1,720,958 research outputs found
The use of online discussion board and blogs to enhance History student teachers’ Work Integrated Learning (WIL)
Full text linkThe paper reports on research on History student teachers’ enhancement of Work Integrated Learning (WIL) using online tools like a discussion board and blogs. It draws on the enhancement programme planned for the History student teachers – 78 Bachelor of Education students (BEd) 4th-year students and 28 Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students who were expected to integrate technological tools in their teaching during WIL; some of them, mostly PGCE students lacked the necessary Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) in this regard. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which the online discussion board and blogs enhanced student teachers’ classroom practice during WIL. The theoretical lens that informed this
study was the five-factor model of mentoring for effective teaching that underpinned the need for improved support and mentoring by the History student teachers: personal attributes, system requirements, pedagogical knowledge, modelling, and feedback. Qualitative research methods and purposive sampling were used. The data was analysed using content analysis as per the five-factor model of mentoring for effective teaching. The
findings revealed that student teachers responded overwhelmingly positively to the use of the online tools. They also revealed that the one-and-a-half-hour face-to-face debriefing was not acceptable to the majority of the participants. Most of them felt that it was just a formality and failed to address their immediate needs compared to being mentored online by their peers. In light of these findings, the study suggests that the usage of an online discussion board and blogs in mentoring and encouraging the improvement of student
teachers’ PCK should be considered and included when planning WIL programmes
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Work Integrated Learning Online Enrichment Intervention Programme for Student Teachers
Full text linkAbstract: The study is based on research conducted on work-integrated learning (WIL), also known as teaching practice during the online enrichment and intervention programme for final-year student teachers at a tertiary institution in Johannesburg. This programme was conducted from 2016 and modified in 2020 to enhance and improve the History methodology student teachers‟ Pedagogic Knowledge and Pedagogic Content Knowledge (PCK), during the Corona virus pandemic using different online tools. Former students of the institution who are now teachers, school learners and a psychologist participated in the process of enhancing the student-teachers‟ WIL. The purpose of the study was to explore the effectiveness of the online enrichment intervention programme in providing History student teachers with necessary teaching skills and to ensure readiness for WIL during the Covid -19 period. The main research question was: “To what extent can the online enrichment intervention programmes for student-teachers improve and enhance teaching practice before and during WIL in the context of covid-19?” Qualitative research methods of observation, interviews and document analysis were used with a sample of 90 Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) and 4th year Bachelor of Education (BEd) students. The findings indicated that the online enrichment intervention programme improved student-teachers‟ confidence, emotional readiness before and during WIL and the unfavourable circumstances in their classrooms. Student-teachers reported better understanding of the need for proactive planning for any circumstance or situation. Despite the constraints imposed by the pandemic, they observed changes in their conceptualisation of teaching, improvement in their interaction with learners, in classroom management, in their ability to implement different teaching strategies, resources and assessment tasks
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Academic staff development needs at a South African institution of higher education
Full text linkM.Ed.Academic staff development is seen as a vehicle of empowerment that focuses on assisting individual members of staff to acquire knowledge, understanding and skills needed to teaceffectively. A great number of South African Higher Education institutions have made inroads and advances with regard to academic staff development programmes. However many such programmes are usually general to all staff members including administrators and professionals and do not address the specific needs of academics. Managers often plan these programmes without consulting the envisaged participants or conducting any needs assessment despite the literature on academic staff development emphasising the importance of conducting a proper needs assessment. As a result academic staff members in these institutions still feel left behind when it comes to academic issues affecting them directly, such as an absence of continuous staff development and the development of their research and academic writing skills. Many academics feel that such programmes are irrelevant and boring and do not attend. Based on the above the aim of this study was to explore the needs of academics within the Education Department of Vista University Soweto Campus in order to arrive at an informed understanding of such needs for the purpose of informing future academic staff development programme planning. For the purposes of this study qualitative research was conducted using semi-structured interviews with a purposefully selected sample of eleven academics within the Education Department in order to ascertain their academic staff development needs. Data were analysed using the constant comparative method. The findings of the research reveal that the majority of the academics were dissatisfied about the manner in which academic staff development activities are planned and conducted. Among the factors mentioned, the following feature prominently: the need for continuous staff development; the necessity of conducting a proper needs assessment prior to planning academic staff developmental programmes, the needs of the academics in acquiring the skills for research and academic writing, and the availability of more funding for staff development activities. This report concludes with a number of recommendations for planning with regard to academic staff development programmes
The vulnerability of teachers during new educational policy reform implementation : an ethnographic account of shifting identity
Full text linkPh.D. (Education and Curriculum Studies)This study is about teachers’ identity shifts during the first waves of educational reform in South Africa in the post-apartheid renewal and restructuring of the education system. I studied the everyday life of four teachers in a “township” school in Gauteng Province, the industrial heartland of the country. I set out to find, over a three of years, how teachers saw themselves as professionals in this changing landscape, which included a three of new policies, including a new curriculum policy and a school governance policy. The study started with the knowledge claim that the researcher would find a shift in teacher identity, working from theories of self, specifically symbolic interactionism. I argued that in the establishment of a “post 1994” identity, as citizens and as educational practitioners, teachers have been the object of multiple social interventions. The least of these is not their adapted teaching modes and their performance as “OBE practitioners”, but as educators who took on the identity of the curriculum and its ideological intent. This was to shift teachers’ focus to learning outcomes more than content input and to see themselves as “guides by the side”, facilitators of learning, creating learning conditions that would optimise the potential of children and youth. For many teachers, the move away from being the giver or instructor to being the guide may be disturbing, I argued at the outset. I was interested to see how they engaged with a new life in a new system, or rather, a system “under repair” and one which may ask of them not only to adopt the “seven new roles of educators” as per the first policy change, but with that, also their sense of who they were, their sense of self as practitioners ..
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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