Search results for: Collaborative learning

This article aims to describe a qualitative action research study into the collective experiences of establishing a mentoring culture within a research triad consisting of a university professor together with a doctoral student and a master’s level student who served as research assistants (RA). The authors believe the establishment of the mentoring culture facilitated the identification of individual needs within the triad, which in turn allowed for increased confidence, adaptive support, and appropriate skills development necessary for all members to contribute to the successful completion of the project. The authors concluded that the application of the model to graduate RAships with multiple participants might lead to enhancement of working environments and professional growth due to multiple contact-points and exposures to specific tasks or skill-sets around which the work is organized.

In this study, the authors were interested to investigate how a lesson plan study (LPS) activity conducted within the context of a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment would impact on prospective teachers’ repertoires of pedagogical-content knowledge (PCK) about teaching primary school mathematics. By the end of this study, it was found that the prospective teachers had made considerable advances to their repertoires of PCK. The authors found several factors that influenced growth in PCK.

This paper presents the action research component of a Master of Natural Science degree program for physics teachers at a large research university in the southwestern United States. The article describes both process and outcomes of this research experience from the perspectives of the research coordinator and the teacher–researchers. The teachers who have completed the MNS degree program indicate their AR process was a valuable and interesting experience despite the manifold challenges of conducting classroom research in cooperation with a team of teachers while simultaneously teaching full time.

The purpose of this study is to examine an online pedagogical activity that fosters the social construction of science knowledge by primary pre-service teachers working in small virtual teams. The study examined how the pre-service teachers collaborated online in virtual teams to complete set tasks. The study also examined their attitudes toward and beliefs about the effectiveness of the online learning experience, and the types and quality of the resources developed. The findings indicated positive attitudes toward the collaborative learning even though beliefs about online learning were mixed.