Dealing with the complexities of the classroom and the diversity of events in classroom situations presents a major challenge for classroom management. The knowledge a teacher has for processing this ...complexity depends a great deal on their level of experience, leading to differences in the way teachers perceive and interpret classroom events. This includes how they monitor events and how they maintain an ongoing awareness of classroom situations. It also impacts decisions about when and how to act in response to events. Research on classroom management has often focused on how to handle common classroom situations, but does not provide a theoretical description of how knowledge from experience affects teachers’ awareness and ability to manage the classroom. This article proposes a definition for
classroom management scripts
by contrasting expert and novice teachers’ knowledge and their decisions to act in response to classroom events. Classroom management scripts help clarify differences in teachers’ recognition and representation of events by considering how expertise influences visual perception and mental interpretation. The proposed model exposes the internal cognitive processing involved in classroom management. Such insights can be useful for helping teacher educators and teachers themselves analyze and make sense of puzzling events. In turn, this may help develop training approaches to improve teachers’ awareness of factors easily overlooked when considering classroom management, enhancing professional vision. This theory also underlines the centrality of facilitating and sustaining learning when grappling with the challenges of managing a classroom.
Visual expertise has been explored in numerous professions, but research on teachers' vision remains limited. Teachers' visual expertise is an important professional skill, particularly the ability ...to simultaneously perceive and interpret classroom situations for effective classroom management. This skill is complex and relies on an awareness of classroom events. Using eye tracking measurements and verbal think aloud, we investigated differences in how expert and novice teachers perceive problematic classroom scenes. Sixty-seven teachers participated, 35 experienced secondary school teachers (experts) and 32 teachers-in-training (novices). Participants viewed videos of authentic lessons and their eye movements were recorded as they verbalized thoughts about what they had seen in the lesson and how it was relevant to classroom management. Two different types of videos were viewed: lesson fragments showing (1) multiple events depicting disengaged students with no overt disruptions and (2) multiple events that included a prominent disruptive event affecting the class. Analysis of eye movements showed that novices' viewing was more dispersed whereas experts' was more focused. Irrespective of the video type, expert teachers focused their attention on areas where relevant information was available, while novice teachers' attention was more scattered across the classroom. Experts' perception appears to be more knowledge-driven whereas novices' appears more image-driven. Experts monitored more areas than novices, while novices skipped more areas than experts. Word usage also differed, showing that expertise was associated with a higher frequency of words referencing cognition, perception, and events than novices.
Keeping an Eye on Learning Wolff, Charlotte E.; van den Bogert, Niek; Jarodzka, Halszka ...
Journal of teacher education,
01/2015, Volume:
66, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Classroom management represents an important skill and knowledge set for achieving student learning gains, but poses a considerable challenge for beginning teachers. Understanding how teachers’ ...cognition and conceptualizations differ between experts and novices is useful for enhancing beginning teachers’ expertise development. We created a coding scheme using grounded theory to analyze expert and novice teachers’ verbalizations describing classroom events and their relevance for classroom management. Four categories of codes emerged. These referred to perceptions/interpretations, thematic focus, temporality, and cognitive processing expressed. Mixed-method analysis of teachers’ verbalizations yielded a number of significant effects related to participants’ expertise levels. Notably, teachers’ cognitive processing diverged significantly based on expertise level. Differences in focus included themes such as student learning, student discipline, and teacher interaction and influence. Experts focused on learning in the classroom and the teacher’s ability to influence learning, whereas novices were more concerned with maintaining discipline and behavioral norms.
The World Wide Web (WWW) has become the biggest information source for students while solving information problems for school projects. Since anyone can post anything on the WWW, information is often ...unreliable or incomplete, and it is important to evaluate sources and information before using them. Earlier research has shown that students have difficulties with evaluating sources and information. This study investigates the criteria secondary educational students use while searching the Web for information. 23 students solved two information problems while thinking aloud. After completing the tasks they were interviewed in groups on their use of criteria. Results show that students do not evaluate results, source and information very often. The criteria students mention when asked which criteria are important for evaluating information are not always the same criteria they mention while solving the information problems. They mentioned more criteria but also admitted not always using these criteria while searching the Web.
The aim of this study was to compare student learning patterns in higher education across different cultures. A meta-analysis was performed on three large-scale studies that had used the same ...research instrument: the Inventory of learning Styles (ILS). The studies were conducted in the two Asian countries Sri Lanka and Indonesia and the European country The Netherlands. Students reported use of learning strategies, metacognitive strategies, conceptions of learning and learning orientations were compared in two ways: by analyses of variance of students' mean scale scores on ILS scales, as well as by comparing the factor structures of the ILS-scales between the three studies. Results showed most differences in student learning patterns between Asian and European students. However, many differences were identified between students from the two Asian countries as well. The Asian learner turned out to be a myth. Moreover, Sri Lankan students made the least use of memorising strategies of all groups. That Asian learners would have a propensity for rote learning turned out to be a myth as well. Some patterns of learning turned out to be universal and occurred in all groups, other patterns were found only among the Asian or the European students. The findings are discussed in terms of learning environment and culture as explanatory factors. Practical implications for student mobility in an international context are derived. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).
This study investigates pharmacy students’ reasoning while solving a case task concerning an acute patient counselling situation in a pharmacy. Participants’ (
N
= 34) reasoning processes were ...investigated with written tasks utilizing eye-tracking in combination with verbal protocols. The case was presented in three pages, each page being followed by written questions. Eye movements were recorded during case processing. Success in the task required differentiating the relevant information from the task redundant information, and initial activation of several scripts and verification of the most likely one, when additional information became available. 2nd (
n
= 16) and 3rd (
n
= 18)-year students’ and better and worse succeeding students’ processes were compared. The results showed that only a few 2nd-year students solved the case correctly, whereas almost all of the 3rd-year students were successful. Generally, the average total processing times of the case material did not differ between the groups. However, better-succeeding and 3rd-year students processed the very first task-relevant sentences longer, indicating that they were able to focus on relevant information. Differences in the written answers to the 2nd and 3rd question were significant, whereas differences regarding the first question were not. Thus, eye-tracking seems to be able to capture illness script activation during case processing, but other methods are needed to depict the script verification process. Based on the results, pedagogical suggestions for advancing pharmacy education are discussed.
Experience in the classroom influences how teachers interpret classroom events. This article investigated differences between expert and novice teachers' interpretations of authentic, problematic ...classroom events. Two types of videos presented problematic events, displaying either unrelated problems, such as disengaged, off-task students, or interrelated problems leading to a flagrant disruption. Predicted differences in teachers’ verbalized interpretations were analyzed through a multi-category coding scheme. All coding categories showed significant main effects for expertise. Novices interpretations focused on issues of behavior and discipline. Experts were markedly focused on student learning, stressing the influential role of the teacher on events arising in the classroom.
•Experts' central focus for managing events is whether or not students are learning.•Teacher-to-student interactions are crucial to how experts' interpret classroom problems.•Novices offer partially integrated perspectives when problematic events are striking.•The timescale of events differs significantly between expert and novice teachers.•Novices tell what they see; experts integrate the meaning behind what they see.
The positioning of eleven teachers towards an innovation was studied in the light of ownership, sense-making and agency. Semi-structured and video-stimulated interviews were used for data collection. ...The findings show that these three concepts are useful for describing similarities and differences between teachers in terms of their positioning towards the innovation. Considerable differences were found between teachers regarding their ownership, sense-making, and agency. Exploring the relations between these concepts revealed that a high degree of agency often went together with a high degree of ownership, but seemed to be moderated by the sense-making process.
► Teacher change towards coaching role was studied in the light of ownership, sense-making and agency. ► These concepts proved useful to describe teachers’ positioning towards an educational innovation. ► Teachers’ ownership, sense-making and agency of the coaching role differed considerably. ► Coaching role part of teacher identity when feelings of ownership are high. ► High agency often goes together with high ownership, but seems moderated by sense-making process.
Scripts and clinical reasoning Charlin, Bernard; Boshuizen, Henny P A; Custers, Eugene J ...
Medical education,
December 2007, Volume:
41, Issue:
12
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Context Each clinical encounter represents an amazing series of psychological events: perceiving the features of the situation; quickly accessing relevant hypotheses; checking for signs and symptoms ...that confirm or rule out competing hypotheses, and using related knowledge to guide appropriate investigations and treatment.
Objective Script theory, issued from cognitive psychology, provides explanations of how these events are mentally processed. This essay is aimed at clinical teachers who are interested in basic sciences of education. It describes the script concept and how it applies in medicine via the concept of the ‘illness script’.
Methods Script theory asserts that, to give meaning to a new situation in our environment, we use goal‐directed knowledge structures adapted to perform tasks efficiently. These integrated networks of prior knowledge lead to expectations, as well as to inferences and actions. Expectations and actions embedded in scripts allow subjects to make predictions about features that may or may not be encountered in a situation, to check these features in order to adequately interpret (classify) the situation, and to act appropriately.
Conclusions Theory raises questions about how illness scripts develop and are refined with clinical experience. It also provides a framework to assist their acquisition.
► The worked example effect (WEE) has mainly been shown in well-structured tasks. ► The same applies to the expertise-reversal effect (ERE). ► This study investigated these effects in a less ...structured task: legal reasoning. ► We did not find an ERE with those less structured tasks. ► The WEE was found for both novice and advanced law students.
The worked example effect indicates that learning by studying worked examples is more effective than learning by solving the equivalent problems. The expertise reversal effect indicates that this is only the case for novice learners; once prior knowledge of the task is available problem solving becomes more effective for learning. These effects, however, have mainly been studied using highly structured tasks. This study investigated whether they also occur on less structured tasks, in this case, learning to reason about legal cases. Less structured tasks take longer to master, and hence, examples may remain effective for a longer period of time. Novice and advanced law students received either a description of general process steps they should take, worked examples, worked examples including the process steps, or no instructional support for reasoning. Results show that worked examples were more effective for learning than problem-solving, both for novice and advanced students, even though the latter had significantly more prior knowledge. So, a worked example effect was found for both novice and advanced students, and no evidence for an expertise-reversal effect was found with these less structured tasks.
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