ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of Motor Skill Impairment among Grade R Learners in the West Coast District of South Africa
Author: van der Walt, Janke
Date: 2020-02-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Psychomotor Skills,Incidence,Public Schools,Early Childhood Education,Gender Differences,Playgrounds,Body Weight,Body Height,At Risk Persons,Socioeconomic Influences,Young Children,Fees

A high prevalence of medical conditions affects the typical motor development of learners in the West Coast District of South Africa. Given the strong correlation between motor skill performance and academic achievement, this study aimed to determine the prevalence of motor skill impairment among Grade R learners (5-7-year olds) enrolled in public schools in the area. Multistage cluster sampling was used to identify 6 schools from which all Grade R learners were invited to participate. Following ethical approval, 138 learners' gross and fine motor skills were assessed using the Movement Assessment Battery for Children 2nd edition (M-ABC2). Results indicate that the prevalence of significant motor skill impairment in this region was high at 14.5%, and that the prevalence of children with manual dexterity difficulties was very high, at 24.6% (i.e. scores below the 15th percentile of the M-ABC2) when compared to global statistics, yet comparable to countries with a similar socio-economic structure. The prevalence of children with balance difficulties was 18.1%, while the prevalence of children with difficulties in aiming and catching was low at 4.3%. Pearson's correlation indicates that gender (male), a lack of playground equipment and low weight/height are factors associated with learners' poor manual dexterity, while poor manual dexterity and balance skills were associated with learners attending no-fee schools. The study confirms that motor skill difficulties are a significant problem in this region and calls for further research to address the problem.
Accelerated Learning Programs for Out-of-School Girls: The Impact on Student Achievement and Traditional School Enrollment
Author: Randall, Jennifer
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Acceleration (Education),Females,Out of School Youth,Academic Achievement,Enrollment Influences,Foreign Countries,Disadvantaged Youth,Program Effectiveness,Educational Attainment,Developing Nations,Access to Education,Traditional Schools,Literacy,Numeracy,Primary Education,School Location,Instructional Program Divisions,War

Within the context of post-conflict DRC, we examined the impact of the Accelerated Learning Program for out-of-school girls' on student learning outcomes and traditional school enrollment. We found that the vast majority of girls advanced through the levels as expected (80%) and, on average, improved their numeracy and literacy skills. The impact on traditional school enrollment was less definitive with the percent of girls who previously attended school, as well as the age of, remaining stable over time, but there was also an increasing trend in the percent of girls who were enrolled in school until the end of the last school year.
Approximating Cultural Responsiveness: Teacher Readiness for Accommodative, Biography-Driven Instruction
Author: Murry, Kevin G.
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Culturally Relevant Education,Readiness,Teaching Methods,Teacher Attitudes,Student Diversity,Instructional Effectiveness,Individualized Instruction,Teacher Student Relationship,Urban Schools,Economically Disadvantaged,Elementary School Teachers,Learner Engagement,Scaffolding (Teaching Technique),Classroom Environment

Although many educators espouse tenets of culturally responsive teaching praxis (CRTP) they struggle to effectively apply it in classrooms. Some teachers are unsure how to address the multifaceted assets and needs of students from various races, ethnicities, and home countries. Other teachers operate from a deficit perspective that emphasizes perceived gaps in knowledge or skills among such learners, with little regard for their prior knowledge, experiences, or ways of knowing (assets). Responding to the needs of both kinds of teachers, Herrera (2010, 2016) developed Biography-Driven Instruction (BDI), a social constructivist method of CRTP that supports educators in making the curriculum accessible, relevant, and rigorous. This phenomenological research investigated teachers' perspectives on BDI use in situ and found both: (a) approximations of mutual accommodation in CRTP and (b) five themes indicative of participant voice regarding BDI effectiveness amidst complex facets of student diversity. Implications for teachers and teacher educators are explicated.
Abstract Thinking of Practicum Students at Najran University in Light of Piaget&apos;s Theory and Its Relation to Their Academic Level
Author: Aseeri, Mohammed Moferh Yahya
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,College Students,Abstract Reasoning,Thinking Skills,Practicums,Piagetian Theory,Student Teachers,Developmental Stages,Females,Constructivism (Learning)

The present study aimed to identify the stage of thinking of practicum students at Najran University in light of Piaget's theory and its relationship to their academic achievement in the scientific disciplines they were studying at the college of science, mainly mathematics, physics and chemistry disciplines. The sample consisted of (50) female student teachers who were practicing teaching mathematics, physics and chemistry at the public schools in Najran. Piaget test was used as a main instrument to determine participants' thinking stage. Results showed that only 10% of participants were in the stage of abstract thinking, 46% were in the transitional stage and 44% were in the stage of concrete operations. Results also revealed statistically significant differences ([alpha]=0.05) between the academic cumulative averages of participants in the concrete thinking and transitional thinking stages in favor of participants in the transitional stage. Moreover, results indicated that there were significant differences between the cumulative academic averages of participants in the concrete and abstract thinking stages in favor of participants in the abstract thinking stage. Nevertheless, there were no statistically significant differences between the cumulative averages of participant students in both transitional and abstract stages. Significant differences were revealed between mathematics and physics student teachers in favor of participants of mathematics discipline. On the opposite, no significant differences were noticed between mathematics and chemistry student teachers, on one hand, and between physics and chemistry student teachers. In addition, there was no significant effect for the interaction between participants' stage of thinking and cumulative average.
STEAM Teacher for a Day: A Case Study of Teachers&apos; Perspectives on Computational Thinking
Author: Juškeviciene, Anita
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: STEM Education,Art Education,Computation,Thinking Skills,Teacher Attitudes,Class Activities,Beliefs

Computational thinking abilities development is a recent popular research topic. Teachers need support and examples of suiTable STEAM activities that focuses on CT implementation. For this purpose, possible class activities were presented for CT abilities development purpose. Teachers from different disciplines identified possible interconnections between presented activities and CT abilities. The case study results showed that primary assumptions were quite different from teachers believes as assumptions weakly correlate with five teachers opinions. The implication of these results is that it provides a better understanding of CT integration in education and is particularly useful for researchers interested in CT and its applications in different subjects.
How to Architecture Open-Ended Problem-Solvers? Student Reflections on Scaffolding Experiences in an Open-Ended Problem-Solving Bioengineering Course Sequence
Author: Mahboobin, Arash
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Problem Solving,Scaffolding (Teaching Technique),Engineering Education,Learning Experience,Reflection,Student Attitudes,College Students

Through reflection, learning experiences that students most-frequently valued during open-ended, scaffolded problem solving in a bioengineering two-course sequence were identified in this study. Reflective knowledge of this type can inform instructors in orchestrating experiences to scaffold problem solving of this kind and were useful in directly demonstrating students' development in problem solving. Reflection is necessary for learning and is an important aspect of scaffolding. The literature has made recent calls for the additional use and study of reflection and scaffolding within STEM. This paper is intended to respond to these calls by focusing on students' reflections about the experiences they most-frequently valued during scaffolded work. Students reflected at multiple points about their scaffolded, problem-solving experiences. These reflections were systematically content-analyzed for the experiences valued by students for their learning and development. These valued experiences can be the focus of instructional and scaffolding efforts for open-ended problem-solving in similar courses.
Improving Learners&apos; Oral Proficiency in French through the Communicative Approach: Colleges of Education in Oyo in Focus
Author: Akanbi, Balogun Thomas
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: French,Speech Skills,Language Proficiency,Foreign Countries,Communicative Competence (Languages),Teacher Education,Instructional Effectiveness,Second Language Instruction,College Freshmen,Conventional Instruction

It cannot be overemphasised that French language is a foreign language in Nigeria and that its teaching and learning cannot take the same process as acquiring/learning the mother tongue or a second language. Foreign language learning requires some strategic applications in order to be able to interact with the native speakers in real life day to day communication. This study aims at delving into some teaching strategies involving the communicative approach to teaching French as a foreign language in order to boost the oral proficiency of our learners in French. The teachers and students in two colleges of Education namely Federal College of Education (Special) [FCES] and Emmanuel Alayande College of Education (EACOED), both located in Oyo town, were the participants in the study. Data were collected through classroom observation, students' achievement test as well as questionnaires for teachers. The results indicated that students perform better when the teachers employ the communicative approach. Based on the findings of this study, it is therefore recommended that teachers of French language use the communicative language teaching approach to build confidence in their students as this will help to develop faster their linguistic skills, given that this approach gives priority to listening and speaking skills over reading and writing skills.
Innovation in Initial Teacher Education through a School-University Partnership
Author: Young, Kirsty
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Preservice Teacher Education,Preservice Teachers,Educational Innovation,College School Cooperation,Partnerships in Education,Educational Improvement,Sustainability,Educational Quality

Global criticism on the quality of initial teacher education has led to calls for reform. One initiative that emerged in Australia was the establishment of Hub School partnerships, which facilitate collaborations between schools and universities to explore how initial teacher education could be improved. This paper reports one such partnership, which applied improvement science in its design to develop an ambitious approach to initial teacher education. A qualitative research approach aimed to uncover the outcomes of the project. The findings from the first prototype are reported herein and highlight the value in cross-faculty mentoring and in providing pre-service teachers opportunities for reflection while immersed in school settings.
Developing Middle School Students&apos; Computational Thinking Skills Using Unplugged Computing Activities
Author: Delal, Havva
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Middle School Students,Computation,Thinking Skills,Grade 6,Foreign Countries,Skill Development,Gender Differences,Program Effectiveness,Learning Activities

This study investigated the role of using unplugged computing activities on developing computational thinking (CT) skills of 6th-grade students. The unplugged computing classroom activities were based on the Bebras challenge, an international contest that aims to promote CT and informatics among school students of all ages. Participants of the study were fifty-three 6th-grade students from two public middle schools in Istanbul. The unplugged computing activities involved the tasks with three different difficulty levels covering the CT processes found to be common in CT definitions in the literature. To evaluate students' CT skills, two equivalent tests were constructed from Bebras tasks considering the same parameters (difficulty levels and CT processes). The results showed that students' post-test scores were significantly higher than their pre-test scores. There were not any significant differences between students' scores in terms of gender, and there was no interaction effect between students' CT scores and their gender.
Long Term Effects on Technology Enhanced Learning: The Use of Weekly Digital Lessons in Mathematics
Author: Kurvinen, Einari
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Mathematics Instruction,Mathematics Achievement,Grade 2,Elementary School Students,Teaching Methods,Arithmetic,Elementary School Mathematics,Foreign Countries,Program Effectiveness

In this study we investigate the effects of long-term technology enhanced learning (TEL) in mathematics learning performance and fluency, and how technology enhanced learning can be integrated into regular curriculum. The study was conducted in five second grade classes. Two of the classes formed a treatment group and the remaining three formed a control group. The treatment group used TEL in one mathematics lesson per week for 18 to 24 months. Other lessons were not changed. The difference in learning performance between the groups tested using a post-test; for that, we used a mathematics performance test and a mathematics fluency test. The results showed that the treatment group using TEL got statistically significantly higher learning performance results compared to the control group. The difference in arithmetic fluency was not statistically significant even though there was a small difference in favor of the treatment group. However, the difference in errors made in the fluency test was statistically significant in favor of the treatment group.
A Model for Developing Computational Thinking Skills
Author: Palts, Tauno
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Models,Skill Development,Computation,Thinking Skills,Computer Science Education,STEM Education,Problem Solving,Elementary Secondary Education,Data Analysis

Computer science concepts have an important part in other subjects and thinking computationally is being recognized as an important skill for everyone, which leads to the increasing interest in developing computational thinking (CT) as early as at the comprehensive school level. Therefore, research is needed to have a common understanding of CT skills and develop a model to describe the dimensions of CT. Through a systematic literature review, using the EBSCO Discovery Service and the ACM Digital Library search, this paper presents an overview of the dimensions of CT defined in scientific papers. A model for developing CT skills in three stages is proposed: i) defining the problem, ii) solving the problem, and iii) analyzing the solution. Those three stages consist of ten CT skills: problem formulation, abstraction, problem reformulation, decomposition, data collection and analysis, algorithmic design, parallelization and iteration, automation, generalization, and evaluation.
Constructivist Dialogue Mapping Analysis of Ant Adaptation
Author: Martin, Kit
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Concept Mapping,Constructivism (Learning),Learning Activities,Concept Formation,Museums,Entomology,Cognitive Structures,Educational Games,Feedback (Response),Informal Education,Automation

This paper introduces constructivist dialogue mapping (CDM), a new type of concept mapping. CDM encodes what people learn during a non-goal directed learning activity. CDM is a practical means to outline the mini theories users fluidly construct as they explore open-ended learning environments. To demonstrate the method, in this paper we use CDM to track how two modelers elaborate understandings during use of a constructionist learning game, Ant Adaptation. Using the method, we show how two users contest and construct their idea of self-organization in ant colonies. The method is rooted in constructionism, constructivism, concept mapping, and conceptual change.
An Approach to Evaluate the Complexity of Block-Based Software Product
Author: Fronza, Ilenia
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Computer Software,Computer Software Evaluation,Difficulty Level,Programming Languages,Computer Science Education

Computer programming skills have been growing as a professional competence also to unqualified end-users who need to develop software in their professional practice. Quality evaluation models of end-user-developed products are still scarce. In this paper, we propose a metric that leverages &quot;When&quot;, a condition typically found in block-based software development frameworks. We evaluated 80 Scratch projects collecting a metric related to the presence of the &quot;When&quot; condition and investigated common traits and differentiation with other metrics already proposed in the literature. We found that, in an evaluation with respect to the conditionals found in Scratch projects, &quot;When&quot; delivers a distinct and complementary approach to software complexity in products developed using block-oriented software development tools.
Teachers&apos; Views on the Problem-Solving &amp; Problem-Posing Tasks in Primary School Mathematics Textbooks
Author: Divrik, Ramazan
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teacher Attitudes,Problem Solving,Elementary School Curriculum,Textbook Content,Mathematics Curriculum,Public Schools,Elementary School Teachers,Foreign Countries,Instructional Effectiveness,Mathematics Skills,Workbooks,Grade 1,Grade 2,Grade 3,Grade 4

This paper aims to reveal teachers' views on the problem-solving &amp; problem-posing tasks of primary school mathematics textbooks. The study utilized the single-case embedded design. We examined the mathematics textbooks used in the Turkish public schools in the 2017-2018 academic year. Also, we interviewed twelve class teachers, who were determined by the criterion sampling method, to reveal their views on the textbooks. In order to collect data, we employed a &quot;Data Coding Scheme&quot; to determine the problem-solving &amp; problem-posing tasks in the textbooks and a &quot;Semi-Structured Interview Form&quot; composed of two open-ended questions to find out about the teachers' views. Since the questions asked to the teachers were determined as themes in advance, the descriptive data analysis technique was used for data analysis. The study concludes that the examined mathematics textbooks contain a sufficient number of problem-solving tasks, which are equally distributed under each heading in the textbooks. On the other hand, it has been found that the textbooks contain a limited number of problem-posing tasks, which are not equally distributed under each heading. Furthermore, we determined that no textbook that we examined contains different types of problem-posing tasks. Also, according to the teachers whom we interviewed, although the number of problem-solving tasks in the textbooks is sufficient, the tasks should be more effective. They also stated that the textbooks contain very few problem-solving tasks requiring different problem-posing strategies.
Daisaku Ikeda&apos;s Philosophical Dialogues on Education
Author: Kuo, Nai-Cheng
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Humanism,Educational Philosophy,Teacher Role,Dialogs (Language),Educational Practices,Elementary Secondary Education,Content Analysis,Teaching Methods,Ethics,Global Education,Peace,Poverty,Politics,Critical Thinking,Lifelong Learning,Citizenship

Daisaku Ikeda's humanism (1928-) has made profound global impacts on education and human lives. However, there is little research on analyzing his philosophical dialogues with global scholars. To explore what roles educators play and what value educators can create based on Ikeda's philosophical dialogues on education with scholars across disciplines, the author uses a theme-based approach to code educational issues derived from the dialogues. The majority of the themes highlight the importance of humanity in education. By knowing the roles that educators can fulfill and the values that they can create, the themes identified in Ikeda's philosophical dialogues provide groundwork for the development of humanistic education and can serve as concrete ways to help educators enhance their educational practices in K-12 schools as well as in higher education.
What Are the Features of Quality for Arabic Teachers Agreed by Students and Teachers?
Author: Al-Muslim, M.
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teacher Characteristics,Educational Quality,Teacher Competencies,Teacher Attitudes,Student Attitudes,Foreign Countries,Feedback (Response),Student Evaluation,Classroom Techniques,Teaching Skills,Semitic Languages,Language Teachers,Secondary School Students,Secondary School Teachers

Teacher is an important factor swaying students' achievement. The success of an educational entity reflects the quality of the teachers engaged. Teacher factor is identified as one of the main obstacles to the Arabic education. Assessment process of the teachers' quality would help those concerned identify the weakness before preventive and remedial actions being taken. This study intends to identify the features of quality for Arabic teachers agreed by students and teachers as the first step in a continuous assessment of the teachers' quality. The respondents of the qualitative approach are 9 excellent Arabic teachers and 90 students from SMKA throughout Malaysia. The qualitative data are analyzed through descriptive and comparative methods using the Atlas.ti. installer. The finding of this study regarding the experiences of excellent Arabic teachers shows that there are 17 GBA quality characteristics that are seen in 4 categories, i.e. 1) Personality, 2) Assessment and Feedback, 3) Class and Student Management, and 4) Teaching and Learning (T&amp;L). The outcome also uncovers types of similarity and difference in determining the teachers' quality based on teacher and student perspective. The teachers are found as leaning to more comprehensive assessment compared to the students who prioritize the quality of a good teacher-student relationship.