Students from Confucian heritage cultures (CHCs), such as China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan, consistently outperform Western students in many academic subjects, under conditions, such as large class teaching, that seem counter-indicated by Western research. These results have been used to justify increases in class size on the grounds that size is irrelevant to effective teaching. Such thinking is simplistic. Children in CHCs are socialized in ways that make them amenable to work in large classes, so that management problems are minimal and teachers can focus on meaningful learning using whole-class methods. An educational system forms a working whole, each component interacting with all other components. Isolating any one component (such as class size) and transplanting it into a different system shows a deep misunderstanding of how educational systems work. 相似文献
A “study process complex” comprising three major motives (instrumental, intrinsic and achievement) and three cognate learning/study strategies (reproducing, meaning and organising), is described. The Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) is an instrument designed to tap these motives and strategies in tertiary students. It is hypothesized that patterns of motivations and study strategies would be typically different between students in colleges of advanced education (CAE's) and universities, given the natures of these two sectors of tertiary education.
The SPQ was administered to over 2,000 students in five universities and nine CAE's in five states, and students’ motive and strategy scores were compared. University students were found to be more intrinsically motivated, and more likely to use meaning and organising strategies. CAE students were more instrumentally motivated and more likely to use the reproductive strategy. University students who rated themselves “excellent” were intrinsically motivated; while CAE students in this category were highly organised. Greatest institutional differences were found in teacher education. These findings are highly compatible with the aims and functions of the two types of institutions, and have particular relevance to the issues of end‐on vs. concurrent programmes of teacher education, and enforced university/college amalgamations. 相似文献
Theories of learning and teaching have tended in the past to have been derived top‐down, from existing theory. It is increasingly recognised today that such a strategy oversimplifies a complex reality, in which there is a great deal of mutual interaction. One way of handling the situation is to derive contextualised theories, such as phenomenography. Such theories are however part of a more general model based on systems theory, in which all parts of the teaching‐learning context are seen as seeking equilibrium. A “system” may exist at several levels: The student, the classroom, the institution, the community. The task of teacher and of staff developer is to achieve those good teaching practices that are viable within the existing matrix of systems and subsystems. Implications in such areas as improving teaching and assessment, using questionnaires for assessing teaching, training in study skills, and conducting research, are discussed. 相似文献
Two major frameworks for educational decision making, including decisions on assessment, can be distinguished: quantitative, whichis adequate for construing some kinds of learning; and qualitative, which should be the appropriate framework for enabling decisions flowing from most tertiary educational aims. However, for various reasons, institutions implicitly encourage a quantitative framework for assessment‐related decision making, particularly evident in the recent emphasis on accountability and performance indicators. This is unfortunate because, through the backwash effect, quantitative modes of assessment encourage surface approaches to learning, which typically lead to low cognitive‐level outcomes that are not compatible with stated course objectives. It is argued that an institution and its educational practices comprise a system in equilibrium, and that if educational goals are to be realised, the whole system needs to be compatible with those aims. 相似文献
This paper examines the ways in which an on-farm maize research project influenced, over a four-year period, the overall priorities and programmes of a maize research programme in Northern India and also generated information for agricultural extension systems. Special attention is given to analysing the way in which the three components of the on-farm research project (trials, surveys and communication methods) provided a learning and feed-back linkage from village level situations to experiment station research. Lessons from the case study include the importance of (1) having the on-farm research and experiment station research under the same research decisionmaker; (2) conceptualizing research as a dynamic and adaptive process with even major changes taking place between years; (3) being able to change easily, in response to farm level information, the research priorities and the allocation of research funds between disciplines, research stations, etc.; and (4) allocating at least a minimum of research resources to the on-farm research component of an overall research programme. 相似文献
Many teachers see major difficulties in maintaining academic standards in today's larger and more diversified classes. The problem becomes more tractable if learning outcomes are seen as more a function of students’ activities than of their fixed characteristics. The teacher's job is then to organise the teaching/learning context so that all students are more likely to use the higher order learning processes which “academic” students use spontaneously. This may be achieved when all components are aligned, so that objectives express the kinds of understanding that we want from students, the teaching context encourages students to undertake the learning activities likely to achieve those understandings, and the assessment tasks tell students what activities are required of them, and tell us how well the objectives have been met. Two examples of aligned teaching systems are described: problem‐based learning and the learning portfolio. 相似文献