Search results for "mathematics"
showing 10 items of 22031 documents
The exclusive language of science? Comparing knowledge gains and motivation in English-bilingual biology lessons between non-selected and preselected…
2018
ABSTRACTThe dominant role of English as the global language of science entails a requirement for science teachers to equip their non-native English-speaking students with receptive and productive l...
Feedback practices in language classes in Finnish general upper secondary schools
2020
As feedback and formative assessment have a substantial effect on learning, the aim with this paper is to report on a study of the perceptions of Finnish general upper secondary school students of feedback in Swedish and English classes, and to compare how the perceptions differ at language proficiency (CEFR) levels. The data were collected by using a survey and were analysed quantitatively. The results show that several differences occur in Swedish: students with higher proficiency levels find feedback more useful, feel that they receive feedback from teachers, and are more willing to correct their own mistakes. There were no differences in perceptions according to language proficiency lev…
Teaching in the age of accountability: restrained by school culture?
2015
AbstractIn this paper, we explore how ‘teaching communication’ in the classroom is connected to school culture. In the age of accountability, the outcome focus force to the forefront, a ‘blame game’ which either blames students’ achievements on the teachers and teacher education, or the students and their socio-economic background. We argue that to succeed with teaching and learning is dependent on the school culture more than the single teacher or the students’ backgrounds. School culture is understood as attitudes, communication, student focus and engagement. Teaching communication in this paper is studied as teachers’ and students’ talk about subject matter in whole-class teaching. We ex…
Formulating 'principles of procedure' for the foreign language classroom: A framework for process model language curricula
2015
This article aims to apply Stenhouse's process model of curriculum to foreign language (FL) education, a model which is characterized by enacting principles of procedure which are specific to the discipline which the school subject belongs to. Rather than to replace or dissolve current approaches to FL teaching and curriculum development, this article seeks to improve and enrich communicative and task-based orientations with an additional criterion for assessing the educational worth of the tasks through which these orientations are developed. Unlike the objectives and competences models, principles of procedure provide an intrinsic justification of school curriculum by enacting the epistem…
Stop the Deficit: Preparing Pre-service Teachers to Work with Bilingual Students in the United States
2018
This chapter explores the education of bilingual students from an American teacher education perspective. Bilingual students in the United States are often diminished to their student status of “English Language Learner” (ELL). Not only does this ELL designation assume a onesize-fits-all approach to education for and understanding of bilingual children, but the label itself implores a deficit perspective which neither captures nor values bilingual children in the United States. Driven by the goal to model and introduce assets-based pedagogies to our pre-service English as Second Language (ESL) teachers, the main question guiding our work was, as teacher educators, how can we challenge pre-s…
Collaborative Game‐play as a Site for Participation and Situated Learning of a Second Language
2009
This paper addresses additional language learning as rooted in participation in the social activity of collaborative game‐play. Building on a social‐interactional view of learning, it analyses some of the detailed practices through which players attend to a video game as the material and semiotic structure that shapes play and creates affordances for additional language learning. We describe how players engage with the language resources offered by the game, drawing on the vocabulary, constructions, prosodic features and utterances modelled on game dialogue, in building their own actions during collaborative play. With these resources, the players display their ongoing engagement with the g…
The representation of reality in teaching: A 'mimetic didactic' perspective on examples in plenary talk
2016
ABSTRACTUsing an observation study in Norwegian lower-secondary school classrooms this paper explores how subject matter and students’ real-world experiences are linked within the use of examples in teaching. The theory of “mimetic didactics” claims that giving students the possibility to interpret examples as both subject matter and something that is relevant to their own lives becomes a possibility through imaginative “as-if” experiences. The study finds that “as-if” experiences in the data are created by identifying with others and through a context-dependent knowledge base. The topics in the examples actualise being human within the political, economic and existential realm and offer po…
Strategic Processing of Chinese Young English Language Learners in an International Standardized English Language Test
2018
Strategic competence is acknowledged to be able to explain variations in language test performance. Research with adult language test-takers has shown that strategic competence has dual components: strategic knowledge and strategic processing. Of the two components, strategic processing, which is state-like, unstable, and tends to fluctuate from contexts to contexts, is more closely related to language test performance. To date, none of the existing studies investigates strategic processing with children English language learners (ELLs) and explores the relationship between strategic processing in all the four skills of language learning and the test performance. Addressing these gaps, the …
From face-to-face to blended learning using ICT
2016
This study examines the development of the education model created in connection with the Master Studies in Mathematical Information Technology. The model has developed from the first stage, where there was only face-to-face teaching supported with Learning Management System, to a stage where studying is possible also fully in online and students may choose themselves how much to take advantage of technology in their studies. The examination of the development of the education model is made from the viewpoints of accessibility, increased role of technology and interaction. In earlier studies, the education model has been evaluated for example from the viewpoints of changes in the participat…
University Teachers’ Conceptions of Their Role as Developers of Technology-Rich Learning Environments
2017
This phenomenographic study examines how a diverse group of university teachers conceptualised their role as developers of technology-rich learning environments at one university in Finland. The research findings illustrate a variety of conceptions. Five qualitatively different ways of understanding teachers’ roles regarding the development of technology-rich learning environments were found: 1) innovator, 2) early adopter, 3) adaptive, 4) sceptic and 5) late adopter. In order to connect the whole set of interconnected roles to a theory of change, Everett Rogers’ innovation diffusion theory was exploited in the last phase of analysis. Finally, hierarchically structured categories were creat…