Family Child Care Providers’ Perspectives Regarding Effective Professional Development and Their Role in the Child Care System: A Qualitative Study     

Jane D. Lanigan 《Early Childhood Education Journal》2011,38(6):399-409

This study examines family child care providers’ perspectives regarding effective professional development and their role in the early learning and care system. Four focus groups were conducted annually for 3 years involving a total of 54 licensed family child care providers. Supportive social relationships emerged as an important dimension of family child care providers’ professional development experience. Providers preferred a cohort design which enabled them to establish relationships with colleagues and a long-term relationship with the same instructor. Trust and a non-judgmental atmosphere were critical to the learning environment. A collaborative approach to evaluation and assessment that focused on a small number of specific items each month supported the continuous quality improvement process better than a single annual assessment by an objective evaluator. Family child care providers valued professionalism, but viewed their services as a unique segment of the early learning and care system worthy of distinct professional development and respect. Recommendations for designing and delivering effective professional development for family child care providers are discussed.  相似文献   

Enjoying A Good Story: Why We Use Children’s Literature When Teaching Adults     

Nancy K. Freeman  Stephanie Feeney  Eva Moravcik 《Early Childhood Education Journal》2011,39(1):1-5

Early childhood teacher educators frequently enhance their teaching by reading children’s books to their adult students. It is not unusual for faculty outside of early childhood to question devoting precious class time to read-alouds which they may consider a curious, if not frivolous, instructional strategy. Quality children’s literature can, however, enhance students’ experiences in the college classroom, contribute to their understanding of course content, promote their personal growth and self-understanding, increase their appreciation for quality children’s literature, and enhance their ability to integrate storybooks into their own teaching. Children’s books often capture a child’s point of view. They have the potential to provide historical or cultural perspectives on children and families. They also can lead to the examination of universal truths and can facilitate the discussion of sensitive or emotional issues A list of books with suggested uses is included.  相似文献   

Video diaries: a tool to investigate sustainability-related learning in threshold spaces     

Jane Roberts 《Environmental Education Research》2011,17(5):675-688

This paper takes as a case study an undergraduate field class from a UK university to rural Uganda. It describes and evaluates the use of video diaries as a tool for investigating the process of transformative learning in the context of education for sustainability. The applicability of threshold concept theory to this learning is investigated. Results show the video diary technique to be much more successful in capturing the development of student learning than written diaries. Despite some practical difficulties, rich data were generated. Analysis demonstrated that learning met three of the five criteria for threshold concepts: the learning was transformative, integrative and troublesome. Further research could test whether the learning in this case study met the threshold concept criterion of irreversibility. Further elaboration of the theoretical relationship between threshold concepts, transformative learning and education for sustainability is also needed. It is concluded that the video diary method is potentially transferable to other educational research contexts and may be particularly suitable for researching learning in threshold spaces.  相似文献   

Curriculum stasis: the disconnect between music and technology in the Australian curriculum     

Renée Crawford  Jane Southcott 《Technology, Pedagogy and Education》2017,26(3):347-366

Technology is a dominant mediating factor impacting on current human behaviour and social change, which both acts on and is acted upon by other phenomena. This changing social landscape, along with new expectations and requirements, drives our educational priorities and curriculum agenda. There is no denying the prevalence of technology found in the statements and guidelines of the national Australian Curriculum. Further, the National Review of School Music Education identified the importance of technology in school music education in 2005. The curriculum guidelines illustrate an understanding of technology in Music and the Arts that is both vague and limiting. In 2015 we are at a point of curriculum stasis, an equilibrium that highlights a disconnect between music, technology and Australian music education. This article investigates current secondary school Years 7–10 (ages 11–15 years) Music and Arts curriculum statements concerning the use of technology and compares this to the general capability information and computer technology (ICT) curricula. There is wide recognition that digital technology is essential in teaching and learning, but this is not reflected in contemporary Australian Arts and Music curricula.  相似文献   

Tracking New Directions in the Evaluation of Postgraduate Supervision   总被引：3，自引：0，他引：3  

Tania Aspland  Helen Edwards  Jane O'Leary  Yoni Ryan 《Innovative Higher Education》1999,24(2):127-147

This article focuses on the evaluation of thesis supervision and highlights the vast range of problem areas presently documented as significant areas of concern for both graduate students and their supervisors. Additionally, the authors report on a study completed in 1995, which surveyed all Australian universities about current evaluative practices in postgraduate supervision. The conclusion of this study was that the conduct of such evaluations appears to be minimal and is primarily designed to obtain an indicator of the general health of a university's postgraduate supervision rather than to foster improved supervisory practices. As part of the same study, the authors conducted University faculty-based student and supervisor focus groups. Key issues emerging from these focus groups were: (1) the importance of relational aspects of supervision as the student communicates over the long term with one or more supervisors; (2) the importance of systematic feedback, monitoring, and evaluation to the supervisory process; and (3) the lack of strategies to facilitate this evaluative feedback process. On the basis of these findings, the authors designed evaluative strategies to facilitate regular ongoing feedback between students and supervisors.  相似文献   

Skills for Independence for Children with Cerebral Palsy: a comparative longitudinal study     

Jane Jung‐Ae Hur 《International Journal of Disability, Development & Education》1997,44(3):263-274

Thirty‐six children with cerebral palsy, aged 3.5 to 4.5 years were compared on their skills for independence. Of the 36 boys and girls, 19 children were enrolled in a Conductive Education Program in Birmingham and 17 were enrolled in British special education programs in the Greater Manchester area. Skills for independence were measured with the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales via teachers’ responses, once a year on three occasions. Parents were interviewed using the Developmental Profile 2, once a year on three occasions. The results of two‐way ANOVA with one repeated measure on both teachers’ and parents’ responses indicate that there was no significant difference between the two groups in their skills for independence. However, both groups performed significantly better as they were getting older. Despite the strong emphasis on independence in Conductive Education, the children's level of independence was no different from their counterparts. Thus, the claim for the effectiveness of Conductive Education is not supported by the study.  相似文献   

Students’ use of slope conceptualizations when reasoning about the line of best fit     

Stephanie A. Casey  Courtney Nagle 《Educational Studies in Mathematics》2016,92(2):163-177

  相似文献   

Dissecting values in the classroom     

Smith J 《New scientist (1971)》1992,134(1820):31-35

  相似文献   

Higher education's new playbook: Learning Reconsidered     

Jane Fried 《About Campus》2007,12(1):2-7

The rules that dictate educational practice on most campuses were written prior to the invention of movable type and long before scientists fully understood learning as an integrated and context‐specific process. Jane Fried summarizes two documents that may well replace the tired old playbooks of yore.  相似文献   

Gesture as a window on children's beginning understanding of false belief     

Carlson SM  Wong A  Lemke M  Cosser C 《Child development》2005,76(1):73-86

Given that gestures may provide access to transitions in cognitive development, preschoolers' performance on standard tasks was compared with their performance on a new gesture false belief task. Experiment 1 confirmed that children (N=45, M age=54 months) responded consistently on two gesture tasks and that there is dramatic improvement on both the gesture false belief task and a standard task from ages 3 to 5. In 2 subsequent experiments focusing on children in transition with respect to understanding false beliefs (Ns=34 and 70, M age=48 months), there was a significant advantage of gesture over standard and novel verbal-response tasks. Iconic gesture may facilitate reasoning about opaque mental states in children who are rapidly developing concepts of mind.  相似文献