the spring of 2rd grade. These data contribute descriptive information about how teachers engage their students in vocabulary learning during the early elementary years. We discuss implications for practice and future research directions. Full article

This paper is drawn from a research project that investigates the relationship between teachers’ understanding of the religious identity of Asian background students, and recent Australian curriculum initiatives focused on religion and religious identification. Based on responses from an Australia-wide survey, and follow-up interviews from teachers and principals in several Australian states, the project examined the ways that Australian teachers understand, respond to and talk about the religious identities of their students, and the implications of these demands for teacher practice and education. This paper is concerned with the findings from the interview phase that for a significant number of teachers, notions of religion were often elided with culture and race, and often subsumed by broader notions of a nominal ‘white’ Australian culture. Research conversations appeared framed by an often Christian perspective and sense of self, as opposed to a putative and Asian religious and cultural other. We argue that a better understanding of the ways that teachers participate in discourses of representations about Asian religious identities negotiated by Australian diasporic communities has direct implications for the refinement of policy and for teacher professional learning. In the light of our findings, we further argue that there is a need for curriculum, teachers and researchers to move beyond an understanding of culture and identity that is based on monolingual, monocultural and Anglocentric perspectives that frame the foreign as the ‘exotic’ other, and define it through references to limited, tokenistic artefacts of culture, which are reinforced by iconic use of language to talk about culture, religion and identity. Full article