Future of Reading: Choose your own books - Reading Workshops

Posted by Ingrid Thomson | 31 Aug, 2009

Spotted in the New York Times Book Supplement.

Instead of assigning a novel to her 7th and 8th graders,  this teacher allowed her class to choose their own books, discuss them individually with the teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading.

According to the story, this is "part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America’s schools. While there is no clear consensus among English teachers, variations on the approach, known as reading workshop, are catching on."

 (This article is the 4th in a series called Future of Reading.  The links to the other three articles is found under the heading "Related" in the story) 

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UNICEF's All Children Everywhere (pdf)

Posted by Ingrid Thomson | 7 Aug, 2009

Spotted on UN Pulse 

All Children, Everywhere   (pdf, 4.31MB)  is the advocacy version of the United Nations Children's Fund's (UNICEF) education strategy through 2015. It provides an overview of UNICEF's work in basic education and gender equality outlines the organization's goals, guiding principles, main partners and key actions to deliver a quality education for all children.

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Podcasts from HSRC: Teacher Shortages - Myth or Reality?

Posted by Ingrid Thomson | 1 Aug, 2009

As part of the public programme of events at the Cape Town Book Fair earlier this year,  teachers and teacher education was discussed by a panel of HSRC researchers.  The discussion was chaired by Prof Peter Kallaway. 

HSRC has now made a package of the podcasts available.    

*  Michael Cosser examining Grade 12 student attitudes towards teaching as viable career and then student plans for entering the teaching profession after graduation.   He is the author of  Studying Ambitions : Pathways from Grade 12  and  Ambitions revised: Grade 12 learner destinations one year on .

*  Fabian Arends, co -author of Teacher Graduate Production in South Africa and Beginner Teachers in South Africa: School Readiness, Knowledge and Skills, looks at the limatations in the planning of continuing professional development and the challenges of identifiying the shortages of subject teachers accurately.

*  Linda Chisholm looks at reopening teacher training colleges as an option of addressing the teacher shortage.   She is the author of An Overview of Research, Policy and Practice in Teacher Supply and Demand, 1994 - 2008. 

*  Glenda Kruss discusses the restructuring processes that have taken place in a diverse range of teacher education providers and the ways these can and are shaping future conditions.   She is the author of Teacher Education and Institutional Change in South Africa and Opportunities and Challenges for Teacher Education Curriculum in South Africa.

 

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Motivation and Textbooks

Posted by Ingrid Thomson | 1 Aug, 2009

Who uses textbooks? Do students actually read the text? A study in Teaching Educational Psychology by Derryberry & Wininger looked at the relationship between student motivation and textbook selection and use.

The authors combine a group of measures to create a group of “internal motivation” measures, including need for cognition (enjoying effortful thinking), mastery goal orientation (focus on increasing competence), and intrinsic motivation. Similarly, a separate group of measures was combined to create a measure of “external motivation”: performance goal orientation (focus on judgments of others) and external regulation. Finally, they also had an “amotivation” scale measured level of motivation. Most previous research on motivation suggests that those with internal motivation are more likely to engage in deeper processing of materal and have higher degrees of self-regulation.

Derryberry, W. P., & Wininger, S. R. (2008). Relationships among textbook usage and cognitive-motivational constructs Teaching Educational Psychology, 3 (2), 1-11

(spotted on Researchblogging with links to the Connections Research Blog) 

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