Problems of Education in the 21st Century

133-134

Authors: Editorial Board

PEC, Vol. 78, No. 2, 2020

136-146

Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas

Scientific (academic) writing is continuous activity of every scientist (researcher), and therefore needs to be regularly advanced. Thus, it should be wrong to assume that writing proficiency is achieved once and for all. The skills of academic writing are essential for the independent acquisition of scientific knowledge and for disseminating the acquired information, i.e. sharing knowledge with others. On these grounds, it is worth remembering that a fully completed research paper, the clear results of the conducted research and specific and valid conclusions act as prerequisites for writing a good scientific article etc. Another trivial but important point is that writing an article (or other research paper) is barely a study itself, but only the presentation, dissemination and publicity of the findings. Consequently, even properly carried out research (exploration, examination etc.) and the obtained significant results may fail to be appropriately presented, and the importance of the produced results may simply ‘disappear’ in a poor description.

167-195

Authors: Margareta Engvall, Joakim Samuelsson, Rickard Östergren

Mastering traditional algorithms has formed mathematics teaching in primary education. Educational reforms have emphasized variation and creativity in teaching and using computational strategies. These changes have recently been criticized for lack of empirical support. This research examines the effect of teaching two differently structured written calculation methods on teaching arithmetic skills (addition) in grade 2 in Sweden with respect to students’ procedural, conceptual and factual knowledge. A total of 390 students (188 females, 179 males, gender not indicated for 23) were included. The students attended 20 classes in grade 2 and were randomly assigned to one of two methods. During the intervention, students who were taught and had practiced traditional algorithms developed their arithmetic skills significantly more than students who worked with the decomposition method with respect to procedural knowledge and factual knowledge. These results provided no evidence that the development of students' conceptual knowledge would benefit more from learning the decomposition method compared to traditional algorithm.

215-234

Authors: Jefri Mailool, Heri Retnawati, Samsul Arifin, Ameliasari Tauresia Kesuma, Himawan Putranta

The Teacher Profession Education Program (hereafter abbreviated: TPEP) in Indonesia is a program designed to generate professional teachers. Every pre-service teacher must be equipped with adequate hard skills and soft skills before diving into a professional environment. This phenomenological research explored the lecturers' experiences in teaching soft skills to the students of TPEP. This research aims at getting a clear understanding of how soft skills teaching is implemented and what kinds of soft skills have been trained during TPEP. The data in this research were primarily collected through in-depth interviews conducted with 15 teaching lecturers from three universities that hold and organize the TPEP. Data analysis used analytic reduction which started from identifying important statements of the interview results, determining the core theme, and describing the essence of the entire experience. The results found that teaching soft skills with integrated/embedded models was used in the TPEP. Lecture, presentation, assignment, mentoring, and practice methods were used to train the TPEP students’ soft skills. While the soft skills that have been trained during the implementation of the TPEP consist of ethics, self-reliance, responsibility, patience, critical thinking skills, communication skills, teamwork, tolerance, and social skills. The future research is expected to develop a criteria-based on integrated soft skills assessment model that can be used to assess the achievement of the acquisition of teachers’ soft skills at the end of TPEP.

249-262

Authors: Herri Mulyono, Anggi Rizky Liestyana, Silih Warni, Gunawan Suryoputro, Sri Kusuma Ningsih

This survey explored the level and types of anxiety expressed by Indonesia students in writing in English as a foreign language anxiety across gender and educational levels. To this end, 221 foreign language (FL) students from three levels of educations, i.e. lower-secondary school, upper-secondary school and university, were surveyed on voluntary basis where they were asked to complete 22 items of a Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) questionnaire. Two statistical analyses, Rasch Analysis and ANOVA, were performed to examine the quantitative data. The findings showed that all students experienced writing anxiety in FL learning, many experiencing a moderate level of anxiety. Furthermore, students’ writing anxiety was not influenced by gender and educational levels. Indeed, students across all education levels reported experiencing somatic anxiety, avoidance behaviour and cognitive anxiety, with avoidance behaviour being the most common form of anxiety. In conclusion, it is recommended that helping students to develop a positive perception of their FL writing is crucial in addition to helping them develop their writing skills.

282-300

Authors: Mehboob Ul Hassan, Rafaqat Ali Akbar

Irony of humans’ resiliencies to grasp life achievements has been remaining one of the important debates since long ago. Controversy prolongs when few report it destiny, whereas remaining claim individual’s endless effort. Origin of social learning theory stoppage caused entire debate and declared that teachers’ psychological attribute; locus of control is a key construct that actively affects students’ success / failure. Present research was conducted to explore the effect of teachers’ locus of control on students’ achievement scores in facing diverse socioeconomic status enrolled in public sector secondary schools of District Kasur; Punjab-Province. Researchers followed quantitative research adopting ex-post-facto design to investigate a burning dilemma on the sample of conveniently selected 1100 respondents. After ensuring ethical considerations from the respondents, researchers collected data from teachers through administering Rose and Medway (1981) Teacher Locus of Control Scale after obtaining unfettered and unrestricted permissions from the authors. Researchers obtained students’ achievement scores and their family socioeconomic status from parents, teachers and head teachers respectively. Researchers’ pilot tested scale on the sample of 100 respondents to confirm Cronbach’s Alpha reliability statistics is .850. Results of regression analysis reported that teachers’ locus of control has affected 66%, teachers’ demographic variables 84.30% and parental socioeconomic status have affected 74.70% of students’ achievement scores. Research recommends that Govt. provide in-service training to secondary school teachers on their neglected psychological attribute; locus of control that confirms worth-seeing importance in obtaining students’ achievement scores and grants monthly stipend to passed ninth grade students having 85% marks in annual examinations focusing their parental socioeconomic status.