Applying Learning Community Theory to Oral English Teaching in Sport Institutes

Since traditional English teaching method, which merely focuses on language teaching but ignores communicative competence, severely impedes the development of students' oral ability. It is high time that English teachers took measures to find a workable and valuable teaching method which can improve students' speaking proficiency effectively. Learning community theory provides a broad space for this, for it regards learning as a process which takes place in a community where the learners are sharing their experience towards knowledge building in an interactive and cooperative way.

Topic Sentiment Analysis in Online Learning Community from College Students

Purpose:Opinion mining and sentiment analysis in Online Learning Community can truly reflect the students’learning situation,which provides the necessary theoretical basis for following revision of teaching plans.To improve the accuracy of topic-sentiment analysis,a novel model for topic sentiment analysis is proposed that outperforms other state-of-art models.Methodology/approach:We aim at highlighting the identification and visualization of topic sentiment based on learning topic mining and sentiment clustering at various granularitylevels.The proposed method comprised data preprocessing,topic detection,sentiment analysis,and visualization.Findings:The proposed model can effectively perceive students’sentiment tendencies on different topics,which provides powerful practical reference for improving the quality of information services in teaching practice.Research limitations:The model obtains the topic-terminology hybrid matrix and the document-topic hybrid matrix by selecting the real user’s comment information on the basis of LDA topic detection approach,without considering the intensity of students’sentiments and their evolutionary trends.Practical implications:The implication and association rules to visualize the negative sentiment in comments or reviews enable teachers and administrators to access a certain plaint,which can be utilized as a reference for enhancing the accuracy of learning content recommendation,and evaluating the quality of their services.Originality/value:The topic-sentiment analysis model can clarify the hierarchical dependencies between different topics,which lay the foundation for improving the accuracy of teaching content recommendation and optimizing the knowledge coherence of related courses.

Integrating WeChat-based Autonomous Learning Community into Improving Speaking--An Action Research Study in EFL

The purpose of this paper is to share the findings of an action research aiming at helping college students to improve their speaking by applying a WeChat-based autonomous learning community.WeChat is the most wide-spread social media platform in China.In this 10-week action research,a total of 16 participants in a Chinese university were involved.After identifying the incentive of participating in this WeChat Group speaking activity,most of which were related with pronunciation and a lack of speaking fluency practice,an action plan was developed and implemented.In this WeChat group,the participants received weekly learning material about pronunciation and speaking assignments accordingly,then they had one week to learn the pronunciation independently and prepare the oral assignments.Following this,participants submitted their voice recording in the WeChat group and were given feedback by an instructor in this group.Observations,questionnaires,and surveys were used to collect data.The results show a positive feedback from the learners on a WeChat-based autonomous learning community.The study observes(1)college EFL learners have a strong motivation;intrinsic motivation especially has a positive relationship with participants’performance;(2)students have a positive attitude towards WeChat-based autonomous learning community;(3)timely feedback from instructors is highly valued by language learners.

The Practical Path to Cultivating Innovative Talents:Implementing Cross-Disciplinary Learning Communities in Environmental Design Education

In response to the national strategy of“vigorously cultivating interdisciplinary talents and actively promoting interdisciplinary integration,”this article focuses on the nationally recognized Environmental Design program at Hezhou University’s College of Design,leveraging local industry advantages to engage in interdisciplinary integration through educational practices.Using the“Construction of the Panoramic Virtual Nature Museum of the Guizhou Crocodile Lizard at Mount Dagui”as a case study,we aim to establish a professional and interdisciplinary learning community,incorporate student-centered interactive teaching methods,boost student motivation,enhance teaching quality,nurture forward-thinking versatile innovative talents,and provide a guideline for interdisciplinary educational reform.

Professional Learning Communities(PLCs)of Chemistry Teachers

The models of Professional Learning Communities(PLCs)are based on principles of learning that emphasize the co-construction of knowledge by learners,who in this case are the teachers themselves.Teachers in a PLC meet regularly to explore their practices and the learning outcomes of their students,analyze their teaching and their students’learning processes,draw conclusions,and make changes in order to improve their teaching and the learning of their students.It was found that participation in a PLC influences teaching practice,so teachers become more student-centered.Moreover,the teaching culture improves as the community increases the degree of cooperation among teachers,and focuses on the processes of learning rather than the accumulation of knowledge.This enables students to be innovative,creative,and critical.In addition,trust is developed among the participants,which enables them to discuss and analyze their students’cognitive and affective problems,misconceptions,and learning outcomes.

Developments of Professional Learning Communities and Challenges for Principals in Chinese Urban Middle Schools

Professional learning communities(PLCs)have seen a rapid spread all around the world over the past 30 years.Since then it has been proved that they can improve teaching quality and thereby the achievement of students,and so PLCs have attracted increasing attention especially from education systems.In China,PLCs have been developed vigorously within schools since the implementation of the‘New Curriculum Reform’in 2000.However,the west has paid scant attention to and were not familiar with them since most research in this field in China was published in Chinese.Furthermore,PLCs are influenced by contextual and cultural factors,and therefore PLCs in Chinese education systems are different from those in Anglo-American settings due to long-standing cultural differences,which require consideration.Therefore,this research will investigate the PLCs in China that may be of interest.Many recent studies have shown that,although PLCs have made significant progress in Chinese urban middle schools through the enthusiastic efforts of educators and scholars,there are still several barriers.The primary purpose of this research is to review the development of PLCs and additionally to analyse the challenges faced by the principals.

Professional Learning Communities in Private Schools in Bahrain and Oman:Reflection on Two Cases

Highlights•This study explores features of professional learning community(PLC)models in the educational contexts in Bahrain and Oman.•Findings based on the case studies of PLCs in two private schools in Bahrain and Oman,and theoretical input from international PLC literature has implications for policy and practice.•Study recommends promoting PLC approaches in the Bahraini and Omani educational systems in pre-and in-service teacher training programs,adapting best international PLC practices to the specific educational contexts of Bahrain and Oman,preparing school principals to lead PLC in their schools,providing human and financial support to these communities,and making school cultures more collaborative.•This study highlights the importance of the PLC approach,expands the existing conceptual/analytical framework,demonstrates how this approach is being used in two schools,and encourages other practitioners and researchers to embrace PLC.

Humanistic Approaches to Foreign Language Teaching

Some educators and teachers stated that the reason of the major failures in foreign language teaching was that teachers could not help their students to discover the personal meaning of the information they provided. To deal with the problem that students were regarded as containers and classroom learning was dull, humanistic approaches were put forward.

Improving Friend Recommendation for Online Learning with Fine-Grained Evolving Interest

Friend recommendation plays a key role in promoting user experience in online social networks(OSNs).However,existing studies usually neglect users’fine-grained interest as well as the evolving feature of interest,which may cause unsuitable recommendation.In particular,some OSNs,such as the online learning community,even have little work on friend recommendation.To this end,we strive to improve friend recommendation with fine-grained evolving interest in this paper.We take the online learning community as an application scenario,which is a special type of OSNs for people to learn courses online.Learning partners can help improve learners’learning effect and improve the attractiveness of platforms.We propose a learning partner recommendation framework based on the evolution of fine-grained learning interest(LPRF-E for short).We extract a sequence of learning interest tags that changes over time.Then,we explore the time feature to predict evolving learning interest.Next,we recommend learning partners by fine-grained interest similarity.We also refine the learning partner recommendation framework with users’social influence(denoted as LPRF-F for differentiation).Extensive experiments on two real datasets crawled from Chinese University MOOC and Douban Book validate that the proposed LPRF-E and LPRF-F models achieve a high accuracy(i.e.,approximate 50%improvements on the precision and the recall)and can recommend learning partners with high quality(e.g.,more experienced and helpful).

How Teachers Learn and Change in Reciprocal Learning Space

This paper reports the impact of a new Canada and China school network on its participating teachers in the context of the Canada−China Partnership Grant Project.Eight schools formed four pairs of sister schools,and teachers in these schools created collaborations embedded in their practices.The data include interviews of teachers and principals in both countries and records of teachers’cross-cultural collaborations.Informed by the literature on teacher learning and professional learning communities,this paper shows benefits of international teacher communities.Also,it explores a new approach to research that features spatiality considerations reflecting a new trend in the comparative education literature.Focusing on teacher knowledge and practice,it shows reciprocal effects of collaboration in the international school network.Finally,this paper links the research results to the literature in a way that highlights the potential of international teacher professional learning communities and contributions of this kind of practice and research.

How Social Network Position Relates to Knowledge Building in Online Learning Communities?

Social Network Analysis,Statistical Analysis,Content Analysis and other research methods were used to research online learning communities at Capital Normal University,Beijing.Analysis of the two online courses resulted in the following conclusions:(1)Social networks of the two online courses form typical core-periphery structures;(2)Social networks of the two online courses contain“structural holes,”where some actors position themselves to become potential opinion-leaders within their social networks;(3)Actors,variously positioned within a core-periphery structure,show quite significant differences in terms of knowledge building;(4)Taking“structural holes”into account,there exist considerable differences in knowledge building between opinion-leaders and non opinion-leaders;(5)Actors in the“core”and“structural hole”positions have very different characteristics in terms of knowledge building.These actors in particular play important roles in online learning communities,impacting on the level of the constructed knowledge.

Unpacking the Relationship Between Teachers’Perceptions of Professional Learning Communities and Differentiated Instruction Practice

Purpose:This exploratory study investigates the relationship between teachers’perceptions of professional learning communities(PLCs)and their differentiated instruction(DI)practice in a Hong Kong primary education context.Design/Approach/Methods:Three subsidized primary schools participated in the study.A total of 121 teachers completed surveys regarding their perceptions of PLC engagement and DI practice.Findings:Using principal component analysis,three dimensions of PLC engagement were identified:student learning,reflective dialogue,and shared and supportive leadership.Two distinctive PLC engagement profiles were generated based on cluster analysis:high PLC engagement and low PLC engagement.Teachers’PLC engagement profiles were correlated with their DI practices.Originality/Value:The findings have implications for fostering teacher engagement in PLCs.Increased teacher participation in PLCs has great potential for promoting the use of DI.