Fang, Yanping

Video cases have been shown as effective tools to support teacher learning and teacher development. This study aims to design web-based video cases to support teachers in mathematical problem solving. Two video cases were built by drawing on data from a three-year funded project in Singapore. The first case is built on two Grade 5 teachers’ different pedagogy in conducting problem solving activities while the second case draws on different challenges that two pairs of Grade 5 students experienced in the process of solving problems. The framing includes case commentary, guiding questions, and discussion forum to help users reflect on their practices and initiate peer-sharing and -learning among users. The long-term goal of the design is to build a virtual community of practice.

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.

This paper aims to review the research paradigms of action research, narrative inquiry, and teacher research, mainly through the writings of John Elliott; F. Michael Connelly and D. Jean Clandinin; and Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Landy Lytle respectively, for conceptual possibilities for fruitful schoolteacher and University researcher partnerships. This study seeks to survey the focal points relevant for the concerns of practice, theory and partnership to give the reader an introduction with an intention to further develop these practitioner research with the possibility of encouraging more fruitful School and University partnerships. This is with a view that teachers need to engage in educational research and that researchers’ perspectives can also contribute especially within partnerships. The literature review aims to survey the current stances of the research paradigms along with their features, research foci, methods, outcomes and others. These are then conceptualized for possible research--practice partnerships (RPP) within educational research in terms of definitions, conceptualizations, organizations, practice and enactment. The review also investigates possible partnership issues, problems and tensions of the research paradigms to suggest resolutions, guiding questions and recommendations for researchers and practitioners.

Starting with a brief overview of the history of teacher education development in China, this paper aims to shed light on a few major positive characteristics in the reform and change of teacher education in China occurred in the past decade. These include changing role of the central government, innovations in curriculum and instruction in pre-service teacher education and strengthening of in-service teacher development. Challenges and issues faced by the reform and development of teacher education in China will be discussed in the final part of the paper together with a brief discussion on directions for the future.

This paper presents findings from observations of the case teacher’s unit of lessons that informed the development of the video cases and teacher participation in the online PLCs. A simplified version of Nassaji & Wells’ (2000) IRF-discourse structure and the Mathematics Curriculum Framework (CPDD, 2005) reveals that the bridging from model method to algebra was done through ‘discussion of problem sums’ by purposefully and carefully building upon students’ work using model method. The lessons followed predominant IRF structure where teachers’ initiated discourse plays key role in developing students’ processes, metacognition, and attitudes towards building connection between the two methods. Such classroom discourse patterns informed the development of viewing questions that scaffold teachers in viewing the video cases.

This report highlights the major findings of a two-year CRPP-funded intervention project in which researchers worked closely with a primary school to introduce Lesson Study as a tool for teacher learning and community building. The findings are presented through a survey study of teachers' perception of Lesson Study; two case studies of the knowledge construction and community building processes in two sampled Lesson Study teams, one in English Language and one in Mathematics and a methodological exploration that attempted to represent the instructional improvement in four mathematics research lessons from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. A video case intended to be used as a tool to support teacher development was developed to document the learning of a mathematics topic through the experience of a Lesson Study team. Its components and development process are also illustrated.

School leaders do recognise that there is an emerging new generation team of teachers with different abilities and life experience in our schools. These teachers bring into the classrooms diverse talents and they approach lesson planning and development in creative ways to motivate and engage their students to learn in school. A greater interplay among teachers would be useful to provide a more sustained approach for innovative and effective pedagogies to scale up across to other subjects and levels. The project allowed veteran teachers with deep teaching experiences working together with other teachers with new perspectives. Five teachers from a secondary school introduced media materials into their teaching of oracy in English Language (EL). The aim was to increase opportunities for high ability students to learn and interact with the materials outside the classroom. The focus of the paper is on the curriculum work as seen through the eyes of these five teachers in providing a more challenging school-based curriculum to engage their high ability students. The teachers planned a series of lessons guided by a modified lesson study protocol. Learning materials were packaged to achieve the syllabus and instructional objectives through the use of class tasks and small group discussions, role-modelling and in-depth study of specific interest areas in the media materials. The five dimensions in the PETALSTM Framework, namely, pedagogy, experience of learning, tone of environment, assessment and learning content were used to examine their pivotal role in predicting students’ engagement levels. Data analysis of the survey as well as interviews with somes tudents highlighted areas for future work in the use of media materials for EL teaching and learning.