The abundant scientific resources on the Web provide great opportunities for students to expand their science learning, yet easy access to information does not ensure learning. Prior research has ...found that middle school students tend to read Web‐based scientific resources in a shallow, superficial manner. A software tool was designed to support middle school students in reading online scientific resources through three key strategies: making explicit a skim–read–summarize structure for online reading, using prompts to guide students' reading and foster articulation of thinking, and connecting reading to learning purposes. This study examined the differences between regular and guided online reading performed by eight pairs of sixth graders in a science inquiry project. The students' online reading processes and conversations were captured by a screen‐recording programme. Analysis of 60 h of screen videos showed that the students' online reading in the regular condition was cursory, fragmented, and opportunistic, while the structured online reading was more deliberate, thorough, and purposeful. Overall, the results suggest that middle school students' online reading of scientific resources needs to be guided.
Encouraging students’ higher-order thinking skills (HOTs) has become an ultimate objective for several education programmes. Being a significant domain of scaffolding strategies, HOTs has been ...considered as a concern that should persistently be at the vanguard of reform agenda of science. The present research aims to examine the effect of scaffolding strategies on HOTs of middle school science students in the context of Saudi Arabia. To carry out the research aim, quasi-experimental design has been applied based on multiple-choice questions comprising 20 questions all distributed on four skills, namely, application, analysis, evaluation and creation. The total population of the research was 84 grade 9 students who all sat for both pre-test and post-test. Convenient sampling was chosen as a sampling method that typically suits both the experimental group (42 students) and the control group (42 students). After collection, data were analysed using both descriptive analysis, mean and standard deviation, and inferential statistics including t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multivariate ANOVA. The effect of scaffolding strategies on the four skills was found to be significant (p <.01). The present research can contribute to the enhancement of students’ HOTs, provided that scaffolding strategies are applied in science classes and, from a research perspective, will be a reference for researchers who are interested in scaffolding strategies in the context of either Saudi Arabia or other countries.
Background: In many universities, undergraduate engineering students are taught in English rather than their first language. This requires the crucial skill of academic listening, but many students ...have limited linguistic knowledge and skills, necessitating additional scaffolding by instructors.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was thus threefold: (a) to explore the needs of Engineering students for scaffolding in the academic listening, (b) to compare their needs for scaffolding strategies and their performance on the academic listening test, and (c) to investigate the performance of two listening instructors in terms of using scaffolding strategies in their classes.
Participants: The participants were 140 undergraduate students of Engineering and two PhD holders teaching academic listening at the Iran University of Science and Technology.
Design and Methods: The data for this descriptive, correlational research was collected through a sample of academic IELTS listening test, a questionnaire on scaffolding strategies followed by five open-ended questions, and five sessions of observation of the listening classes.
Results: The results showed that in one class with 96% of learners' satisfaction, the most frequently used strategies by the instructor were 'repeating whole or part of a task for the students if needed' and 'waiting for them to answer the questions', while in another class with 30% of the learners' satisfaction, only one strategy, 'providing a comfortable atmosphere for the students to listen to the tasks', received the highest percentage. The results also revealed that 'providing clues and directions to help students find the correct answer' and 'correcting task or the answers of students' were the only two statistically significant strategies required by those who obtained the lowest scores on the academic listening test.
Conclusions: The findings revealed that meeting students' needs for scaffolding in listening classes can enhance their satisfaction.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of the key aspects of classroom interaction in L2 and CLIL contexts and its effects on students’ academic and language development in such educational ...settings. It also aims to raise awareness of the role of language and discourse in teaching content and language in CLIL classrooms. More specifically, it discusses how teachers can efficiently enact Classroom Interactional competence (CIC) which is a range of interactional strategies adjusted to the classroom micro-context and which are essential for the correct development of the teaching-learning process. The article presents how teachers can use classroom interaction to guide students in better understanding of subject-specific content, foster the development of students’ communicative competence in a foreign language and the integrated learning of content and language as well as promote a more active students’ participation in content-rich contexts. Last but not the least, the article discusses the role of the teacher in providing emotional support in the classroom and creating a safe environment where students can develop a positive self-image through their interactions both with the teacher and the peers.
The current research aims to establish several theoretical frameworks and educational implications for a new web-based learning model “SOSE”. Additionally, it also aims to compare and contrast the ...new model to a well-known web-based learning model, WebQuest, which was developed by Dodge of San Diego State University (
1995b
). WebQuest is a web-based learning model that is derived from Web 1.0 to help students to learn. However, with today’s advances in internet-based learning and the evolution from Web 2.0 to Web 5.0 applications, which have been widely adopted, new web-based learning models are necessary. Learning in a sheltered online scaffolding environment (SOSE) consists of three main stages: a preparation stage including task exploration and information collection; a data refinement stage including refining data and extracting evidence and findings; and a cooperation and publishment stage including decision-making, final agreement and publishing. The theoretical bases of the suggested model basically rely on six main educational theories and approaches: web-based learning, constructivist theory, scaffolding strategies, project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, discovery learning, problem-based learning and active learning.
Although learning scientific language is crucial for learning science, many primary school teachers lack the knowledge and skills to support this. The present case study reports on a primary school ...teacher who learned to use a repertoire of scaffolding strategies for stimulating pupils' scientific language development in inquiry-based science lessons (14 pupils; grade 4). Teacher support included an instructional sequence, participation in interviews and writing reflective reports. The aim of this study is to identify how the teacher used the scaffolding strategies in a classroom with native speakers and which challenges she experienced during the process. Analysis of lesson transcripts showed that the teacher applied all scaffolding strategies suggested to her. Analysis of interview transcripts gave insight into five categories of challenges the teacher experienced while using scaffolding strategies, including her expectations regarding pupils' scientific language level and dealing with differentiation in the classroom. The findings show that a teacher can learn to apply multiple scaffolding strategies for stimulating scientific language development. Patterns in the use of scaffolding strategies arose related to the aim of the strategy, the situation (i.e., phase of the empirical cycle and teaching approach) and the required pedagogical content knowledge (and skill) of the teacher.
PDF
