Jordan Teacher Competency Exam flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky's concept describing the gap between what a learner can do unaided and what they can achieve with guidance from a more capable person.

Scaffolding

Temporary structured support a teacher provides so a learner can complete a task beyond current ability; it is gradually removed as competence increases.

Bloom's revised taxonomy

A hierarchy of cognitive processes ordered as remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, create; used to write objectives at appropriate cognitive levels.

Negative reinforcement

Removal of an unpleasant stimulus after a behaviour, which increases the likelihood that the behaviour will be repeated; not the same as punishment.

Withitness

Kounin's term for a teacher's awareness of everything happening in the room and timely response to misbehaviour before it spreads.

Differentiation

Adjusting content, process, product or learning environment to match students' readiness, interests and learning profiles while holding objectives constant.

Backward design

Wiggins and McTighe's planning sequence: identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, then design learning experiences aligned to both.

Learning objective

A statement of observable student behaviour including the condition and the criterion for success, forming the basis for instruction and assessment.

Task analysis

Breaking a complex skill into ordered sub-skills so each can be taught, practised and checked for mastery in sequence.

Horizontal alignment

Consistency among objectives, instructional activities and assessments within the same lesson or unit, so assessment measures what was taught.

Table of specifications

A test blueprint mapping items to objectives and cognitive levels, ensuring proportionate coverage and supporting content validity.

Validity

The extent to which an assessment measures the intended learning objective and supports the inferences drawn from scores.

Reliability

Consistency of assessment results across occasions, raters or equivalent item sets; a necessary but not sufficient condition for validity.

Item discrimination index

D equals the proportion correct in the upper group minus the proportion correct in the lower group; values of 0.3 or more are acceptable.

Descriptive feedback

Information that identifies the gap between current performance and the goal and specifies the next step, rather than giving only a mark.

Criterion-referenced assessment

Assessment that compares a student's performance to a defined standard or objective, not to the performance of peers.

Pedagogical content knowledge

Shulman's construct: knowledge of how a specific topic is best represented, which examples work, and which misconceptions learners typically hold.

Fair test design

An investigation in which only the independent variable is changed, all other variables are controlled, and the dependent variable is measured consistently.

Primary source

An original document or artefact produced at the time of the event, such as a letter, photograph or official record.

Cognitive load

The demand placed on limited working memory by a task; chunking, segmenting and guided practice reduce it and free capacity for learning.

Self-efficacy

Bandura's term for a learner's belief in their capability to succeed on a specific task; mastery experiences are its strongest source.

Growth mindset

The belief that ability is developable through effort and strategy; it supports persistence after failure and is reinforced by process praise.

Intrinsic motivation

Engagement driven by interest or satisfaction in the activity itself; supported by autonomy, competence and relatedness rather than external rewards.

Dyscalculia

A specific learning difficulty affecting number sense, arithmetic fact retrieval and quantitative reasoning, requiring targeted instruction and accommodations.

Compulsory basic education

In Jordan, grades 1 to 10, which all students are required to complete before entering the secondary stage.

Tawjihi

Jordan's General Secondary Education Certificate Examination, the national school-leaving exam whose results are used for university admission.

Ministry of Education role

Jordan's national authority responsible for school curricula, textbooks, teacher employment and public school administration up to secondary level.

Teacher confidentiality duty

The ethical obligation to keep student records, grades and personal information private and to share them only with authorised personnel.

Hamzat al-waṣl

The hamza pronounced at the start of speech but dropped when the word is joined to what precedes it, as in the definite article al-.

Sun and moon letters

In Arabic, sun letters cause the lām of al- to assimilate in pronunciation, while moon letters keep the lām clearly pronounced.

Nominal sentence

An Arabic sentence beginning with a noun, consisting of mubtadaʾ and khabar, both normally in the nominative case.

Istiʿāra

An Arabic rhetorical figure in which a word is used figuratively for another term because of a shared attribute, with one element omitted.