Education Commons^™

Backbone Of Classroom Instruction, Bilqees Patel

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

New Ways Of Teaching Science, Naheed Anwar

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

The La Aurora: New Beginnings Project Final Evaluation Summary, Steven Rogg

Steven R Rogg

Citation: Rogg, S. (November, 2007). The La Aurora: New Beginnings Project – Final Evaluation Summary. U.S. Department of Education. Office of English Language Acquisition. Bilingual Education Professional Development Career Ladder Program (CFDA #84.195E, grant #T195E010024). Submitted to: Aurora University, Aurora, Illinois.

Background: A discretionary grant of $1.1M from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Language Acquisition was awarded to Aurora University to execute a five-year Career Ladder Program with a start date of 1-September, 2001 and completion date of 31-August, 2006.1 The stated intent of the Career Ladder Program is summarized here: “The program provided discretionary grants to upgrade …

A Spring Board To Fly, Aafiyat Nazar

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

It Pays For Teachers To Learn Again, Asghari Ummulbanin

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

Breaking The Math Barrier, Bilqees Patel

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

Mind Your English, Sadia Hanif

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

Homework: A Nightly Ritual Beginning In The Elementary Grades, Ann-Marie N. Skaggs

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Homework has become an accepted staple within education in the United States. However, little is acknowledged regarding the influences homework has on students. The purpose of this extended literature review is to look at the influences of homework on students in the elementary grades. The following research on homework was found through books, peer-reviewed journal articles, government reports, magazine articles, and interviews. Within the research, educational, socioeconomic, and parental factors show the largest influence, both positive and negative toward homework. The author discusses future implications to better improve homework's influence on students in the elementary grades. These implications include a …

An Examination Of The Effect Of Constructivist And Cooperative Learning Teaching Techniques On Student Engagement In Social Studies, Dana Olivieri

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this investigation was to see if teaching students through constructivist and cooperative learning teaching techniques increases student engagement in social studies. Thirteen sixth grade students participated in the investigation. They completed surveys before and after a curricular intervention that consisted of social studies instruction based on constructivist and cooperative learning techniques. During the intervention, the students' engagement was observed by the researcher. The students demonstrated that constructivist and cooperative learning teaching techniques led to an increase in engagement in social studies. Implications for future research and implications for teaching are discussed.

A Poetry Unit For Middle School Students, Dana Louise Longmire

All Graduate Projects

The focus of this project was to review the available research on using poetry as a method for teaching literary terms, enhancing comprehension, and developing creative writing skills. The results of the research show that there is a need for poetry instruction and that including this instruction in the middle school provides remarkable benefits for students. Poetry is suitable for the varying levels of ability found within the classroom. The project includes a guide providing teachers with activities to implement a poetry unit.

Improving Students’ Algebraic Thinking: The Case Of Talia, Kien H. Lim

Kien H Lim

This paper presents the case of an 11th grader, Talia, who demonstrated improvement in her algebraic thinking after five one-hour sessions of solving problems involving inequalities and equations. She improved from association-based to coordination-based predictions, from impulsive to analytic anticipations, and from inequality-as-a-signal-for-a-procedure to inequality-as-a-comparison-of-functions conceptions. In the one-on-one teaching intervention, she progressed from the sub-context of manipulating symbols, to working with specific numbers, to reasoning with “general” numbers, and eventually to reasoning with symbols. Three features were identified to account for her improvement: (a) attention to meaning, (b) opportunity to repeat similar reasoning, and (c) opportunity to explore.

An Investigation Of An After-School Science Enrichment Program, Jennifer Lyn Jamison

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate an after-school science enrichment program and its components. The study was conducted in a middle school in the Evesham Township School District located in the Burlington County region of South Jersey. The participants included sixty-one students taken from the four sessions of the science program, three teachers of the program, twenty parents of the students, and the program director. Data sources included interviews held with each of the participants, anecdotal notes recorded in a teacher research journal, and student artifacts. I found positive results in the operation of the program, because of …

Learning Mathematics In English Medium Classrooms In Pakistan: Implications For Policy And Practice, Anjum Halai

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

This is an in-depth qualitative study of students learning mathematics in classrooms where the medium of instruction was English which was the second or third language of the learners i.e. they were multilingual classrooms. Moreover, to promote reasoning and learning with understanding, the teachers had introduced group work, mathematical discussion, and mathematics tasks employing everyday contexts and language. Focus of the paper is the complex relationship between the language of instruction and the process of learning mathematics. The study demonstrates that learning mathematics in multilingual classrooms brings added complexity because students moved back and forth from the language of instruction …

Repeated Reading To Improve Oral Reading Fluency, Loretta Lynn Powers

All Graduate Projects

The focus of this project was to review the available research on repeated reading as a method of improving a student's oral reading fluency (ORF), to determine its contribution to the reading process, and to create an implementation guide for middle school teachers to use in their language arts classroom. The results of the research show that there is a need for effective repeated reading instruction. Including this instruction at the middle school level will provide tremendous benefits for students. Repeated reading is an effective way to expose students to short, interesting, fictional and non-fictional texts. The project includes a …

Developing Teachers’ Skills In Thar Desert Area, Sindh, Pakistan, Saeed Nasim, Parvez Pirzado

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

This paper aims to present AKU-IED’s experiences about working in the Thar Desert Area of Sindh. AKU-IED aimed to develop teachers’ skills and to help them provide quality education to the children of the said underprivileged and remote area of Pakistan.

Teacher Mentoring Programme: A Vehicle To Support Professional Development For Improving The Quality Of Education In Districts Of Sindh And Balochistan Of Pakistan, Rakhshinda Meher, Asghari Ummulbanin, Ghazala Mursaleen

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

In general practices it is noticed that there is greater improvement in teacher’s performance if they refresh themselves by attending different professional development programmes. They start rethinking about their role as effective teacher and how to support novice teachers. In order to support the novice teachers and develop them professionally there is a need of quality teacher education programme. Literature reveals that “Teacher mentoring programs have dramatically increased since the early 1980s as a vehicle to support and retain novice teachers. The vast majority of what has been written about mentoring focused on what mentors should believe and do in …

Women In Educational Leadership: A Comparison Of Kenyan And Pakistani Women Educational Leaders, Jane F. A. Rarieya

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

Though literature on educational leadership is expansive, most of it is related to the social and organisational structure of educational systems in the western world, thereby giving an impression that western models of leadership are universal. Hence, there is need to study school leadership in non-western countries because perspectives of educational leadership have been taken almost exclusively from western literature and practice. Women in educational leadership are in a minority in Pakistan and Kenya, as is the case in many parts of the world. Whilst a number of writers have attempted to identify and categorise some of the internal and …

Enhancing And Sustaining Teacher Professionalism In Pakistan, Meher Rizvi, Bob Elliott

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

This paper presents a conceptual framework for fostering teacher professionalism in Government primary schools in Karachi, Pakistan. The framework identifies various stages for enhancing and sustaining teacher professionalism. These stages have been derived from in-depth multiple case studies of four Government primary schools in Karachi where reforms have been occurring. In order to enhance and sustain professionalism among the teachers they need to be provided with opportunities to expand their capabilities and, consequently, the reform managers will need to encourage them through various stages of development. Amongst the various stages are those of involvement, initiation and engagement and developing collaborative …

Action Research—A Means Of Continuous Professional Development In A Rural Context: Possibilities And Challenges, Razia Fakir Mohammad, Roshni Kumari

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

This paper presents our findings from a research initiated to support teachers’ continuous development through action research in the rural context of a developing country. The study investigated the experiences of seven teachers and teacher educators from the rural context of Pakistan, who spent nearly six months undertaking action research projects as part of a follow-up strategy for a university based teacher education programme. After the completion of the university-based programme, the participants had gone back to their respective institutes and were expected to initiate action research projects in order to implement new knowledge/learning. It was also a strategy to …

Making Latin Concrete: Strategies For Teaching Latin Through Material Culture, Patrick Beasom, Lynne. Kvapil

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

We decided to address the issue of incorporating archaeology and material culture into classes devoted to Latin literature last spring, while Patrick was teaching Latin and Lynne was teaching Roman Civilization. Both of us were confronted with the danger of losing the interest of students who once had a burning desire to learn about the ancient world. Our aim is to offer up some suggestions for ways that, through collaboration between specialists in philology, history, and archaeology, we can keep the Classical world dynamic and relevant.

Reconsidering Teacher Professional Development Through Constructivist Principles, Kathryn Kinnucan-Welsch

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

Constructivism has been discussed from multiple perspectives, including philosophical, psychological, social, and educational. These perspectives, of course, overlap when we shape what we do in the day-to-day realities of teaching and learning. The perspective that I bring to this chapter describing the professional development of teachers is that constructivism is a theory of learning that suggests that individuals make meaning of the world through an ongoing interaction between what they already know and believe and what they experience. In other words, learners actively construct knowledge through interactions in the environment as individuals and as members of groups.

It is from …

From The Co-Editors

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

No abstract provided.

Critical Mathematics Pedagogy: Transforming Teachers’ Practices, David W. Stinson, Carla R. Bidwell, Christopher C. Jett, Ginny C. Powell, Mary M. Thurman

Middle-Secondary Education and Instructional Technology Faculty Publications

This study reports the effects of a graduate-level mathematics education course that focused on critical theory and teaching for social justice on the pedagogical philosophies and practices of three mathematics teachers (middle, high school, and 2-year college). The study employed Freirian participatory research methodology; in fact, the participants were not only co-researchers, but also co-authors of the study. Data collection included reflective essays, journals, and “storytelling”; data analysis was a combination of textual analysis and autoethnography. The findings report that the teachers believed that the course provided not only a new language but also a legitimization to transform their pedagogical …

What Is Mathematics?: Teachers Exploring The Philosophy Of Mathematics, Kimberly White-Fredette, David W. Stinson

Middle-Secondary Education and Instructional Technology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Quality In Education: Teaching And Leadership In Challenging Times. Vol. 1, Sajid Ali, Meher Rizvi

Books

No abstract provided.

Quality In Education: Teaching And Leadership In Challenging Times. Vol. 2, Sajid Ali, Meher Rizvi

Books

No abstract provided.

Cantonese As An Additional Language In Hong Kong, Gertrude Tinker Sachs, David C.S. Li

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

Based on data obtained from a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews with four Caucasians and four dark-skinned Asians, this study shows that while some ‘foreigners’ do make an effort to learn Cantonese, many find the teaching methods not so useful and the language difficult to master, especially its tone system. The data are analyzed following the interactive multicultural model of acculturation. The findings point toward a huge chasm between non-local groups and the Cantonese-speaking community. The receptivity of Hong Kong Chinese towards attempts by members of non-local groups to speak Cantonese varies, depending on their racial identity and socioeconomic status.

An Examination Of Preservice Teachers’ Initial Attempts To Use Instructional Scaffolding, Joyce E. Many, Donna Lester Taylor, Yang Wang, Gertrude Tinker Sachs, Heidi Schreiber

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

In today’s diverse schools, meeting individual literacy needs of students is one of the most challenging aspects of teaching. Instructional scaffolding is a powerful tool that many literacy teachers use to meet the challenge. While the term denotes a wide array of strategies, most teachers use scaffolding in some form or another in their classrooms. Many consider it to be one of the most effective instructional procedures available (Cazden, 1992; Graves, Graves, & Braaten, 1996).

Challenges To Teacher Control In The English Laptop Classroom, Ewa Mcgrail

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

When teachers develop successful instructional strategies and efficient classroom management, they establish control and assert authority so that learning can take place in the classroom. The teachers’ experiences with wireless laptop technology in this study, however, demonstrate that ubiquitous access to this technology in the classroom can sometimes create challenges for teachers, from managerial, curricular, to communicative perspectives. Exploring these challenges and their complexities in this report is meant to present a more balanced picture of technology integration in education, the one that takes into account not only the affordances and the possibilities but also the challenges and the constraints …

Laptop Technology And Pedagogy In The English Language Arts Classroom, Ewa Mcgrail

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

The English Language Arts teachers in this qualitative study reported somewhat negative outcomes in social and material spaces in the context of laptop technology in their classrooms. These outcomes included: social isolation, limited communication with a teacher or peers, and off-task behavior. In an attempt to uncover the reasons for these rather negative results, the researcher analyzed these teachers’ classroom environments and instructional engagements with laptop technology, since these practices are believed to be reflective of these teachers’ current beliefs about instruction and technology’s role in it. Some of the reasons the researcher uncovered were: limited physical space, cumbersome furniture, …