Rethinking Education in the Raw Materials Sector through Tailor-Made Teaching Methodologies

This article presents a methodology applied to the design of a tailor-made program for teaching staff that addresses the needs of high-level educational institutions in the Eastern and South-Eastern European (ESEE) region. The tailor-made program was implemented as a one-week online course for 22 “Trainees” from six ESEE universities earlier in 2021. “Trainees” from six participating universities are currently developing acceleration programs, planned to occur continuously until 2024, increasing the percentage of the trained academic staff to >50% at each of the six universities. During that period, 240 students will benefit from 140 improved RawMaterials-related courses, improving their learning and understanding.

Instructing AI Ethics and Human Rights

This chapter will exploit emerging issues of AI and current literature on AI ethics and human rights teaching. The authors will exploit understanding AI ethics and human rights in daily life and offer teaching methodologies to explain how to teach AI ethics and human rights in K-12 learning environments. Furthermore, the chapter will be devoted to the latest trends and issues on how to teach AI ethics and humans rights teaching in K-12 learning environments. Particular emphasis will be made on a survey of existing ethics teaching methodologies and how to adopt existing teaching strategies into AI ethics teaching in order to improve their understanding on AI ethics and human rights.

Nuevas metodologías docentes en tiempos de COVID 19 = New teaching methodologies in times of COVID 19

La insólita situación derivada de la crisis COVID-19, ha obligado a docentes y alumnos a reinventarse, utilizando nuevos métodos de enseñanza y aplicando tecnologías en línea que permitan un aprendizaje a distancia eficiente. Como consecuencia, en la asignatura práctica Experimentación en Ingeniería Química II, del Grado en Ingeniería Química, las explicaciones teóricas necesarias para llevar a cabo la experimentación, se han realizado de forma online y sincrónica mediante la plataforma Microsoft Teams, como paso previo a la asistencia al laboratorio. Las sesiones se grabaron y se pusieron a disposición de los alumnos para su consulta. Así, se minimizó el contacto físico entre alumno y profesor y entre alumnos.Por otro lado, en la asignatura Regulación de Procesos Químicos, se ha modificado la evaluación de las prácticas de simulación y, en lugar de pedir a los alumnos informes extensos, se les solicitó completar un cuestionario en Moodle.AbstractThe unusual situation derived from the COVID-19 crisis has forced teachers and students to reinvent themselves, using new teaching methods and applying online technologies that allow an efficient distance learning. As a consequence, in the practical subject Experimentation in Chemical Engineering II, of the Degree in Chemical Engineering, the theoretical explanations necessary to carry out the experimentation have been carried out online and synchronously through the Microsoft Teams platform, as a prior step to attendance to the laboratory. The sessions were recorded and made available to the students for their consultation. Thus, physical contact between student and teacher and between students was minimized.On the other hand, in the subject Regulation of Chemical Processes, the evaluation of simulation practices has been modified and, instead of asking students for extensive reports, they were asked to complete a questionnaire in Moodle.

Influence of BIM-Based Teaching Methodology on the Spatial Abilities of Construction Engineering Students

Spatial visualization skills are considered essential for a variety of professional careers, especially those related with architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC). A number of studies have proven that these skills are progressively acquired by AEC students during their years in college, being necessary specific pedagogical approaches for this purpose. Other 3D native design software has been proved to exert a positive influence on the spatial abilities of students in several fields, such as fine arts or civil engineering. In the field of AEC, BIM software stands out as an appropriate tool for this purpose, as it supports 3D-native design. This study was conducted to clarify the influence that working with BIM models has on the spatial abilities of the students to visualize constructive components in 3D; it was hypothesized that the effect would be positive to some extent, as in similar disciplines. To that end, an experiment was conducted with 73 undergraduate students in construction engineering, who attended an intensive 4-week workshop where they had to work with BIM models. The improvement in their spatial abilities was measured by the Mental Rotation Test (MRT) and, besides, a satisfaction survey was conducted. The results indicate that MRT scores improved between 3.8% and 15.5% and that students felt highly satisfied with this pedagogical approach. These results aim to help in implementing BIM in the academic curricula to maximize the educational outcomes of the students while gathering their assessment of BIM-based teaching methodologies.

Novice Teachers' Thinking Development from Practicum to Early Career

<p>Teacher education programmes have focused on training student teachers with knowledge of teaching methodologies and good teaching performance. What is going on inside student teachers’ minds in their processes of learning to teach is more difficult to observe and sometimes overshadowed by this primary focus. This study sets out to gain a deeper understanding of student teachers’ developing cognition while learning to teach. The existing literature on teachers’ critical thinking, reflection, and cognition provides various frameworks each of which presents different levels or stages of teachers’ development in the respective domains. Each level or stage is characterised by certain concerns, beliefs, skills, discourse, or teaching behaviours. However, underlying processes of change – i.e. how teachers move from lower levels to higher levels of such development, what triggers such movement – and how such movement enhances their teaching effectiveness are under-researched. In addition, those existing frameworks describe major stages of teachers’ development during the whole of their professional journeys. Little research zooms in novice teachers’ thinking development. This research takes an exploratory approach, without relying on any existing frameworks, to investigating and theorising the unseen thinking development processes of novice teachers during the important transition from teaching practicum to early career teaching. The research included three stages of inquiry in which one stage was developed from the previous stage and its results were constantly compared to those of the previous one. The first stage involved in-depth individual interviews with nine early career teachers. The second stage involved working closely with a cohort of five student teachers during four months of their teaching practicum in the same teacher training program. The third stage involved my following one of the cohort members into the first two years of his teaching through online communication about their experiences and thinking about language teaching in real-life contexts. The close interaction with the novice teachers incrementally constructed a clearer picture of the complexity and dynamics of their thinking. The stories of the three groups revealed and confirmed a hierarchy of attention to core aspects of effective teaching. However, the movement across the hierarchy was not linear but fluctuating and causing dissonance between their cognition and practice. Moreover, the novice teachers’ thinking development also involved the development of generic thinking skills – from “either-or” thinking to “both-and” thinking, from single-perspective to multi-perspective thinking, and from a focus on the detail to 'big picture' thinking. Thinking development was found to go hand in hand with the development of teaching effectiveness, understanding of teaching methodologies, and awareness of professional identity. This research proposes a tentative framework of novice teachers’ thinking development from teaching practicum to early career teaching. The framework presents both content and processes of their thinking changes, both internal and external factors influencing their thinking changes, and both teaching-domain-specific and general thinking skills. This framework suggests reconsidering the over-emphasis on surface teaching methodology and teaching performance in teacher education programs and calls for more attention to the thinking, emotions, and self-awareness which strongly influence novice teachers’ teaching performance and professional identity.</p>

Novice Teachers' Thinking Development from Practicum to Early Career

<p>Teacher education programmes have focused on training student teachers with knowledge of teaching methodologies and good teaching performance. What is going on inside student teachers’ minds in their processes of learning to teach is more difficult to observe and sometimes overshadowed by this primary focus. This study sets out to gain a deeper understanding of student teachers’ developing cognition while learning to teach. The existing literature on teachers’ critical thinking, reflection, and cognition provides various frameworks each of which presents different levels or stages of teachers’ development in the respective domains. Each level or stage is characterised by certain concerns, beliefs, skills, discourse, or teaching behaviours. However, underlying processes of change – i.e. how teachers move from lower levels to higher levels of such development, what triggers such movement – and how such movement enhances their teaching effectiveness are under-researched. In addition, those existing frameworks describe major stages of teachers’ development during the whole of their professional journeys. Little research zooms in novice teachers’ thinking development. This research takes an exploratory approach, without relying on any existing frameworks, to investigating and theorising the unseen thinking development processes of novice teachers during the important transition from teaching practicum to early career teaching. The research included three stages of inquiry in which one stage was developed from the previous stage and its results were constantly compared to those of the previous one. The first stage involved in-depth individual interviews with nine early career teachers. The second stage involved working closely with a cohort of five student teachers during four months of their teaching practicum in the same teacher training program. The third stage involved my following one of the cohort members into the first two years of his teaching through online communication about their experiences and thinking about language teaching in real-life contexts. The close interaction with the novice teachers incrementally constructed a clearer picture of the complexity and dynamics of their thinking. The stories of the three groups revealed and confirmed a hierarchy of attention to core aspects of effective teaching. However, the movement across the hierarchy was not linear but fluctuating and causing dissonance between their cognition and practice. Moreover, the novice teachers’ thinking development also involved the development of generic thinking skills – from “either-or” thinking to “both-and” thinking, from single-perspective to multi-perspective thinking, and from a focus on the detail to 'big picture' thinking. Thinking development was found to go hand in hand with the development of teaching effectiveness, understanding of teaching methodologies, and awareness of professional identity. This research proposes a tentative framework of novice teachers’ thinking development from teaching practicum to early career teaching. The framework presents both content and processes of their thinking changes, both internal and external factors influencing their thinking changes, and both teaching-domain-specific and general thinking skills. This framework suggests reconsidering the over-emphasis on surface teaching methodology and teaching performance in teacher education programs and calls for more attention to the thinking, emotions, and self-awareness which strongly influence novice teachers’ teaching performance and professional identity.</p>

Ecossistemas Costeiros e Poluição das Águas: há Abordagem CTSA nos Livros Didáticos do Ensino Médio?

ResumoA abordagem Ciência-Tecnologia-Sociedade-Ambiente (CTSA) permite uma visão crítica sobre a ciência e a tecnologia e seus impactos, sejam esses positivos ou negativos, na sociedade e no ambiente, e os livros didáticos (LD), amplamente presentes na realidade escolar, se configuram como um importante aliado para tratar destas questões. Assim, este estudo se propõe a verificar a ocorrência desta abordagem nos livros didáticos do Ensino Médio, adotados pela rede estadual de ensino no município de Estância, SE, nos tópicos que retratam os temas ecossistemas costeiros e a poluição das águas. As categorias adotadas para análise foram: 1) relação de exemplos com a realidade; 2) presença de história da ciência; 3) relações entre a responsabilidade individual e a coletiva; 4) impactos sociais na aplicação da tecnologia; 5) a tecnologia na resolução de problemas e 6) tomada de decisões e resolução de problemas. A partir das análises dos quatro livros didáticos utilizados, nota-se que o enfoque CTSA tem sido abordado nos livros didáticos e que o tópico referente à poluição das águas surgem em uma relação CTSA, que está mais estabelecida. Uma maneira de contornar as lacunas existentes nos LD são elaborações ou busca de sequências didáticas direcionadas ao tema que não são aprofundadas nos livros. O livro didático sendo um material amplamente presente na realidade escolar se apresenta como um importante aliado dos professores, quando devidamente explorado, para promover uma aprendizagem crítico-reflexiva junto aos alunos do Ensino Médio. Palavras-chave: Recursos Didáticos. Ensino E Aprendizagem. Metodologias de Ensino. AbstractScience-Technology-Society-Environment approach (STSE) allows a critical view of science and technology and its impacts, whether positive or negative, on society and the environment, and Didactic Books (DB), widely present in reality school, are configured as an important ally to address these issues. Thus, this study aims to verify the occurrence of this approach in high school textbooks, adopted by the state school system in the municipality of Estância, SE, in the topics that depict the themes of coastal ecosystems and water pollution. The categories adopted for analysis were: 1) relation of examples to reality; 2) presence of a history of science; 3) relationships between individual and collective responsibility; 4) social impacts on the technology application; 5) technology in problem solving and 6) decision making and problem solving. From the analysis of the four textbooks used, it is noted that the STSE approach has been addressed in the textbooks and that the topic referring to water pollution is where the STSE relationship is most established. One way to circumvent possible gaps in the DB is to elaborate or search for didactic sequences directed to the theme that are not discussed in depth in the books. The textbook, being a material widely present in school reality, is an important ally for teachers, when properly explored, to promote critical-reflective learning with high school students. Keywords: Didactic Resources. Teaching and learning. Teaching Methodologies.

A Comparative Study on Teaching Methodologies Applied in Engineering and Manufacturing Process Subjects during the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 and 2021

Specific disciplines in engineering, such as manufacturing processes, require students in their academic stage to pay special attention, given the possible changes that may affect the acquisition of competencies. In an environment of uncertainty, such as a global pandemic, teaching must adapt without losing the effective delivery of content to students. The health and safety measures applied during the first months of the pandemic led to a different type of teaching to that which had customarily been applied, such as synchronous and asynchronous methodologies defined by the university’s governing bodies, where face-to-face and online methodologies coexisted in the same academic year. All of this avoided interrupting the academic year. This paper studies the results achieved in this uncertain environment, extends them and compares them with the following year, where only the face-to-face methodology was applied to the students enrolled in Manufacturing Processes 2 at the Centro Universitario de Mérida within the Bachelor’s Degree in Design Engineering and New Product Development (Grado en Ingeniería en Diseño y Desarrollo de Nuevos Productos -GIDIDP-). An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to the data obtained to locate the significant differences between the samples taken in the first year with online and face-to-face teaching methodologies and those taken in the second year with an exclusively face-to-face methodology. When comparing the results, maintaining face-to-face teaching proved essential, as it contributes towards achieving better marks or maintaining the level. However, online methodologies also help as an additional tool to acquire other knowledge and specific skills in these technical engineering subjects, specifically those dealing with the manufacturing processes addressed in this study.

Home-based physiology labs in the time of COVID-19 prove popular with medical students

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting “lockdown” have forced many medical schools to shift from traditional “face-to-face” teaching methodologies and embrace full online delivery. Although lectures and tutorials are readily communicated by this approach, the execution of laboratory exercises is much more difficult. To overcome these challenges, face-to-face laboratory sessions were replaced by a blended learning approach in which students were provided instructional material online and then required to conduct the laboratory exercises at home. These laboratory exercises made use of easily accessible household materials and mobile applications. A self-report survey was designed to assess students’ perception of their learning experience and attitudes to the home-based laboratory exercises. The survey consisted of 16 questions that students had to respond to using a 5-point Likert scale. Students were also allowed to provide open responses to select questions. Overall, the 80% of students that completed the survey expressed strong satisfaction with their learning experience and were enthusiastic toward home-based laboratory exercises. However, concerns about not being able to complete particular face-to-face exercises that required specialized equipment were expressed. Several students proposed a combined approach going forward. Our results show that home-based laboratory exercises offer a multimodal option that enriches the learning curriculum by engaging students in “hands-on” bespoke practicals using inexpensive household materials.