Beginning Teachers�� Workplace Experiences: Perceptions of and Use of Support

This paper illuminates the experiences of beginning teachers using a participatory perspective approach and drawing on some of these teachers’ perceptions. We place the ‘subject’ of workplace learning research centrally in understanding the relatedness between workplaces and novice employees/trainees. This paper builds on previous work by the authors using semi-structured interviews with 17 beginning teachers in 19 schools that aim to better understand issues associated with beginning teacher retention. This study explores an application of a framework for evaluating workplaces as from expansive to restrictive learning environments, whilst examining individuals’ responses to and agency in these environments. In addition, these teachers’ personal networks were explored to idedntify how they shaped the teachers’ engagement with workplaces. This analysis revealed networks both internal and external to their schools, and hence a broader view of workplace than is often proposed. Together these analyses allowed an examination of the relatedness between individual beginning teachers and the schools they experienced. This paper identifies the significance of ontogeny and expectation that individuals bring to the workplace, along with individuals exhibiting different agency. These beginning teachers indicate how individuals can be proactive in creating more expansive learning environments for themselves through the utilisation of personal networks, even when these are not offered. This finding may have implications for beginning teachers to re-evaluate their potential to become empowered as they begin their careers.     

Age and directed-participation variables influencing the effectiveness of televised instruction in concrete operational behaviors

Head Start preschoolers on an isolated Papago reservation in southern Arizona were subjects of two studies of the effects of televised instruction and directed participation on teaching enumeration and conservation skills. Television instruction was most effective when used with active, directed participation and corrective feedback, but this, as well as amount and skills learned, varied with age. The televised segments used linear sequencing rather than the fragmented approach of Sesame Street. This research was supported in part by grant OCD-CB-479 from the Children’s Bureau, Office of Child Development, U.S. Office of Education. The authors appreciate the cooperation and participation of the Papago Tribe and the staffs of Head Start centers at San Xavier, Sells, and Pisinimo, Arizona. Special thanks are extended to Thora Schultz, who facilitated liaison on the Papago Reservation, and Margie Francisco, Elizabeth Siqueros, Edith Manuel, Pat Mendez, Elaine Williams, and Irma Dean Edmund, who contributed to instructional development and data collection.     

Vexing questions that sustain sensemaking

Current science education reforms highlight the importance of students making sense of scientific ideas. While research has studied how to support sensemaking in classrooms, we still know very little about what drives students to pursue and persist in it on their own. In this article, we use a set of parallel case studies of undergraduate students discussing introductory physics to show how certain student-generated, vexing questions both initiate and sustain students' sensemaking processes. We examine affective and linguistic markers in student discourse in paired-clinical interviews to demonstrate both of these functions of vexing questions and detail their role in the explanations students construct. We conclude by discussing the implications of this analysis both for supporting sensemaking in classrooms and for studying it in research.     

Challenging the post‐Fordist/flexible organisation thesis: the case of reformed educational organisations

This paper examines claims that recent reforms to UK education have led to significant organisational changes in primary school and higher education. It also examines two main theoretical explanations for these, namely post‐Fordism and New Managerialism. Examples of changes in both schools and universities, including flexibility and teamwork, are explored. Up to the mid‐1980s, publicly funded educational organisations did display bureaucratic features, including rules, staff hierarchies and complex procedures. However, professionals employed in these organisations retained discretion and autonomy in their work. Since then, the introduction of an audit culture and a greater emphasis on management and regulation of the work of teachers and academics has decreased discretion and autonomy. This paper suggests that theories of New Managerialism offer a more satisfactory explanation of the changes explored than post‐Fordism, which has more often been used as a normative model of what contemporary organisations should look like.     

Ethical Challenges for Student Design Projects in Health Care Settings in New Zealand

Student‐led design projects undertaken within healthcare settings raise considerable ethical challenges, primarily resulting from collaboration with service users. This article emerged out of the experiences of design from a New Zealand university undertaking real world projects in acute health care contexts. A human‐centred approach to design is underpinned by a requirement for students to immerse themselves in the user context to optimise design outcomes. Several issues exist in relation to the management of the ethical complexities arising from these projects. Multiple formal ethical review processes were triggered when students’ projects were defined as research. These processes were perceived as onerous and disproportionate to the scale of the projects, and students were ill equipped to identify ethical issues and engage with formal review processes. This resulted in either abandoned projects or the use of compromised methods. A review of codes of practice and design industry approaches identifies a gap in guidance for both students and qualified designers. Some designers describe their projects as service improvement, and not subject to formal ethical review. This article argues for embedding consideration of ethics in all design projects to enhance the process, to be true to the underpinning philosophy of human centred design and to produce ethically aware graduates. To achieve this, a multi‐pronged pedagogical approach which encompasses both hypothetical, class‐based and real‐world learning experiences is described, with the ultimate goal of normalising the consideration and development of ethical standards for students and best practice across the industry.     

Making sense of carbon footprints: how carbon literacy and quantitative literacy affects information gathering and decision-making

Abstract

Popular media often reports on the carbon footprint of certain activities, items or people. We were curious to explore how people make sense of these news pieces, and specifically, whether and how carbon literacy (CL) and quantitative literacy (QL) influences their reasoning. We interviewed and surveyed students of various backgrounds using simulated news pieces of three carbon footprints: that of Facebook, that of the US dairy industry, and that of the US chocolate industry. We found that being highly carbon or quantitatively literate influenced participants’ reaction – but only while they were gathering information about the prompts. The effect of literacies disappeared when they were asked to decide whether the carbon footprint was worrisome or which they would tackle first as a policy-maker. We describe and categorize the strategies students used to make sense of carbon footprints, and link the frequency of using particular strategies to their carbon and quantitative literacy. Implications for future research and environmental education are discussed.     

Understanding teenagers' personal contexts to design technology that supports learning about energy consumption

Energy sustainability is prevalent in political and popular rhetoric and yet energy consumption is rising. Teenagers are an important category of future energy consumers, but little is known of their conceptions about energy and energy saving. We report on empirical research with two groups of teenagers. This is part of ongoing work to design learning technologies that support teenagers learn about personal energy consumption. In this paper we describe our analysis and methodology, which are shaped by the Ecology of Resources (EoR) design framework [Luckin, R. (2010). Re-designing learning contexts: Technology-rich, learner-centred ecologies. London and New York, NY: Routledge]. Our findings informed the development of an EoR model of the participants' personal context, which includes their world resources (people, tools, knowledge, skills, and environment) and their personal resources (conceptions, motivations and concerns around energy consumption). We discuss the range of methods we employed to understand learners' personal contexts. These findings contribute to our understanding of how to explore teenagers' personal contexts and have implications for the design of technology to support learning about personal energy consumption.     

Empirical and clinical methods in the assessment of personality and psychopathology: An integrative approach for training

School psychologists have a critical role in identifying social‐emotional problems and psychopathology in youth based on a set of personality‐assessment competencies. The development of competencies in assessing personality and psychopathology is complex, requiring a variety of integrated methods and approaches. Given the limited extent and scope of formal preparation in personality assessment in school psychology training programs, it is important to develop models using multiple methods of assessment. It is proposed that an integrated paradigm associated with a combination of empirical and clinical methods serve as a framework for the development of school psychology practice competencies in personality assessment. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 513–526, 2006.