1,720,957 research outputs found
The academic language proficiency of primary school teacher education students at a South African university
Get PDFM.Ed. (Childhood Education)Abstract: As a teacher educator I have observed that many students struggle to read academic texts for understanding, and to write academic texts appropriate at a university-level. I initiated the current study to determine with what academic language proficiencies teacher education students enter university, also to determine if their academic language proficencies improve after three years of study at a university and to what extent it changes. To this end, I utilised a core academic language skills (CALS) test designed and standardised by Uccelli, Dobbs and Scott (2013) to test students’ core academic language proficiencies (according to this specific instrument). Many authors on the topic of academic language and academic language proficiency argue for the importance of teaching academic language to learners intentionally and explicitly. In order for teachers to do this, they have to know what academic language is and the appropriate pedagogies for teaching it (Scarcella, 2003; Schleppegrell, 2012; Snow, 2010). In this study, I argue that student teachers do not have the appropriate academic language proficiencies in order to effectively teach it when they enter classrooms. I further argue that student teachers have to be taught academic language across the curriculum in order for them to take this up in their own teaching once they graduate. I also posit that they may have underdeveloped strategic- and word recognition reading skills, which could be due to many educational as well as social factors, and which could be one source of their underdeveloped academic writing competence In this study, the unit of analysis is the academic language proficiency of teacher education students, according to a specific metric. The unit of sampling is 695 teacher education students, comprising students in their first-, second-, and third year of study on two campuses that implement a University-accredited teacher education qualification. Students’ scores on the CALS test were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, first to capture their performance, second to determine..
Lesson design in pre-service teacher education : the Science of learning and competencies for a fast-changing world
Get PDFAbstract: Teaching is complex and requires teachers to make informed decisions about the lessons they design and teach. Research suggests that the quality of novice teachers is linked to their initial preparation (Green et al., 2018). This study focused on one aspect of initial teacher education - namely, lesson design. This study therefore focused on equipping pre-service teachers to deal with the complexity in the classroom by preparing them to design powerful and purposeful lessons. In 2020, a colleague and I piloted a course in which we taught final year student teachers a new way of designing lessons, drawing on the body of scholarship dubbed the science of learning and the literature on competencies required for a fast-changing world. The science of learning, an amalgamation of research in education, neuroscience, psychology and cognitive science, provides evidence that helps us understand how people learn and how to support learning. A core premise of the course and this study was that such a course would serve the student teachers well in dealing with the complexities of teaching. The aim of the study was to explore what the student teachers had learnt from the implementation of the course. The research thus pursued the question: What do student teachers learn from the implementation of a teacher education course, which focuses on a lesson design approach that foregrounds principles derived from the literature on the science of learning and competencies for a fast-changing world? The course was designed, and its implementation planned before the COVID-19 pandemic. When the COVID-19 lockdown occurred in South Africa (in March 2020), all teaching had to be moved abruptly online. This situation prevailed for the entire year of implementing the course (excluding two months before the national lockdown). In light of this, the study sought to address an ancillary research question: What lessons can be learnt from the emergency remote teaching experience due to COVID-19 that can enrich the teaching of the course going forward?Ph.D. (Education
Lede van die Uitvoerende Komitee van die Senaat
No full textFormat: TIFF; Size: 8.28 MB; Dimensions: 3504 x 2478 pixels; Resolution: 300 ppiMembers of the Executive Committee of the Senate. Front: Prof. J. Poolman (Vice-Rector), prof. Anna F. Steyn (Dean, Faculty of Literature and Philosophy), prof. J.P. de Lange (Rector), prof. G.J. Hauptfleisch (Vice-Rector). Back: Prof. G.L. de Wet (Dean, Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences), prof J. Heidema (Dean, Faculty of Natural Sciences), prof. P.J. Maree (Dean, Faculty of Education), prof. S.W.J. van der Merwe (Dean, Faculty of Law), prof. F.F. Odendal, prof. J.D. van Wyk (Dean, Faculty of Engineering), prof. I. van W. Raubenheimer, prof. G.H de Swardt
Lede van die Uitvoerende Komitee van die Senaat
No full textFormat: TIFF; Size: 8.28 MB; Dimensions: 3504 x 2478 pixels; Resolution: 300 ppiMembers of the Executive Committee of the Senate. Front: Prof. J. Poolman (Vice-Rector), prof. Anna F. Steyn (Dean, Faculty of Literature and Philosophy), prof. J.P. de Lange (Rector), prof. G.J. Hauptfleisch (Vice-Rector). Back: Prof. G.L. de Wet (Dean, Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences), prof J. Heidema (Dean, Faculty of Natural Sciences), prof. P.J. Maree (Dean, Faculty of Education), prof. S.W.J. van der Merwe (Dean, Faculty of Law), prof. F.F. Odendal, prof. J.D. van Wyk (Dean, Faculty of Engineering), prof. I. van W. Raubenheimer, prof. G.H de Swardt
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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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