Do aspects of "Heavy homework load" and "Demanding teacher" make an impact on an effective learning?
LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Transculturality; Lesson; Effectiveness and quality of the lesson; Homework; Didactic requirements.
ENThe "Effective lesson" issue is not leaving the headlines of current research papers. The majority of scientists who analyze effective lesson aspects, touch upon such problems as educational context and its influence on the effective lesson culture, effective lesson criteria, its methodical thesaurus and quality of teacher's performance, teaching behavior (Xu, 2011; Hattie, 2012; Helmke, 2015; Nunez, Suarez, Rosario, Vallejo, Cerezo, Valle, 2015; Russo, J., Hopkins, S., 2017; Van der Lans, R. M., Van der Grift, W. J., Van Veen, K., 2018). A rather romanticized parallel compares an effective classroom with the symphonic orchestra, where a teacher, acting as a conductor, brings out the best of the performance from each musician - pupil to make a symphony sound the most harmonious way. No wonder that the research of such "symphony", in other words, "effective lesson" is not simple, because the "lesson" concept as a subject of research is difficult to understand for many objective and subjective stereotypes and premises. For this reason, the authors of the presented research, while continuing their "effective lesson" investigation, introduce an authentic questionnaire intended for older schoolchildren - "Evaluate the teacher and his/her lessons".The questionnaire is compiled while considering transculturality aspects, relying on the analysis of the current educational practices of different European and Asian countries. Alongside with the questionnaire the authors present theoretical and practical parameters of the research. The currently available statistical base of the questionnaire (N students = 9872 and N teachers = 386) includes different gymnasium type schools from different regions of the country. The main findings received during the investigation highlight the noncorrelation of such indicators as "homework load" and "level of the requirements set by the teacher" with all the remaining scales, although the latter intercorrelate very significantly. This fact presupposes the main question (and hypotheses) of the paper: whether the mentioned variables "Homework load" and "Demanding Teacher" can truly affect the didactic quality of the lesson counterproductively. While relying on their findings, the authors of the research paper, alongside with the methodological and metrological aspects of the achieved scientific results, highlight the quite controversial fact: the teacher's didactic demanding requirements and homework load, unfortunately, do not fit into the system of indicators describing the quality of a universal, multi-cultural, multidimensional lesson. Moreover, these two indicators are likely to contribute very little to the quality of the contemporary effective lesson. [From the publication]
