JOURNAL OF THEORY AND PRACTICE IN CURRICULUM
Year:2013 | Volume:1 | Issue:1|Papers Count:8

This article engages the reader with a critical and challenging issue in teacher education domain. The issue chosen is the structure of the program which extends itself quite naturally to the issue of implementation in terms of institutions involved. The author argues that although there is no definite answer to the question of which pre-service teacher education program assures training of effective teachers, a viable teacher education curriculum should consist of four elements, together forming an image of a square. The four elements are described as: content (disciplinary) knowledge component, general educational knowledge component, content specific professional knowledge coupled with practicum and induction, which refers to a one year monitoring and coaching of novice teachers. The four-sided program needs to be implemented in a cooperative spirit which involves the higher education sector and public education sector, thus depicting a cross-sectoral picture of the task of teacher education. The first two components come naturally under the expertise of universities and the last two are components for which the public education sector is better prepared.The implementation scheme discussed in the article presents a serious challenge to the current thinking and policy direction in Iran which has recently rested the case for teacher education by awarding all the responsibilities to the public education sector and exempting the higher education from performing any meaningful role in this respect. The policy has manifested itself in the 2012 enactment of a legislature authorizing the establishment of a single university run by ministry of education to assume the full responsibility for teacher education.

The ways that mathematics teachers listen to students’ explanation, influence their understanding of students and their teaching activities. If teachers be informed about different ways of “listening” to students’ ideas and conceptions concerning mathematics, they might be able to use listening as an effective teaching method to enhance students’ mathematical learning. The related literature indicates that teachers’ familiarity with different “listening” approaches, could potentially help them to set up the stage for more interaction between students, teachers, and their learning environments. In such cases, students are gradually become skillful in realistically assessing their ideas, revising them and deepening their mathematical learning. We, thus, designed and conducted a study with five mathematics teachers in grades 6 to 8, to learn more about the ways they listened to students in their mathematics classes. All participants were volunteered female teachers with at least bachelor degree in mathematics. The research paradigm of the study was qualitative and the research method was phenomenography. Therefore, observations and interviews were the main instruments for the data collection. As Marton (1988) suggested, the categories of descriptions made up the main results of this research. So, the findings are three major and distinct categories to reveal the commonality and differences of the nature of “listening” concerning mathematics teachers in their classrooms. These categories had great consistency with Davis’ (1997) theoretical framework of three approaches to “listening” including; evaluative, interpretive and hermeneutic.

This paper conducts a historical analysis of the meaning and aims Reconceptualism in viewpoint of Pinar et al, including methodology and critics related to it in curriculum field from 1960s to 2010s. For this means, 25 papers and 4 books of Pinar et al were studied by methods of document and textual analysis through an analytical-critical approach. Critiques of Wraga and Hlebowitsh as alternatives for Reconceptualism are accounted. The result of analysis showed that a) Reconceptualists aren’t a homogeneous group of curriculum experts share certain ideas; b)Reconceptualism isn’t a movement, but rather a way or a process of understanding; c) the process of understanding or the Reconceptualiztion project will never cease to continue. Thus, Reconceptualism cannot be defined easily and, d) Reconceptualism is a critical and inclusive movement that concentrates on out of school phenomena and critique of hidden and overt curriculum outcomes. Concerned issues and methodology of Reconceptualism that were extracted via open and selected coding include: pursuit of interdisciplinary studies, empowering critical role of theory, paradigm shift from curriculum planning to curriculum understanding, focusing on out of school variables, generalizing, emphasis on theory rather than practice, improving the field of curriculum studies in order to adapt to complicated dialogues, internationalization of curriculum studies, critic of ahistorical posture and using of autobiography and interpreting Currrere as a biographical mode. Finally, notable critiques of Reconceptualism and their responses are analyzed.

The main purpose of this research is to derive Seminary virtual education effectiveness criteria. Seminary education has main differences with tertiary or professional education. Therefore, to assess their effectiveness, we must take into account these differences. In this research we have used qualitative methodology and set a semi-interview mechanism with 15 experts in e-learning, all employees in Seminary educational institutions established in Qom. Data analysis was done in three stages: open encoding, axial encoding and selective encoding. In open encoding stage 114 codes was detected. In axial encoding stage these codes were categorized around six basic categories. With recurrent reviewing of interviews in selective coding stage we reached one inclusive category. Based on these research findings, to assess Seminary virtual education’s effectiveness, there are two layers, i.e. surface and deep. In surface layer we must consider six categories which include: Seminary’s essential values, seminary educational aims, curriculum design, teacher skills, learner skills and behavioral and attitudinal outcomes. But in deep layer, based on Seminary essential values and interactions among six categories, it boiled down to one inclusive category which we called “Seminarian traits”. This concept involves elements such as: Seminarian style, religious inquiry, propagation skills, observing the teacher’s dignity, developing an inner feeling and life-long learning.

This paper presents a report on the level of achievement in the third grade of high school courses of physics and laboratory. This research is assessment-oriented and evaluative and in collecting of data follows the grounded theory method. Curricular goal achievement was assessed with evaluating mathematics and science students (N=369) from five districts in Tehran via academic achievement test. The analysis of data showed that:1-The goals of physics curriculum in cognitive domain had been achieved.2-There were no significant differences between male and female mathematics and science students in goal achievement in cognitive domain.3-There were significant differences in cognitive domain in between students who studied in different districts of Tehran.

The aim of this study was to explore skills that a teacher needs in order to apply ICT in education. This study is a descriptive- survey research. The data were collected through Delphi method. Ten experts in the field of new technologies, IT teachers in the ICDL Iran institute, informants in the Smart School project, 25 teachers working in smart schools with at least 5 years of experience in developing and implementing content were invited for participation in the research. At the first stage, experts prioritized items, giving each item a weight taking into considerations factors such as importance, necessity and priority of the item for the teacher inside the classroom. They also carried out two tests, i.e. Friedman test and Spearman's coefficient of agreement. Thus, the level of agreement between ten expert participants and validity of the priorities as set by the entire group of participants was determined. At the second phase, after applying the priorities, in order to achieve maximum consensus, items were again handed to the participants, resulting in a 95.48 percent agreement. The findings showed an increase in means and standard deviation in the second phase, indicating convergence among the participants. Results showed that all the correlation coefficients are significant at 1% alpha, which shows the validity of each component and high agreement. With the contribution of experts, ICT application skills were divided into general and specialized skills, while competency was divided into three components: cognitive, functional and emotional.

The present study is about one of the most important contemporary issues in education and curriculum development, namely “human rights education”. By using content analysis, 36 textbooks of 2012-2013 school year with an overall of 3924 pages were studied and analyzed. For the analysis of the data, Shannon's entropy method derived from the theory of systems was used to obtain the credibility ratings of each human rights component and comparison of their coefficients. Based on our research findings, there hasn’t been enough attention to human rights components, and among the pages of the textbooks, most credibility ratings was related to constitutional laws and less to the rights of social, economical and cultural components. Also based on the credibility ratings obtained from the frequency corresponding to the sub-components, the highest credibility ratings is related to sub-components of environmental rights, while the lowest credibility ratings relates sub-components of right to fair trial and property rights.