Search

This study aims to understand teachers' Personal Practical Knowledge to provide future teacher educators with essential points for improving teacher training programs. The study was conducted with six teachers in the primary education context, using narrative inquiry as a qualitative approach. The semi-structured interview with teachers indicated that they had a rich knowledge of factors affecting the success of the teaching profession. As such, data analysis of teachers' transcripts using open, axial, and selective coding resulted in five main themes crucial for future teacher educators to consider for developing effective teacher training programs: (1) Entwined and complicated aspects of teaching, (2) Effective communication is key, (3) Ineffectiveness of theoretical versus practical courses, (4) Being ignored by society, and (5) Losing the dream of being perfect. The paper concludes with implications for the theory and practice in the teacher education field.

Digital gamification has been argued to be a fun and enjoyable method to support Learning English as a Second Language (LESL) and to ease the gap between students' learning and educational practice. This systematic review presents an overview of the state of the art on the use of gamification for LESL in digital environments. Furthermore, this review study maps learning experiences of learners and their learning outcomes when they deal with LESL through gamification. For this systematic review, 22 publications dating from 2008 through 2019 were studied to highlight the foci of this field of research. Although, these studies reported positive effects of gamification on learners' learning experiences and their learning outcomes, none of the publications reported specific gamification elements associated to the learning experiences and outcomes. Being enjoyable, engaging, motivating and fun were positive learning experiences of gamified LESL environments. Content language learning, engagement, motivation, and satisfaction were targeted learning outcomes of gamified LESL. The results of this study provide suggestions on how to design digital gamification for students' LESL and their corresponding learning experiences and outcomes.

This study compared the effects of support for peer feedback, peer feedforward and their combination on students' peer learning processes, argumentative essay quality and domain‐specific learning. Participants were 86 BSc students who were randomly divided over 43 dyads. These dyads, in a two‐factorial experimental design, were assigned to four conditions including: peer feedback (n = 22), peer feedforward (n = 22), mixed (n = 20) and control group (n = 22) conditions. An online peer feedback environment named EduTech was designed which allowed us to implement various types of support in the form of question prompts. In this online environment, students were asked to write an argumentative essay on a controversial topic, to engage in peer learning processes and to revise their essay. Overall, the results showed that students in the three experimental conditions (peer feedback, peer feedforward and their combination) benefited more than students in the control group condition (without any support) in term of peer learning processes, argumentative essay quality and domain‐specific learning. However, there was no significant difference among the three experimental conditions. This implies that peer feedforward can be as important as peer feedback in collaborative learning environments which is often neglected both in theory and practice. Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic? Writing argumentative essays is a common practice for higher education students in various disciplines which deal with controversial issues.Writing argumentative essay requires solid argumentation strategies which makes it a challenging task for higher education students.Additional instructional support is needed to help students write high‐quality argumentative essays.What this paper adds? Peer learning is a promising instructional strategy for improving students' argumentative essay writing and learning.Online support in the form of question prompts to guide students during peer learning can improve their argumentative essay writing and learning.Next to the peer feedback, peer feedforward is also a promising instructional approach to support students' argumentative essay writing and learning.Implications for practice and/or policy Given the positive effects of peer learning processes, the use of peer feedback and peer feedforward should be given more attention by teachers to support students write high‐quality argumentative essays for controversial issues.Teachers and educational designers should not only provide opportunities for students to engage in peer feedback processes (how I am doing?) but also in peer feedforward processes (where to next?). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]