363 research outputs found
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The role of mobile technologies in pre-service foreign language teacher education
No full textPre-service teacher education plays a pivotal role in ensuring that future teachers are prepared to integrate technology effectively to their teaching. One way of improving readiness in future teachers is integrating mobile technologies to discipline-specific teacher education courses. This article presents three case studies drawn from exploratory research carried out in a year-long course that used an ‘experiential approach’ to teacher education. Accordingly, pre-service teachers of foreign languages used iPads to support both learning to teach languages and learning to integrate technology to their teaching. The cases illustrate the complexities of integrating technology to learning to teach. Although situated on a foreign language teacher education context, findings of this article have implications for other sectors as mobile technologies become ubiquitous in classrooms everywhere.
Exploring the mental strategies of Year 9 students
No full textThis paper reports on a study with eight Year 9 students from a low decile secondary school. Four of the students were high achievers in mathematics (from a mathematics extension class), and four were low achievers in mathematics (from a mathematics applied [MAP) class].Tasks from the diagnostic interview of the Numeracy Development Project (Numeracy Project Assessment: NumPA) were used to assess the students' mathematics understanding. Additional tasks to explore students' recognition of the connectedness of related mathematics problems were also used.High achieving students differed from low achieving students in a number of ways, including: the number of questions they could answer, the speed with which they found solutions to the problems, the ease with which they explained their mental strategies, and their overall confidence levels.Most of the students from both groups expressed a preference for using penand-paper, and many of those who used mental strategies simply carried out a formal written algorithm in their heads.Most students recognised the connection between related mathematics questions and used that information to solve subsequent problems. The only student not to recognise the connectedness of related problems was a low achieving student
Teachers and curriculum: Insights into classroom practice
No full textThis article reports on research that studied what occurred in primary school classrooms as teachers' planned and taught lessons across a range of curriculum areas.It draws on observations of one teacher's interactions with her students to make generalised comments about teachers' work and examines some issues that were raised in the follow up discussions between the researchers and the teacher.The findings show that the teacher was incredibly busy coping with the demands of a national curriculum and her classroom of mixed ability students
