Education Commons^™

Exploring The Role Of Instructional Technology In Course Planning And Classroom Teaching: Implications For Pedagogical Reform, Matthew T. Hora, Jeremiah I. Holden

Remi Holden

Instructional technology plays a key role in many teaching reform efforts at the postsecondary level, yet evidence suggests that faculty adopt these technology-based innovations in a slow and inconsistent fashion. A key to improving these efforts is to understand local practice and use these insights to design more locally attuned interventions. This exploratory study draws on systems-of-practice theory from distributed cognition research to provide a framework for producing comprehensive accounts of technology use. This account includes three components: (a) awareness of the local resource base for instructional technology, (b) decision-making processes regarding tool use, and (c) actual classroom use of …

Attracting Top Teaching Talent, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

In some of the world’s highest-performing countries, entry to teaching is now as competitive as courses such as engineering, science, law and medicine.

Archives Alive!: Librarian-Faculty Collaboration And An Alternative To The Five-Page Paper, Tom Keegan, Kelly Mcelroy

Tom Keegan

Meeting The Challenge Of Disciplinary Literacies, Marion Meiers

Marion Meiers

Focused: Why A Teaching Team Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts, Ray Peck

Ray Peck

Ray Peck reports on new research revealing that focused teaching teams assist the mathematics learning of students with Down syndrome.

Deaf Students And Their Classroom Communication: An Evaluation Of Higher Order Categorical Interactions Among School And Background Characteristics, Thomas Allen, Melissa Anderson

Melissa L. Anderson

This article investigated to what extent age, use of a cochlear implant, parental hearing status, and use of sign in the home determine language of instruction for profoundly deaf children. Categorical data from 8,325 profoundly deaf students from the 2008 Annual Survey of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children and Youth were analyzed using chi-square automated interaction detector, a stepwise analytic procedure that allows the assessment of higher order interactions among categorical variables. Results indicated that all characteristics were significantly related to classroom communication modality. Although younger and older students demonstrated a different distribution of communication modality, for both younger and older …

Can They Teach Each Other? : The Restructuring Of Higher Education And The Rise Of Undergraduate Student “Teachers” In Ontario, Jennifer Massey

Jennifer Massey

Changes to public funding regimes, coupled with transformations in how universities are managed and measured have altered the methods for educating undergraduate students. The growing reliance on teaching fellows, teaching assistants, and increasingly undergraduate peer educators (administering Supplemental Instruction [SI] programs) is promoted as a means to achieve a greater “return on investment” in the delivery of postsecondary education. Neoliberal discourses legitimating this downloading of teaching labour suggest it offers a “win-win” solution to the “problem” of educating growing numbers of undergraduate students. It proposes universities can deliver the same curricula, and achieve the same “outcomes” (primarily measured through grades …

Creative Activities In Mathematics : Problem-Based Maths Investigations For Lower And Middle Primary : Book 1., Derek Holton, Catherine Pearn

Catherine Pearn

Problem-based learning is a powerful alternative to drill-and practice or skills-based learning, especially within maths, but it can be difficult to source rich materials that engage an entire class. The Creative Activities in Mathematics series provides a wealth of investigations and open-ended active learning activities, designed to engage students with mathematics and develop their problem-solving, collaboration and mathematical skills. Book One provides 12 different class activities suitable for students in lower and middle primary school (Foundation to Year 4), along with teaching notes and staged lesson plans. Each activity is a whole-class investigation with open-ended answers that takes a particular …