“Educational research is cyclical process of steps that typically begins with identifying a research problem or issue of study. It then involves reviewing the literature, specifying a purpose for the study, collecting and analyzing data, and forming an interpretation of information. This process culminates a report, disseminated to audiences, that is evaluated and used in the educational community” (Creswell 2002). Since researching and analyzing data critically are highly necessitated skills for a professional practitioner in education, I have been inspired to select some resources, which I think will help me shot in the arm and boost my career as an educator. I tried to slim my research in the teaching methodologies to be more focused and stuck to my major as a teacher. I will try to recap and reflect on each source as follow: -
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The journal of effective teaching(1996) is a peer reviewed semiannual online journal. They may have special issues for any current topics. JET deals only with novelties in teaching experience and best practices related to classroom management. One of the most impressive manuscripts, which really guaranteed my realism in PBL theory, is “The Effect of Project-Based Activities on Intermediate EFL Students' Reading Comprehension Ability” (Shiraz and Larsari, 2014). The author’s purpose was to improve through his research that using PBL in teaching the intermediate schools students would raise their competency in reading comprehension skill. I was overwhelmed by the manner he adopted the research in his school. It was simple and led to clear results of the importance of the Project Based Learning theory. EFL/ESL Teaching Techniques :( 2012) devotes its efforts to teachers of English as a second language. Being majored in English, I was attached to this journal very strikingly. Any English language teacher can find a sufficient number of articles and handouts that interrelate directly with his areas of need or interest in teaching English as a second language. “Numerically Assessing Young ESL/EFL Learners Without Tests” (A. James,2010) has suggested several ways of considering the social skills and attitudes of the students toward the taught material and how to turn these nonnumeric inputs into numbers and figures to be presented to the stakeholders and analyzed for further improvements.
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GENERAL EDUCATION JOURNALS (1880) is a subordinate of the Questia Trusted Online Research website. It was established in 1880 to function as a quarterly journal serving the field of educational innovations along with preparing teachers for their professions. Unavailability of funding resources imposes some charges for the publication in this journal. It has started its first handling of the educational issues since 1993 until now with numerous amount of beneficial editions.
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One internet site that should be highly appreciated by teachers as long as students is TeacherVision®. It saves a lot of time for teachers in different fields with so many printables, lesson plans, graphic organizers and theme, etc. It provides searching engine that delivers so many topics for teachers to benefit from. TeacherVision gains its influence from trusted educational associations and the world's best children's publishers, including the Council for Exceptional Children, Educators for Social Responsibility, Houghton Mifflin Company, the National Association for Music Education, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster, Inc., and the vast resources available within the Pearson family.
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The Companion Website for Effective Teaching Methods: Research-Based Practice is a comprehensive website that offers well organized resources enable teachers to gain their mastery skills in the pedagogical methods of teaching depending on graduated stages. This amazing website prepares and empowers teachers with 12 in depth chapters. Each chapter comprises of similar divisions that covers the chapter objectives and overview, videos, quizzes, praxis prep and classroom observation tools.
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Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching is a subsidiary of Iowa State University website. The website as a whole is fantastic and serves the educational community with a variety of resources. Yet, one division in this website is my favorite. The Teaching subtitle is one major part of this website for every teacher and educator. It is divided into five sections that cover the instructional cycle as in one piece. First part is Effective Educational Practices; it deals with wide information that are useful to students’ learning. Teachers learn how to apply instructional techniques and differentiate their teaching according to their students’ levels and learning types through the Course Planning part. Classroom Practice is a third part that enables teachers to conduct new classes and manage large classes easily. One important part is Documenting Your Teaching; it offers many methods of formative and summative assessment with no neglecting of the peer feedback. The final part of Teaching Division is the Online Learning Hub. A lot of supplementary resources that support the professional development are there.
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About how “Educators explore nontraditional methods of teaching and receive positive results”, Diane Curtis has suggested new techniques of integrating technology in teaching in here article: “Brain-Based Research Prompts Innovative Teaching Techniques in the Classroom”. She has suggested Key Largo School as a model school that integrated technology effectively in teaching. Depending on some brain researches that showed a great deal of positive influence of technology on teaching, Key Largo School has provided their students with different kinds of networked technology devices. Using the computer and some internet videos, a kindergarten teacher was able to understand how the flower opens with no suffering in searching for any dull teaching aids that do not work with those small kids. Other higher graders were entitled to practice Brain Gym exercises through performing some movements with their fingers to sustain concentration and observation skills actively.
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Trying to draw the teachers’ attention to the importance of altered techniques in managing their classrooms effectively, Robert Ledbury in his article” The Importance of Eye Contact in the Classroom” (R. Ledbury, I. White and S. Darn )has highlighted the using of nonverbal communication as a need. He assured the eye contact as a powerful tool for conveying any needed messages to and from teachers and students. Succeeding in forming their personalities, teachers should highly estimate the influence of the look. The Look may have variant interpretations; it could, according to the situation, mean stay calm please', through ‘try to be more focused to ‘it’s enough. According to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), the clever eye contact is considered as a key success indicator for the good presenter; this is the why there are so many training programs on the effective use of body language and eye contact with the difference in patterns of people.
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“Personality similarity between teachers and their students influences teacher judgement of student achievement”( Tobias Rauscha*, Constance Karingb, Tobias Dörflerc & Cordula Artelta) is an empirical study that has been applied on 409 dyads of German teachers and their students in order to examine the relationship between the common personal characteristics of the teachers and their students and if that has an impact on the teachers’ judgment on their students achievement or not. Results show positive relationship between the similar teachers with their students while judging their achievement. While the classroom is a place where the teacher interact with his students according to the similarity and dissimilarity in terms of personal traits and attitudes. The study show that similarity leads to a more accurate estimation of the students’ achievement, because as a human it is easier to accept another persons’ viewpoint if that person is more similar to you than a less similar one.
References List: -Research Rundowns (2009) What is Educational Research? Available at: https://researchrundowns.wordpress.com/intro/whatisedresearch/,(accessed in 22/04/2015) -The journal of effective teaching (1996) The Effect of Project-Based Activities on Intermediate EFL Students' Reading Comprehension Ability, available at: http://www.uncw.edu/cte/et/articles/Vol14_3/PoorverdiAbs.html, (accessed: 22/04/2015) -Abela, J., (2014) Numerically Assessing Young ESL/EFL Learners without Tests, available at: http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Abela-AssessingYoungLearners/ (accessed: 4/20/2015) - GENERAL EDUCATION JOURNALS (1880) available at:https://www.questia.com/library/p5118/education?gclid=CMPV4tW-MQCFakKwwod_rQARA,(accessed :4/19/2015) -Pearson Education Inc. (2015) available at: https://www.teachervision.com/, (accessed in 22/04/2015) - Borich, G., (2010) Effective Teaching Methods: Research-Based Practice, Sixth Edition, available at: http://wps.prenhall.com/chet_borich_effective_6/ (accessed in 22/04-2015) - IOWA State University (2015): Strategies to Check Student Learning in the Classroom (Classroom Assessment Techniques) available at: http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching-resources/classroompractice/teaching-techniques-strategies/check-student-learning/
- Curtis, D., Brain-Based Research Prompts Innovative Teaching Techniques in the Classroom, available
at:http://www.edutopia.org/brain-based-research-powerful-learning, (accessed in 21/04/2015) - Ledbury, R., I., White, and S.Darn, (2004) The Importance of Eye Contact in the Classroom, available at:http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Darn-EyeContact.html(accessed in 19/04/2015) Rauscha, T., C., Karingb, T., Dรถrflerc & A., Cordula, (2014), Personality similarity between teachers and their students influences teacher judgement of student achievement, available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01443410.2014.998629#abstract, (accessed in 20//04/2015)