Tamar Levin

Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices in Technology-based Classrooms: A Developmental View

Abstract This paper reports on an exploratory, longitudinal study that analyzes and interprets the evolution of teachers’ beliefs regarding learning teaching and technology, and their instructional practices, in the context of integrating technology-based information-rich tasks in six 4th-6th grade classrooms. The study used multiple research tools, interviews, questionnaires and observations, focusing on both teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices. The findings reveal that following multi-year experiences in technology-based classrooms, teachers’ educational beliefs had changed quite substantively, demonstrating multiple views rather than pure beliefs. The study argues that teachers’ beliefs form a mosaic of complementary visions, even conflicting ones. It also shows that it is easier to change classroom practices than educational beliefs.

Changes in Educational Beliefs and Classroom Practices of Teachers and Students in Rich Technology-Based Classrooms.

This study was conducted in the framework of a project that sought to change the school learning and teaching environment and adapt it to current reality through the proactive use of technology in the search for knowledge. It is an exploratory, longitudinal, case study of a single school, in one city in central Israel, which examines changes in educational beliefs, classroom practices, and knowledge restructuring processes of six teachers of grades 4-6, who for three years experienced an approach to teaching and learning focusing on information-rich tasks in an information-rich environment. The main findings show different patterns and rates of change in teacher educational beliefs, knowledge restructuring processes and classroom practices. They also demonstrate that students of teachers whose educational beliefs and classroom practices radically changed and which reflected a constructivist approach to learning regarded learning as a process of engaging with complex, context-related tasks requiring multiple viewpoints, whereas students whose teachers had a traditional positivist approach saw technologyassisted learning as learning with technical tools. The study indicates a reciprocal rather than unidirectional relationship between teacher classroom practice and changes in teacher educational beliefs and knowledge restructuring processes.

Exploring teachers’ views on learning and teaching in the context of a trans‐disciplinary curriculum

This longitudinal case study of a single school examines changes in the educational beliefs of 10 elementary‐school teachers who experienced a constructivist‐based trans‐disciplinary curriculum (CTC). After 3 years of experiencing a CTC, which emerges through theme‐oriented and project‐based learning, teachers’ educational beliefs had changed to demonstrate multiple views rather than pure beliefs. Teachers’ beliefs form a mosaic of complementary visions and the process of change in teachers’ beliefs reflects the ‘overlapping’ rather than the ‘staircase’ metaphor.

Behavioral Patterns of Students under an Individualized Learning Strategy.

The study examines the behavioral patterns of high, average and low achievers in classrooms implementing an individualized instructional strategy. The study makes use of an observational instrument modelled on Medelys Personal Record of school Experiences (PROSE). Seventy-two boys and girls chosen from 12 first, second and third grade classrooms were included in the sample; 1/3 were ranked by the teacher as high achievers, 1/3 as average and 1/3 as low achievers. The findings revealed that students spent about 2/3 of their time on independent work; and the time spent interacting with teacher was about equal to the time spent interacting with classmate.The results also showed that interaction patterns between teacher and individual students are related to the student achievement level. In addition, distinctly different work patterns of independent activity were discerned in high and low achievers indicating higher involvement in on-task activities among high students compared with low achievers. Similiar patterns of interaction between students were found for high, average and low achievers demonstrating either on-task or off-task interaction of a verbal nature among students of the same sex. Implications for teachers, teachers trainers and instructional developers are discussed.

Understanding Language Achievement of Immigrants in Schools: The Role of Multiple Academic Languages

In this paper we argue that immigrant students need to develop both their second language (Hebrew) and the specific language characterizing each subject area learned at school, its terminology, concepts, thinking patterns and world views. At the same time students are also expected to communicate complicated ideas in the second language. These are the issues that triggered our interest in exploring how these two factors interact. We further claim that learning a school subject has elements that are similar to learning a language since each subject area has a specific register and sets of discourses which are culturally bound. More specifically the learning of subject-specific knowledge like those involved in the study of physics, history, geography or mathematics, cannot happen without the communicative base, and without appropriate language knowledge which is essential for good learning. Academic language is thus a necessary component of competence in a well-defined subject area and has to be explicitly developed alongside with it. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate that academic language, as used in schools, plays a major role in understanding and explaining the academic achievements of immigrants, in this case those coming to Israel from the former USSR and Ethiopia and in three school levels – elementary, junior high, and secondary school.

Mixed-methodology Research in Science Education: Opportunities and Challenges in Exploring and Enhancing Thinking Dispositions

Questions about the value of research in education, its paradigmatic orientation, and potential use and importance for advancing knowledge have resurfaced in the past decade, mainly as a result of the proliferation of standards-based reforms and highstakes accountability policies. The political agenda of accountability, manifested in such issues as the call for common standards, quality indicators, and evidence-based instructional programs, has created a demand for proven research strategies among educators, including literacy and science educators. Two acts in the United States— the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2002) and the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA, 2002)—have prompted epistemological questions regarding the disciplinary profile of educational research, maintaining that education research can and should shape knowledge, policy, and practice. Their demand for research-proven strategies along with hopes of making education an evidence-based field (US National Research Council, 2004) have helped to challenge and encourage fresh and mindful dialogue on the nature of worthwhile research in literacy and science education and the relation of research to both theory and practice. For many decades, the quantitative paradigm has been the paradigm of choice for science education research—chiefly when investigating the relation between different types of instruction and student learning. More specifically, the dominant paradigm or Gold Standard for science studies and program evaluation has been experimental methodology. This standard is considered to have merit in particular because experimental research makes explanations possible as to cause and effect. This paradigm has often involved comparing instructional innovation with more traditional forms of instruction in an experiment building or drawing on theory-driven hypotheses, random assignment of participants to treatments, controlled manipulations uniformly applied to all participants under rigorously controlled conditions, and the use of quantitative measurement and statistical analysis (McCall & Green, 2004). The parameters of evaluating performance outcomes have also remained well within

Developing Students’ Views on the Nature of Science through Non-traditional Writing-to-Learn Experiences in the Science Classroom

The chapter describes a theory-driven study, inspired and informed by the constructivist view of learning, science literacy theory, views on the NOS, and cognitive and social theories of writing. Relying on the epistemological effect of writing, it explores the effects that non-traditional forms of writing such as story, diary, and debate, have on students’ views on the nature of science when used in combination with reflective writing on the writing process. Using a pre-post research design with intervention and comparative groups totaling 97 eighth graders from a homogenous, middle-class background, in a city in central Israel, the study demonstrates that the combined use of diversified types of nontraditional writing tasks and reflection on the writing process can enhance students’ views on the nature of science, in a direction aligned with the type of scientific literacy sought in science education today. When structured as cognitively and attitudinally challenging assignments concerning scientific and societal issues, such writing genres can encourage students to perceive science as a more subjective, temporary, speculative, and interpretative endeavor that helps to solve problems and social issues. In contrast, no changes in views on the NOS were found for students in the comparative group

Enhancing Thinking Dispositions Through Informal Writing

This study explores whether, how and why non formal writing in science classroom change students thinking disposition, which are perceived as latent tendencies that motivate and direct abilities toward productive thinking. The study is theory-driven, inspired by a constructivist view of learning, new approaches to science literacy, cognitive and social theories of the writing process, and a theory of thinking disposition. Designed as an action research with a comparative group, the study was conducted in four 8th grade science classrooms for almost two years, and includes 97 students. Measurements of students’ thinking dispositions were analyzed prior to the study and at the end, following the implementation of writing experiences that allowed the use of four writing genres. The measurement instruments were developed and validated specifically for the study: thinking disposition questionnaire, reflection questionnaire and 14 writing tasks. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis was performed. The findings provide hard evidence that not only do students who write on science subjects after studying a science topic show progress in all five thinking dispositions measured, but a comparable group of students, who did not receive writing assignments, either failed to make significant progress or made less significant progress than the intervention group. The results also demonstrate that improvement in student thinking dispositions was affected by tasks that, although generically representing different types of rhetorical discourse, nevertheless had similar potential to enhance dispositions.