Four components that sustain teachers’ commitment to students – a relational and temporal model

Teacher commitment is a key factor for explaining how and why teachers care about their students’ learning and well-being, and it is a well-known fact that teachers invest emotionally in their work and their students. The purpose of the article is to contribute to the conceptual underpinning of commitment in relation to the teacher-student relationship and to suggest a conceptual model based on empirical material. Eight teachers were selected for interview, all of whom had been in the profession since 1993 and had reported high commitment throughout their careers. The content of the teachers’ accounts were analysed, with attention to how commitment to students manifested itself in their stories. The analysis resulted in a model consisting of four temporally related components of teacher commitment to students: moral, action/motivational, knowledge/self-confidence and reward/self-esteem. Understanding teacher commitment is important for preventing teacher attrition. Rather than applying general measures to boost commitment, this model provides conceptual bases for addressing deficits in particular components of teacher commitment.     

Teachers’ Experience, Attitudes, Feelings and Behavioural Intentions towards Children with Special Educational Needs

This project examined teachers’ attitudes to children with special educational needs. Understanding the implicit and explicit attitudes of teachers is an important precursor to improving teaching practices for children with special needs. Participants (N=77) were pre-service teachers and experienced teachers during in-service training courses. Results showed that behavioural intentions related to explicit rather than implicit attitudes, and that feelings of guilt and anxiety were associated with intentions for negative actions. Profiles of attitudes were substantially similar in terms of personal and teaching experiences. However, attitudes were less positive about children with low social skills and more positive about children with low cognitive skills. Findings have direct application to training teachers of children with special educational needs.     

小学数学教师职业知识的结构与内在关系

本研究以小学数学分数起始教学为媒介,通过自编的小学数学教师职业知识测验,考察了162名小学数学教师在学科知识、一般教育学知识和教育实践知识等三类知识上的表现,并据此探讨了这三类职业知识间的相互关系。研究结果表明,自编的小学数学职业知识测验具有良好的信度和结构效度,教师的学科知识和一般教育学知识能显著地预测其教育实践知识。     

教师教学认知偏差问卷的编制及初步应用

依据社会心理学等有关认知偏差理论,结合教师教学实际自制了"教师教学认知偏差问卷"。对问卷进行探索性因素分析和验证性因素分析以及信度检验等发现,该问卷显示出较好的效度和信度。以该问卷对846名教师进行了初步调查,调查的数据反映出在教师中存在不同程度的教学认知偏差,其中女教师的教学认知偏差要显著好于男教师,教学优秀教师的教学认知偏差显著好于一般普通教师,教龄时间较短的教师的教学认知偏差要显著好于教龄较长的教师。     

影响教师职业认同的相关因素分析

本研究利用自编问卷对177名中小学教师职业认同状况进行了调查,结果显示:(1)我国教师的职业认同总体水平较高;(2)教师职业认同存在显著的性别、职称差异;(3)中学与小学教师的职业认同存在显著的差异;(4)不同职业动机、工资满意度的教师的职业认同存在显著的差异。     

The Effects of Numbered Heads Together with and Without an Incentive Package on the Science Test Performance of a Diverse Group of Sixth Graders

A clear and consistent finding of educational research has been the importance of active student responding. During lectures and discussions, active responding most often takes the form of student responses to teacher questions. This whole group responding to questions, however, does not permit every student to respond and does not assure that all students are actively engaged. Previous research has shown that Numbered Heads Together is an efficient and effective instructional technique to increase student responding and to improve achievement. Using an A-B-BC-B-BC design, we examined the effects of two versions of Numbered Heads Together on 6th graders daily quiz scores and pretest-posttest performance in chemistry. Findings indicated that the addition of a behavioral incentive package noticeably improved student performance during Numbered Heads Together instruction. Implications are discussed for teachers and educational researchers.     

Injustice in physical education: gender and the perception of deprivation in grades and teacher support

School as an institution is not powerful enough to fight external mechanisms leading to gender inequalities. Sport, as Physical Education (PE), remains a male domain and appears as a site for the reproduction of hegemonic masculinity. In PE, girls obtain lower grades than boys; teachers support boys more. This paper focuses upon the French pupils’ perceptions of injustice with respect to teacher support and grades relative to gender and social gender role orientation. Data were collected through questionnaires from 1620 pupils in secondary school. Although boys, Androgynous and Masculine pupils, obtained significantly higher grades in PE, they felt more deprivation. Concerning teacher support, girls’ perceptions of injustice were similar to boys’ perceptions, and Undifferentiated pupils perceived the highest deprivation level. Pupil’s perceptions may not be free of gender stereotypes. Vanessa Lentillon is in the third year of PhD in the Centre de Recherche et d’Innovation sur le Sport (C.R.I.S.). She is employed as a temporary personal for teaching and research (A.T.E.R.) at the University of Sport in Lyon, France. Her research concerns injustices perceived in Physical Education related to gender issues. She has written various book chapters and articles on her research. E-mail: vanessa.lentillon@univ-lyonl.fr Geneviè Cogérino is Professor at the University and works in the Centre d’Innovation et de Recherche sur le Sport (C.R.I.S.), France. Her research mainly concerns the gender issue in physical education. She has authored a recent book and several articles on this subject. E-mail: cogerino. genevieve@upicardie.fr Mattias Kaestner works at the International Academy of Sport Science and Technology (AISTS) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is a 2004 graduate of the Master of Advanced Studies in Sport Administration and Technology (MSA). E-mail: matthias.kaestner@aists.org     

Aggression against middle and high school teachers: Duration of victimization and its negative impacts

Prior research indicates that student aggression against teachers is widespread, and it has negative impacts on victimized teachers’ emotional and physical well-being and job performance. However, little is known about the relationship between the recency and duration of victimization and teachers’ thoughts about quitting the teaching profession and related job dissatisfaction and disconnectedness to school. Analyses of data from a longitudinal study of 1,236 US teachers fills these gaps. The study found that many teachers experienced theft/vandalism and sexual harassment victimization that was limited to just 1 year. In contrast, sizeable proportions of teachers experienced verbal abuse and nonphysical contact aggression that occurred over 2 years. Multiple regression analyses showed that teachers who reported recent or multiyear victimization had lower levels of connectedness to school, less job satisfaction, and more thoughts about ending their teaching careers. These results may indicate that unless victimization recurs, negative effects of victimization are contemporaneous and are less likely to persist. Additional research is needed to examine victimization over longer than 2 years, investigate the effects of the frequency of different types of aggression against teachers, and identify school policies and interventions that weaken the connection of victimization to negative outcomes.     

Private blog reflections connecting course content with field experiences: preservice teachers grapple with teacher identity

A challenge experienced within teacher preparation programs is the ability to help preservice teachers connect educational theory with teaching practice. Guided by Dewey's phases of reflective thinking and Schön’s reflection on action as an ethic for inquiry, we embedded a systematic reflection of written responses, recorded in a private weblog over the course of a 15-week intermediate reading methods course. Inductive thematic analysis of responses revealed the following themes: visceral thought, vulnerability, interpretation of course content, and identity formation toward becoming a classroom teacher. Our findings exemplify how systematic reflection in a private digital space contributed to the development of preservice teachers’ professional identities.     

幼儿教师政府支持、组织支持和胜任力对职业幸福感的影响：职业认同的中介作用

为探索幼儿教师政府支持、组织支持、胜任力和职业认同对职业幸福感的影响,选取四川、重庆、西藏、贵州、江西、湖北和北京七地幼儿教师462名,用幼儿教师职业幸福感量表、幼儿教师胜任力问卷、幼儿教师职业认同问卷、政府支持问卷和组织支持感问卷进行调查。结果表明：（1）幼儿教师政府支持、组织支持和胜任力均是保护性因素,提升其职业幸福感。其中,组织支持影响最大。（2）幼儿教师职业认同在政府支持、组织支持和胜任力对职业幸福感的影响中起中介作用。上述研究结果发展了职业幸福感的JD-R模型,并对提升幼儿教师职业幸福感具有一定价值。