Authors:Apostolia Matziouri Pages: 1 - 16 Abstract: This article is our third attempt to give out evidence resulting from a large-scale and revealing research that took place in a regional unity of Northern Greece. Our goal is to trigger speculation and dialogue inside the scientific community regarding aspects of foreign students’ cultural backgrounds and their attitude inside school. The article begins with a short theoretical frame, continues with the methodology and the findings, providing quotes that reveal a lot, especially after the recent alarming political upheavals in Eastern Mediterranean and ends with some excruciating questions intended to awaken native people’s conscience. PubDate: 2020-05-06 DOI: 10.5296/ije.v12i2.16854 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 2 (2020)
Authors:Richard Kwabena Akrofi Baafi Pages: 17 - 29 Abstract: Teaching quality, as demonstrated by effective teacher instructional strategies, has dominated education process research in the recent past. This study sought to establish the effect of instructional strategies on student academic achievement in public senior high schools in Ghana. The study utilised a sample of 210 students and 160 teachers sampled through proportionate stratified sampling. The study attempted to establish which instructional strategies were inherent in public senior high schools in Ghana and how those strategies influenced students’ achievement in the national standardised mathematics test. The study found out that most teachers had an average experience of five years, with those over ten years’ experience exhibiting ineffective teaching strategies due to lack of structured teacher professional development. Further, the study established that classroom management strategies which promote discipline among students and teacher-prepared strategies were inherent among teachers. However, strategies which increase learner engagement, as well as those which increase learning during lesson delivery, were inadequate. The study recommends that the government of Ghana enhances a structured teacher professional development as well as effective school-based teacher supervision policies. PubDate: 2020-05-06 DOI: 10.5296/ije.v12i2.16978 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 2 (2020)
Authors:Ioanna Talli, Polyxeni Emmanouil Pages: 30 - 45 Abstract: Studies of bilinguals with developmental dyslexia learning to read in two alphabetic orthographies have shown that they demonstrate similar reading and phonological short-term memory (STM) deficits in both their languages. The present study aimed at exploring whether dyslexia in adults affects similarly decoding skills in two transparent languages, Greek and Italian, whether there are similar deficits in phonological STM and whether the dominance of one of the two languages affects the manifestation of the deficits. We compared the performance of a young Greek-Italian bilingual dyslexic adult (exposed to Italian from birth, L1: Greek) to that of a young monolingual Greek dyslexic adult, a young Greek-Italian typically developing (TD) bilingual adult (exposed to Italian from birth, L1: Greek) and a young Greek monolingual TD adult. We assessed them in word and non-word reading and non-word repetition. Results showed that bilingual dyslexic adult performed significantly poorer than the bilingual TD adult on all tasks in both languages, suggesting that dyslexia affects similarly decoding and phonological STM across languages. On reading, bilingual outperformed monolingual dyslexic, while monolingual outperformed bilingual TD adult. On phonological STM, both bilinguals outperformed monolinguals. A positive effect of bilingualism was found for reading skills only for dyslexics, while it was found for phonological STM for both dyslexic and TD adults. Finally, the dominance of L1 affected bilinguals' performance in reading but not in non-word repetition, where they showed better performance in Italian, perhaps due to the phonotactic complexity of the Greek orthography compared to Italian. PubDate: 2020-05-08 DOI: 10.5296/ije.v12i2.17010 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 2 (2020)
Authors:Fumi Takegami Pages: 46 - 66 Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to report outcomes of the study regarding the professional development of a Japanese teacher of English (JTE) helping her to meet the recent national English foreign language curriculum policy in Japan. The policy requires teachers to basically conduct classes in English. An action research framework was used. The participant, in collaboration with the author, went through praxis-oriented cycles built on planning, doing reflecting and revising. Data were collected and analyzed using grounded theory methods. A three-stage coding process led to the emergence of two core themes to encapsulate the data: Existing Positive Disharmonies (EPD), a disruptive zone leading to possibility of change; and Reconstructing Teaching Practice (RTP), in which the participant experienced changes that worked in her lessons. This led to the advancement in her teacher development to meet the demands of the new curriculum policy. The paper demonstrates that shedding light on positive disharmonies within teaching practices was useful in the participant’s professional development helping her to make instructional adjustments required by policy changes. It is plausible that the outcomes of this study may be transferable to teachers working in other similar teaching environments. Accordingly, a model for teacher development is presented to help JTEs and other teachers in their teacher development. PubDate: 2020-05-23 DOI: 10.5296/ije.v12i2.16885 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 2 (2020)
Authors:Ana Rodriguez Martínez, Alejandra Cortés Pascual, Cesar Rodriguez-Ledo, Francisco Royo Pages: 67 - 85 Abstract: The purpose of this work is to evaluate the impact that the Master-level course in Socioemotional Learning for Personal and Social Development (hereinafter MAESE) has had on socioemotional skills, positive psychology (dispositional optimism and satisfaction with life), the level of communicative and teamwork skills developed through coaching, and the capacity for entrepreneurship and innovation in the students of four consecutive graduating classes. This Master-level course has been taught at the University of Zaragoza in a blended-instruction form since 2014 and is currently in its sixth year. The methodology used here is eminently quantitative through an ex post facto descriptive study, although in the coaching and entrepreneurship block, qualitative information is also collected through open-ended questions. The results show that after completing the MAESE, there are few significant improvements in socioemotional skills (MSCEIT). On the other hand, there are significant improvements in the participants’ dispositional optimism (Life Orientation Test), satisfaction with life (SWLS), skill development through coaching, and ability to undertake projects and to innovate (PTWS). We conclude by reinforcing the importance of and responsibility to evaluate the impact that university training has on its students, especially for degrees covering emotion-related content. PubDate: 2020-05-23 DOI: 10.5296/ije.v12i2.16822 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 2 (2020)
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