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Teacher Mediated Agency in Educational Reform in China

Author : Hongzhi Yang

Publisher : Springer

Page : 224 pages

File Size : 35,61 MB

Release : 2015-03-26

Category : Education

ISBN : 3319159259

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Book Description

This book examines teacher agency in implementing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum reform in the Chinese university context. It theorizes the concept of teacher agency from a sociocultural theory perspective and draws on a study conducted in a conservative and less developed area in China. The book uses Engeström's activity theory and Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to understand the nature and extent of teacher agency in adapting one’s teaching with respect to beliefs, knowledge and instructional practices. The study concludes that curriculum reform in China needs to shift from reliance on 'top-down' policies to 'bottom-up' implementation that mobilizes local understandings and practices. One of the implications of this study is that transformative teacher education programs aimed at developing teacher pedagogical agency require that teachers have ongoing opportunities to design, develop and evaluate curriculum-based mediational means.



Teacher Agency

Author : Mark Priestley

Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing

Page : 201 pages

File Size : 40,67 MB

Release : 2015-10-22

Category : Education

ISBN : 1472525876

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Book Description

Recent worldwide education policy has reinvented teachers as agents of change and professional developers of the school curriculum. Academic literature has analyzed changes in how teacher professionalism is conceived in policy and in practice but Teacher Agency provides a fresh perspective on this issue, drawing upon an ecological theory of agency. Using this model for understanding agency, Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson explore empirical findings from the 'Teacher Agency and Curriculum Change' project, funded by the UK-based Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Drawing together this research with the authors' international experiences and perspectives, Teacher Agency addresses theoretical and practical issues of international significance. The authors illustrate how teacher agency should be understood not only in terms of individual capacity of teachers, but also in respect of the cultures and structures of schooling.



Teacher Agency and Policy Response in English Language Teaching

Author : Patrick C. L. Ng

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 217 pages

File Size : 42,99 MB

Release : 2016-08-05

Category : Education

ISBN : 1317295811

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Book Description

The role of English in the global arena has prompted official language-in-education policy makers to adopt language education policies to enable its citizens to be proficient in English and to access knowledge. Local educational contexts in different countries have implemented English education in their own ways with different pedagogical goals, motivations, features and pedagogies. While much of the research cited in English language planning policy has focused on macro level language policy and planning, there is an increasing interest in micro planning, in particular teacher agency in policy response. Individual teacher agency is a multifaceted amalgam, not only of teachers’ individual histories, professional training, personal values and instructional beliefs, but also of how these interact with local interpretations and appropriations of policy. Teacher Agency and Policy Response in English Language Teaching examines the agency of the teacher in negotiating educational reforms and policy changes at the local and national levels. Chapters in the book include: English language teaching in China: teacher agency in response to curricular innovations Incorporating academic skills into EFL curriculum: teacher agency in response to global mobility challenge Teacher agency, the native/nonnative dichotomy, and "English Classes in English" in Japanese high Schools Teacher-designed high stakes English language testing: washback and impact This book will appeal to researcher across all sectors of education, in particular key stakeholders in curriculum and language planning. Those interested in the latest development of English language teaching will also find this book a valuable resource.



Educational Policy Borrowing in China

Author : Charlene Tan

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 227 pages

File Size : 39,9 MB

Release : 2016-02-22

Category : Education

ISBN : 1317802586

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Book Description

For over a decade, Mainland China has been embarking on an ambitious nation-wide education reform ('New Curriculum Reform') for its basic education. The reform reflects China’s propensity to borrow selected educational policies from elsewhere, particularly North America and Europe. Chinese scholars have used a local proverb "the West wind has overpowered the East wind" to describe this phenomenon of ‘looking West’. But what do we mean by educational policy borrowing from the West? What are the educational policies in China's new curriculum reform that are perceived to be borrowed from the West? To what extent have the borrowed educational policies in China's new curriculum reform been accepted, modified, and rejected by the various educational stakeholders? How does culture influence the various educational stakeholders in China in interpreting and mediating educational policy borrowing from the West? How do the findings of this study on China’s education reform inform and add to the existing theories on and approaches to on cross-cultural educational policy borrowing? This book answers the above questions by critically discussing China’s policy borrowing from the West through its current reform for primary and secondary education. It presents the latest in-depth research findings from a three-year empirical study (2013-2015) with school principals, teachers, students and other educational stakeholders across China. This study offers new insights into China’s educational policy borrowing from the West and international implications on cross-cultural educational transfer for academics, policymakers and educators.



English Language Teacher Education

Author : Minh Hue Nguyen

Publisher : Springer

Page : 194 pages

File Size : 41,26 MB

Release : 2019-07-16

Category : Education

ISBN : 9811397619

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Book Description

This book examines a range of complex issues concerning the professional experience (i.e., practicum) in English language teacher education with regard to curriculum design and implementation, as well as professional learning. Drawing on a sociocultural perspective, it explores the context of the professional experience, preservice teachers as learners of English language teaching, and the activity of learning to teach English language in connection with interrelated contextual and personal issues: contextual issues such as policies, curricula, university-school partnerships, and mentoring relations are investigated in relation to personal issues such as the beliefs, expectations, prior educational experiences, previous teaching experiences, and cultural-linguistic backgrounds of preservice teachers. In turn, the book addresses professional learning issues, including professional identity development, emotional experiences, and pedagogical learning, in depth. The book delves into the qualitative “fine-grained” aspects of the professional experience while also making valuable conceptual contributions through a sociocultural analysis of the professional learning experience, which can also be applied to research in other teacher education contexts. The findings presented here hold practical implications for English language teacher education in terms of developing a knowledge base for English language teaching and an effective model of professional experience to prepare English language teachers for working in today’s expanded, diverse and dynamic neoliberal contexts.



Quality in TESOL and Teacher Education

Author : Juan de Dios Martínez Agudo

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 297 pages

File Size : 17,86 MB

Release : 2019-10-17

Category : Education

ISBN : 042958234X

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Book Description

This volume takes a holistic view of the current trends and challenges in quality and quality assurance in TESOL and teacher education. Bringing together top scholars in the field from all over the world, the text features invaluable international perspectives with the common objective of improving the quality in TESOL and teacher education in constantly changing and challenging educational contexts globally. Grouped into four wide-ranging, thematic sections – on multilingualism, diversity, teacher education, and future challenges – the book addresses new obstacles faced by educational professionals in today’s rapidly changing educational landscape by offering alternatives to quantitative targets. Chapter authors cover a range of contexts and timely issues, including technology in the classroom, culturally relevant teaching, teaching for continuous improvement, professional development, and monitoring and evaluating quality. Providing a forum of discussion on the intricacies, complexities, and challenges related to the urgent question of quality in the field, this book is a must-read for prospective ESL/EFL teachers and teacher educators.



Language Teachers at Work

Author : Zhan Li

Publisher : Springer Nature

Page : 147 pages

File Size : 30,35 MB

Release : 2020-06-13

Category : Education

ISBN : 981155515X

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Book Description

This book examines a ubiquitous, yet under-researched, area of language education, i.e., language teachers' use of curriculum materials. It particularly focuses on EFL teachers' use of prescribed curriculum materials in higher education in Mainland China and presents a qualitative, multi-case study involving four Chinese EFL teachersand eight students (two students from each teacher’s class) at one university in Mainland China. Drawing on data from pre-lesson and post-lesson interviews with the teachers, lesson observations, and documents in three consecutive semesters at the target university, the book delineates the processes of materials useinclassroom settings. It also identifies four domains of factors that influenced the enactment of curriculum materials. Most importantly, by adopting Vygotsky’s (1978) mediation theory and Remillard’s (2005) participatory perspective, the book constructs a "curriculum enactment mediation model" to reveal the complex and mediated relations among teachers, learners, curriculum materials, and context. It also recommends practical implications for materials developers, teacher educators, administrators, and policymakers.



Activity Theory and Collaborative Intervention in Education

Author : Katsuhiro Yamazumi

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 242 pages

File Size : 40,42 MB

Release : 2021-02-22

Category : Education

ISBN : 1000348830

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Book Description

By applying cultural-historical activity theory and expansive learning theory to educational research, this volume illuminates new forms of educational activities as collaborative interventions in schools and communities where learners and practitioners generate expansive learning so that they can collectively transform their activities and expand their agency for themselves. It covers four cases of activity-theoretical formative intervention studies conducted in Japan, which are related to: fostering children’s expansive learning in classroom lessons; teachers as collaborative change agents in redesigning schools; expanding the school activity from below; and emerging knotworking agency in community-based disaster prevention learning. This book employs activity theory as a general theoretical framework of human learning and development to connect focal data from empirical and interventional studies on real human learning in specific educational settings in Japan. In this way, the book illustrates how the general theoretical framework could be used to understand a specific socio-cultural milieu, that is, the Japanese context. It also shows the universal relevance of the Japanese context of educational activity on broader international research, analyzing concrete empirical data from specific settings in Japan. In conclusion this book creates new understanding and develops a cohesive framework of the agentic and hybrid nature of educational activities as collaborative interventions in the expansion of learning.



Insights in Educational Psychology 2021

Author : Douglas F. Kauffman

Publisher : Frontiers Media SA

Page : 452 pages

File Size : 27,92 MB

Release : 2023-09-12

Category : Science

ISBN : 2832533736

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Book Description

This Research Topic is part of the Insights in Psychology series. We are now entering the third decade of the 21st Century, and, especially in the last years, the achievements made by scientists have been exceptional, leading to major advancements in the fast-growing field of Psychology. Frontiers has organized a series of Research Topics to highlight the latest advancements in science in order to be at the forefront of science in different fields of research. This editorial initiative of particular relevance, led by Douglas Kauffman, Specialty Chief Editor of the section Educational Psychology, is focused on new insights, novel developments, current challenges, latest discoveries, recent advances and future perspectives in this field. Also, high-quality original research manuscripts on novel concepts, problems and approaches are welcomed.



School-Based Curriculum in China

Author : Yunhuo Cui

Publisher : Springer Nature

Page : 165 pages

File Size : 35,1 MB

Release : 2020-12-07

Category : Education

ISBN : 9811086303

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Book Description

This book first develops a framework to understand the curriculum administration system in China. It describes the historical process of localizing school-based curricula as well as the significance and positioning of school-based curricula, and presents in detail cases of how three types of school-based curriculum were developed and implemented in Chinese schools. The book outlines for the first time best practices in school-based curriculum development in China, i.e. how to make a holistic curriculum plan, how to design a curriculum, and how to develop a course in the context of a school-based curriculum. By discussing these three aspects, it clearly summarizes the strategies and technologies for school-based curriculum development, which are applicable across contexts. Although the concept originated outside China, school-based curriculum development in China differs from that in other countries both in theory and practice. This book equips readers with theoretical and practical knowledge of how to develop school-based curricula and how to generate experiences for new curriculum development. This timely book is a valuable resource for researchers, curriculum designers, school teachers and others who are interested in school-based curriculum development.