Assessing Teachers’ Pedagogical Knowledge in the Context of Teaching Higher‐order Thinking     

Anat Zohar  Noa Schwartzer 《International Journal of Science Education》2013,35(13):1595-1620

This article reports the development and application of two instruments for assessing science teachers’ pedagogical knowledge in the context of teaching higher‐order thinking: a Likert‐type research instrument, and an instrument that analyzes classroom observations. The rationale for developing these instruments and their main categories is described. One hundred and fifty Israeli science teachers replied to the Likert‐type questionnaire. Results show that biology teachers gained a significantly higher score than either physics or chemistry teachers, that junior high school teachers scored significantly higher than high school teachers, and that a significant negative correlation was found between final scores and teaching experience. Participants in the classroom observation study were 14 teachers who attended a one‐year professional development course for teaching higher‐order thinking. The instrument was sensitive in detecting progress in teachers’ pedagogical knowledge in several categories, such as: Frequency of tasks that required higher‐order thinking; The variety of thinking strategies that teachers addressed during their lessons; Engagement of students in metacognitive thinking; and Using the “language of thinking” in class. The implications of the findings for research and practice are described.  相似文献   

Israeli college students’ perceptions of internationalisation     

Miri Yemini  Vered Holzmann  Dalia Fadilla  Nazeh Natur  Anat Stavans 《International Studies in Sociology of Education》2013,23(3):304-323

In the last two decades, higher education institutions have invested significant resources to internationalise, due to economic, political, academic and cultural pressures. Students play a dual role in this process: as customers, selecting institutions based on respective reputations (including the international dimension) and as outputs of institutional internationalisation processes aiming to produce internationally oriented graduates. Universities aspire towards integration of international, global and intercultural dimensions as main aims of higher education, reflecting the upsurging prominence of cosmopolitan capital among their future graduates. Indeed, cosmopolitanism is increasingly considered desirable on individual and institutional levels. Using data from a student survey (n = 1650) gathered at seven geographically and otherwise diverse colleges in Israel, this paper investigates Israeli college students’ perceptions of internationalisation and estimation of their institutions’ internationalisation activities. Parents’ education, previous experiences abroad, proficiency in English and institutional efforts to internationalise were found to positively impact students’ perceptions of on-campus internationalisation initiatives and characteristics. Such differences were also found to relate to the university’s general status and context. This paper presents the findings of the survey and discusses possible implications for policy and practice at institutional and national levels.  相似文献   

School Religious-Cultural Attributes and School Principals’ Leadership Styles in Israel     

Anat Barth  Pascale Benoliel 《Religious education (Chicago, Ill.)》2013,108(4):470-485

Schools in Western cultures, including Israel, have been transformed from closed to open systems. This change is especially important to the principal’s role and leadership style. This article seeks to investigate the cultural-religious differences in Israeli Jewish principals’ leadership styles. Data were collected from 1,859 teachers, 34% from ultra-Orthodox schools, 50% state-religious schools, and 16% from state-secular schools. Regression results support the study's main hypotheses: cultural-religious orientation explains participative and transactional leadership styles but not transformational leadership. We discuss the implications of these findings for both theory and practice.  相似文献   

Activity and Action: Bridging Environmental Sciences and Environmental Education     

Tali Tal  Anat Abramovitch 《Research in Science Education》2013,43(4):1665-1687

The main goal of this study was to examine the Environmental Workshop unit taught to Environmental Sciences majors in the high schools in Israel and learn if, and in what ways, this unit could become a model for environmental education throughout the high school curriculum. We studied the special characteristics of the Environmental Workshop (EW) unit, which is based on inquiry-based learning that takes place in and out of school, and includes an environmental action component as well. We describe three approaches to the EW we identified. After identifying teachers’ challenges in assessing their students, in addition to the phenomenographic study, we suggest and demonstrate assessing the EW students by relevant socio-scientific issues. Finally, we argue that the EW could be incorporated in the junior as well as the high school curriculum as a coherent unit that is in line with environmental education in its broader sense.  相似文献   

The Persistence of Solid and Liquid Naive Conceptions: A Reaction Time Study     

Reuven Babai  Anat Amsterdamer 《Journal of Science Education and Technology》2008,17(6):553-559

The study explores whether the naive concepts of solid and liquid persist in adolescence. Accuracy of responses and reaction times where measured while 41 ninth graders classified different solids (rigid, non-rigid and powders) and different liquids (runny, dense) into solid or liquid. The results show that these naive conceptions affect adolescences’ classifications in terms of both accuracy and reaction time. The rate of correct classifications of non-rigid solids and powders was significantly lower than of rigid solids. Lower rate of success was also found for classification of dense liquids compared with runny liquids. In addition, the reaction time results of correct classifications for non-rigid solids and powders were longer than those for rigid solids and, likewise, reaction times for dense liquids were longer than for runny ones. These results suggest that reasoning processes associated with correct classification of objects that are not consistent with the naive conceptions are more demanding.  相似文献   

Gender and Performance in Mathematical Tasks: Does the Context Make a Difference?     

Anat Zohar  Anna Gershikov 《International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education》2008,6(4):677-693

This study investigates how the context of mathematical tasks affects the performance of young children (ages 5–11). Subjects were 523 children from age 5 to 11. Three contexts of mathematical tasks (stereotypically boys’ contexts, stereotypically girls’ contexts and neutral contexts) are examined in three age groups (young, medium, and old). Boys’ and girls’ mean scores were compared for each age group in each of the three contexts. The data show that girls’ performance is affected by the context of the task while boys’ performance is not. The comparison between boys and girls in the three different contexts showed that in neutral contexts, the scores of boys and girls are similar. In (stereotypically) boys’ contexts, however, boys score significantly higher than girls. In (stereotypically) girls’ contexts, a significant interaction is found between age and gender, showing that the way girls are affected by such contexts depends on their age. The implications of these findings for gender-fair mathematics learning are discussed.  相似文献   

Economics of Distance and Online Learning: Theory,Practice, and Research William J. Bramble and Santosh Panda,Editors     

Rafi Nachmias  Anat Cohen 《The American journal of distance education》2013,27(4):229-232

Business school deans at institutions accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business were surveyed on distance education programs offered at their respective schools. This study examined sixteen characteristics of the distance education programs: the number of offerings, the question of not offering distance education, future plans, degree level of programs, number of years offered, number of graduates, length of programs, public or private institutions, grant funding, faculty qualifications and student-faculty ratio, method of delivery, use of a librarian, geographic areas served, tuition rates, financial aid, and the successful aspects. The results of this study may be used to make decisions in planning new distance education programs and the enhancement of existing programs.  相似文献   

Today's learning objective is to have a party: playing research with students in a secondary school special needs unit     

Anat Greenstein 《Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs》2014,14(2):71-81

The use of creative methods has been advocated within disability and childhood research as a means of including voices of inarticulate participants in research, as it can support and supplement the use of conventional language. This paper draws on a research project aimed at designing ‘the best school in the world’ with five students in a special needs unit of a secondary school in a socially deprived community in England, to suggest the use of playful creative methods in generating and representing data in inclusive education research. Play, as an activity occurring in an actual social reality yet not completely governed by its rules, offers an interesting starting point for researchers interested not only in describing the existing world but also in imagining viable alternatives to it. This paper discusses how using a playful methodology had an impact on power relations and provided an accessible context to foster participants' engagement in reflexive discussions about social norms and values. Creative and playful methodology was also useful in transgressing the primacy of language in educational research, thus opening spaces for other aspects of experience to be included in the analysis. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/Lt9l1eab6rQ .  相似文献   

Normal service continues — the role of intermediaries in electronic publishing     

Albert Prior 《Learned Publishing》1997,10(4):331-338

The paper outlines some of the conditions which bring about the need for intermediaries in the electronic world, the views of end users and librarians towards electronic journals and the range of intermediary services which exist for Internet based full texts. It also briefly considers archiving and digitisation activities.  相似文献   

Correspondence     

Albert Prior 《Learned Publishing》1993,6(1):77-77

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