American Journal of Educational Research

The purpose of this study was to investigate the science-specific Questioning framework, based on the QUILT framework, used to organize a variety of teaching strategies. In this study, two strategies were applied under the Questioning framework: One was the “Puzzling picture,” which aims to induce cognitive conflict, and the other was “Think-Pair-Share,” which aims to foster discussion. A lesson on “change of state in a substance” was developed and tested on 71 junior high school students in the 7th grade to examine the effects of the Questioning framework. Evaluation of the Questioning framework was conducted by qualitative analysis of the utterance protocol using text mining. Two important results were gathered: 1) The “Puzzling picture” was effective in encouraging perspective and wide-ranging discussion; and 2) the Questioning framework was effective in promoting students’ science-related utterances in the science class.

American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(4), 360-365. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-4-10
Pub. Date: April 06, 2016

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The Pragmalinguistic Competence in Requests: A Comparison between One Native and Two Non-native Speakers of English

by Ahmad Mousa B. Altasan

Case Study

Speech acts are a very important part of pragmatics in any language. There are many types of acts (e.g., request, complain, question, etc.) associated with the speaker’s utterances. Searle (1972) calls production of linguistic communication ‘a speech act’ (137). The present study examines how two Arab learners of English at two levels of proficiency modify requests compared to a native speaker. The performances by the three informants were compared in terms of internal modification (lexical and phrasal downgraders) and external modification (supportive moves) used. The data were collected by means of a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). Overall, the results revealed that although the advanced-level learner outperformed the intermediate-level learner in using lexical and syntactic mitigators, both learners underuse internal and external modifiers compared to the native speaker. This study addressed three questions that are associated with three directional hypotheses: Hypothesis 1, intermediate or advanced learners of a second language underuse internal modifiers compared to L2 native speakers. Hypothesis 2, advanced learners could vary the syntactic form of the request while the intermediate learners relied heavily on modals and the politeness marker 'please'. Hypothesis 3, second language learners have been said to display verbose pragmatic behavior by producing frequent and lengthy supportive moves (Hassel, 2001).

American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(4), 353-359. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-4-9
Pub. Date: April 05, 2016

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The Learners' Satisfaction of E-learning: A Review Article

by Fatemeh Bahramnezhad, Parvaneh Asgari, Shahrzad Ghiyasvandian, Mahmoud Shiri and Fathieh Bahramnezhad

Review Article

The present study was conducted with the aim of "evaluation of the evidence on students' satisfaction of e-learning and the impact of key factors upon e-learning and their usefulness in teaching." The present systematic review was done on 16 studies from around the world. The inclusion criteria were: use of the specified terminology in the title, designing research, and searching the database of Medline, Elsevier, Proquest, Google, Google Scholar, SID, MagIran. In order to determine the quality of quantitative researches, the scale of Jaddad et al was used. The results indicated that factors influencing the learners' satisfaction of e-learning were divided into three categories: the factors related to the learner, to the instructor (curriculum designing, , and to the management and technical support. In order to increase the learners' tendency toward using this method, the effective factors should be studied and based on which this method be used.

American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(4), 347-352. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-4-8
Pub. Date: April 01, 2016

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Early Childhood Care and Development: An Investigation into a Day Care Center in Bangladesh

by Md Tariqul Islam, Farhana Rashid and Sheikh Abir Hossain

Original Research

All over the world, day care center is one of the recognized institutional settings to ensure early childhood care and development. In Bangladesh day care centers serve as shelter for children while parents engage in their professional responsibilities. In this study, a day care center in Bangladesh was investigated to find out the initiatives implemented to address the issues of early childhood development and parents’ perception in this regard. Mixed methods approach was followed for collecting and analyzing data. Required data was collected from the parents of the enrolled children and a teacher of the early childhood development center. Various documents and websites of the day care center, government policies and frameworks were also analyzed to see the real practice and its relationship with the policy guidelines. The findings of the study revealed that the purposes of the parents for enrolling their children in the day care center were fulfilled in a significant level. Parents also expressed their satisfaction about the services in early childhood development through physical, social, emotional, cognitive development and school preparation of the day care center as well. Besides, some parents suggested increasing the service hours in a day so that they can perform their other duties more comfortably. In addition, few parents want to see religious education in the very early stage of their children.

American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(4), 338-346. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-4-7
Pub. Date: April 01, 2016

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Efficacy of Open-Source Learning Management Systems in Developing the Teaching Skills of English Language Student Teachers

by Thouqan Saleem Yakoub Masadeh and Abdellah Ibrahim Mohammed Elfeky

Original Research

The study aimed to investigate the efficacy of open-source management systems in the development of the main teaching skills of student teachers at the department of English language at Najran University. An Open-Source Learning Management based educational website in addition to performance based observation card were developed for the sake of accomplishing the study's aim. Each one involved four main fields, i.e. lesson planning, lesson implementation, learners' achievement assessment, and classroom management. The experimental approach was used and the experiment was carried out on (56) participants. All of them were at their eighth level (last term at university) and were doing their field experience at schools. They were randomly assigned into control and experimental groups with (28) students in each. Participants in the control group were taught by the traditional way of teaching whereas their peers in the experimental group were taught via Open-Source Learning Management Systems. Findings revealed significant differences between the teaching performance of student teachers in both groups regarding their skills in lesson planning; lesson implementation; and students' achievement evaluation in favor of the experimental group. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference between the teaching performance of student teachers in both groups with regard to classroom management.

American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(4), 329-337. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-4-6
Pub. Date: March 30, 2016

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Correlation between Kindergarten Teachers' Attitudes toward Teaching Science and Their Teaching Practices

by Eman Gheith and Aseel Al-Shawareb

Original Research

The aim of this study is four fold: (a) to reveal the attitudes of kindergarten teachers in Jordan toward teaching science; (b) to explore their teaching practices of science according to the developmentally appropriate practices approach; (c) to study the impact of their educational qualifications, years of experience, and the type of Kindergarten they work at (public/private), on their attitudes toward teaching science and their teaching practices; and (d) to explore the relationship between their attitudes toward teaching science and their teaching practices in accordance with the developmentally appropriate practices approach. The results of the study indicate that teachers' attitudes toward science were positive. Moreover, the findings indicate statistically significant differences among the mean values of the teachers' scores on the teaching practices scale in science according to the type of Kindergarten (public/private) and in favor of teachers who work in private kindergartens. The findings further indicate that teachers’ attitudes toward teaching science are considered to be a significant factor in predicting developmentally appropriate teaching practices in science.

American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(4), 320-328. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-4-5
Pub. Date: March 29, 2016

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Educational Development and Improve the Quality of Education in Nepal

by Bhattarai Binod

Case Report

This Paper provides a brief introduction to the socio-economic context and status of educational development in Nepal. In this paper I will be divided in to two sections. The first section provides an introduction to the Nepalese socio-economic context, which includes culture and tradition, geography and the current development status of the country Nepal. The second section explains the educational development of the country, which includes the quantitative and qualitative expansion of the educational development of the country. Educational development after 1990, Nepal has made remarkable progress, particularly with school participation of all levels of education. The final section explains the current educational policies to improve the quality of education in Nepal.

American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(4), 314-319. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-4-4
Pub. Date: March 26, 2016

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Quality of Implementation of the School Health Program in Oyo State, South-West Nigeria: A Rural-Urban Comparative Survey

by Ayodeji Matthew Adebayo and Eme T. Owoaje

Original Research

Background: The implementation of the School Health Program (SHP) is core to the realization of the goal of National Policy on Education. Despite the formulation and adoption of the National School Health Policy (NSHPo) in Nigeria in 2006, no study has been conducted to evaluate the quality of its implementation. This study was carried out to appraise the quality of implementation of the program in public primary schools in rural and urban Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Oyo State, Nigeria. Methodology: The study utilized a comparative cross-sectional design. A two-stage sampling technique was used to select 49 public primary schools; 26 rural and 23 urban, from two selected LGAs. Observational checklist (OC) was used to assess the SHP in the selected rural and urban schools from the LGAs. The checklist comprised of 4 sections; the school administrative information and implementation items for each of the three main components of the SHP as listed below i.e. School Health Services (SHS), School Health Education (SHE) and Healthful School Environment (HSE). The overall quality of implementation was measured by assessing the availability, appropriateness and functionality of basic health, sanitation and education facilities on a 79-point scale (SHS-21, SHE-10, HSE-48). Scores of <40%, 40-49% and ≥50% were categorized as poor, fair and good quality of implementation of the SHP respectively. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 22. Results: All the schools in both the urban and rural public primary schools had functional Parent Teacher Association. Neither the rural nor the urban public primary schools had trained first aiders, school health assistants or school health nurses. Even though most (87.8%) of the schools had first aid boxes (rural-100% versus urban-73.9%), 56.5% and 23.1% of the first aid boxes in the urban and rural public schools contained nothing. Only 8.7% of the urban schools had a sick bay. None of the public primary schools in both the rural and urban locations had major communicable health problems, HIV/AIDS education and use and abuse of drugs in their health instruction curriculum. Majority of the schools in the rural locations (88.5%) had sources of water supply compared with 10 (43.5%) of the schools in urban LGAs. Some (38.8%) of the schools had refuse bins located either on the corridors or at the corners of the classrooms. Higher proportions of schools in the urban areas (27.8%) had dustbins compared with (20.7%) of the rural schools. Overall, (59.2%) schools had poor quality of implementation of the SHP (rural-65.4% versus urban- 52.2%). Conclusion: The study revealed poor quality of implementation of the school health program in the selected rural and urban public primary schools in Oyo State as various essential equipment/items for effective school service delivery were either inadequate or lacking. There is a need for concerted efforts to improve/upgrade the standard of the program in both rural and urban public primary schools in the state.

American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(4), 307-313. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-4-3
Pub. Date: March 25, 2016

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Optimizing Classroom Instruction through Online Instructional Delivery Technique

by Elen Mae M. Apostol, Abegail M. Apolonio, Bonifacio R. Jose Jr., Eleanor G. Garingan and Romiro G. Bautista

Original Research

This study presents the pedagogical advantages of online instructional delivery technique in optimizing classroom instruction. Using the One Group Pretest-Posttest Design of the Pre-experimental Designs to 43 senior Bachelor of Elementary Education students, the following are forwarded: the respondents were social butterflies; the respondents were generally satisfied with the integrated online learning sessions in their classroom activities; all of the respondents vouched that the embedded online learning tools in their classroom learning were very advantageous; students’ successes in using online learning tools were found dependent to their indulgence and prior experiences in online learning; and much of the respondents said that they benefited from their online learning experiences.

American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(4), 302-306. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-4-2
Pub. Date: March 25, 2016

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Comparing the Effectiveness of Four Interventions for the Support of Students with Learning Disabilities in Acquiring Arithmetic Combinations of Multiplication and Division

by Afroditi Teli and Ioannis Agaliotis

Original Research

The present study examined the effectiveness of four instructional interventions for teaching arithmetic combinations of multiplication and division to students with arithmetic combinations of multiplication and division to students with Learning Disabilities. The basic intervention, through which the control group was instructed, was based on six fundamental principles of effective instruction. A combination of this basic intervention and an alternative grouping and presentation form of arithmetic combinations constituted the intervention for the 1st experimental group. The addition of fact finding strategies to the intervention for the 1st experimental group yielded the intervention used for the 2nd experimental group. Finally, the intervention through which the 3rd experimental group was supported consisted of the 2nd experimental group’s intervention plus components of number sense. The results showed that the majority of students of all groups presented significant improvement in learning the arithmetic combinations, while no significant differences were found among groups. However, in some groups differentiation was observed regarding the final performance in multiplication or division arithmetic combinations, probably due to the nature of the interaction of certain instructional techniques and the specific characteristics of the two arithmetic operations.

American Journal of Educational Research. 2016, 4(4), 294-301. DOI: 10.12691/education-4-4-1
Pub. Date: March 24, 2016

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