Using a Virtual Agency to Teach Research

ABSTRACT

Use of instructional technology in social work has grown rapidly in recent years. Despite this increase, there is limited empirical investigation of its impact. In this paper we describe the use of a virtual agency for the teaching of research methods and program evaluation at a school of social work. Evaluation of the virtual agency showed that students in general were satisfied with its use and that higher satisfaction led to higher satisfaction with the overall course. The authors also discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of using a virtual agency for teaching research and program evaluation.     

An Agency Theory Perspective on Student Performance Evaluation

The emphasis in recent research on the responsibility of college and university business instructors to prepare students for future employment underscores a need to refine the evaluation of student performance. In this article, an agency theory framework is used to understand the trade‐offs that may be involved in the selection of various approaches to student evaluation. Understanding these trade‐offs may be particularly important as faculty members seek to balance competing obligations, such as research and service requirements, while ensuring instructional effectiveness. This article presents propositions for examining how various institutional, instructor, and student characteristics influence the selection and use of student performance evaluation techniques (i.e., exams, papers, and group assignments). In conclusion, we suggest that agency theory may serve as a foundation for understanding current evaluation practices and guiding instructors in their selection of appropriate evaluation mechanisms.     

Three reflections on assessing safety training needs: A case study

Needs assessment plays an important role in training and human performance improvement efforts, but the literature contains little research on this topic. This study extended previous research on the Performance Analysis for Training (PAT) model of needs assessment by examining its implementation to determine environmental and occupational health and safety training needs in a government agency. Using case study methodology and the lens of responsive evaluation, this study resulted in three perspectives about the actual needs assessment implementation. The three professionals' distinct areas of expertise (evaluation, health and safety, human resource development) informed the case in unique ways. The results can be used to improve the PAT model and also to give human resource development and performance improvement professionals insights about nuances of needs assessment practice.     

英国RAE与我国CDR之比较

英国RAE与我国CDR同为评估机构为促进高等教育质量而实施的评估,均以学科为评估对象,对高校的科研质量进行的评估活动。但这两种评估活动在实施主体、指标体系、运行程序等方面均有很大差异。英国的高等教育质量评估工作在国际上享有盛誉,将其与我国的学科评估进行对比,探寻差异,可以为我国高等教育学科评估工作的完善提供借鉴。     

British and French Evaluation of International Higher Education Issues: an identical political reality?1

In both Britain and France, evaluation has been seen as one element of national strategies to internationalise higher education (HE), with the spread of evaluation indicating policy convergence. However, there are dangers in describing the cross‐national adoption of evaluation as an instance of policy transfer in higher education. This article compares two evaluation agencies, the French Comité National de l’Évaluation des Établissements Publics à caractère scientifique, culturel et professionnel (CNE) and the British Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), which have both been seen as guarantors of the quality of domestic HE, and concomitantly as elements in international HE promotion. It indicates considerable differences in the evaluation reports produced by each agency, and links these to the context in which they were produced: the institutional relationships between each agency, higher education institutions, and the state; and the general context of ‘evaluation’ in each country's public sphere. The article thus challenges analyses which have seen the proliferation of evaluation across national contexts as evidence of ‘policy transfer’ or of ‘homogenisation’. Instead, it shows how differences in an ostensibly similar ‘product’, the ‘quality reports’ produced by each agency, reflect the institutional context of evaluation and its role in public policy writ large.     

Accounting for structure and agency in ‘close-up’ research on teaching,learning and assessment in higher education

This paper examines research into teaching, learning and assessment (TLA) in higher education in terms of structure and agency. It argues that although issues of structure and agency are seen as crucial in social theory, they are very little discussed in research into TLA in higher education and that a consideration of structure and agency raises some important questions about this research and the quality of the explanations that it generates. It is therefore time to reconsider this research from the standpoint of structure and agency so that more sophisticated approaches to researching, and generating explanations of, teaching, learning and assessment in higher education can be developed.     

What is agency? Conceptualizing professional agency at work

The concept of agency has become widely used in learning research, especially in studies addressing professional and workplace learning, but also in policy discussion on how to promote individually meaningful careers and life-courses amid rapid changes in working life. The purpose of this article is to provide a critical review of the multidisciplinary concept of agency, and to suggest a fruitful conceptualization of professional agency at work. The following questions are addressed: (i) How have the ontological characteristics and manifestations of agency been understood? (ii) How have the relationships between the social and individual aspects of agency been understood? We examined previous studies and discussions on agency in the fields of education and social sciences, looking selectively also at psychology and gender studies. We identified four major research traditions in which notions of agency were prominent: (i) the social science tradition, (ii) the post-structural tradition, (iii) the socio-cultural approach, and (iv) the identity and life-course approach. Analyses within and across these traditions brought out a range of understandings and manifestations; thus agency might be viewed merely as rational and intentional activity, or else it might be seen from a temporally broad perspective, covering subjects’ ontogenetic development, and encompassing discursive, practical, and embodied relations with the world. Analysis of the relationships between individual and social/contextual elements revealed assumptions ranging from analytical inseparability to separateness, and in case of analytical separateness assumptions of strong or weak contextual influence. Based on our review, we suggest a conceptualization of professional agency from a subject-centered socio-cultural perspective. This takes individual agency and social context to be analytically separate, but mutually constitutive, and in complex ways highly interdependent. The suggested conceptualization is summarized in terms of seven propositions.     

中日高等教育质量评价的特点及社会中介评价机制比较

高等教育质量评价体系是衡量高等教育成败的关键.科学的质量评价体系应包括多元的评价主体、评价目标、评价方法、评价标准等.本文以社会中介评价机制为切入点,对社会中介评价机制在中日两国高等教育质量评价体系中的现状及扮演角色进行了比较分析,指出社会中介评价机制在我国高等教育领域面临的问题和解决对策.     

质量评价如何多元有效——教育部“试点项目”总结性评估带来的思考之三

本文是教育部"中央电大人才培养模式改革和开放教育试点"总结性评估带来思考的最后一部分.在前两部分剖析开放教育本体意涵、拓展培养模式深层改革之后,在此又进一步探求了远程开放教育应有的质量观、质量文化及其质量标准框架.在论述教育性作为远程开放教育质量评价的内核,过程性才是远程开放教育质量评价重心的基础上,围绕质量认证、质量评估和质量评审在远程开放教育质量评价过程中的功能定位及其相关作用的发挥,进而提出了远程开放教育质量的评价观和多元评价方式及选择方略.     

Outputs and Outcomes of Vocational Education Programs^ Measures In Australia

This paper discusses some key issues involved in the evaluation of outcomes from vocational education and training in Australia where a number of vocational education and training policies have been introduced at both federal and state levels. These policies have been a response to Australia's relatively poor economic performance over the last decade in an attempt to overcome the perceived (and actual) deficiencies in the labor market and the skills of the work force. The paper focuses in particular on the vocational education sector in Victoria where the agency responsible for the provision of vocational education (The State Training Board) has instituted a number of plans without clear specification of its objectives or establishment of program evaluation processes. Finally, the paper proposes a research strategy to evaluate progress rates, outputs, and outcome measures.     

Resistant agency in German lessons in primary education in Germany

This paper aims to research practices of resistance as an important part of agency in primary school classrooms. By combining a post-structural theoretical frame with a critical ethnographic research approach, it understands children’s resistance as an ordinary practice, as a necessary response to structures and practices of the classroom setting. It argues that agency needs to be resistant to some extent, because otherwise it would be merely submission or adaptation. How agency can emerge depends on the social position of the student, which influences the way in which she or he is able to anticipate (more or less implicitly) spaces for resistant agency and also how he or she is addressed in the classroom and beyond. An ethnographic case study of German lessons in a third-grade primary class in a German school shows how resistant agency manifests and how it might be restricted when it comes to racialised subject-positions in the classroom.     

高职教育“管办评分离”质量保障体系的意蕴、问题与对策

高职教育"管办评分离"质量保障体系是政府、学校和社会评价组织为增强利益相关者的质量信任,以先进理论为指导,围绕人才培养和科技研究工作等建立的结构化、系统化制度体系。当前高职教育"管办评分离"质量保障体系建设,存在着法律法规规章保障不力、学校现代治理能力不强、第三方评估机构发展不足等突出问题,亟待通过完善国家制度政策、建构学校内部保障体系、发展独立专业评估机构、实施专项督导等予以解决。     

The emergence of learners’ transformative agency in a Change Laboratory intervention

Changes and transformations in organisations are traditionally initiated by the management. This approach does not, however, encourage the agency of all the members in an organisation to engage in cooperative development of the activity. This paper presents an analysis of the development of participants’ transformative agency in a Change Laboratory (CL) intervention. In a CL, the participants analyse conflicts and disturbances in their local activity and search for ways to transform current work practices. In the analysis, we identified six types of expressions of transformative agency which evolved over the course of the laboratory sessions and across the topical contents of those sessions. Furthermore, we examined to what extent the expressions of agency produced by the participants reflected individual and collective agency. Our key argument based on the research findings is that transformative agency goes beyond the individual and the situational here-and-now actions. It is produced and maintained in collective change efforts and evolves over time.     

Rethinking the Subject: (de)constructing human agency in environmental education research

In this article I critically analyse some of the ways in which human subjectivity and agency are constructed in contemporary discourses of environmental education research, with particular reference to conceptual change discourses such as those borrowed from ‘misconceptions’ research in science education. I argue that the methods of constructivist science education research are not necessarily applicable to either the (human) ‘subjects’ or subject‐matters (in an epistemological sense) of environmental education, and that poststructuralist methodologies may provide useful frames for rethinking the ways in which understandings of human subjectivity and agency are deployed in environmental education research.     

Critical Depictions of Agency in Pura Belpré Awarded Texts

Given the need for multiple representations of historically underrepresented voices in children’s literature, this research study explored critical depictions of agency of Latinx youth within the Pura Belpré awarded texts from 1996 to 2021. The findings report a critical multicultural analysis of depictions of age, sex, socio-economic status, ethnicities, and geographic regions of these awarded texts. Using a secondary analysis of opportunities for agency, we examine how focal subjects (Vaughn et al., 2021; Crisp, 2015) exert their agency in their respective contexts. Our aim in doing so is to highlight the notion of agency in these texts of Latinx children and youth, specifically understanding who exerts agency, how, and for what purposes. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

     

What is ‘Agency’? Perspectives in Science Education Research

The contemporary interest in researching student agency in science education reflects concerns about the relevance of schooling and a shift in science education towards understanding learning in science as a complex social activity. The purpose of this article is to identify problems confronting the science education community in the development of this new research agenda and to argue that there is a need for research in science education that attends to agency as a social practice. Despite increasing interest in student agency in educational research, the term ‘agency’ has lacked explicit operationalisation and, across the varied approaches, such as critical ethnography, ethnographies of communication, discourse analysis and symbolic interactionism, there has been a lack of coherence in its research usage. There has also been argument concerning the validity of the use of the term ‘agency’ in science education research. This article attempts to structure the variety of definitions of ‘student agency’ in science education research, identifies problems in the research related to assigning intentionality to research participants and argues that agency is a kind of discursive practice. The article also draws attention to the need for researchers to be explicit in the assumptions they rely upon in their interpretations of social worlds. Drawing upon the discursive turn in the social sciences, a definition of agency is provided, that accommodates the discursive practices of both individuals and the various functional social groups from whose activities classroom practice is constituted. The article contributes to building a focused research agenda concerned with understanding and promoting student agency in science.     

The Online Academy formative evaluation approach to evaluating online instruction

The Online Academy (HO29K73002) was funded by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) to develop online instructional modules in the content areas of reading, positive behavior support, and technology across the curriculum. Targeted to preservice teacher education programs in institutions of higher education (IHE), to date, the modules have been adopted for implementation by 162 institutions. A requirement of the funding agency was that the content of the modules be research based. A total of 75 lessons in 22 online modules and an authoring software tool were developed. Each module is approximately equivalent to a one-semester credit course. This paper describes the formative evaluation processes that were employed in creating the instructional design, design and production processes, content development, usability and navigational features of the modules, and the national implementation process.     

基于委托代理理论的高校招标代理机构管理研究

针对高校政府采购对招标代理机构规范化管理滞后于实务操作现状,以委托代理理论分析委托人与代理人的关系,应用SWOT方法分析招标代理机构。提出建立"内控-动态-约束"的委托人与代理人的管理模式,通过"采购部门—采购人"内控体系建设,解决信息不对称引发的招标代理机构"逆向选择"供应商;通过"采购部门—代理机构"动态系统建设,减小代理过程中的信息差和时间差,通过建立准入机制和诚信评估体系、完善招标代理合同、共享数据信息,从而彼此制约、共同提高代理质量;通过"代理机构—经办人员"约束体系建设,提高代理源头和代理过程质量,避免"道德风险";借助于政府对代理机构检查之力、利用社会力量的监督作用,营造招标代理机构良好的运行环境。     

Agency at work: two beginning science teachers’ stories in a context of curriculum reform in China

In this study, a sociocultural perspective was adopted to understand the interplay between identity and agency in a context of science education reform in China. The manifestation of agency and the interaction between identity and agency were examined with two beginning science teachers teaching with practical work in high school. As part of this study, the identity formation of beginning science teachers was conceived as a site for locating and investigating teacher agency. Based on multiple data sources, we identified six spaces in which the two participants’ agency manifested: (1) personal characteristics; (2) personal beliefs; (3) interactions with students; (4) interactions with colleagues; (5) curriculum materials; and (6) high-stakes examinations. In each space, the two participants’ agency contrasted in terms of perspectives and actions: one was passive, less confident and negative, whereas the other active, more confident and positive. Moreover, it was found that their contrary actions were the result of different perspectives. Based on the findings, a model of the interplay between the identity and agency of an individual science teacher is proposed in a context of curriculum reform. The implications of this model for future research and science teacher development are discussed.