-
The enhancement of autonomy in language education relies heavily on teachers' empowerment and agency as critical intellectuals and reflective practitioners. However, most teacher education programmes are still based on instrumental views of teacher development that undervalue professional experience and expertise. The authors set the ground for alternative practices by proposing and illustrating a case-based approach to language teacher education that values experiential professional learning and expands competences to promote autonomy in school.
-
This volume offers insights from modelling measures of parental involvement and their relationship with student reading literacy across countries, exploring and incorporating cultural differences.
-
From the first attempts at including sign language in deaf education until today, the status of sign language in deaf education has been marked by changing perspectives on deafness and the needs and abilities of deaf students. The perception of deaf individuals using a sign language and a spoken/written language as bilinguals is a relatively new phenomenon, and so is a bimodal bilingual conception of deaf education. The present work elaborates on the status of sign language in deaf education from a historical perspective with a view to tracing the current diversity of approaches to the education of deaf students. It portrays the developments leading to the establishment of sign bilingual education programmes in diverse social contexts, and discusses the major components and objectives of sign bilingual education based on a comparison of bilingual programmes implemented in Europe and North America. Commonly, the primary promotion of sign language is a characteristic of sign bilingual education conceptions at the programmatic level. Yet, how is this demand put into practice? Are the sign bilingual education programmes established in the last decades based on a common didactic conception? If they are not, what are the main dimensions of variation? And what does the variation observed reveal about the objectives pursued? The systematic analysis of the information gathered about the conception, establishment and evaluation of sign bilingual education reveals the advances that have been made and the challenges that remain regarding the promotion of sign bilingualism in deaf education in the areas of research, policy and practice.
-
This book provides a nexus between research and practice through teachers’ narratives of their experiences with telecollaboration. The book begins with a chapter outlining the pedagogical and theoretical underpinnings of telecollaboration (also known as Virtual Exchange), followed by eight chapters that explain telecollaborative project design, materials and activities as well as frank discussions of obstacles met and resolved during the project implementation. The projects described in the volume serve as excellent examples for any teacher or education stakeholder interested in setting up their own telecollaborative exchange.
-
Ebooks are coming of age in education, as this exciting collection commissioned by Jisc demonstrates. Case studies, reflecting ebook success stories across the higher and further education sectors, include: - An innovative app to encourage ebook take-up in a Welsh college. - A partnership between a library and research centre to create open access monographs and midigraphs. - Several examples of creative negotiations with ebook publishers. Insight chapters address hot topics in the ebook universe, including: - The changing world of access to scholarly digital content in the mobile environment. - The challenges faced by the library as online distance learning moves from margin to mainstream. - How ebooks have the potential to meet a wide range of accessibility needs. - Experimentation with ebooks as a shared service. This collection will provide inspiration and guidance to institutions as they develop projects and services to support students and researchers and will be of interest to library practitioners, publishers, ebook vendors, information professionals, teachers, lecturers and students.
-
Educational quality is at the center of debates worldwide. In all these debates, teachers are considered as the critical actors determining to a large extent the quality of our educational systems. At the same time, doubts are expressed related to teachers’ quality as well as to the education or training of teachers. In this context, policy debates underline the need for ‘excellent’ teachers and ‘excellent’ teacher education. ‘Excellence’ became the mantra in all educational policy debates. This book presents a model for teachers’ professional development together with the three central themes: (1) professionalism of teacher educators, (2) professional development of (student) teachers, and (3) (student) teacher practices. The different chapters in this book discuss these themes in detail and originated from an open call launched at the ISATT 2013 conference that was organized around the central theme of ‘Excellence of teachers?’. Urgent issues that address practitioners, teacher educators, and researchers are discussed throughout the chapters and general research challenges for teacher education researchers are put forward in the epilogue of this book.
-
What are today’s main concepts and theories – and the main stakes – associated with the issue of competences in organisations? Several topics are discussed, including competence issues regarding the evolution of work, professionalisation, competence evaluation, competence management, and the competences of adult educators and trainers, as well as European policies regarding competence needs and development. From the Contents: Changes in Work and Competences Professionalisation and the Development of Competences in Education and Training The Role of Professional Didactics in Skills Development for Training and Education Professionals Competence Evaluation Processes in Adult Education Competence Management and Adult Education Changes in Vocational Training and New Models of Competences for Individuals
-
The importance of adult education is growing steadily— be it in relation with migration, matters of inclus - ion, the work place etc. Thus, this international perspective on the most important research issues in adult education is a wealth of knowledge for anyone related to this field. The book is composed as a text book and thus, provides didactic material for discussion and further exploration of research in the field of AE from an international perspective. From the Contents: EU policy in Education and AE: links with Research opportunities on the field Support for Research in Adult Education in the European Union Main areas of Research in AE at the International level · Research on Migration. · Research on Inclusion, Access and Participation · Professionals, Assessment and Counselling · Learning in the Workplace International organisations and networks with influence to Adult Education.
-
Adult Learning and Education The graduate student guide in adult education explores theories of adult learning and adult education participation. It provides a frame of reference for understanding the development of a rapidly evolving field and for enhancing knowledge and competencies in this professional domain. The publication is divided into two sections: a section on adult learning theories and a section on adult education participation theories. If Adult Learning and Education (ALE) is now a recognised professional field, the theoretical perspectives, underlying practices and policies draw on a variety of academic disciplines. Various theories of learning and of adult education participation shape the practice and the “engineering” of adult learning. In the first section, this study guide provides a review of the most important learning theories, including behaviourist, cognitive, and constructivist approaches, their modern development, as well as specific developments in adult education theory. The second section examines the psychological and sociological theoretical backgrounds of adult education participation in order to understand the factors at work in participation patterns along the adult life course and between different social contexts. Observing the relativity of social reproduction allows to identify the conditions and variables that need to be addressed in order to alter prevailing trends.
-
Education in Asia Pacific countries is being transformed by globalisation and the market economy. Most economies within the region have flourished due to increased regional capital flow, trade and other forms of economic and political interaction. The Asia Pacific also has rich and unique traditions, which create cultural diversity as well as common challenges, including obstacles of language and geographical separation. Additionally, there is a growing reaction to the predominance of Western social theories that is fuelling recognition of and movement towards theories that reference the wide range of contextual and cultural perspectives available in the East. Contributors offer Eastern-oriented perspectives on teacher education, parent participation, government withdrawal, textbook content, uses of modern technology, the challenges of migrating families and tertiary students who travel from overseas for study. Their commentaries highlight issues of equity, identity and social justice.
-
In the anthology Didactic classroom studies. A potential research direction didactic classroom studies are characterized and discussed in relation to, on the one hand, didactics and, on the other hand, classroom studies. It is argued that classroom studies has particular potential for realizing the ambitions that constitute didactics in empirical studies – to simultaneously focus processes of teaching and learning as well as the content of these processes and how they interact, and at the same time emphasize that teaching and learning as classroom work is intentional and flows towards specific goals. Classroom studies are not limited to pay (empirical) attention to the student, teacher or content, but have the capacity to focus on how these aspects interact and depend on each other. The research is delimited in contextual and situational terms of teaching-learning wholes, rather than primarily in terms of components (e.g., student, teacher or content). This translates to that classroom studies can capture and examine teaching and learning processes including their dependence of specific contexts in which they are conducted. The potential that lies in the work of classroom studies for didactics is attended to and described in more detail than previous research has done along with a set of example studies, which is a significant contribution of the anthology as a whole. The book gives examples of eight different classroom studies that focus different content areas with varied but related theoretical perspectives and specific methodological approaches. Through these concrete examples, as described and discussed in relation to each other in two concluding commentary chapter, the didactic value of the studies is made visible and didactic classroom studies are described as constituting ‘a potential research direction’. Through a detailed analysis of the chapters with empirical studies – in terms of their research questions and knowledge interests, research contexts, theoretical and analytical perspectives, specific empirical designs and didactical consequences – a number of issues are identified that could be addressed and further developed. In this way, the volume contributes not only to identifying didactic classroom studies as a potentially central research focus in educational science but also outlines a further direction for this research.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
2006
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
