Two studies investigated teacher activities that may lead to the development of competence, if not expertise. In Study I, 136 teachers indicated in a questionnaire that evaluation and planning activities (informal and formal) best parallel deliberate practice activities that Ericsson and colleagues report as accounting for expertise in other domains. In Study II, log data and interviews from ei...

Competence in one's professional work role is important in the overall learning process. Ready (1967) described competence as a motivational factor that is responsible for individual achievement. However, results of numerous studies reveal that vocational agriculture teachers are experiencing difficulties in the performance of several professional activities. Parrington (1981) reported that act...

Students who teach less experienced students within the same educational program are known as near-peer teachers. A number of studies have shown that near-peers are effective teachers in preclinical courses such as anatomy and physical examination. We hypothesized that near-peers could also be effective teachers in a clinical clerkship. We report on a pilot study in which near-peers participate...

This study aims at investigating which cues teachers detect and process from their students during instruction. This information capturing process depends on teachers’ sensitivity, or awareness, to students’ needs, which has been recognized as crucial for classroom management. We recorded the gaze behaviors of two pre-service teachers and two experienced teachers during a whole math lesson in p...

The primary purpose of this study is to examine science student teachers' experience with educational technology, their intentions for their own use, their intentions for their students’ use, and their beliefs in the value of educational technology in science instruction. Four-hundred-forty-eight science student teachers of different disciplines and levels participated in the study. A questionn...

In this thesis a neural network-based fuzzy modeling approach to assess student learning characteristic and update the student model in Intelligent Learning Environments is proposed. The neural network-based fuzzy diagnostic model is a general diagnostic model which can be used to implement the diagnostic process in any learning environment according to designers’ and teachers' suggestions. Fuz...

EFL teachers’ professional identity is a multi-dimensional and complicated concept. It is influenced by many other issues in the educational context such as reflective practice. This study intended to explore the relationship between professional identity and reflectivity of Iranian EFL teachers. It also aimed to examine how high and low reflective teachers perceive the professional identity co...

The nature of heterogeneity issues within the context of Iranian, English language learning contexts in high schools is one of the under-researched lines of inquiry. For this aim, a researcher-made, Likert-type questionnaire whose items were initially validated through a multi-stage, exploratory research design among 30 teachers was distributed among some 67, Iranian EFL teachers with different...