Handling challenge and becoming a teacher: an analysis of teachers’ narration about life competence education

Abstract

This article takes an interest in how teachers handle new challenges. The challenge in focus is a nonmandatory yet widespread subject in Swedish education called Livskunskap, Life Competence Education (LCE). The purposes of the present study are to identify and discuss notions of being a teacher actualized in teachers’ narratives about the challenge of LCE, and to discuss how narration may help teachers to handle and reflect upon professional challenges. Seven teachers were interviewed about their experiences from teaching LCE. The analysis showed how acts of defending, exploring, presenting, or resisting LCE were performed in the teachers’ narratives. LCE seems to actualize a narrative tension between two dominant aspects of teacher identity. On the one hand, there is an image of a socially committed teacher who cares about the emotional well-being of and relations to his/her students. On the other hand, there is an image of a knowledge-oriented teacher who connects with the students mainly by focusing on subject matters. Drawing upon the theoretical work, mainly by Michalinos Zembylas, I found that the teachers had opportunities to use narration as an arena for personal agency, but these opportunities were not necessarily taken in the present narratives.     

Student perceptions of facilitators’ social congruence,use of expertise and cognitive congruence in problem-based learning

In problem-based learning (PBL), the role of a tutor or facilitator is different from what is typically considered as the role of a traditional teacher. In addition to being a subject-matter expert, the facilitator is also expected to be ‘socially’ and ‘cognitively congruent’. In this study, we analyze the survey responses from more than 10,000 students in order to better understand their perceptions of what makes a good or poor facilitator, and to identify specific qualities related to social congruence, cognitive congruence and use of expertise. Students’ comments for the highest and lowest scoring groups of facilitators were analyzed qualitatively using inductive data analysis strategies. The following themes were identified: for social congruence—facilitator personality, relating to students, professionalism, motivating students, and learning environment; for cognitive congruence—scaffolding learning, and communication skills; for use of expertise—content knowledge and experience, and stretching students’ learning. Coding of students’ feedback also demonstrated that students most frequently commented on issues related to facilitators’ social congruence. Our findings indicate that social congruence encompasses skills which facilitators may improve on. We also argue that understanding students’ perspectives is critical especially in a learner-centred approach such as PBL and therefore propose that our findings provide useful input for the professional development of PBL facilitators.     

Contextual conflicts in educators? personal experience narratives

This paper describes and analyzes how context acts as a resource for and a constraint upon the personal experience narratives educators tell. Since personal experience narrative is both a form of oral literature and a sociolinguistic event, a narrator is obligated to attend to both the poetic demands of telling a good story and the demands of context. Through a detailed case study of a personal experience narrative, told in the culturally defined scene of a teacher study group, the author demonstrates how the powerful subtleties context can undermine educators? personal experience narration.     

Tragedy and Teaching: The education of narrative

Abstract

This is the second of two articles that are connected in a reading of The plague by Albert Camus. The other article is a determined narration of the events of a tragedy that befalls a city on the coast of Algeria. That article resists analysis beyond the decisions that are made regarding text to use, and of course interpretations to make. This article is juxtaposed to the first, with the intention of taking key themes of education and narration and considering them within the context of another tragedy and another kind of narration. In this article the narratives of government education policy are considered in relation to the event of a tragic earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. The government narratives are then replaced by the narratives of Oran to consider alternative ways of thinking about tragedy and education and in particular to think about the ways in which the narrative relates to the tragedy and to any learning that might happen as a result of, and during, a tragedy.     

Retired Teachers Reflect on Learning from Experience

An attempt to clarify how learning from experience takes place and the role memory plays in the process was carried out in the frame of a study of retired teachers' accounts of their teaching, focusing on their views on the transformation of experience into professional wisdom. Forty-three retired teachers participated in the study and were asked to talk about their professional memories. The stimulus question was: 'What can you tell me about recollected events of your teaching practice?'. Further data was collected through lengthy and repeated interviews with 15 teachers. In the interviews, retired teachers were asked what the role of experience was in the development of their professional knowledge. They focused on the necessary conditions for learning from experience, as well as on the process itself. Among the necessary conditions for learning from experience, teachers in the present study mentioned time, maturity, and interaction with others. The following characteristics of the learning process were identified: the importance of narratives; the emotional aspects of learning from experience; and the role of disequilibrium and reframing. Teachers' recollections concerning their practice and insights about learning from experience represent cases of practice that can be analyzed and discussed in pre-service and in-service courses. They serve to create a sense of professional identity and continuity.     

Frontotemporal Dementia and a Solid Gold Bracelet

Editor's Note: This piece represents the first installment of a new section of Educational Gerontology called Professional Thoughts and Experiences. The effective practice for professionals engaged with the aging population is an optimal balance of best available clinical evidence, personal expertise, and common intuition. At Educational Gerontology we have made it our primary goal to provide our readers with the highest quality of evidence-based aging studies. However, care providers' clinical expertise, i.e, the proficiency and judgment acquired through clinical experience and practice, which varies among care providers and the individual needs of the patients (clients), does not always receive published recognition. As such, we will, from time to time, publish the narratives, poetry, and anecdotes of our professional care providers so that we can all respect—and even aspire to—their dedicated service to this population.

This article presents the story of a wife whose husband has frontotemporal dementia. Her story of love and loss is illustrated from the perspective of her clinical psychologist. The narration reveals how one client–therapist interaction can provide a lesson in love and life to the clinician and countless others.     

Qualities of Collaboration,Professional Development and Teaching Improvement: An experience in the university context

A group of teacher educators adopted collaborative teamwork to cope with a too large teaching load. The authors reflect on the experience of working together in a critical friendship group, highlighting the role that conversation plays in this process. The experience of a collaborative approach and its impact on teaching and professional development is evaluated in terms of the teaching process and the professional development of the teachers involved. This experience contributes to understanding teaching as a complex social practice which is susceptible to improvement.     

The Thinking Body: Constructivist Approaches to Games Teaching in Physical Education

Abstract

In this article two questions arc addressed. The first is whether there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate there is a significant experience of poverty amongst university students. The second question is, if student poverty is a significant problem, then why hasn't it become an issue to which government officials and people outside government pay serious attention? The article is confined to an exploration of two factors that appear influential. The first relates to the minimal political efficacy of students, which I suggest is linked to their general social status and to popular narratives that tertiary students are a privileged group. This also reinforces the widely held belief that student poverty is a positive ‘character building’ experience for young people. The second factor which helps explain the omission of tertiary student poverty from the policy agenda concerns the absence of ethnographic information on tertiary student poverty.     

Building Leadership Expertise of Future Early Childhood Professionals

Abstract

This article describes the effectiveness of the Structured Simulation Training Method (SSTM) as a pedagogical too] to prepare student teachers for work in inclusive early childhood settings. Simulations are a performance‐based methodology designed to allow student teachers to directly experience issues in diversity and practice interpersonal communication, consultation and decision‐making skills. Qualitative methodologies were employed to analyze data collected from student reactions to interactions with simulated clients. Themes that emerged from the data suggest that the SSTM allows student teachers to socially construct professional knowledge, improve attitudes about diversity and practice effective interpersonal skills in a realistic but supportive learning environment.     

Multiple Classrooms of Life: English,Ideology and ‘Sparkle’ Moments

ABSTRACT

This essay comprises multiple sets of dialogues between us as colleagues and friends as we revisit the question of the status of English as a global language. Through the metaphor ‘multiple classrooms of life’, we share reflections and narratives arising out of our experiences with English that are embedded in our professional work, scholarship, pedagogy and creative interests. Our discussion encompasses a range of artefacts, including excerpts from our diaries, poems, vignettes, visuals, letters, songs and anecdotes. This amalgam of materials represents our personal engagement with English, as distinct from treating the spread of English simply as a metanarrative played out at a remove from personal experience. We reconstruct ‘sparkle moments’ arising from personal encounters and social interactions that have caused us to reflect on the role of English in our lives. We thus focus on ideology as personally felt and lived from within and through inter-personal interactions.     

1992 ATTW bibliography

This article explores the ways that the discourse of usability might support a socially oriented pedagogy within technical communication. Specifically, it explores two approaches to usability—user-centered design and distributed usability—and suggests that the conversation between these approaches can ground socially responsive discussions of technology and technical communication. As such, the discourse of usability provides a field-specific means to address increasing calls for socially situated pedagogies within the field of technical communication.     

Training Online Technical Communication Educators to Teach with Social Media: Best Practices and Professional Recommendations

ABSTRACT

The author reports on social media research in technical and professional communication (TPC) training through a national survey of 30 professional and technical communication programs asking about their use of social media in technical communication. This research forms the basis of recommendations for training online TPC faculty to teach with social media. The author offer recommendations throughout for those who train online TPC faculty as well as for the teachers themselves.     

Narratives of learning communities in environmental education

Abstract

This article introduces the core concepts that emerged from five environmental education action research studies conducted by a group called Learning Communities in Environmental Education, Science and Mathematics (CEAMECIM) from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande (FURG) in the south of Brazil. The studies focus on teacher education processes in learning communities involving teachers, researchers and environmental educators, and the critical writing and reading texts of classroom recordings to problematise participants’ teaching practices. CEAMECIM used action research cycles to examine narratives of educational action, narratives from teachers concerning their development as environmental educators, and narratives of their development of a sense of belonging, with a particular focus on critiquing social models that are based on hierarchies and individuality. From this analysis, we propose a new perspective on being and learning how to become a learning community, crystallised by the belief that ‘we are more when we are together’.     

Regional lifelong learning policies and the social vulnerability of young adults in Girona and Vienna

ABSTRACT

This article explores the interface between lifelong learning policies and the definition of social vulnerability of young adults in two regions located within the European Union. Girona comprises a constellation of small towns with important industry, service and hospitality sectors. Vienna is a global city where many key international operators are based and employ a large number of highly qualified professionals. The article explores to what extent the meta-governance and the ‘causal narratives’ of lifelong learning policies contribute towards shaping the prevailing images of youth vulnerability in these regions. In Girona, bureaucratic governance patterns lifelong learning policies, which strongly rely on the potential of career guidance to encourage the youth to undertake further education. Correspondingly, policy designs and professional discourses emphasise that the beneficiaries previously failed at school. In Vienna, authorities govern lifelong learning by means of both bureaucracy and complex networks of employers and non-profit organisations. The ‘causal narrative’ of the policies straightforwardly claims that all youth must have an experience with employment, whether in apprenticeships or in transitional workshops that emulate real jobs. There, policies portray beneficiaries according to their capacity to undertake and finish apprenticeships.     

个人经验的口头和书面叙事策略研究

60名土耳其大学的学生的恐怖叙事被分析;30份个人口头叙述被收集。另外30份叙述在一项书写任务中被引出。这项研究旨在于发现土耳其大学生个人经验叙事在口语和书面语叙事中运用叙事结构和评价性语言方面的不同。     

Teacher professional learning as a social practice: an Australian case

Abstract

Framing professional learning as a social practice underscores the interplay between subjective meaning systems and objective conditions of the social space where learning occurs. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social practice, and methodologically guided by critical realism, the paper identifies what constitutes effective teacher professional learning through mentoring. The empirical focus of the paper is an Early Childhood teacher mentoring programme in the state of Victoria, Australia. The findings show that: (a) relevant circumstances that make teacher professional learning a necessity are associated with individual aspirations and systemic requirements; (b) collegial relationships and critical deliberation constitute meaningful learning experiences; and (c) teacher learning takes place in the domains of professional dispositions, pedagogical knowledge and social capital. The implication is that in designing professional development programmes such as mentoring, it is important to take teachers’ contexts of practice into account; conceptualise learning as a socially situated practice; and recognise the value of teachers’ lived experiences as a locus of deliberation and learning.     

Socially just pedagogies in changing times

This article reports on Australian research that developed the concept of 'productive pedagogies', a model that is deemed to be socially just and appropriate for the contemporary post-modern globalised world. The model extends the modernist one of 'authentic pedagogy' developed in the USA and sits as a counter to the inauthentic post-modernist model of pedagogy framed by neo-liberal and new public management forms of accountability in some educational systems. The article begins from the assumption that the quality of pedagogies is a social justice issue and documents the lack of intellectual demand, connectedness and working with difference in the pedagogies mapped in the 1000 classrooms observed, while also noting the high degree of social support teachers offered students. These lacks can be seen to reproduce inequalities through schooling, rather than challenge them. Teacher care and support are necessary, but not sufficient for socially just pedagogies, which also need to be backed by redistributive socially just policies and some professional trust of teachers.     

Research as ideology in professional communication

This article claims that the debate over research in professional communication is grounded in ideology. The article discusses the ideologies of two research perspectives: a functionalist perspective, common in much social scientific research, and a critical interpretive perspective, currently emerging in disciplines other than our own. The article sets recent discussions of research in professional communication within a functionalist framework, then posits that a critical interpretive ideology provides an alternative. The interests advanced by both perspectives are discussed, and the viability of critical interpretive research in professional communication is supported.     

Vicarious versus Direct Experience: How the Media Affect Psychological Growth

Abstract

Information technologies such as television or computer games are often described as creating either a passive or an interactive experience. These polar alternatives can better be conceived of as direct experience on the one hand or vicarious experience on the other. Direct experience involves overt acts. Once an overt act is made, the physical world or the social world provides feedback about the consequences. Vicarious experience requires no overt response on the part of the person attending to the message.

It is the main thesis of this article that direct experience tends to be normative while vicarious experience permits individualistic psychological growth because vicarious experience is not under the control of cither social norms or the norms imposed by the realities of the physical world. If this is correct, a critical index of personality is the ratio of direct to vicarious experience. If the ratio is great, a person is likely to be adjusted to social norms. If the ratio is small, a person will probably be in conflict with social norms. Much of the recent history of the behaviour of young people can be interpreted using these principles. However, there are still many puzzling aspects in the changes in the behaviour patterns of young people over the last decade or so. The implications for instructional design using information technology will be discussed.     

Of Friction Points and Infrastructures: Rethinking the Dynamics of Offering Online Education in Technical Communication in Global Contexts

ABSTRACT

International interest in technical communication education is growing as more individuals gain online access worldwide. This factor means technical communication educators might find themselves developing online classes for students located in other nations. Doing so requires an understanding of aspects affecting international interactions in such educational contexts. This article examines central factors—or friction points—that technical communication instructors must understand and address to offer effective online educational experiences to globally distributed students.