Today I attened the Science Method class. An interesting question discussed was the experiment of falling objects-the Galileo’s Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment. Dr. Luft provided us some students’ responses and let us to figure out the students’ thinking and how to response to students properly.
But the question caught my curiosity in the class was two ice cube droping from the same inclination.
On a grassy lawn near the road, standed a little girl about five years old. She was looking up at the colorful tree leaves and jumping to reach them. She jumped up using all her energy but found herself still get nothing.
I walked close to the girl-she was really a beautiful angel.
“Do you need help?” I asked.
She stared at me with her shinning black eyes without saying a word.
“Do you want some leaves? I can help!” I repeated.
“No” she answered.
“I can use the ball.” She fetched a ball from the ground just several steps away.
“then the leaves will fall.”
“You are very clever!” I said.
After I left, she began throw the ball up to the leaves again and again - very exitedly.
Well, she may never heared of the term “gravity”, but she do have been aware of it and even make use of it to get the beautiful leaves.
How students learn: science in classroom
five epistemic features of scientific knowledge:(Windschitl,Thompson, & Braaten,2008)
testable 可验证性
revisable 可修改性
explanatory 解释性
conjectural,and 推理性
generative 启发性
科学不仅仅是科学知识，还包括科学过程和科学的本质。学生不仅应该了解科学知识是什么，还应该了解科学知识是如何产生和发现的。MBL能够体现科学的全过程，是更真实的科学。
科学探究在一线教学中面临很多困难，由于教学资源和时间的限制，学生很难有机会检验自己的假说是否正确，也较少有体会出自己的研究问题的机会。计算机模拟则可以解决这些困难，为学生提供模拟的科学探究体验。
对于有效教学行为的研究所揭示的高效教学列表中，基于模型的科学探究覆盖了绝大部分的有效行为。因此，它是一种非常值得提倡的一种教学实践方式。
Reference
Rapp & Sengupta models and modeling in science learning(2).doc - Rapp-Sengupta.pdf
Discourse Tools model-based inquiry: http://tools4teachingscience.org/
Windschitl, M., Thompson, J., & Braaten, M. (2008). Beyond the scientific method: Model‐based inquiry as a new paradigm of preference for school science investigations. Science education, 92(5), 941-967.
Index of /mwind/MWHome/downloads
http://faculty.washington.edu/mwind/MWHome/downloads/
reflection on groupwork modeling - Chunlei’s Blog
http://zhangchunlei.com/blog/2013/09/27/reflection-on-groupwork-modeling/
Timss video and reflection of teaching science with modeling - Chunlei’s Blog
http://zhangchunlei.com/blog/2013/08/19/timss-video-and-reflection-of-teaching-science-with-modeling/
I have wrote several posts about modeling:
Such as Interactive simulation based inquiry activities
Look for more click here
But this time I would rather to think modeling from the groupwork perspective.
As a teacher, we should keep in mind that groupwork can only be flowers while big science ideas are the real fruits. The big flowers don’t guaranteed the fruits are big.
Groupwork tasks take times, so they must be well designed and organized.
What do I mean by well designed? The groupwork should meet the following preconditions:
What do I mean by well organized? The teacher should do the following:
How to help students to generate more productive group conversation?
I watched two vedios of Japan science teaching see my previous post
Since then I tend to pay close attention to Japan science education including both teaching practice and teacher professional development. Tonight we talked about the lesson study in Japan and China, So googled Japan lesson study and found 2 interesting resources(attached at the end of this post).
I think the Japan lesson study sounds really good.
First, the lesson is designed and prepared by a team not a single teacher. This is different from China, where one teacher is reponsible for everything and under a great pressure. When a team prepare and co-design the lesson, teacher can really have more opportunities to learn from each other.
Second, the study is aiming to solve a problem or acheiving a special goal. It is not providing a common good lesson for other teachers to follow or comment. This goal-orantied study will make it more meaningful for teachers. It becomes easier for other teachers take a stand to think if they have acheived their goal or what would help.
Third, the team will spend 3-4 years on the same goal, they will design a long range plan to achieve it. They also refine their goal ever year. So it tend to be a continue systematic problem solving process with significant value in a special school context.
Fourth, the topics of discussion and reflection can cover a wide range of concerns, including content related issues(goal of unit and lesson, concepts, problem to focus on, students’ solution and response), and pedagogical issues and behaviors issues, also education rationals and goals.
Resources:
Lesson Study: An Introduction By Makoto Yoshida & Clea Fernandez
Japanese Lesson Study: Dr. Clea Fernandez
Today I attended a workshop about co-teaching and mentoring by Dr Dresden. Georgia is going to promote co-teaching in the future. This was a foundational workshop for mentor teachers, in which they could know about what is co-teaching, how it is different from traditional mentoring, what kinds of approaches can be used. This was the task of the morning session. In the afternoon mentoring session, teachers were divided into 3 groups to work out how to welcome your teacher candidates, stages of their concern, and scenarios playing and discussions.
I found it interesting to hear what the mentor teacher say. Although co-teaching sounds like a powerful idea to make the internships session more effective, there are still lots of barriers and problems to overcome and handle with. Mentors do need to know how to co-teach, why to co-teach, what to do, but this is not enough. Another important part is the collaboration and communication between each pieces. Well teacher candidates, university professors are in university system, while teacher mentors are in the middle school system, they have different responsibilities and roles, they have few chances to work together, they are all very busy and tend to draw back for lack of time or inconvinient reasons. You know what, it takes time and energy and wisdom to build trust relationships between them.
So in the afternoon session, communication skills are stressed. But I think it would be more helpful if supervisors and teacher candidates can show up and speak their voices. Well may be this will be done during the Pairs workshop.
宝宝七个月了，母乳开始不够吃了，爸爸给你设计了下面的副食，别挑食哦！
早餐：稀粥加青菜末、蛋黄泥
顺便多煮一个土豆或者红薯（备用）
母乳：一次性加热到39度，否则容易破坏免疫蛋白活性。
午餐：猪肝泥、米粉、西红柿糊（或者苹果泥）
西红柿糊做法：做法： 将西红柿放入开水，随即取出。 将西红柿去皮，去籽，其余部分捣碎成糊状即可。
晚餐：土豆泥（或者红薯，紫薯）、果汁
土豆泥做法：土豆洗净煮到透心，去皮，用汤匙捣成泥，温度适宜后即可小口喂食。
果汁需要用温开水稀释2倍（不要太甜）
加餐：磨牙棒
1.把馒头切成1厘米厚的片，放在锅里，不加油，烤至两面微微发黄，外皮略有一点硬度，里面松软就可以了。一方面，馒头不会卡着孩子，另一方面，他可以自己用手拿着吃，既增加了吃的趣味性，又练习了手眼协调能力。除了能磨牙，营养和味道也不错。
2.也可以用蔬菜做磨牙棒，帮助宝宝尽早熟悉蔬菜的味道。把胡萝卜、黄瓜、白萝卜等去皮，刻成各种形状，比如刻成小动物;也可以将水果条、菜茎直接拿给宝宝，既能咬，又能玩，妈妈还可以帮他认物、辨色。
磨牙棒制作来自这里
“No one is born knowing how to teach.” 1
–Mentoring Matters, Laura Lipton and Bruce Wellman, 2003, p.65
Teacher have to spent years to learn to teach. Even with enough experience only some grow into expert teacher. One of the most important reason is reflection. Explicit and critical self-reflection on practices can be very hard for begining teachers even experienced teacher. Sometimes it hurts and provides little directions. Teachers are unwillingly to preserve in self-reflection. Situations may change, if someone can supervise and assist teachers’ reflection.
What is supervision? Here Supervision, I mean clinical Supervison for teacher development. It basicly has three phases in a clinical suervision cycle:
There are many types of professional development programs.Acheson & Gall mentioned six types of professional learning programs in their book about clinical supervision.4
What constitutes a good supervision? Supervising is for not supervising. Good supervision helps teacher become independent learner by providing concrete and constructive feedbacks. What make supervision good or effective? Supervision is expensive. It costs time, labor, money, resources. How to make effective supervision cheaper and sustainable?
This paper is going to follow these questions to review related literatures to look for clues and solutions.
There are lots of studies on various kinds of supervision programs. In search of effective supervision, it is necessary to define what “effective supervision” means. It means supervisee made significant progress to their goals through all participants’ resonalbe efforts. In this process, superviors acts effectively and properly, productive relationship is formed and sustainable. Taking the supervision context into concern, this paper is going to arrange these studies in the followinging themes:
How supervisors affect supervision programs? Supervisors play an important role in supervision. And this can decide the success of the program.
Lyman(1987) found that supervisors who stress authority and identification of weaknesses build less trust than those who emphasize collegiality, productive diversity, and strengths. 12
It suggests that supervisors should discover supervisee’s progress and emphasize diversity of resources and strategies in a collegial atmosphere.
But What an effective supervisor should do according to supervisees?
Bret G. Range , Suzie Young & David Hvidston (2013)studied in-service teacher supervison and found that:
Initial contract(non-tenured teachers) believed that the following variables influenced their reflection on practice: building trust, sharing the observation report, teacher’s focus for the lesson, constructive feedback, identified standards, sequence for conference, and areas for future growth. Yet tenured teachers only perceived two variables as influential on their reflection on practice: linking the post-conference to extended learning opportunities (professional development) and providing positive comments in the post-conference by the principal/supervisor. Analysis of open-ended items indicated that respondents valued trusting relationships, constructive feedback, reflection and areas of improvement as important elements of either conference.10
But if you are a university professor and want to supervise your student teacher classroom, it would be a great challenge because you may have not enough time and convinence to supervise every student in their classroom.
In this case, BORKO and MAYFIELD (1995) recommended that university supervisors use their limited time in schools to help cooperating teachers become teacher educators. For example, they can model ways of observing student teachers and strategies for conducting conferences that focus on teaching and learning and help student teachers to become reflective about their practice. They also found that cooperating teachers who believed that they could and should play an active role in student teachers’ learning, conducted longer and more frequent conferences with their student teachers, and provided more extensive feedback.11
Summary of characteristics of effective supervisors:
How the cooperation relationships affect supervision programs? Inoder to make supervision effective and coninuable, a good relationship between the supervisor and the supervisee must be built. But if high-stake evaluation was involved, sometimes it becomes difficult to develop mutuality, trust and friendship.
Riordan, G. P. (1995) found that the most effective collaborations were characterized by relationships that were mutually rewarding, equally valued, and based on similar and/or complimentary professional and social strengths and interests. All participants in their study reported that the collaborative approach to supervision was worthwhile, although in the partnerships where the development of mutuality, trust, and friendship were at an early stage, teachers were less inclined to find or to make time to work with their partner or to focus on aspects of their teaching that involved risk-taking.6
In order to help supervisor and supervisee to form a good relationship, it would be better to avoid negative evaluation relationship but postive evidence for evaluation are recommaned to be collected by supervisor.
Sometimes good relationships are hard to develop just because lack of effective communication and alliances.
Nelson, Mary Lee, et al.(2008) believed in creating strong supervisory alliances, discussing evaluation early on, modeling openness to conflict, and providing timely feedback. Dependable strategies included contextualizing conflicts in light of developmental and environmental factors, seeking consultation with colleagues, self-coaching, processing conflicts, accentuating supervisee strengths, interpreting parallel processes, and withdrawing from supervisee dynamics.8
Valencia(2009) discovered another crucial problem in student teaching.
There were numerous instances of lost opportunities for student teachers to learn to teach, including sparse feedback on teaching subject matter and few links to methods courses, plus limited opportunities to develop identities as teachers. The structures that frame student teaching and its participants have deep roots in the cultures of universities and schools that must be considered if student teaching is to maximize its potential.9
Summary of the characteristics of productive cooperation relationships:
Supervision can take place in many context, it can be online, in a school community, or in the cooperation between university and professional development schools. What is the difference of supervision that happen in idfferent context? How context affect supervision? How to design a proper supervison for a special context? These questions need to be addressed if we want to make supervision flexiable and sustainable.
Wortmann, Karly, et al.(2008) proposed seven different types of online Mentoring programs as following:5
Task-based mentoring focuses on an individual’s short-term need to improve a skill or acquire knowledge in order to fulfill a new role.
Experience-based mentoring pairs an individual, who is new to an organization or a role, with a mentor who has experience in that role.
Just-in-time mentoring matches mentors with individuals who have an unanticipated need for assistance.
> One-to-one mentoring centers on a single mentor working with a single mentee
Team mentoring joins groups of mentors with groups of mentees.
Formal mentoring involves explicit expectations of the mentoring process and/or outcomes by specifying such characteristics as timelines, achievements, progress reporting, benchmarks, and communications formats.
Project Supervision can be designed to develop professional development materials for school supervisors/mentors in a community of practice involving teachers – both experienced and preservice – and teacher educators.3
Levine (2011) proposed five features of professional communities that can help supervisors improve their work: norms promoting collaboration; trust and familiarity; activities deprivatizing practices; access to logistical information and shared expectations about the role of supervisors; and time for collaboration.7
Supervision can also happen in the coteaching context. Experienced teacher coteach with a preservice teacher, they codesign the leson and then coteach, coreflect. The supervisor can observe both of the teachers and give feedbacks.
In this case, the experienced teacher can also serve as a cooperating teacher and have different ways to act in the supervision process.
Clarke,Triggs,& Nielsen(2013) identified 11 ways for cooperating teacher to participate in teacher education:2
Providers of Feedback,
Gatekeepers of the Profession,
Modelers of Practice,
Supporters of Reflection,
Gleaners of Knowledge,
Purveyors of Context,
Conveners of Relation,
Agents of Socialization,
Advocates of the Practical,
Abiders of Change, and
Teachers of Children.
The following graph shows us the ideal feedback.
But this kind of supervison does not easily happen. The more participant involed, the more complex it become, the more hard to organize and make it successful. So facilitators are needed to make sure every pieces move in the right direction.
Facilitators can be administrators, principles in professional development schools , staff in universities, companies or other organizations.
Riordan, G. P. (1995) suggested that administrators should be aware of the extra difficulties partners may experience in working collaboratively; (2) administrators wishing to encourage collaborative clinical supervision partnerships to meet professional development goals should develop a system that allows teachers to have some input in the selection of partners, provide adequate time for conferencing, and notice and encourage teachers’ collaborative efforts; (3) teachers wishing to develop relationships with their colleagues should be aware of the powerful norms of teacher autonomy and isolation;13
The ideal supervision I can picture based on these literatures.
University professors should use their limited time to help cooperating teachers become teacher educators. They can aslo help by providing timely and constructive feedback and learning opportunities. In suppervision session, emphasizing collegiality, productive diversity, and strengths would help to build trust relationship.
Cooperating teacher should play an active role using an indirect style in student teacher’s learning. They should build collaborative and trust relationships, offer timely positive feedback, be open to conflict, give constructive suggestions, and provide learning opportunities.
Supervisees should take the ownership of their learning and be actively engaged, open minded, reflective in their process of learning to teach.
Facilitators:
Facilitators can provide support in communications, organizations, and skills development. They should design and organize the process for participants’ convinences and make sure every pieces moving to the right directions.
Why do we use the model of supervision?
==>Value
Promote teacher learning and student learning.
==>Cost
Time, labor, money, resources.
==>DNA
Classroom reality towards effective teaching
==>Pedagogy
Direct or indirect, low-stakes or high-stakes
==>Content
Effective teaching skills and characteristics
==>Technology
Supervision techniques, online platforms
==>Context
school, university, district, cross-culture, multi-languages, reform-based
If we want to make supervision sustainable, we must design and develop a mutual benefit and win-win relationship between all the participants of supervision.
It is like jigsaw. First you have to see every piece very clearly and then you can make the best guess and try to connect the two pieces.
A teacher is just like a cook. You can tell a good cook by the taste of his dishes, so you can also tell a good teacher by his students’ acheivements. Sometimes you can also tell a good cook by observing his cooking process. Good cook can aways get everything ready quickly and easily. Good teacher do the same thing.
Teachers’ job is adapting the curriculum and materials to local settings and particular learning goals. Effective teachers are aware of what they are currently doing, aways pursueing new effecive ways to teach the same content. It is just like cooks making foods for different customers.
I just received the Stanford Online Course Statement of Accomplishment Of DTAL from Novoed.
I also accomplished another similar course Designing a New Learning Environment
I had spent 5~10 hours per week on each course. In fact, I didn’t expect to accomplished them and got certificates. They just appeared interesting and related with my work. So I tried my best to take the boat and take every advantages of the learning oportunities and resources. But the statments of accomplishment do encourage me to take more similar courses, so they are powerful in this sense.
Free Online course resources:
Open Course Collection
Category-opencourse
Strongly recommaned Online courses Platforms:
The pdf version of my Online Course Statement of Accomplishments: DTAL and DNLE