Decision Support Systems (DSS) for teachers and the development of linguistic competence
Submitted by:
Marta Gràcia
Abstract:
Problem statement: School is an essential context that contributes to children’s communicative competence (Marinac, Woodyatt & Ozanne, 2008). In-class interactions between children and teacher and among children themselves have been assessed with different type of instruments (Gràcia et al., 2015). Decision Support Systems (DSS) are tools that can help teachers to assess their own practice and to take decisions to improve it (Eom & Kim, 2006).
Research question: It is possible to construct and implement a Decision Support System conceived as a teacher empowerment tool aimed at self-improving their practice concerning children's language competence?
Method: Participants are 24 teachers and 700 children from schools in Spain, Brazil and Ecuador. Data collection phases are: (1) design and development of an DSS to assess discursive strategies, communication management and context adequacy that teachers use in the classroom to teach language; (2) assessment of children initial linguistic competence; (3) classroom observation and recording while teacher and children are working on different subjects (maths, sciences, language, arts…); (4) teachers’ training to use a DSS, enabling them to make teaching self-assessments of their classes and make changes depending on children’s response, while researchers also conduct external assessments of some of the same classes; (5) verification of the changes in teaching practices and in children linguistic competence; (6) validation of DSS use and introduction of the necessary adjustments based on the obtained results.
Results: Our results show that our DSS helps teachers to make decisions about their teaching practice and the use of discourse strategies for communication management in order to contribute to the development of language skills of pupils enrolled in schools that are socially, geographically and linguistically diverse.
Discussion: The use of a DSS can contribute to improve teachers’ competence to reflect and take decisions about their practice and to detect the conditions and strategies that allow pupils be more linguistically active, participative, critical and self-regulated while they were carrying on class activities.
Eom, S. and Kim, E. (2006). A survey of Decision Support System Applications (1995-2001). The Journal of the operational Research Society, 57(11), 1264-1278.
Gràcia, M. (coord) (2015). EVALOE. Escala de valoración de la enseñanza de la lengua oral en contexto escolar. Análisis de las interacciones comunicativas entre docentes y alumnos en el aula [Assessment scale of oral language teaching. Analysis of communicative interactions between teachers and students in the classroom. (ASOLT)]. Barcelona: Graó.
Marinac, J.V., Woodyatt, G.C. and Ozanne, A.E. (2008). Investigating adult language input and young children’s responses in naturalistic environments: An observational framework. Child Language Teaching and Therapy 24, 265–84.