We describe a collaborative project in which university researchers, teachers and Grade 4–5 English language learners (ELLs) investigated the sociohistorical contexts and practices in which the ELLs participate, through a ‘community scan’. Many observers have argued that schools and teachers have such minimal knowledge of the outside- school lives of their multilingual and multicultural students that they are unable to build upon the ‘funds of knowledge’ that students and other members of their communities have. In particular, a large body of recent literature argues that school literacy education should be linked to literacies that children develop in their homes and communities. We present here a study centred on a public school located in a Canadian Punjabi-Sikh community. For our scan we collected census and other demographic representations of the community, as well as media reports and academic literature concerned with Punjabi-Sikh immigration. In addition, our scan included interviews with teachers, principals, parents and community leaders. Students’ investigations and representations of the community and of out-of-school multiliteracies were also collected. The authors argue that such information is crucial in the development of pedagogy that values and promotes the reworking of the practices, images, texts and symbols that children already use.
This paper reports on the second phase of a joint teacher/researcher project that explored teachers’ understandings of the potential of the interactive whiteboard (IWB) as a tool for primary school children’s collaborative group work. By examining teachers’ written analyses and discussions of work carried out in their own classrooms, the paper seeks to contribute to the debate about the ways in which the use of IWBs can contribute to changes in pedagogy. It highlights the interrelationships between collaborative learning and factors identified as important in the research carried out by teachers, amongst them the children’s technical skills and confidence, the mediating role of the teacher, the IWB affordances for knowledge‐building and the teachers’ own knowledge, attitudes and professional development. The paper also provides an account of how participation by the teachers in a course with Faculty staff, focused on the collaborative co‐construction of knowledge related to learning and to classroom research grounded in the values and principles of socio‐cultural theory, supported changes in pedagogic practice.
Inequality in classroom can be addressed Much of the hidden curriculum is shown that classroom pedagogy stratify learners and engage and enable learners unequally. Literary , reading skills at at the basis of learning and success at school, but is not tacitly taught. Socioeconomic situation determines exposure to lierary, reading is seen as incremental, but using scaffolding, LtoR and Rto Learn and the five steps, all leraners can by supported by the teacher (giving information instead of demanding information)
report on outcomes from recent research in which we have
worked with the metaphor of ‘scaffolding’ to address questions about the
nature of English as a Second Language (ESL) education.
What do we teach when we teach information literacy in higher education? This paper describes a pedagogical approach to information literacy that helps instructors focus content around transformative learning thresholds. The threshold concept framework holds promise for librarians because it grounds the instructor in the big ideas and underlying concepts that make information literacy exciting and worth learning about. This paper looks at how this new idea relates to existing standards and posits several threshold concepts for information literacy.
The aim of this article is to discuss some of the challenges and possibilities that librarians may face when engaging in faculty-library collaboration. The main objective is to present findings from two case studies of embedded librarianship at Gjøvik University College (GUC) and to compare these findings with results from a literature review. The literature review is concentrated around collaboration challenges, a possible role-expansion for librarians, team-teaching and assessment of information skills courses. Another objective is to present two pedagogical approaches that are in use at GUC; the tutor approach and the team-teaching approach. Findings from the case studies suggest that faculty staff were impressed with the librarian’s knowledge and they quickly became comfortable with team-teaching and/or leaving the librarian in charge of the students. However there were concerns from both the teacher and librarian about the time-consuming nature of collaborative work. This paper contributes to the literature through a literature review, two case studies and teaching approaches that highlight factors leading to success when collaborating with faculty.
The research question asks how interactive whiteboards can support interactivity and dialogic communication between teachers and students. This is mostly focused on use in Secondary History; although Primary and middle schools included in the study.
Gibbons, P. 2008: Abstract: This paper reports on some of the findings from research that investigated how
the notion of ‘intellectual quality’ is played out in schools where there are large
numbers of students who are learning through the medium of English as a second
language (ESL). Starting with the premise that high challenge, high support
classrooms benefit all learners, the paper discusses and illustrates the recurring
intellectual practices identified in five linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms,
where the teachers were involved in action research projects. The paper also
discusses the collaborative process by which the research was undertaken, and the
teacher learning that resulted. It concludes with a brief discussion of the implications
for pedagogy, and suggests that the ‘apprenticeship’ approach that broadly
describes the pedagogy adopted by the teachers has the potential to be particularly
significant for ESL learners’ engagement and participation in curriculum and
language learning.