Vol. 14 Supplement/ August 2020

In this paper, we aim to present the process of realization of a partnership between two professional communities in different countries devoted to supporting academic institutions in strengthening relationships between teacher education, educational research, and practice. Based on the current situation in the involved partners (academic institutions training pre-service and in-service teachers, school psychologists as well as researchers in psychology and education), we were facing the need to re-think how educational research, teacher education, and practice could be connected in a more useful and valuable way. In response to this, we tried to foster practiceled research activities in the partner institutions. Since the practice-led research approach is the hallmark of high-performing education systems, teachers, practitioners, and teacher educators need to research their practice, and young researchers should be prepared to foster carrying out practice-led research activities. Such an approach requires having capacities, motivation, confidence, and opportunities to do so. Consequently, the focus on practice-led research orientations needs to be modeled and sustained during the initial teacher education, but also in the context of training young researchers in educational sciences.

The goals of this paper are: a) to identify dominant teachers’ practices (teaching and co-operation with colleagues) as well as constructivist beliefs and b) to analyze the differences in the school environment where different groups of teachers work (more precisely, the school climate and feedback teachers receive in school). The secondary analysis (cluster analysis and ANOVA) of TALIS 2013 data enabled attaining the research goals. Four groups of teachers were identified with varying patterns of scores on three variables – constructivist beliefs (about teaching and learning), co-operation with colleagues, and teaching practices – through cluster analysis: one group with all three highly positive scores, one with all three highly negative scores, and two groups of teachers with moderately developed teaching practices but with varying beliefs and co-operation practices. All groups differ significantly in the extent to which teachers find the feedback they receive in schools important. Also, the majority of the groups significantly differ in teachers’ assessment of the school climate (that is based on respect and mutual trust). A trustful and supportive school climate and frequent feedback are the characteristics of the schools where the teachers work using structured, student-centered, and enhanced teaching practices and frequently cooperate with their colleagues. The results suggest that systematic practices of co-operation with other teachers and a system of receiving and giving feedback on various aspects of professional practices, in a supportive school climate, possibly strengthen effective teaching practices regardless of the teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning. From the policy perspective, strengthening the school climate that is based on mutual respect and support and developing a system of teacher feedback is considered as possible ways of teacher professional development for meaningful and effective teaching practices.

The main focus of this paper is the relationship between the teachers’ practice in Serbian language (reading) classes and student achievement on PISA tasks. Specifically, in an effort to examine this relationship, we focused on the link between the students’ PISA achievements and the strategies teachers use to engage the students during the reading tasks in order to structure and scaffold the work on those tasks. This two-part study relied on a mix-methodology combining quantitative and qualitative analyses. The data from the quantitative study was analyzed using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) with student and school level. The results indicated that the students have the best achievements when teachers motivate student in engagement reading and sparingly those intended for structuring and scaffolding the work on the reading tasks. The data from the qualitative analyses revealed the most useful strategies teachers and students identify and whether they recognize in their classes those strategies that were included in PISA questionnaire.

The assumption that the educational needs of students with a higher visual-spatial ability can be met by including non- continuous texts in the educational practice was empirically tested on a convenience sample, comprising 191 14-year-olds from three Belgrade elementary schools. The findings, obtained after applying ANOVA and ANCOVA, attested to a linear relationship between the measure of visual-spatial ability and PISA unit achievement, both with continuous and non-continuous text formats. The differences between these findings and those of previous study, upon which this work is based, were interpreted in light of the possibility that relative strength in the visual-spatial domain, compared to verbal ability, could be associated with the way the unit is approached, rather than with achievement. The confirmation of this assumption could speak in favor of respecting students’ different cognitive styles.

This research intends to help understand the process of predictions made while reading literary texts. Our starting position is grounded in phenomenological theories (Ingarden, Izer, Jaus) and supported by the general findings of the OECD/PISA study in the domain of reading literacy. The goal of this paper is to clarify the possible directions in which the readers’ horizon of expectations could develop as well as its influence on the further reception of the text (whether it does or does not coincide with the facts from further narration). The research was conducted with 28 high school students (ages 14 to 15) in Belgrade (Serbia), using qualitative methodology. With the help of individual semi-structured interviews, we guided the respondents through the sequential reading of a story selected from the PISA items (The Gift). After each paragraph, the students were invited to express their expectations about further story development, after which they continued to read until the next break. Using the qualitative analysis, we defined and scrutinized more deeply the following ways of predicting further events: a) expectations dictated by the author’s intention, b) expectations that selectively follow the intent of the text, and c) expectations which are not based on the signals in the text. The definition of the possible types of expectations, found within the story, can be useful for understanding the difficulties that students experience while trying to understand and envision literary texts they are reading.

The goal of this research is to examine how elementary school students (aged nine years) perceive contemporary poetry. The research is based on the reception theory (Jauss, Ingarden, Iser) and aspires to define factors and transformations that enable the reception of poetry at a specific age. The qualitative aspects of reception are studied using the poetry that is not written for children, but adults. After the respondents had read three texts of a Serbian avant-garde poet (Vasko Popa) and the semi-structured interview had been conducted with 17 of them, the qualitative analysis was carried out: reception of the stylistic, conceptual, and syntactic-lexical features of the texts. The appropriate elements of the process and quality of reception will stand out based on the dominant factors in the text. Findings of the analysis show that: 1) the students understand poetry to a higher degree than expected, 2) when a student reads a less comprehensible text, he/she also relies on the emotional experience, 3) the conceptual layer is more accessible if the degree of abstraction is reduced, 4) the students are capable of implicit interpretation of stylistic figures, 5) the students’ understandings of poetic images are based on personification, analogy, epithets, and sound. Possible distractors that affect reception quality are: 1) impressions of concrete meanings, 2) selective and separate reception on the conceptual and thematic level – poetic images are not connected coherently within the poem, 3) inertness of imagination contrary to the suggestiveness of poetic images, 4) limitations of the possibility to verbalize his/her thoughts. The criteria relevant for the methods of interpretation of poetry and its selection stem from the results of the study.

OECD/PISA 2012 survey data showed that mathematical literacy achievement in Serbia is 50 points below the OECD average, while approximately 40% of the students fall into the functionally illiterate group. At the same time, more than half of the students in Serbia reported a high level of mathematics related anxiety. A possible explanation for the low score on the PISA survey lies in the incompatibility of mathematics’ teaching practices in the Serbian education system and the functional knowledge assessed by PISA. This study aims to examine mathematics teachers’ conceptions of mathematical literacy and the assessment of mathematical knowledge. For this purpose, in-depth interviews with 15 mathematics teachers (from primary and secondary schools) and university mathematics professors (from Mathematics Faculty and Teacher Education Faculty) were performed. The participants were asked to define mathematical literacy and to express their opinion regarding the entrance exam (obligatory exam for 14-year-old students finishing primary school), the PISA survey, their assessment practice, and different types of mathematical tasks (PISA tasks and traditional tasks). The participants’ answers to these topics were analyzed using the Inductive thematic analysis to better understand the teachers’ conceptions of mathematical literacy in comparison with the PISA paradigm (the abstract level) and their perception of the differences between PISA and traditional tasks (concrete level). The analysis revealed four different teachers’ conceptions of mathematical literacy (sorted by descending frequency): 1) knowledge about basic mathematical concepts (main formulas, operations, geometry objects, etc.); 2) correct use of mathematical symbolism; 3) use of mathematics in everyday situations (such as in shops or markets); 4) developing a specific way of thinking. Teachers’ comments about the differences between the different types of tasks highlighted additional differences. PISA tasks were described as both more interesting and complicated, as well as assessing reading ability, while the tasks from the final exam were observed as more formal, solely mathematical tasks. The teachers’ opinion was that PISA-like tasks should be introduced to mathematics practice as an addition to the traditional, solely mathematical tasks. The results reveal broad differences between the underlying logic behind PISA testing and Serbian mathematics teachers’ understanding of mathematical literacy and knowledge assessment. In order to overcome the gap between these conceptions, it is necessary to deconstruct meanings present in everyday teaching practices.