ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
The Relation between Teacher Vocabulary Use in Play and Child Vocabulary Outcomes
Author: McLeod, Ragan H.
Date: 2019-08-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Correlation,Vocabulary,Play,Outcomes of Education,Vocabulary Development,Preschools,Preschool Children,Preschool Teachers,Randomized Controlled Trials,Early Childhood Education,Federal Programs,Disadvantaged Youth,Early Intervention,Developmental Delays,Language Skills,Teacher Student Relationship,Intelligence Tests,Verbal Ability

Although extensive research exists on vocabulary instruction during book reading in preschool classroom, comparatively little research has been conducted on vocabulary exposure in classroom play contexts and child vocabulary outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine Head Start teacher and child vocabulary use in dyadic play sessions and the relation between teachers' vocabulary use and children's vocabulary outcomes. One Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT) session for each of 53 teacher-child dyads was transcribed and coded for teacher use of target and sophisticated vocabulary, use of teacher strategies to support vocabulary development, and child use of vocabulary. Descriptive data indicate variability for both teacher and child vocabulary use in the play sessions. Both teacher total number of vocabulary words and vocabulary supports were significantly related to child vocabulary use within sessions. Implications for practice are discussed.
Designing a Rubric to Measure Elements of Transformative Learning in Online Learning: A Case Study of a FutureLearn MOOC
Author: Beer, Nicola
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Test Construction,Scoring Rubrics,Transformative Learning,Electronic Learning,Online Courses,Nursing Education,Masters Degrees,Foreign Countries,Distance Education,Open Education,Alignment (Education),Delivery Systems,Accreditation (Institutions),Instructional Effectiveness,Interpersonal Communication

This study evaluates a two-week MOOC delivered on FutureLearn as part of an MSc in Nursing accredited by Coventry University to establish whether learners are demonstrating transformative learning. Evaluation is in the form of a rubric which is designed using Mezirow's theory of Transformative Learning as a theoretical framework, alongside the activity types used to inform design of FutureLearn courses. The literature review finds that there is a gap in the research in evaluating for-credit MOOCs against the intended educational aims of the accrediting institution. The rubric created for this research attempts to fill that gap, by providing a means to evaluate both student learning and learning design. The rubric identifies that the learners on this course are demonstrating elements of transformative learning at the lower levels of Mezirow's seven stages of critical reflection. Although the rubric was designed with the aim of evaluating MOOCs, it can be applied to any online learning experience that includes student engagement, either written or spoken. The paper makes recommendations for future developments and further research.
Facilitating Student Engagement through Educational Technology: Towards a Conceptual Framework
Author: Bond, Melissa
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Technology,Learner Engagement,Influence of Technology,Elementary Secondary Education,Higher Education,Educational Environment,Systems Approach,Technology Uses in Education,Teacher Student Relationship,Peer Relationship,Outcomes of Education,Cognitive Processes,Affective Behavior,Student Participation

The concept of student engagement has become somewhat of an enigma for educators and researchers, with ongoing discussions about its nature and complexity, and criticism about the depth and breadth of theorising and operationalisation within empirical research. This equally applies to research conducted in the field of educational technology and its application in schools and higher education. Recognising the inherent role that technology now plays in education, and the potential it has to engage students, this paper draws on a range of student engagement literature and conceptualises a provisional bioecological framework of student engagement that explicitly includes technology as one influential factor. This paper first proposes a definition of student engagement and provides an exploration of positive student engagement indicators. It then presents a bioecological framework, and the microsystemic facets of technology, teacher and curriculum are further explored in their relation to fostering student engagement. Based on this framework, implications for further theory-based research into student engagement and its relation to educational technology are discussed and recommendations for educators are given.
How Is Digitalisation Affecting the Flexibility and Openness of Higher Education Provision? Results of a Global Survey Using a New Conceptual Model
Author: Orr, Dominic
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Electronic Learning,Global Approach,Distance Education,Access to Education,Delivery Systems,Adoption (Ideas),Open Universities,Technology Uses in Education,Educational Strategies,Peer Evaluation,Student Evaluation,Credentials,Open Educational Resources,Foreign Countries

The adoption of open, online, flexible and technology-enhanced modes of learning (in short: of OOFAT) differs by higher education institution, despite the general cries of revolution and disruption due to digitalisation. This paper presents a new conceptual model for framing difference in three key educational processes (content, delivery and recognition) related to the potential of digitalisation to make these processes more flexible and more open. It is based on the results of a global survey of 69 higher education providers. The findings reveal six distinct archetypes of technology-enhanced higher education which vary according to the extent to which digitalisation is harnessed for content, delivery and recognition, and suggest different institutional strategies of digital adoption. It is hoped that this contribution will support comparative analysis of digitalisation strategies and peer learning between institutions.
Exploring Patterns in Student Dialogue While Using a Digital Platform Designed to Support Online Inquiry
Author: Murphy, Victoria L.
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Inquiry,Internet,Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,High School Students,Scaffolding (Teaching Technique),Cooperative Learning,Interaction,Interpersonal Communication,Dialogs (Language),Foreign Countries

Online inquiry, or using the Internet to generate questions and then search for, analyse, and synthesise information about these questions, is an essential part of digital literacy. However, processes involved in online inquiry are substantially complex. Prior research suggests that digital platforms can scaffold online inquiry processes. Moreover, the value of scaffolding dialogue in collaborative activities has been shown to enhance critical thinking, an important part of online inquiry. This study investigates whether the use of digital platforms designed to scaffold online inquiry can support productive dialogue when used collaboratively. Data from four pairs of high school students was collected as they worked together using both the digital platform and multiple online sources outside the platform to complete an online inquiry task. Each pair's interactions were analysed to investigate whether features of the digital platform prompted productive dialogue. In line with research suggesting the use of academic language influences content understanding, each pair's use of certain academic terms related to the task and digital platform's interface were also statistically examined. Results suggested that most productive dialogue occurred when using the digital platform. Additionally, two of the four academic terms investigated occurred more often in talk while interacting with the digital platform, compared to talk when on another website. A comparison of timelines associated with these terms offered examples of how initially they were said exclusively while on the tool, and then progressed towards independent use.
Scaffolding Extracurricular Online Events to Support Distance Learning University Students
Author: Foley, Karen
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Scaffolding (Teaching Technique),Extracurricular Activities,Distance Education,College Students,Sense of Community,Learner Engagement,Open Universities,Part Time Students,Data Collection,Synchronous Communication,Peer Relationship,School Holding Power,Foreign Countries,Social Networks,Recognition (Psychology),Humor

Studies about effective practice in Higher Education (HE), student retention, progression and attainment suggest that student engagement is a major factor in success. A sense of belonging to a community of students and academics is seen as key to creating effective engagement. Such studies have identified interventions that have proved successful in traditional HE contexts; however, ideas of belonging and community are considered problematic in distance learning contexts. Preliminary work by the doctoral research author showed that many Open and Distance Learning (ODL) students were successful in their studies without identifying as a student or interacting socially with others, calling into question the extent to which belonging and community are relevant in part-time and distance learning settings. In 2014, The Open University developed a platform, the Student Hub Live (SHL), to facilitate academic community. This research focuses on the value of attending the live online interactive events at the SHL that support part-time distance learning students outside the curriculum, and relating to their studies. Using an ethnographic approach and grounded theory methods, chat logs of events were analysed and the emergent themes informed semi-structured interviews with six participants. The overall findings were that although the curriculum was often a primary focus for students, learning how to apply academic skills more generally and learning from other students is important in ODL. The findings are relevant to other distance and face-to-face HE providers that are keen to engage students in virtual extracurricular spaces to support learning.
Benefits of Teacher Diversity: Leading for Transformative Change
Author: Nevarez, Carlos
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Diversity (Faculty),Social Justice,School Culture,Culturally Relevant Education,Cultural Awareness,Role Models,White Students,Teacher Influence,Leadership Responsibility,Teacher Recruitment,Teacher Persistence,Transformative Learning,Social Change,Racial Differences,Grade 8,Grade 12,Minority Group Students,Consciousness Raising

This essay articulates the benefits of teacher diversity by illustrating six themes: a) leading for social justice through local and global civic engagement; b) developing an inclusive school culture; c) culturally relevant pedagogy; d) cultural translators and transformers; e) role models; and (f) benefits accrued by White students. The authors draw from evidence in supporting arguments surrounding the benefits accrued when teacher diversity reflects the demographics of students served and the role educational leaders can play in advancing efforts to recruit and retain a diverse faculty pool. They challenge readers to consider the benefits accrued when deliberate efforts to increase teacher diversity are made in light of advancing student academic success.
Teachers&apos; Adoption of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education
Author: Baas, Marjon
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Higher Education,Open Educational Resources,Shared Resources and Services,Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Foreign Countries,Teacher Attitudes,College Faculty,Knowledge Level,Technology Integration

Open Educational Resources (OER) have the potential to change the domain of higher education; however, adoption is still limited. As teachers are the pivotal actors to adopt OER, more insights are needed on their practices with OER and need of support. This exploratory study uses the OER Adoption Pyramid as a framework to analyse adoption of OER within a Dutch University of Applied Sciences. A questionnaire (n = 143) and semi-structured interviews with teachers who had some experience with sharing or using OER (n = 11) offered insights into the current state of affairs on adoption and need of support. The results revealed that informal sharing of resources within teachers' personal networks happens frequently whereas the use of OER is more limited. If teachers use OER, they are mainly used 'as-is' or for a source of inspiration. Our findings indicate that the OER Adoption Pyramid does not properly describe the sequence of each layer within the context of this study. Availability must be lower in the pyramid as a prerequisite for teachers to explore their capacity and volition. Hence, the findings underline the need of support on subject-specific overviews of OER and the creation of national or institutional teacher communities. To improve our understanding, future research should focus on qualitative studies focusing on one case in which teachers engage with OER. This could lead to extensive insights on the factors and sequence of the OER Adoption Pyramid within different contexts.
Considering Standards-Based Grading: Challenges for Secondary School Leaders
Author: Townsley, Matt
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Grading,Academic Standards,Secondary Schools,Instructional Leadership,Educational Principles

Rather than awarding points for a combination of worksheet completion, quiz performance, in-class participation, and essay writing, standards-based grading separates academics from non-academic factors and communicates students' progress towards mastery of course or grade-level standards. Some secondary schools are moving towards standards-based grading (SBG) in an attempt to produce more consistent grading practices, however the empirical evidence resulting from this change is mixed. The purpose of this article is to describe principles of standards-based grading, empirical support of SBG, and several common challenges secondary school leaders may face when considering this philosophical shift. Future research recommendations include exploring the perspectives of college students who graduate from high schools using SBG to understand the longer-term successes and shortcomings of the grading system.
Open Education and Learning Design: Open Pedagogy in Praxis
Author: Paskevicius, Michael
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Educational Practices,Instructional Design,Praxis,Higher Education,Constructivism (Learning),Affordances,Technology Integration,Computer Literacy,Copyrights,Access to Information,Open Educational Resources,Individualized Instruction,Cooperative Learning,Instructional Materials,Peer Evaluation

Beyond providing alternatives to traditional learning resources, there exists a gap in the literature in understanding how openness is impacting teaching and learning in higher education. This paper explores the ways in which educators describe how open education is impacting their pedagogical designs. Using a phenomenological approach with self-identifying open education practitioners, we explore how open educational practices (OEP) are being actualised in formal higher education in the context of British Columbia (BC), Canada. The findings suggest that OEP represent an emerging form of learning design, which draws from existing models of constructivist and networked pedagogy, while using the affordances of open tools and content to create and share learning in novel ways. Faculty members report finding ways to use open approaches and technologies to support and enable active learning experiences, present and share learners' work in real-time, support formative feedback, peer review, and, ultimately, promote community-engaged coursework. By designing learning in this way, faculty members offer learners an opportunity to consider and practise developing themselves as public citizens, develop their knowledge and literacies for working appropriately with copyright and controlling access to their online contributions, while presenting options for extending some of those rights to others. Inviting learners to share their work more widely, demonstrates to them that their work has inherent value beyond the course and can be an opportunity for them to engage directly with their community.
Humanising Text-to-Speech through Emotional Expression in Online Courses
Author: Hillaire, Garron
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Online Courses,Emotional Response,Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Suprasegmentals,Assistive Technology,Large Group Instruction,Higher Education,Sentences,Program Effectiveness

This paper outlines an innovative approach to evaluating the emotional content of three online courses using the affective computing approach of prosody detection on two different text-to-speech (TTS) voices in conjunction with human raters judging the emotional content of the text. This work intends to establish the potential variation on the emotional delivery of online educational resources through the use of a synthetic voice, which automatically articulates text into audio. Preliminary results from this pilot research suggest that about one out of every three sentences (35%) in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) contained emotional text and two existing assistive technology voices had poor emotional alignment when reading this text. Synthetic voices were more likely to be overly negative when considering their expression as compared to the emotional content of the text they are reading, which was most frequently neutral. We also analysed a synthetic voice for which we configured the emotional expression to align with course text, which showed promising improvements.
Using Technology-Enabled Learning Networks to Drive Module Improvements in the UK Open University
Author: Boyd, Lesley
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Open Universities,Distance Education,Tutors,Cooperative Learning,Organizational Change,Discussion Groups,College Faculty,Web Sites,Technology Uses in Education,STEM Education,Learning Modules

This paper describes a work-in-progress action research project to investigate how technology-enabled learning networks may achieve practical organisational improvement outcomes in the author's own institution, a UK distance learning higher education (HE) context. Collaborative learning technology, typically used for academic learning or professional development, affords the geographically scattered and disparate practitioner stakeholders involved in distance learning module design and delivery the ability to grapple together with a problem area requiring improvement. In this particular context, there is a perennial organisational need to close a feedback loop between remote module tutors and campus based teams, to develop a joint understanding of teaching and learning design challenges, and to put tutors as close as possible to the development of solutions. However, there is insufficient conceptual and practical understanding about the mechanisms by which this unfolding process of technology-enabled organisational learning might happen. Conceptual frameworks in the field of learning networks and networked learning are still developing (Sloep, 2016). The aim of this research is to investigate the active use of learning networks to achieve practical improvement outcomes, and to explore a new conceptual framework covering all stages of the required learning process. The research aims to make an original contribution to the call for actionable knowledge in organisational research, using a collaborative, equitable and rigorous action-oriented and theory-building approach, which also aims to achieve measurable impact.
Systems Thinking for Principals of Learning-Focused Schools
Author: Shaked, Haim
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Systems Approach,Principals,Instructional Leadership,Curriculum Development,Communities of Practice,Data Interpretation,Academic Achievement

Systems thinking involves attempts to understand and improve complex systems, examines systems holistically, and focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts interrelate. This essay provides examples of how systems thinking can enable principals to demonstrate instructional leadership and nurture learning-focused schools in the current era of complexity, diversity, and accountability. These examples illustrate how systems thinking contributes to developing school curriculum, empowering professional learning communities, and fostering performance data interpretation. Overall, systems thinking offers a comprehensive way of both conceptualizing and practicing leadership for learning within the entire school setting, which leads directly to enhancing the quality of instruction and raising students' achievement.
Has Student Voice Been Eliminated? A Consideration of Student Activism Post-Parkland
Author: Geis, Paul J.
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Student Participation,Activism,Student Rights,Freedom of Speech,Democratic Values,School Safety,Violence,Weapons,Civil Rights,Cooperation

David Blacker points to a problematic decline in personal freedoms, including student speech rights: &quot;[A]s the 'educational mission' of schools moves ineluctably even further toward warehousing and surveillance--pre-jail--then remaining intra-institutional speech rights will easily be quashed.&quot; Critical of the elastic conception of educational mission as put forth in &quot;Morse v. Frederick,&quot; he warns that matters of school safety will take precedence over student speech rights, especially in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012, and earlier and future school shootings. In the wake of yet another mass school shooting, Paul Geis examines whether Blacker was correct to sound the alarm about an elimination of student voice. Similar to Kathleen Knight Abowitz and Dan Mamlok's recent article on political emotion in civic education, Geis uses the post-Parkland context to bring concepts from philosophy of education to bear on real contemporary events in schools. He turns to Sarah Stitzlein and Bryan Warnick to analyze student and school responses. Drawing on their ideas on democratic habits and student free speech respectively, Geis explores whether the actions of students and school administrators substantiated Blacker's pessimistic concerns for the elimination of student voice, or whether signs of hope for democracy emerged post-Parkland.
Teacher Evaluations and Contextualized Self-Efficacy: Classroom Management, Instructional Strategies and Student Engagement
Author: Mireles-Rios, Rebeca
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teacher Evaluation,Feedback (Response),Self Efficacy,Classroom Techniques,Teaching Methods,Teaching Skills,Learner Engagement,High School Teachers,High Schools,Administrator Role,Classroom Environment,Peer Influence

Teacher feedback from administrators can play an important role in continuous teacher development, especially in making the classroom safe, challenging, and engaging for all students. In this study, interview data was collected from 28 high school teachers from three different comprehensive high schools within the same school district in Southern California to examine teachers' perceptions of feedback from administrators in the areas of classroom management, instructional feedback, and student engagement. Results indicated that teacher feedback from administrators can play an important role in increasing teachers' self-efficacy. Types of feedback varied depending on the context (classroom management, instructional strategies, and engaging students), individual teacher needs, and the population served. For this reason, feedback from administrators may need to be tailored accordingly. Implications are discussed and may be useful for administrators to conduct teacher evaluations with a set of concrete solutions for teachers in specific areas.