In this study, we set out to explore how two private, early childhood education and care centres in a small island developing state in the Pacific are coping with schooling during the COVID-19 lockdown period. In particular, we used a case-study research approach to explore teachers’ feelings about the situation and what actions or strategies the centres have devised to continue to support education of young children. We also report on the challenges and opportunities that teachers have experienced in teaching remotely. The case studies suggest that teachers feel worried not only about their personal lives, but also about their professional lives as teachers. The findings also reveal how the two early childhood education and care centres innovate in delivering education in a time of severe crisis. Glimpses of success are visible in terms of making teaching and learning possible and meaningful even with very young children. These findings provide useful insights into teaching and learning during a pandemic.
Using lesson observations, the study reported in this article explores how two practising secondary mathematics teachers implemented formative assessment actions in their classroom teaching. The study also investigated whether teachers’ beliefs about teaching and assessment could be mapped onto their classroom practices. In particular, while the two teachers were implementing student portfolio assessment in their own Year 9 mathematics lessons, the classroom observations focused on how they utilised formative assessment actions such as clarifying and sharing learning criteria intentions and criteria for success; activating students as instructional resources; and, providing feedback that moves learners forward. The findings suggest that one of the teachers made better use of formative assessment or assessment for learning actions while the other showed an emerging understanding of such ideas. A holistic analysis of teachers’ actions point to possible links to their beliefs about teaching and assessment. These findings imply that some teachers may hold productive beliefs about teaching and assessment that support the use formative assessment actions more readily. Such productive beliefs provide a useful platform for enacting better assessments inside secondary classrooms, given that there is paucity of research that deals with how secondary teachers make use of formative assessments. The findings implicitly confirm that better use of formative assessment strategies tend to result in more interactive lessons.
Abstract
Reflective practices in pre-service teacher education enables teachers to evaluate their pedagogical skills. This study aimed to integrate different assessment techniques such as peer assessment, lecturer assessment and self-assessment in a micro-teaching setting. Using 20 pre-service teachers post-microteaching (MT) reflection, we explored how these teachers viewed peer feedback and lecturer feedback. This study also analyses how pre-service teachers self-evaluate their MT. The findings indicate that per-service teachers find both peer and lecturer feedback useful in terms of in terms of identifying their strengths and weaknesses as well as proving incentives for improvement. Furthermore, the findings show that when engaged in self-evaluation, the pre-service teachers tend to focus more on self-knowledge. The findings reaffirm the importance of peer and self-evaluation in teacher education.
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