Timetable >
20.11.2020 >
International perspectives
Parallel sessions III.
International perspectives
English
Fri 20.11.2020 12:00-14:15
Lecture hall: Room A
Chair: Mojca Kukanja Gabrijelčič
-
Greek teachers’ beliefs as correlated with students’ self-efficacy during a nomination procedure
PaperScientificEnglishThis research is an effort to explore how students’ self-efficacy is correlated with teachers’ beliefs about their potential and abilities, when a nomination procedure is conducted. With an emphasis to students’ high potential and the degree that teachers nominate it, self-efficacy of a group of nominated students was compared with a group of non-nominated students. Two tools were administered: a) one questionnaire on general characteristics of students’ high potential, answered by 44 teachers voluntarily, in 15 state schools of primary and secondary education in Athens and other urban and semi-urban areas of Greece, and b) another questionnaire of 16 questions on children’s self-efficacy, answered by 647 students of 10-14 years of age. Specifically, teachers answered 21 questions, created by Gari, Kalantzi-Azizi & Mylonas (2000), for 55 selected cases of students with high potential, using a 5 point Likert scale, from 5 “absolutely agree” to 1 “absolutely disagree” regarding student’s characteristics – cognitive, learning and social- and their behavior in class. All students answered the Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale of 10 questions created by Schwarzer & Jerusalem (2013) along with 6 questions created for the purpose of this study with five questions of negative content. During the nomination procedure, 49 out of 647 students were nominated as students of high potential by 24 teachers. Cronbach’s α for the teachers’ and the students’ answers were .84 and .72, respectively; for the nominated students’ self-efficacy answers α= 77. ANOVA analyses of self-efficacy questions for the total sample of students and t-test analyses for the 48 nominated students presented statistically significant differences in terms of students’ age (10-11 years and 12-14 years) showing higher self-efficacy scores for the younger students; no significant differences emerged in terms of gender. Medium positive correlations appeared between teachers’ answers on the nominated students’ high abilities and students’ answers on self-efficacy, ranging from rho=.30 to .46. These results are discussed in terms of the moderate relation of teachers’ beliefs about their students’ abilities, despite the wide spread importance of teachers’ role to students’ understanding of abilities and the general effectiveness in school life. -
From personal constructs toward construction of tolls for identifying potential giftedness and creativity
PaperScientificEnglishPresenter(s): Lada MarinkovicThe paper will present the results of a project whose goal was to respond to the missing needs of practitioners in their efforts to recognize and identify the potentials of gifted children as well as the potential for creativity at an early preschool age. As a theoretical and methodological framework, we used Kelly's theory of personal constructs in which knowledge is viewed as research and experience plays a significant role in its determination. Starting from the assumption that educators' recognition of gifted and creative potentials in children depends on their beliefs about giftedness and creativity, we used the constructivist technique of repertoire network and elicitation using the minimal context technique (Fransella and Bannister, 1977), modified to examine group construct in the group of professionals. In a pre-selected group of experienced preschool teachers, we researched their constructs about the main subject of the research. By analyzing the obtained grids in the Idiogrid program, two constructs were obtained. One about a potentially gifted child and one about a potentially creative child. The process of analysis of the main components determined their key dimensions, and based on the elements of key dimensions, we created instruments for assessing potential giftedness (NS-D 1.0 / 2019) and potential creativity (NS-K 1.0 / 2019). Three dimensions were obtained for the construct of potential giftedness: Social, Intellectual and Creative, while two dimensions were obtained for the construct of potential creativity: Social and Personal characteristics. Compared to contemporary views on the phenomena of giftedness and creativity, the obtained constructs have many common elements. The scales provide insight into a child’s strengths and potentials, as well as those less developed, that also remain visible to practitioners for incentive planning purposes. They also provide an opportunity for more educators or persons to assess the behavior of the same child and for the observed differences in assessments to be the subject of their further communication. Scales are created in such a way as to obtain a graphical profile of the expressed characteristics of a potentially gifted child on the dimensions of social behavior, cognitive abilities and preferences and creativity (for the giftedness scale) and for the potential creativity scale characteristics of a potentially creative child on the dimensions of social behavior and personal characteristics (the names of the constructs only approximately express the content of the items within the dimension).
It is expected that further research and validation of the scales will enable the positioning of an individual child in relation to the characteristic profile of his age (peer) group.
The paper is part of the project "Mapping the talent and creativity of preschool children", Preschool Teacher Training College, Novi Sad, realized thanks to the support of the Provincial Secretariat for Higher Education and Scientific Research as a developmental-research project of higher schools in 2019. -
Analogies as a tool for creativity in history teaching
PaperScientificEnglishPresenter(s): Eleni KaragianniThis presentation examines the role and contribution of analogies in the development of children's creativity in the context of teaching and learning history. Analogical reasoning allows us to use our limited experiences to solve everyday problems. In other words, it is a process of transferring mental schemes and relationships from a known space to new and currently unfamiliar situations, in which similarities in the structure and relationships are sought even if as a whole they differ significantly (Cavoura, 2003: 348).
Analogical thinking is used systematically in the sciences, where theories and concepts are transferred from one scientific space to another (Piaget used the biological concepts of "assimilation" and "modification" to describe a child's mental development). Psychologists such as Spearman and Piaget believe that analogical reasoning is a key function of human intelligence. Therefore, cognitive psychologists study the role and conditions of its activation in the field of education (Vosniadou & Ortony, 1989). W. Gordon (1961), who has been systematically involved in creative thinking, considers analogical thinking to be a key component of creativity.
Analogical reasoning can take a dominant position in the teaching process of the History lesson in at least two cases: a. when the student is asked to use his/her knowledge - concerning the characteristics and especially the structures - of a known system (base object) to understand an unknown system (target object) and b. when the teacher attempts to facilitate generalization and especially the transfer of knowledge (Cavoura, 2003: 346-353, Repousi, 2004: 344).
According to Cooper (2018: 2), in the subject of History, creative thinking begins when one "takes his time" to think, to activate his curiosity in order to: i. Identify an area to be explored and define what the problematic situation is within that area, ii. Ask open-ended questions and accept probability, possibility, uncertainty and risk, iii. Use his / her creative imagination and iv. Make mental connections / correlations and to draw conclusions.
To this end a gifted student could find him/herself engaged in a variety of creative activities, products and assessments, as mentioned in this paper.
The presentation also suggests paths to achieve ascending intellectual demand, and presents an example of teaching history using analogical connections in the field of social sciences.