Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Halliday - Learning Language, Learning through Language, Learning about Language.

Halliday, M.A.K. (2004). Three Aspects of Children's Language Development: Learning Language, Learning through Language, Learning about Language. In J.J. Webster (ed.), The Language of Early Childhood: M.A.K. Halliday, pp 308-326, Ch. 14. New York: Continuum - ISBN - 0826488250

Learning Language (p. 308) - a child starts learning language from the moment he is born. In fact, the baby has started learning language before he was born ... from birth onwards, he is actively involved in communication, exchanging signals with the other human begins around him.

Learning through Language (p. 317) - refers to language in the construction of reality: how we use language to build up a picture of the world in which we live ... the part played by language in shaping and transmitting the world view of each and every human culture

Learning about Language (p. 322)- coming to understand the nature and functions of language itself

Google Books

First published in Yetta M. Goodman, Myna M. Hausser and Dorothy S. Strickland (eds.) Oral and Written Langauge Development: Impact on Schools. International Reading Association & National Council of Teachers of English: Proceedings from the 1979 and 1980 IMPACT Conferences. pp.7-19.

Also see Pauline Gibbon's Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning (2002), Ch. 7, pp. 118-139

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Lesh & Clarke (2000) Formulating operational definitions of desired outcomes of instruction in mathematics and science education

Lesh, R.A. & Clarke, D. (2000). Formulating operational definitions of desired outcomes of instruction in mathematics and science education. In A.E. Kelly & R.A. Lesh (eds.) Handbook of Research Design in Mathematics and Science Education, pp 113-49. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

p120: Later in this chapter, other explanations will be given about why teaching to tests, over a long period of time, tends to be a losing strategy. For now, a brief explanation is that: (a) students soon forget disorganized lists of facts and skills; (b) when facts and skills are "mastered" one-at-a-time and in isolation, students may never learn when to chose which one to use in particular situations; and (c) when instruction emphasizes only facts and skills, or content-independent problems solving processes, other exceedingly important goals of instruction are ignored.

p121: high scores on tests often are treated as if they went beyond being indicators of achievement toward actually being the goals of instruction. [JC: see Labaree and his discussion of credentialism]
p122: In past stages of history, educators have tended to think about the mind (and about the nature of mathematical knowledge) as if it were similar to the most sophisticated technology of the preceding age. For example, as civilizations evolved from the industrial revolution through the electronics revolution to the current age of biotechnologies, educators have shifted from machine metaphors (based on hardware) to computer metaphors (based on software) to organic metaphors (based on wetware of the type that characterizes the processes of the human brain). Yet, in the area of assessment, simple input-output models continue to dominate that are based on machine metaphors.

p122: (NCTM, 1989)
In spite of the best intentions of developers and implementors. it was unreasonable to expect that new products or programs would be used as intended in most schools and classrooms. The reason for this is that public schools as they now operate are integrated social systems. Tinkering with parts. such as changing textbooks or the number of required courses, fails to change other components of the system. The traditions of the system force new products to be used in old ways. Current educational practice is based on a coherent set of ideas about goals. knowledge. work. and technology that came from a set of "scientific management" principks growing out of the industrial revolution of the past century. These ideas about schooling need to be challenged and replaced with an equally coherent set of practices in light of the economic and social revolution in which we are now engaged. Current school mathematics operates within a coherent system; reform will happen only if an equally coherent system replaces it. (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. 1989)

p126: Behavioral Objectives Involve Three Parts
Given {specified conditions} the student will exhibit {specified behaviors} with identifiable quality {perhaps specified as percents correct on relevant samples of tasks, or perhaps specified in terms of a correspondence with certain criteria for excellence}.

In mathematics and science education, the main problem with behavioral objectives is that not all forms of learning consist of rules (facts, skills, procedures); and, if attempts are made to reduce more complex conceptual systems to checklists of rules, the following sorts of difficulties arise.

For instance, it may be true that a great artist (or a great athlete) should be able to perform well on certain basic drills and exercises (calisthenics); nonetheless, a program of instruction (or assessment) that focuses on nothing more than these checklists of basic skills is unlikely to provide adequate approaches to excellence.

p127: Cognitive objectives function similarly to the ways cyclotrons, cloud chambers, and vats of heavy water are used in physics. That is, they are defined operationally by specifying: (a) situations that optimize the chances that the targeted construct will occur in an observable form; (b) observation tools that enable observers to sort out signal from noise in the results that occur; and (c) quality assessment criteria that allow meaningful comparisons to be made among alternative possibilities.

p130: In particular, in the case of conceptual systems that students develop during the solution of individual problem solving sessions: (i) model-eliciting activities put students in situations where they confront the need to produce a given type of construct, and where the products that they generate require them to reveal explicitly important characteristics of their undedying ways of thinking; (ii) ways of thinking sheets focus on ways of recognizing arxi describing the nature of the constructs that students produce; and (iii) guidelines for assessing the quality of students' work provide criteria that can be used to compare the usefulness of alternative ways of thinking.

p133: Three final characteristics should be mentioned that pertain to operational definitions involving the development of students, teachers, and programs. First, the development of these problem solvers tends to be highly interdependent. Second, when something (or someone) acts on anyone of these complex systems, they tend to act back. Third, researchers (as well as the instruments that they use) usually are integral parts of the systems that they are hoping to understand and explain.

p.135-6: Examples of such teacher-level activities include generating:
(a) observation sheets that colleagues could use to make significant observations about students as they are working in groups;
(b) "ways of thinking sheets" that colleagues could use to give feedback to students about the strengths or weaknesses of their work; and
(c) quality assessment procedures that colleagues could use to lead discussions with students aimed at assessing the quality of the products that students produce.

For the purposes of this chapter, three of the most important characteristics of multitiered teaching experiments are that:
1. They use formative feedback and consensus-building to provide conditions that make it possible for students, teachers, and/or programs to develop in directions that are continually "better" without basing the next steps on preconceived notions of "best."
2. They emphasize the use of self-documenting activities that encourage students, teachers, and/or programs to learn while simultaneously producing trails of documentation that reveal important characteristics about the nature of what is being learned.
3. The preceding trends allow inferences to be made about future developments that are likely to occur.

p.136: One of the most important assumptions underlying the teacher level of multi-tiered teaching experiments is that, to improve teachers' teaching practices, it is not enough to ensure familiarity with a checklist of behavioral objectives; teachers also need to develop productive ways thinking about their teaching experiences. In particular, teachers need to develop productive ways of thinking about their students' learning and problem solving experiences.

p.136: Cognitively guided instruction is a name that's been given to an approach to teacher development that focuses on helping teachers become "reflective practitioners" by becoming familiar with new insights about the nature of students' developing mathematical knowledge (T. Carpenter & Fennema, 1992).

p.137: rather than telling teachers about their students' ways of thinking, thought-revealing activities are used so that teachers can make firsthand observations about their students' ways of thinking.

p.138: in studies of developing expertise of teachers (Lesh & Kelly, 1998), it is not necessary for a given description of expertise to be locked in at the beginning of a study (and used as the basis for a pretest-posttest design). Instead, increasingly sophisticated descriptions can be refined and documented gradually over the course of the study; and, at the end of the study, the validity of the description can be based on the trajectory of development that is revealed. In fact, as teachers, programs, and schools develop, their notions of excellence in teaching are primary factors that change. Therefore, if their progress continues to be measured using conceptions of excellence that existed at the beginning of a study, this practice tends to have significant negative influences on development.

p.139: An alternative to conformance models for curriculum change might be called planned experimentation.

p.140 Contexts that elicit complex performances don't necessarily require the relevant participants to reveal observable ways of thinking; and, they also don't necessarily provide useful tools for comparing or assessing the quality of competing systems. Nonetheless, it often is not difficult to identify situations that require the relevant systems to be elicited and revealed, and it often is not difficult to identify ways to compare and assess the results that are produced. For example, we may not know how to define what makes Granny a great cook; however, it still may be easy to identify situations that will elicit and reveal her capabilities, and it also may be easy to compare and assess alternative results that are produced.

p.141: some important principles to keep in mind include the following:
1. Achievement usually needs to be assessed using something more than brief tests that reduce expertise to simplistic lists of condition-action rules.
2. Students' relevant products or performances usually should include more than those that can be interpreted and assessed easily by a machine.
3. Emphasis needs to shift beyond superficial coverage of a large number of small tasks to the comprehensive treatment of a small number of big ideas.
4. Quality ratings should not ignore the conditions under which complex performances occur, and complex profiles should not be collapsed into simplistic scores on a scale that recognizes only a single dimension along which progress can be made.

p.144: three-fold character of model-eliciting activities: situations, products, and quality assessment criteria This structure focuses attention (as classroom practitioners or as educational researchers, for instance) on activities that create situations conducive to the constructs to be studied, requires products or observation tools through which the construct is made manifest, and produces these products in a form amenable to assessment against specified criteria for quality.

p.144: perhaps the most contentious of the suggestions put forward in this chapter is advocacy of the use of assessment to change the observed system purposefully toward the desired outcomes. In this, the authors anticipate the development of assessment systems that both reveal valued constructs and deliberately prompt adaptations within the systems studied in directions advantageous to the system or to the individual whose performances are assessed.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Tochon - From video cases to video pedagogy

Tochon, F.V. (2007). From video cases to video pedagogy: A framework for video feedback and reflection in pedagogical research praxis. In R. Goldman, R. Pea, B. Barron, & S.J. Derry (Eds.), Video Research in the Learning Sciences, pp. 53-65. Mahwah, NJ: Routledge

p. 56:
Video pedagogy involves the art of choosing the right framework for shared reflection. This constitutes a basic principle of video study groups: The framework of reflection specifies the point of impact of video feedback. The way video is used is closely dependent on the framework chosen by the group. It must be concerted and well defined.

What frameworks are available for video study groups? Several have been found especially helpful to shared reflection. 
  • The mastery framework orients activities in light of the desired results of the task to be performed. 
  • The psychocognitive framework emphasizes the conceptual structures of information and strategies for learning. 
  • In the sociocognitive framework, the process of bringing thought to awareness is linked to authentic experiences that challenge widely held notions. 
  • The narrative framework is the foundation for autobiographical or personal approaches to human experience. 
  • The critical framework functions in a social and participatory perspective. It proposes empowerment over the act of learning and an examination of those aspects of interaction that turn education into a process of either oppression or liberation. 
  • The pragmatic framework is focused on the language of practice. It explicates practical discursive arguments and intentions related to situations.
p. 55:
Following Croue (1997), a typology of video cases could be raised:
  • (a) Cases that dealt with the nature of a problem were related to decision making, to assessment or feedback; 
  • (b) Cases that dealt with the range of the problem presented a problem or showed the interconnection between various problems; 
  • (c) Cases that took a story format presented a story line, with episodes, props, and portraits.

Croue. C. (1997). Introduction a la methode des cas [An Introduction to the case method]. Paris: Gaetan Morin Europe.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Cochran-Smith & Lytle (1999): Relationships of Knowledge and Practice: Teacher Learning in Communities

Cochran-Smith, M., Lytle, S.L (1999). Relationships of Knowledge and Practice: Teacher Learning in Communities. Review of Research in Education, Jan 1999; vol. 24: pp. 249-305. Retrieved from http://rre.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/24/1/249

Three conceptions of teacher knowledge and learning:

knowledge for practice: formal knowledge and theory (including codifications of the so-called wisdom of practice) for teachers to use in order to improve practice

knowledge in practice: Here it is assumed that teachers learn when they have opportunities to probe the knowledge embedded in the work of expert teachers and/or to deepen their own knowledge and expertise as makers of wise judgments and designers of rich learning interactions in the classroom.

knowledge of practice: it is assumed that the knowledge teachers need to teach well is generated when teachers treat their own classrooms and schools as sites for intentional investigation at the same time that they treat the knowledge and theory produced by others as generative material for interrogation and interpretation

FIGURE 1
TEACHER LEARNING: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

KNOWLEDGE-PRACTICE RELATIONSHIP
What is understood or assumed to be the relationship of knowledge and practice? What is assumed about how "knowing more" and "teaching better" are connected?

IMAGES OF KNOWLEDGE
What knowledge are teachers assumed to need in order to "teach better"? What are the domains, sources, or forms of that knowledge? Who generates that knowledge? Who evaluates and interprets that knowledge?

IMAGES OF TEACHERS, TEACHING, AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
What is assumed about the nature of the activity of teaching? What is included in the idea of "practice"? What are assumed to be the primary roles of teachers in and out of classrooms? What is the relationship of teachers' work in and out of classrooms?

IMAGES OF TEACHER LEARNINGA ND TEACHERS' ROLES IN EDUCATIONAL CHANGE
What is assumed about the roles teachers and teacher learning play in educational change? What are assumed to be the intellectual, social, and organizational contexts that support teacher learning? What is the role of communities, collaboratives, and/or other collectives in these?

CURRENT INITIATIVES
What are current initiatives in teacher education, professional development and/ or teacher assessment that are based on these images?

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Shulman’s Model of Pedagogical Reasoning and Action (1987)

Shulman’s Model of Pedagogical Reasoning and Action (1987)

Comprehension
Of purposes, subject matter structures, ideas within and outside the discipline

Transformation

Preparation: critical Interpretation and analysis of texts, structuring and segmenting, development of a curricular repertoire, and clarification of purposes
Representation: use of a representational repertoire which includes analogies, metaphors, examples, demonstrations, explanations, and so forth
Selection: choice from among an instructional repertoire which includes modes of teaching, organizing, managing, and arranging
Adaptation and Tailoring to Student Characteristics: consideration of conceptions, preconceptions, misconceptions, and difficulties, language, culture, and motivations, social class, gender, age, ability, aptitude, interests, self concepts, and attention

Instruction

Management, presentations, Interactions, group work, discipline, humor, questioning, and other aspects of active teaching, discovery or Inquiry Instruction, and the observable forms of classroom teaching

Evaluation
Checking for student understanding during Interactive teaching
Testing student understanding at the end of lessons or units
Evaluating one's own performance, and adjusting for experiences

Reflection
Reviewing, reconstructing, reenacting and critically analyzing one's own and the class's performance, and grounding explanations in evidence

New Comprehensions
Of purposes, subject matter, students, teaching, and self
Consolidation of new understandings, and learnings from experience

Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1-22.