ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Tensions between Policy and Practice: Reconciliation Agendas in the Australian Curriculum English
Author: Exley, Beryl
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Conflict,Educational Policy,Educational Practices,English Curriculum,Indigenous Populations,Pacific Islanders,Culturally Relevant Education,Alignment (Education),Preservice Teacher Education,Social History,Educational Theories,Educational Objectives,Politics of Education,Educational Change,Foreign Countries,Change Strategies,Curriculum Development,Cultural Influences

In various parts of the world, Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are actively working towards Reconciliation. In Australia, the context in which we each undertake our work as educationalists and researchers, the Reconciliation agenda has been pushed into schools and English teachers have been called on to share responsibility for facilitating the move towards a new national order. The recently introduced Australian Curriculum mandates that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures be embedded with &quot;a strong&quot; but &quot;varying presence&quot; into each learning area (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2013). In this paper we consider the tensions between policy and practice, when discourses external to education are recontextualised into the discipline of English. We do so by applying an analytical framework based on Bernstein's (1990, 1996, 2000) sociological theories about the structure of instructional and regulative discourses. Our findings suggest that the space to exert Reconciliatory agendas in the Australian Curriculum English is ambiguous and thus holds the potential to not only marginalise Indigenous knowledges but also to create tensions between policy and practice for non-Indigenous teachers of English.
Reframing Equity under Common Core: A Commentary on the Text Exemplar List for Grades 9-12
Author: Schieble, Melissa
Date: 2013-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: State Standards,Secondary School Curriculum,Reading Lists,English Instruction,Critical Literacy,Content Analysis,Reading Material Selection,Selection Criteria,Position Papers,Teaching Methods,Multicultural Education,Politics,Decision Making,Program Attitudes,Equal Education,Teacher Empowerment,Instructional Leadership

This article provides a commentary on the text exemplar list for Grade bands 9-12 included in the Common Core documents in the United States. It is argued that a critical literacy perspective supports ELA teachers to assert a professional voice when making complex text selections based on diverse students&apos; needs and interests. Implications for how this perspective reframes goals for equity, working both within and beyond the text exemplar list, are addressed.
Initial English Language Teacher Education: Processes and Tensions towards a Unifying Curriculum in an Argentinian Province
Author: Banegas, Dario Luis
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,English Teachers,Preservice Teacher Education,English (Second Language),Unified Studies Curriculum,Teacher Education Curriculum,Curriculum Development

In this reflective piece I discuss the process of developing a new unifying initial English language teacher education curriculum in the province of Chubut (Argentina). Trainers and trainees from different institutions were called to work on it with the aim of democratising curriculum development and enhancing involvement among agents. In the process, tensions emerged in the following areas: the cultural and ideological representations of English and the incorporation of interculturality; the integration of fields in the knowledge base; and the role of subject matter in teacher education. The article concludes by stating that while attempts to include trainers' voices were achieved, the curriculum was still conceptualised as compartmentalised knowledge.
Walking and Talking with Living Texts: Breathing Life against Static Standardisation
Author: Phillips, Louise Gwenneth
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Literacy Education,Standard Setting,Standardized Tests,Instructional Materials,Art Activities,Multiple Literacies,Cooperating Teachers,Parent Participation,Learner Controlled Instruction,Urban Areas

Current educational reform, policy and public discourse emphasise standardisation of testing, curricula and professional practice, yet the landscape of literacy practices today is fluid, interactive, multimodal, ever-changing, adaptive and collaborative. How then can English and literacy educators negotiate these conflicting terrains? The nature of today's literacy practices is reflected in a concept of living texts which refers to experienced events and encounters that offer meaning-making that is fluid, interactive and changing. Literacy learning possibilities with living texts are described and discussed by the authors who independently investigated the place of living texts across two distinctly different learning contexts: a young people's community arts project and a co-taught multiliteracies project in a high school. In the community arts project, young people created living texts as guided walks of urban spaces that adapt and change to varying audiences. In the multiliteracies project, two parents and a teacher created interactive spaces through co-teaching and cogenerative dialoguing. These spaces generate living texts that yield a purposefully connected curriculum rich in community-relevant and culturally significant texts. These two studies are shared with a view of bringing living texts into literacy education to loosen rigidity in standardisation.
Professional Knowledge and Standards-Based Reforms: Learning from the Experiences of Early Career Teachers
Author: Allard, Andrea
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Beginning Teachers,Educational Change,English Teachers,Testing,Professional Identity,Standards,Interviews,Case Studies,Secondary School Teachers,Teaching Experience,Teacher Characteristics

This article explores the paradoxical situation of early career teachers in this era of standards-based reforms, beginning with the experiences of an English teacher working in a state school in Queensland, Australia and expanding to consider the viewpoints of her colleagues. Our goal is to trace the ways she and the other early career teachers at this particular school negotiate the tensions between the current emphases on standardisation of curricula, testing regimes and teaching standards and their burgeoning sense of their identities as teachers. We shall raise questions about the status of the professional knowledge that these early career teachers bring to their work, showing examples of how this knowledge puts them at odds with standards-based reforms, including the professional standards recently introduced by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) and the National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN).
Clearing the Ground for a Greener New Zealand English
Author: Matthewman, Sasha
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Educational Change,Change Strategies,English Instruction,Environmental Education,Sustainability,Educational History,Educational Development,Culturally Relevant Education,Heritage Education,Ecology,Vignettes,National Curriculum,Politics of Education

In the context of public and policy concerns about human induced climate change, it is striking that dominant models and histories of English teaching marginalise the environmental significance of English as a school subject (Matthewman, 2010). This is in spite of a growing body of ecocritical work within English and cultural studies which has explored the relationship between cultural texts and environmental thinking (Buell, 2005; Clark, 2011; Garrard, 2012; Glotfelty, 1996; Kerridge &amp; Sammells, 1998). This article explores the potential for teachers in New Zealand to clear the ground for a &quot;greener&quot; version of English. This could be facilitated by a number of features which are unique to the New Zealand context. These include the powerful (though contested) imagery of New Zealand's environmental purity; the historical relationships of New Zealanders to the land; the integration of Maori environmental values into educational policy; the relative openness of the national curriculum in New Zealand; the absence of a dominant canon and tradition of English teaching; and the recent turn towards New Zealand literature (with its strong emphasis on links to the land) in literary choices for study. The article will examine traditions of English in New Zealand against the social, cultural and environmental factors which offer the potential for ecocritical versions of English to emerge within new models of teachers' professional practice.
National Standardised Testing and the Diluting of English as a Second Language (ESL) in Australia
Author: Creagh, Sue
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Standardized Tests,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Testing Programs,Second Language Instruction,Literacy,Numeracy,Statistical Analysis,Educational Change,Equal Education,Teaching Methods,Scores,Classification

The Australian field of English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching is globally respected for its research and practice achievements over a period of some 30 years. However, this essential field of pedagogy is being diluted in the current Australian reform agenda which is firmly founded on a traditional vision of English as first language, and national standardised testing which maps progress in a one-size-fits-all &quot;English as first language&quot; development only. This paper will argue that the de-prioritising of ESL is directly related to the statistical processes which form the architecture of the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test. The paper first explores the economic rationalism which drives the need for standardised assessment, which in turn enables measurement of school performance according to broad statistical categories. Language Background Other than English (LBOTE) are examined, as the only statistical category used in NAPLAN for the apparent disaggregation of language effect on test performance. The limitations of the LBOTE category definition are contrasted with the complex understandings about second language acquisition, which have informed ESL pedagogy and assessment for some time in Australia. The paper draws on the author's recent PhD research, from which quantitative data will be discussed to show that the LBOTE category hides a heterogeneous group of ESL students and that understanding and responding appropriately to these needs is within the domain of ESL specialist knowledge. The paper argues that the LBOTE category is highly problematic to the Australian education reforms, to the professional knowledge that characterises the work of ESL educators and to the goal of equity for all Australian students.
Closing the Emergency Facility: Moving Schools from Literacy Triage to Better Literacy Outcomes
Author: O'Mara, Joanne
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Educational Testing,High Stakes Tests,Educational Change,Literacy,Technological Literacy,Curriculum Design,Equal Education

This article focuses on the tensions between national and international testing, educational policy and professionalism for middle school English teachers. I argue that state and federal government(s) are responding to the impact of Australia's falling results on the international testing in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) through the usage of their own testing program, the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). The publication of NAPLAN results on the MySchool website in a searchable and comparable form has been detrimental to many schools and has pushed these schools into &quot;emergency mode&quot;, as they struggle to improve their scores. At the same time, the results from recent PISA examinations reveal extensive inequities in educational outcomes across Australia, as well as some consistent general trends in the Australian data. I use the metaphor of the hospital emergency department to explore this situation. Drawing on Sahlberg's (2011) notion of the Global Educational Reform Movement (GERM), I explore this metaphor becoming a pandemic. I draw on Gillborn and Youdell's (2000) usage of educational triage and cast different and multiple educational professionals playing the role of the triage nurse--the alternate federal and state government education ministers responding to international and state test results in triage; and principals of poor performing schools operating their school as though it is an emergency department; poor literacy results triaged Code Red receiving immediate focus and attention, but &quot;treated&quot; in terms of immediate survival and a focus on basic skills. I argue that the international testing provides better markers for how we are doing as a nation, and what might be done to improve our international standing with respect to our literacy scores. I argue that true gains in literacy and the development of more complex literacy skills are not made through triaging literacy through an emergency department, but through a long-term focus on school redesign.
Healthcare Learning Community and Student Retention
Author: Johnson, Sherryl W.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Culturally Relevant Education,Communities of Practice,Academic Persistence,School Holding Power,Educational Strategies,Educational Practices,College Students,Student Surveys,Health Services,Health Education,Social Capital,Career Education,Employment Opportunities,Academic Achievement,Success,Social Networks,Teacher Student Relationship,Student Attitudes

Teaching, learning, and retention processes have evolved historically to include multifaceted techniques beyond the traditional lecture. This article presents related results of a study using a healthcare learning community in a southwest Georgia university. The value of novel techniques and tools in promoting student learning and retention remains under review. This study includes a healthcare learning community as a cutting-edge teaching and learning modality. The results of an introspective survey of 22 students in a learning community explore strategies to enhance culturally relevant teaching, learning, and retention. Although learning and retention studies have been conducted at numerous universities, few have included feedback from students in a healthcare learning community. Frequencies from student responses were tabulated using five thematic factors: social support, career knowledge/opportunities, academic support, networking and faculty rapport/relationship building. Of the five theme areas, social support was identified most frequently by students as a means to support their learning and retention in the university setting.
Using the Comfortability-in-Learning Scale to Enhance Positive Classroom Learning Environments
Author: Kiener, Michael
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Student Adjustment,Undergraduate Students,Predictor Variables,Learning Processes,Educational Environment,Student Surveys,Active Learning,Student Attitudes,Affective Objectives,Statistical Analysis,Qualitative Research

A goal of higher education is to advance learning. This study examined the role &quot;comfortability&quot; plays in that process. Defined as the level of comfort students experience with their classmates, instructor, and course material, comfortability addresses how secure a student feels in the classroom. Comfortability was assessed multiple times during one semester with undergraduate students and found student comfortability significantly increased across the course of the semester and significantly predicted affective learning. These findings suggest the importance of the classroom environment in the learning process and support the need for faculty to consider &quot;non-academic&quot; factors in addition to course content.
Leading the Charge for SoTL--Embracing Collaboration
Author: Cassard, Anita
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Scholarship,Educational Research,Higher Education,Interdisciplinary Approach,Teaching (Occupation),Educational Practices,Educational Quality,Student Evaluation,Literature Reviews

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) enables colleges and universities to assess student learning and measure the outcomes by engaging in meaningful research, and to disseminate this research. The objective of this paper is to give a snapshot of and assess the current thinking behind this scholarship by presenting examples of SoTL, and to provide insights into the measurement of SoTL research by faculty members. By presenting a carefully crafted research agenda in SoTL, colleges and universities can disseminate this research as a means of providing useful assessments of student learning and measurements of relevant outcomes.
A Study of the Effectiveness of Blackboard Collaborate for Conducting Synchronous Courses at Multiple Locations
Author: Tonsmann, Guillermo
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Videoconferencing,Computer Mediated Communication,Synchronous Communication,Distance Education,Online Courses,Electronic Learning,Delivery Systems,Computer Software,Teaching Methods,Mathematics Instruction,College Students,Student Attitudes,Feedback (Response),Student Surveys

This paper discusses the effectiveness of the videoconferencing software Blackboard Collaborate for carrying out instruction at college level to students attending classes synchronously at multiple locations. The paper describes the motivation for this study, a brief literature review on the subject, the methodology used, and the results obtained. The main conclusion of this study is the confirmation that synchronous instruction, in general, and Blackboard Collaborate, in particular, is an effective environment for tuition of students at a distance. Based on this study, several recommendations to be used in synchronous education are provided.
A Multimodal Assignment that Enriches Literacy Learning: The Problem
Author: Oldakowski, Tim
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Multiple Literacies,Learning Modalities,Intermode Differences,Adolescent Literature,Young Adults,Technology Uses in Education,Attitude Change,Learning Processes,Student Projects

In education the linguistic is the mode most commonly assessed because it is important for students to write clear, complex pieces to show their understanding of content. However, in worlds outside of classrooms additional modes, such as visual, aural, and digital are often used to convey messages. This article demonstrates the value of multimodal learning (the use of more than one mode) as a means for student expression, specifically in responding to young adult literature. Here, I share how students had rich interpretations of a text through the use multiple modes.
Improving Secondary School Students' Achievement and Retention in Biology through Video-Based Multimedia Instruction
Author: Gambari, Amosa Isiaka
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Secondary School Students,Science Achievement,Biology,Student Improvement,Video Technology,Multimedia Instruction,Foreign Countries,Achievement Tests,Pretests Posttests,Statistical Significance,Experiments,Narration,Animation,Scores,Hypothesis Testing,Teaching Methods,Instructional Materials,Retention (Psychology)

The study examined the effects of video-based multimedia instruction on secondary school students' achievement and retention in biology. In Nigeria, 120 students (60 boys and 60 girls) were randomly selected from four secondary schools assigned either into one of three experimental groups: Animation + Narration; Animation + On-screen Text; Animation + Narration + On-screen Text or a control group. The pretest, posttest experimental, and control group design was adopted. A 50-item multiple-choice objective test termed Biology Achievement Test (BAT) was used for collecting data. The validated BAT was tested for reliability using Kuder Richardson (KR20), which yielded 0.89. T-test, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and Scheffe's post-hoc analysis were used in determining the significant differences among the four groups. The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference among the experimental groups. Generally, students under multimedia instruction performed better than their colleagues in the conventional teaching method. However, students in conventional teaching method had better retention than other groups.
Challenging Multiple-Choice Questions to Engage Critical Thinking
Author: Kerkman, Dennis D.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Multiple Choice Tests,Critical Thinking,Undergraduate Students,Predictor Variables,Scores,Grade Point Average,Student Participation,Correlation,Hypothesis Testing,Teaching Methods,Multiple Regression Analysis

This article examines a technique for engaging critical thinking on multiple-choice exams. University students were encouraged to &quot;challenge&quot; the validity of any exam question they believed to be unfair (e.g., more than one equally correct answer, ambiguous wording, etc.). The number of valid challenges a student wrote was a better predictor of exam scores than the number of invalid challenges or GPA. The technique also allows instructors to gain insight into the sources of students&apos; errors that may be useful in improving instruction.
Integrating Language Skills through a Dictogloss Procedure
Author: Stewart, Benjamin Lee
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: English Instruction,Translation,Language Skills,Teaching Methods,Class Activities,Written Language,Interaction,Writing Skills,Speech Skills,Error Correction,English (Second Language)

In this article, the authors offer an alternative to traditional methods of teaching English that often included translating structures from the target language to the mother tongue. Although this method seems antiquated, it is still commonly practiced, as original dictogloss procedures were intended to provide an alternative to traditional grammar teaching. This article demonstrates an interactive and student-centered example of dictogloss activities that offer an alternative to traditional dictation, and also can be applied both within and outside the English language-learning classroom. A dictogloss provides a framework for educators to integrate language skills with social interaction that encourages learners to take ownership of their learning. Thus, learning becomes more meaningful and relevant for what learners are likely to face in the future.