International Journal for Lesson & Learning Studies
PurposeThis special issue reveals how lesson study in China continues to serve as a powerful plat... more PurposeThis special issue reveals how lesson study in China continues to serve as a powerful platform to support change in teaching. The papers included in this issue explore how university faculty members and researchers support teachers to cross boundaries resulting from the introduction of key competencies-based (hexin suyang 核心素养) curriculum reform (KCR).Design/methodology/approachThe theme of continuity and change is examined against the backdrop of Chinese lesson study's (CLS's) consistent supporting role in enabling curriculum reform. These analyses make use of concepts involved in understanding boundary crossing, such as using boundary objects and their roles, to help make sense of the new theories, tools, and resources as well as relationships engendered in responding to the reform's demand. While recognizing the continuity at play in Chinese LS, the authors use the lens of learning at the boundary of research-practice partnerships (RPPs) (Farrell et al., 2022) ...
Each presenter retains copyright on the full-text paper. Repository users should follow legal and... more Each presenter retains copyright on the full-text paper. Repository users should follow legal and ethical practices in their use of repository material; permission to reuse material must be sought from the presenter, who owns copyright. Users should be aware of the .
The International Journal of Learning: Annual Review, 2010
Неравенства для гармонических мер относительно неналегающих областей Пусть области B1 и B2 являют... more Неравенства для гармонических мер относительно неналегающих областей Пусть области B1 и B2 являются компонентами дополнения замкнутой жордановой кривой Γ ⊂ C, и пусть E(r) = {z : |z − z0| r}, где z0 ∈ Γ. Известное неравенство для гармонических мер множества Γ∩E(r) относительно областей B1, B2 распространяется на случай произвольного числа попарно неналегающих областей B k , k = 1,. .. , n. Доказываются аналогичные неравенства для гармонических мер множеств, сосредоточенных в нескольких кругах либо континуумах E l (r), l = 1,. .. , m, заданной логарифмической емкости. Кроме того, для указанных мер устанавливаются неравенства, включающие производные Шварца функций, отображающих конформно области B k на единичный круг. Библиография: 12 наименований.
This document may be used for private study or research purpose only. This document or any part o... more This document may be used for private study or research purpose only. This document or any part of it may not be duplicated and/or distributed without permission of the copyright owner. The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document.
Trends of and implications for the diffusion of lesson study: thematic analysis of WALS2019 conference presentations
International Journal for Lesson & Learning Studies, 2020
PurposeA first post-WALS attempt at a thematic analysis of the conference presentations since its... more PurposeA first post-WALS attempt at a thematic analysis of the conference presentations since its first annual meeting in 2007, this paper aims to achieve two major purposes: first, to capture the trends of spread and diffusion of lesson and learning studies globally and second, to draw useful implications for future conferences.Design/methodology/approachA thematic analysis using NVIVO12.0 coding on all forms of conference presentations found in the WALS 2019 Conference Programme was conducted. Representative cases were selected from paper and symposiums sessions to support the claims generated from the analysis.FindingsThe study provides an evidence-based confirmation of the global spread and diffusion of lesson and learning studies. It uncovers findings key to the initial spread and continued diffusion; examines funding as a mechanism enabling university–school research relationships, models of adaptations and issues of sustainability; surfaces the theoretical models and methods ...
Online Learning Resources to Support Knowledge and Community Building in Singapore
2019 Eighth International Conference on Educational Innovation through Technology (EITT), 2019
This paper presents the theory and process of a design-based research project which aims to promo... more This paper presents the theory and process of a design-based research project which aims to promote online learning community for mathematics teachers in Singapore through developing web-based video cases and online platforms. The design principles, components of video case, and online facilitation as well as a pilot study for refinement are reported, analyzed and discussed.
This paper was presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting (AERA), ... more This paper was presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting (AERA), held in Denver, Colorado, USA from 30 Apr to 4 May 2010
Teachers and Teaching in Eastern and Western Schools: A Critical Review of Cross-Cultural Comparative Studies
International Handbook of Research on Teachers and Teaching, 2009
ABSTRACT The nature of teaching in schools in Eastern and Western countries has been a major them... more ABSTRACT The nature of teaching in schools in Eastern and Western countries has been a major theme in cross-country comparative studies in education in the past three decades. Interest in such comparative studies emerged in the 1970s after the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) launched the First International Mathematics Study (FIMS) in 1964 (Husen, 1967). This study showed that the US students scored much lower than students in China (Hong Kong), Japan and Korea. Subsequent large-scale quantitative measurements of student achievement, such as IEA's Second IMS in 1980, and the third, TIMSS, in mid-1990, with a science component added, had consistently revealed the same performance gap between the United States (and other Western countries, such as Germany and Britain) and their counterparts in these East Asian Countries. These large quantitative studies had led researchers to conduct smaller scale research involving qualitative approaches, such as interviews and observation of classroom teaching starting from the early 1980s, for instance, research led by Stevenson and his associates that attempted to identify the contextual factors contributing to the achievement gap. In most cross-cultural comparative studies in education, mathematics and science have been the focus not only because they are more measurable subject areas across different educational systems with different instructional languages but also because they are believed to play more important roles in determining the quality of future work forces for national economic development for the twenty-first century. Given the availability of existing research and space limitation, in this brief review, we refer the Eastern countries to those heavily influenced by Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC)1, such as China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore and Western countries mainly to the United States, Germany, Britain and France.
International Journal of Educational Research, 2006
Efforts beginning in the 1990s to raise the qualifications and quality of China's teachers have b... more Efforts beginning in the 1990s to raise the qualifications and quality of China's teachers have brought about new regulations, standards and systems of accountability. Reflecing broader economic, social and political changes, new policies have moved to create more standard definitions of teacher quality and common forms of accountability. Yet what seems like a process of global convergence occurs in interaction with the persistence of more organic structures that have long been part of China's teaching cultures. Chinese educators appear to be constructing hybrid models that rely on insider and outsider expertise.
Developing curriculum and pedagogical resources for teacher learning
International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, 2011
ABSTRACT Purpose – Teacher education and professional development have long been criticized for f... more ABSTRACT Purpose – Teacher education and professional development have long been criticized for failing to induct and engage teachers in discourses of classroom deliberation. Lesson studies have contributed to an emerging discourse in which teachers come together to study classroom teaching to improve student learning. The purpose of this paper is to share knowledge about developing video resources to support this emerging discourse. Design/methodology/approach – The authors showcase a digital hypermedia video case developed from research lessons on a third-grade topic on division with remainder, conducted by teachers and researchers in a lesson study cycle in Singapore. Drawing on anchored instruction and knowledge points of the mathematics education discourse in China, the authors used embedded contexts, case-based reasoning, critical incidents and facilitation as major design features. Findings – A video documentary traces the research problem and how teachers learned to use the concrete-pictorial-abstract (CPA) model to improve teaching for student learning. Critical incidences are created to engage teachers in analyzing the research lessons by describing, interpreting and probing into the object of learning, student difficulties in learning, and how the teacher mediated the subject matter of teaching. A full range of lesson study data and related reading and web resources are provided in the video case to support training and self study. Originality/value – The paper demonstrates the promise to capitalize on the curricular and pedagogical values of the rich video archives of lesson studies to support continued inquiry of teachers. It has important implications for addressing the issues of depth of implementation and sustainability arising from rapid spread of lesson studies in countries like Singapore.
Entering a Culture of Teaching: Teacher Induction in Shanghai
Comprehensive Teacher Induction, 2003
Li Mei is an energetic, cheerful woman who feels that teaching “is the hardest job under the sun,... more Li Mei is an energetic, cheerful woman who feels that teaching “is the hardest job under the sun, but the happiest”. [2] In her second year of teaching lower secondary mathematics, she teaches thirteen periods a week (the average load for most lower secondary teachers in Shanghai): six each to two different sixth-grade classes and one to an elective ‘activity class’ (huodong ke) that is geared at strengthening and deepening pupils’ interest in mathematics and helping them develop ‘divergent’ ways of thinking that stretch beyond the textbook. Her load is like that of most teachers in her school.
Educational collaboration across borders: the preparation of the Transforming teacher education. Redefined professionals for 21st century schools report
Journal of Education for Teaching, 2010
This paper provides an account of the processes leading to the report Transforming teacher educat... more This paper provides an account of the processes leading to the report Transforming teacher education. Redefined professionals for 21 century schools undertaken by the International Alliance of Leading Education Institutes. The report is a unique document, neither a series of country studies nor one based on an extensive review of the literature. Rather, it attempted to strongly reflect widely varying
This study examines the mediating role of homework in the daily practice of a middle-school mathe... more This study examines the mediating role of homework in the daily practice of a middle-school mathematics teacher and her colleagues in Shanghai. It aims to explore how a system of homework activities mediates and engenders a cultural pedagogy characterized by transforming errors into resources for teaching and learning. The transformation itself embodies teacher learning processes tied up with making sense of errors and providing feedback and pedagogical support to help as many students as possible to 'get it right'. The findings of the study raise important questions about what teaching entails, and how to organize teachers' work so that teacher learning occurs in the process of fostering student learning. This requires a reconceptualization of homework to capitalize on its pedagogical potentials.
Basic education reform in China: globalization with Chinese characteristics
Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 2009
With new information technology and the ensuing innovative process, globalization has led to a ne... more With new information technology and the ensuing innovative process, globalization has led to a new internationally economic, political, cultural, and educational world order. With the increasing spread of capitalism around the world, led mainly by the developed countries, the process of globalization has resulted in homogeneity on the one hand, and diversity and heterogeneity through hybridization on the other (Luke & Carrington, 2002). This creates a “push-pull” effect, “mediated and refracted by local variation and response” (Luke & Carrington, 2002, p. 55; Ferguson, 1992), which has important implications not only economically and politically but also culturally and educationally for any nation-state or local community. After more than three decades of reform (since 1978), China has joined the globalization process with Chinese characteristics. As a socialist country, for a long time, ideological debates have surged over the differences between socialism and capitalism. In the recent decade, however, China has opted for a globalized and market-oriented strategy to achieve its economic goals. For more than a decade, the globalized market economy in China has maintained a fast-growing pace at an annual growth rate of about 10% (Xu, 2009). The rapid economic growth is characterized by increasing industrialization, privatization of means of production, commodification of labour, the rising of a new rich class, and so on (Naughton, 2000). In spite of people’s improved material life, the government and its cultural elites recently publicly acknowledged that these rapid changes have been achieved at the expense of widespread and severe environmental degradation in both rural and urban areas; accelerated loss of farmland to industrialization, widened income gaps between the rich and poor, and brought about keenly felt issues of social and educational justice, just to mention a few (Liu, 2005). These problems, among many others, have caused a social, psychological and ideological crisis for many Chinese people and generated untold resentment against the reform, globalization and the government (Liu, 2005). Consequently, the government and its cultural elites began to argue (Chen, 2004) that what China needs to do the most is not only to achieve rapid economic development but also to protect its environment, to ensure social and education justice in order to build a harmonious society. The impact of economic reforms on education in China is multi-dimensional. China’s basic education has changed as rapidly as its politics, economy, culture and society. The forces of globalization, modernization and economic development have led to substantial changes in China’s educational policy and governance, curriculum and pedagogy (Liu, 2005; Paine & Fang, 2006). Since 1997, the government has launched a series of basic education reforms. In the main, this set of education reforms has attempted to: 1) diversify the school governance with a clear shift from central control towards local decision making (Harris, Zhao & Caldwell, this volume); 2) reorient the system from traditional curricular orientations towards a focus on knowledge and skills that are perceived as
Students' limited view of mathematics and their strong orientation on numbers have been major hin... more Students' limited view of mathematics and their strong orientation on numbers have been major hindrances in developing students' capacity in problem solving. Our study aims to understand students' challenges in reasoning quantitatively and gain insights on how they overcome these challenges. To this end, seven pairs of Grade 5 students and eight pairs Grade 7 were observed and videotaped when they solved one routine task and one nonroutine task. Their processes in solving these two tasks were analyzed using the method of conceptual analysis (Glasersfeld, 1995). Findings suggest that there were two major areas of difficulties that they experienced in reasoning quantitatively. Some of the major challenges behind those difficulties were the lack of quantitative understanding in whole numbers and fractions, the stronger focus on the magnitudes of quantities than the quantities themselves, and the stronger reliance on visually-perceived relationships in the model representation of situation than the quantitative relationships. A case of a Grade 7 pair is presented to discuss a context of pair collaboration that fosters the overcoming challenges in reasoning quantitatively that suggests a practical implication of using collaborative learning to support students' development of quantitative reasoning capacity. Overview and Objective The central focus of Singapore mathematics curriculum framework is to develop students' capacity in mathematical problem solving (MPS) in terms of dealing with mathematical problems that cover a wide range of problem situations and making use of the relevant mathematical knowledge and thinking processes (Curriculum Planning and Development Division, 2000). The biggest hindrances are students' limited view of mathematics and their strong orientation on numbers when they solve mathematical problems. Yeap & Kaur (1996) found that students tended to view mathematics as a collection of tools and algorithms to be used to obtain definite numerical answers to given word problems. Foong & Koay (1997) found that students also tended to disregard the problem situation and directly inferred the needed arithmetic operation to combine numerical data presented in the problems.
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