PATTERNS OF DIDACTIC DECISIONS MADE BY TEACHERS IN PHYSICAL SCIENCES CLASSROOMS
Journal Title: Problems of Education in the 21st Century - Year 2011, Vol 36, Issue 1
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to highlight didactic decisions of teachers in Physical Sciences classrooms. The framework used is teacher mediation of students’ learning. Research questions: (a) what aspects of teaching trigger didactics? (b) What are the relationships between the didactic decisions of teachers and their triggers? Are the responses to these questions dependent on teacher or teaching level? This study reports on a multi-case study of five teachers from three teaching levels (basic, secondary and higher education). Multimodal narratives (a description of what happens in the classroom, using several types of data collected inside and outside the classroom) were used to analyse the didactic decisions of teachers and to determine what causes them to take a particular decision in the classroom. It searches for categories using open code analysis, and then use cluster analysis to find patterns. Four patterns of decisions were found, transversing teacher and teaching levels, and relate them to their triggers. It is found that each teacher and each teaching level has a singular profile for decision-making (a particular combination of patterns of decision-making, what draws the teacher’s attention, and the specific decisions taken).
Authors and Affiliations
Carla A. Santos, J. Bernardino Lopes, J. Paulo Cravino
CONSTRUCTIVISTIC PATHS IN TEACHING PHYSICS: FROM INTERACTIVE EXPERIMENTS TO STEP-BY-STEP TEXTBOOKS
Teaching Physics, in-between theory and technical applications is nowadays a tedious task. Apparent abundance of web resources makes access to information easy, but its use by pupils is quite unclear. These difficulties,...
LEARNING ATTAINMENTS AS A RESULT OF STUDENT ACTIVITY, COGNITION AND THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT
The purpose of the study was to construct a model to comprehensively describe the relationships between the classroom learning environment, student’s cognition (student mediation) and learning outcomes. In studies of the...
MULTILEVEL RELATIONS BETWEEN EXTERNAL ACCOUNTABILITY, INTERNAL ACCOUNTABILITY, AND MATH ACHIEVEMENT: A CROSS-COUNTRY ANALYSIS
External accountability policies have spread fast across various educational systems over the past decades. This research examines the relations of internal and external accountability with students’ math achievement dra...
IN AND AGAINST RADICAL MONOPOLY: CRITICAL EDUCATION AND INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES
In the recent study “Ivan Illich Gone Digital: Convivial Information and Communication Technologies for Critical e-Learning” Jandric and Boras (2011) conducted counterfoil research of e-learning technologies. Results of...
TEACHERS’ AND LEARNERS’ EXPERIENCES OF ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION: PRACTICE AND CHALLENGES IN RELATION TO VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE PEDAGOGY
Entrepreneurial education is described as gaining abilities that enable the future workforce to develop, be part of and adapt to the changing society. International policy texts, from for instance the Organisation for Ec...