Search results

Using student-centered teaching methods presents a great challenge to many new middle and high school history teachers. Having experienced mostly teacher-centered instructional approaches (such as lectures and teacher-led discussions) in secondary school and college classes, they begin student teaching with few models for how to teach using less traditional forms of instruction. This paper discusses “Ideas, Issues, and Insights,” a strategy for prospective history teachers, as they explore the use of student-centered teaching methods with middle and high school students. It analyzes written reflection papers where history teacher candidates identify their ideas for three student-centered instructional methods — small group work, primary source analysis, and historical role-plays and simulations — as well as issues that arise when these student-centered methods are implemented in the classroom. As history teacher candidates respond to their ideas and issues, they generate insights about how they can best use student-centered teaching methods in their future classrooms. The first-person perspectives of history teacher candidates are highlighted to show how college students in one university-based teacher preparation program think about their student teaching experiences and their choice of instructional methods to use with students.

This research aims to examine the educational philosophy of teachers in classrooms. Teachers' educational philosophy influences the power balance, course content function, student and teacher roles, responsibility for learning and assessment purposes and processes. The research also analyzes whether gender, qualification, specialization and experience significantly influence classroom educational philosophies.

The study utilized a quantitative research design, utilizing data from 193 teachers working in a public higher education institution in the Sultanate of Oman. The study utilized a survey method to solicit data from the respondents. Besides utilizing descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation, the study used analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test to test the hypotheses.

Analysis revealed an instructional strategy's preference, including elements of both teacher-centered and student-centered educational philosophies. Elements of progressivism, constructivism, reconstructivism and perennialism are more relevant in the teacher's instructional design. The results show no significant differences in teachers' pedagogical philosophy that exist based on gender, specialization and experience. However, teachers' age significantly influences their educational philosophy preferences.

This research centers on a public higher education institution in the Sultanate of Oman, with a particular focus on the Department of Business Studies. This resarch delimits its discussion on teachers' chosen educational philosophy. Other possible factors may also impact student retention and effective teaching and learning.

This research offers valuable insights to academicians, higher education administrators, and policymakers. Specifically, this research emphasizes the significance of employing a blended approach, which incorporates both student-centered and teacher-centered educational philosophies, to enhance student engagement, retention, and effective teaching and learning.

This research emphasizes the importance of educators' adoption of a blended educational philosophy in promoting student retention and engagement within higher education institutions. To achieve desirable outcomes, policymakers in higher education must ascertain which educational philosophy is most effective in the classroom. Additionally, ensuring congruence between preferred educational philosophy and teachers’  instructional practices is vital in facilitating effective teaching and learning.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind among teachers in higher education in the Sultanate of Oman. The outcome of this study helps detail the specific strategies teachers deploy and categorize into various educational philosophies.

This study aims to investigate the role of professors as gatekeepers for sustainable development competencies (SDC) in disciplinary study programs. It aims to understand which factors are crucial for professors to integrate SDC into their teaching, their basic understanding of SDC, the actual degree of SDC integration and how suitable they perceive student-centered teaching strategies for teaching SDC.

The results are based on the qualitative content analysis of interviews with 16 professors after they participated in a didactic training program focused on combining student-centered teaching strategies with SDC.

Psychological factors, like the attribution of responsibility, value orientations and cost-benefit considerations, are not the only reasons for integrating SDC into a course, as disciplinary requirements play their role. When teaching SDC, professors focus on systems-thinking, strategic and normative competencies. They consider student-centered teaching strategies especially suitable to teach systems-thinking and interpersonal competencies.

Promoting changes toward teaching SDC may best be done by supporting professors’ intrinsic motivations: by fulfilling the need for growth in teaching skills, activating values and creating an environment in which everybody feels responsible for teaching SDC.

Teaching SDC with student-centered teaching strategies is relevant even in study programs that show little relation to sustainability issues. professors are experts in their field, but not necessarily in the field of sustainability. Understanding how such professors might include sustainable development competency development in their syllabi can widen the influence of SDC on higher education.

This study of 65 elementary school teacher candidates enrolled in social studies methods classes examined attitudes toward currently contentious curriculum issues before and after participation in a practicum experience teaching an arts-integrated unit on Africa. These curriculum issues included arts-integrated project-based learning versus narrower skill-based lessons; the importance of creativity, leadership, organizational, and affective skills; and student-centered versus teacher-centered instruction. Attitudes were measured by teacher candidates placing themselves on each of ten continuums between endpoints representing opposing curriculum approaches and responding to open-ended questions. Statistically significant pre-post differences with medium effect sizes occurred on three of the continuums indicating that teacher candidates now placed greater value on arts-integrated curricula to teach social studies content; recognized that choice motivates students; and expressed more enjoyment of planning complex, long-term, student-centered projects. They recognized deep conceptual learning and engagement of elementary school students during the student-centered arts-integrated lessons but noted that the time and effort of complex project work were barriers to implementation. Social studies methods teachers need to involve teacher candidates in field experiences that offer authentic arts- integrated student-centered project work to allow them to adopt curriculum stances not experienced as elementary school students.

Although student-centered learning (SCL) has been encouraged for decades in higher education, to what level instructors are practicing SCL strategies remains in question. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a university faculty’s understanding and perceptions of SCL, along with current instructional practices in Qatar.

A mixed-method research design was employed including quantitative data from a survey of faculty reporting their current instructional practices and qualitative data on how these instructors define SCL and perceive their current practices via interviews with 12 instructors. Participants of the study are mainly from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) field.

Study results show that these instructors have rather inclusive definitions of SCL, which range from lectures to student interactions via problem-based teamwork. However, a gap between the instructors’ perceptions and their actual practices was identified. Although student activities are generally perceived as effective teaching strategies, the interactions observed were mainly in the form of student–content or student-teacher, while student–student interactions were limited. Prevailing assessment methods are summative, while formative assessment is rarely practiced. Faculty attributed this lack of alignment between how SCL could and should be practiced and the reality to external factors, including students’ lack of maturity and motivation due to the Middle Eastern culture, and institutional constraints such as class time and size.

The study is limited in a few ways. First regarding methodological justification the data methods chosen in this study were mainly focused on the faculty’s self-reporting. Second the limited number of participants restricts this study’s generalizability because the survey was administered in a volunteer-based manner and the limited number of interview participants makes it difficult to establish clear patterns. Third, researching faculty members raises concerns in the given context wherein extensive faculty assessments are regularly conducted.

A list of recommendations is provided here as inspiration for institutional support and faculty development activities. First, faculty need deep understanding of SCL through experiences as learners so that they can become true believers and implementers. Second, autonomy is needed for faculty to adopt appropriate assessment methods that are aligned with their pedagogical objectives and delivery methods. Input on how faculty can adapt instructional innovation to tailor it to the local context is very important for its long-term effectiveness (Hora and Ferrare, 2014). Third, an inclusive approach to faculty evaluation by encouraging faculty from STEM backgrounds to be engaged in research on their instructional practice will not only sustain the practice of innovative pedagogy but will also enrich the research profiles of STEM faculty and their institutes.

The faculty’s understanding and perceptions of implementing student-centered approaches were closely linked to their prior experiences – experiencing SCL as a learner may better shape the understanding and guide the practice of SCL as an instructor.

SCL is not a new topic; however, the reality of its practice is constrained to certain social and cultural contexts. This study contributes with original and valuable insights into the gap between ideology and reality in implementation of SCL in a Middle Eastern context.

This paper aims to report empirical research investigating how school‐based management (SBM) and paradigm shift (PS) in education are closely related to teachers' student‐centered teaching and students' active learning in a sample of Hong Kong secondary schools.

It is a cross‐sectional survey research involving 31 secondary schools, 1,119 teachers and 7,063 students with seven sets of questionnaires: three for students, three for teachers and one for principals.

The results of analysis indicate the following findings. The greater tendency towards SBM of a school associates with the greater extent of PS from the site‐bounded paradigm towards the triplization paradigm in education. Both the measures of SBM and PS in education are closed related to teachers' student‐centered teaching (in terms of facilitating student learning, facilitating student thinking and facilitating student self‐reflection and assessment) and students' active learning (in terms of positive learning attitudes, application of various learning methods, learning effectiveness, multiple thinking in learning and satisfaction in learning). The profiles of “high SBM and high‐PS” schools are much more preferable than “low SBM and low‐PS” schools in terms of various measures of teachers' teaching and students' learning.

Even though SBM and PS in education are strongly emphasized in ongoing educational reforms in different parts of the world, there is lack of empirical study to show how they are related to teachers' teaching and students' learning in practice. The findings of the research contribute to filling this research gap and advancing theoretical and practical understanding in such a frontier area.

This study aims to explore expectation gaps concerning the roles between educators and students in the context of venture creation courses at higher education institutions by investigating their mutual perspectives. The authors seek to answer the following research questions: (1) how is the role expectation toward the entrepreneurship education of teachers different from that of students and (2) what are the consequences of these expectation gaps in entrepreneurship education?

This study applies an explorative qualitative approach. As the research setting, the authors selected an entrepreneurship education course for advanced management students at a German public university. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with both educators and students to examine how role ambiguity emerges in venture creation courses.

This study identified discrepancies between educators and students in their fundamental assumptions regarding the role of educators and students. Such discrepancies are the autonomy-level assumption gap, capacity assumption gap and learning outcomes expectation gap. Based on the findings, this study develops a framework of expectation gaps between educators and students as sources for role ambiguity in entrepreneurship education by extending the role episode model developed in role theory.

The findings contribute to the extant literature on entrepreneurship education in several ways. First, this study reveals that students in venture creation programs can encounter role ambiguity due to differing expectations about their role between educators and students, which can negatively affect the students' perception of their learning outcome. Second, this study discovered that the possible discrepancies regarding the fundamental assumptions about the role of educators and students pose a challenge to educators. Third, the findings illuminate the importance of understanding the complex identity of students in the context of student-centered entrepreneurship education.

This study offers several practical implications for entrepreneurship educators in higher education institutions. First, this study reveals the confusion among students concerning their role in entrepreneurship education. As such, it is recommended that educators explain to students the purpose of the student-centered pedagogical approach and the expected role of students in acting as independent entrepreneurial agents. Second, while student-centered entrepreneurship education is based on the fundamental assumption that students are motivated to develop their own startup projects, educators must consider the nature of students' motivation and their overall student-life situation. Finally, this study demonstrates the importance of creating an active feedback loop so that entrepreneurship teachers can be aware of such perceptional gaps between educators and students and understand the sources of these gaps.

While the extant literature indicates the existence of perceptual gaps between educators and students in the context of entrepreneurship education, how these gaps emerge and influence the outcome of entrepreneurship education remained unclear. One critical reason for the under-investigation of this issue was that existing studies predominantly emphasize the educators' perspectives, although such expectation gaps can only emerge through the discrepant views of two different parties. This study tackled this research gap by considering the mutual perspective of educators and students by applying role theory.

In this chapter, we offer a thorough research compendium that bridges together theories and perspectives from various disciplines including adult and higher education, psychology and social psychology, sociology, and women's and gender studies in order to help instructors think about ways to expand on existing activities by incorporating mobile technologies in the learning process. Based on this review of literature, we discuss the importance of motivation, participation, community, voice, and learning in higher education and offer our Interdisciplinary Model for Student-Centered Classrooms as a guide for helping instructors who want to use mobile technologies in their own classes. In the second half of the chapter, we discuss suggestions for achieving this model through the use of mobile technologies, provide several opportunities for critical reflection of this model through problem-based scenarios to stimulate applications of our model, and consider the process of infusing mobile technologies into current pedagogical techniques. Overall, this chapter provides a theoretical basis and mandate for further research and implementation of mobile technologies as useful pedagogical tools in higher education capable of increasing student retention, engagement, and positive learning outcomes in higher education.

Guiding college and university students through the process of becoming globally aware citizens has increasingly become a part of the higher education landscape in the United States. Student affairs administrators, alongside faculty, are charged to assist students in their journey toward global citizenry. Each is encouraged to do so without prescribed methods or plans imposed upon them. Written from the perspective of a student affairs administrator within an academic unit, this chapter affirms the importance of global citizenry and how concepts of global citizenry can be incorporated into student-centered academic advising. The literature presented is drawn from foundational research on academic advising and student development coupled with references to the leading entity regarding global citizenry – Oxfam International. In addition to the aforementioned scholarship, the author also includes narrative examples from her own professional experiences within higher education. This chapter concludes with concrete recommendations for ways to incorporate concepts of global citizenry into academic advising.

The purpose of this research is to investigate how secondary school teachers adaptively make use of the classroom learning environment. The approach illustrates the intimate relationship between teaching style, learning style and the adaptive use of space as well as the preferences for different learning environments.

A multi method study approach was used to carry out the research. Two main methods were used in the study. In the first method, trainee teachers recorded spatial observations (mapping). Maps of the chemistry classrooms were produced. The observers marked all fixed, semi‐fixed and flexible elements in the classroom space. The second method involved two questionnaires. The first questionnaire (Principles of Adult Learning Scale (PALS)) was used to identify and describe teachers' teaching styles. The second questionnaire (Questionnaire of the Classrooms' Physical Properties) was used by trainee teachers acting as observers. It consists of a set of items that enable the evaluation of classroom quality related to specific physical properties. Research data were collected from ten secondary schools (upper level of the Polish secondary schools) in five cities located in South‐West part of Poland.

The results suggest that the traditional row and column classroom seating arrangement was dominant. It was found that teaching styles could be identified determined using factors identified using the PALS scale. Teachers generally perceived their own learning environment as more teacher‐centered or more student‐centered. Their teaching styles were combinations of student‐centered and teacher‐centered activity.

The research has practical significance in that it had developed a questionnaire that can be used by students and teachers to monitor the quality of physical classrooms environments and provide guidelines for the improvement of learning spaces.

The application of the multi‐method described in this study creates possibilities for a deeper understanding of secondary school classroom environments. A structured data collection system was valuable for the trainee teachers. They acquired a useful knowledge of classroom management and how to create effective learning environments, during the professional practice period. Trainee teachers gain awareness that would enable them to make changes to the classroom environment as an adaptive resource.