Search

For many novice teachers, their first year on the job can be a roller coaster experience of 'ups' and 'downs' as they transition from their teacher education programs to teaching in real classrooms. While to 'ups' are always good to experience, the 'downs' can be so traumatic that novice teachers can feel so stressed that their teaching is adversely impacted and burned out to the point that they consider resigning for the profession. For the most part, however, the language teaching profession has not addressed this aspect of a novice ESL (English as a second language) teacher well-being in terms of their personal and emotional investment as they transition from trainee to novice teacher in their first year. This paper attempts to shed light on the emotional experiences of three female novice ESL teachers in a university language school in Canada as they reflected during regular group discussions and journal writing during their first semester (12 weeks) as novice ESL teachers. The results reveal that the group discussions and journal writing provided a platform for the teachers to articulate their mostly negative emotions with three most frequently expressed: frustration, anger and boredom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study on fragmentation and defragmentation of reflective thinking structures has never been conducted. Therefore, the purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to identify the types and forms of fragmentation of students' reflective thinking structures in solving mathematical problems, (2) to describe attempts to defragment students' reflective thinking structures in each type and form of fragmentation, and (3) to find out if such defragmentation attempts can work for reflective thinkers who experience fragmentation. This research was qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive. The subjects included in this study were students who thought reflectively and experienced fragmentation at each level of reflective thinking when solving mathematical problems. Data collection was conducted using tests, interviews, think-aloud protocols, and observation. Data analysis was conducted using constant comparative method. Data validity was established using method and source triangulation. The results showed: (1) Scanning Defragmentation work for Less-Strict Fragmentation, (2) Schema Emergence Defragmentation work for Pseudo-True Fragmentation, (3) Schema Activation work for Pseudo-False Fragmentation, (4) Connection Emergence Defragmentation work for Nonexistent-Connection Fragmentation, (5) Compare-Reflect Defragmentation work for Confidence-False Fragmentation. The results of this study can be reference for mathematics researchers and educators to develop learning models that can prevent the occurrence of fragmentation of reflective thinking structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the role of youth workers' confidence in Meitheal: an Irish model of prevention and early intervention in child welfare. This study had an exploratory mixed methods design. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with youth workers to analyse their knowledge of prevention, early intervention, Meitheal and partnerships in child welfare. These were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Additionally, youth workers completed a questionnaire to explore the levels of confidence in their role. Due to the small sample only descriptive and non-parametric statistics were used to analyse the data obtained. Youth workers see support and advocacy of young people as their primary role in Meitheal, despite this, participants described explaining what they do with other child welfare agencies as a challenge which was understood as a possible insecurity on the part of youth workers, alongside a presumption that their role and profession is not understood. Overall, this study found the need for youth workers to be more confident when engaging in Meitheal to facilitate their role and ensure that young people and their families are appropriately supported by the discipline of Youth Work specifically but also as part of the overall Meitheal model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mix-methods study sought to assess the effect of semi-structured and unstructured reflective journaling (RJ) on 97 undergraduate students' perceptions of their metacognitive awareness, classified into two main components: knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. Students' entries were analyzed based on a guiding scheme. The Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) was administered to the participants before (pretest) and after (posttest) a 13-week intervention. Multiple levels of reflective engagement were evident in the semi-structured RJ entries, whereas the unstructured entries were largely descriptive, and mainly related to students' short-term learning experiences. Semi-structured RJ was found effective in nurturing students' perceptions of their regulation of cognition. The present study adds to past work by showing how prompting questions might enable students to perceive themselves as self-regulated learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]