Surveys of Programs and Emplopent in Eklucational Measurement

What is the supply and demand for educational measurement specialists? What types of jobs are more difficult to fill? How can NCME aid recruitment in to the profession ?     

Report on Divedty Within the Leadership of the National Council on Measurement in Education

What activities constitute leadership in NCME? Do those in leadership roles represent the general membership in terms of gender, ethnicity, and employment affiliation? Is there sufficient diversity in the organization and in the profession at largey     

The Same Term but Different Connotations: Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Studying the Academic Profession in China and Other Asian Countries

Through experiencing and reviewing multiple-country endeavors in academic profession study and participating in a new project regarding the academic profession in Asia, the author pinpoints and anticipates the shortcomings of study alone or dominantly questionnaire-based and ignoring the broader social context. The author proposes a new perspective or methodology to mitigate these shortcomings. The traditional approach focuses on commonalities rather than differences of the academic profession in a variety of countries. By comparing identical questionnaires, it is easy to conclude that, according to some indicators, the academic profession in developing countries, a category in which most Asian countries belong, is inferior to that in developed countries by a certain magnitude. This research strategy will devalue the research efforts on the academic profession in Asia. The academic profession is a complicated phenomenon, and it requires a sophisticated research methodology. The characteristics of the academic profession in Asia can be induced by empirically studying its relationship with the institutional environments in which the academic profession is embedded. In addition, all developing countries in Asia are undergoing a process of modernization. This dynamic feature is valuable and deserves exploration. The institutional environments in Asia can be demonstrated and illustrated via cultural and historical lenses. The purpose of this paper is to review international projects and literature regarding the academic profession. This review tries to be both critical and constructive, and shed light on newly initiated projects in the Asian academic profession. Two major research questions are raised by the author: What is the scholarly value of the new project? What strategy can researchers employ for this endeavor? Past research is dominated by the structure-function paradigm and cross-sectional questionnaire method. This approach has both strengths and weaknesses. Historical and cultural perspectives are proposed to overcome the existing limitations and explore the potential value of the new academic effort.     

Are women engineers in Lebanon prepared for the challenges of an engineering profession?

This study investigates the status of women engineers in the Middle East, considering women engineers in Lebanon as a case study. The author investigated the following questions: What are the influences behind females’ decisions to choose engineering as their major course of study? What are the motives behind this decision? What are the perceptions of females regarding the essential skills for a successful engineering career? An online survey consisting of Likert-scale items was completed by 327 female engineers who graduated from universities in Lebanon and now work in various locations around the world. A genuine interest in the field appeared to be the main influence in the participants’ decisions to choose engineering profession. The potential for professional growth was the leading motivator for choosing engineering. Although participants reported that they possessed adequate theoretical knowledge and technical skills before graduation, in the actual practice of engineering, they noted weaknesses in creativity and innovation.     

Returning history to the educational formation of health professionals in Australia

History has practically vanished from allied health professional education. We ask, what kind of problem does a ‘history of the professions’ pose for health sciences curriculum? What are the implications of graduates being unschooled in the history of their profession? Literature on knowledge in the curriculum, is used to interrogate how historical knowledge has come to be constituted in professional education fields. We develop a sketch of two particular health professions – occupational therapy and physiotherapy – and ask why it might be difficult to include a history of the profession in these curricula. Our view is that by helping students to cultivate an historical imagination, they can see how their experiences are framed by a fascinating collision of ideas, politics and practices. Furthermore, attention to history can help students better situate their own uncertainties about transitioning to practice enabling them to tackle professional quandaries with hindsight, foresight and insight.     

Independent teaching work to cooperative teaching: A new paradigm introduced in the Portuguese educational system (1894–1895)

With this article we intend to fill a large gap that exists in the field of educational research – examining the history of teaching. We chose a critical historical moment that initiated the great labour transformation in the exercise of the teaching profession. In this context, we investigated the pedagogical benefits introduced by the Portuguese educational system by the class regime promulgated in the 19th century with the reform that introduced the class system, enacted in the nineteenth century.

This change is a landmark in the history of teaching. We tried to study what had changed in the workplace to realise the division of teaching. How did teachers relate to each other and to their work in each working system? What social links are required by each of the working systems and what implications do they have for how teachers behave? What place (role) does the teacher play in the production chain? What skills (competences) are required in their working position?

The system change that was enacted in the nineteenth century created a new division of labour that called for dynamic labour, diametrically opposed to the traditional and established practice. This curriculum revolution not only brought new demands in teaching but also had consequences in terms of professional identity. From that point forward, being a teacher no longer had the same reference, “if you know – you do it well”. This has radically changed. Being a professional in education is no longer a purely individual act involving inter-subject intervention. They now have to act inter-individually with the intention of being multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary. They have to break through subject boundaries and dualities. The professional skills required by the job in the new employment scheme launched a new challenge in learning (teacher training) and in the exercise of the profession. Reflection on the new type of qualifications is still necessary and remains to be explored. Are the educational workers aware of this?     

Education, Profession and Culture: Some Conceptual Questions

What is it to regard the occupation of teaching as a profession – as distinct from a trade or vocation? The conventional modern conception of a profession is that of a normative enterprise in which standards of good practice are not just technically or contractually but also morally grounded: indeed, arguably the key difference between trades like plumbing or building and professions like medicine or law is that although the former are doubtless often subject to ethical regulation, ethical principles are actually constitutive of professions. It is also plausible to regard universal professional obligations as grounded in rights indexed to considerations of human need: insofar as humans cannot in general flourish without health, medical practitioners are bound to respond to any medical need without favour or prejudice. This paper argues, however, that powerful and persuasive contemporary critiques of notions of objective or value-neutral development and flourishing raise quite serious theoretical problems (expressed here as antinomies) for any analogous view of teaching as a profession.     

Cultivating Virtue in Teaching: The Role of the Personal,the Professional,and the Situational

It has been argued that virtuous teaching dispositions are essential to high-quality teaching. Discourse around dispositions, however, is still murky because there are contradictions in the field in regard to the issue of virtue. What is the source of teacher virtue, and how might it be cultivated? This essay explores evidence and implications for three possible sources of teacher virtue: the teacher's personality, the teaching profession, and the teacher's situational context.     

Special education trainee teachers’ perceptions of their professional world: motives,roles, and expectations from teacher training

To open a window into perceptions entailed in the professional world view of special education teacher trainees, three research questions were developed: (a) What are their motives for joining the profession? (b) How do they perceive the role of the special education teacher? and (c) What are their expectations from teacher training? The research was carried out using a qualitative approach. Ninety-three students about to begin their professional training in special education in an Israeli teacher-training college completed a questionnaire consisting of five open questions. The data were analyzed according to the grounded theory approach. The research findings showed that the trainees chose special education because they wanted to belong to a group of teachers perceived as the most ethical; one that considers its mission to help ‘vulnerable’ individuals, mold their characters, and ‘have an impact on society.’ The role of special education teachers was perceived mainly as caring for students and their parents; the trainees expected that during their training, they would become completely familiar with the range of disabilities and how to deal with them, as well as learn about themselves and strengthen their teaching skills. The world of special education was perceived as ‘mysterious,’ having a high moral standing; as a closed profession, in that relations are limited to teacher, child, and parents; but with a spiritual aspect. The professional world of special education as perceived by the teacher trainees was different than that actually waiting for them, and for which teacher training institutes must prepare them.     

Academic Profession in Academic Organization

An analysis of the properties of university organization will tell us about important aspects of academic life, but only an analysis of the academic profession will give us the whole story of academic work. External and internal life in academia is a function of the interplay between academic organization and academic man(woman). It is vital to an understanding of academic life to recognize the distinction in perspective between the organization and the individual, because academic organization is mainly passive whereas academic man(woman) is active. The two entities—the university and the academic profession—are fundamentally dissimilar from an action perspective. What academic man(woman) is—rational, evaluative, coordinating, goal oriented—the university cannot be; and what the university as an organization amounts to—satisfying a "garbage-can" model's properties—would spell disaster for academic man(woman). What unites the university and the academic profession is that both entities have to act in an environment that is at the same time dynamic and heterogeneous. Both the university organization and the academic profession face an environment the distinctive trait of which is a constantly shifting heterogeneity. The university may attempt to define and erect stable input and output functions vis-à-vis its environment only to discover that plans have to be remade and decisions adjusted to the ongoing march of events, which the university can neither control nor even adequately predict. What creates a hazardous situation for the university as an organization is what academic man(woman) thrives on; since the perspective of the academic profession is the understanding of the environment and not the accomplishment of organizational goals, adaptation becomes that much easier; a stable and homogeneous environment would mean that the flow of stimuli for new knowledge would slow down and there would not be such a variety of needs for research. What separates the two entities—the university and the academic profession—is the basic difference in the conditions for action.     

‘The danger of a single story:’ a reflection on institutional change,voices, identities,power, and outcomes

ABSTRACT

What role does academic development have to play in responding to radical cultural shifts in the global landscape? Whose voices and identities are contributing to institutional change? This reflective essay encompasses the perspectives of the four international panellists in the opening plenary of the International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) 2018 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, USA – Torgny Roxå on ideologies; Chng Huang Hoon on agency and empowerment; Joy Mighty on voices and identities; and Mary Deane Sorcinelli on evidence and outcomes. These perspectives set the stage for the conference, and, brought together in this paper now, they address key conference themes, offer coordinates for reflection, and pose further questions about our profession.     

A mythopoetic methodology: storytelling as an act of scholarship

A pre-service teacher clashes with his mentor and the practicum ends badly. There is distress and a sense of failure all round. Questions get asked. Was the pre-service teacher simply unsuited to this demanding profession? Was the teacher education inadequate? Was the mentor a good fit? Were there the right kinds of support in place? Was the school culture intolerant of new ideas, new energies?

Given concerns about an ageing workforce, beginning teacher attrition rates and healthy work environments, questions such as these require thoughtful investigation. But the issues are complex. Complexity is not an easy thing to research.

The past hundred years has seen a number of significant attempts to understand personal and social complexity, from the grand structural narratives of the psychoanalytic movement through to post-structural accounts that pay increasing attention to the apparently chaotic interplay of intersecting life trajectories, shifting identities, and ordinary affects.

What methodologies nudge us deeper into perceived and experienced complexities? What ways of communicating the insights afforded by such methodologies are likely to have impact, to create affects?

In this paper, I suggest that a mythopoetic methodology (the writing of a story) plays a part in the scholarly attempt to see complexity more fully. I suggest, too, that a mythopoetic form (the telling of a story) has the potential to create useful affects.

The paper is performative rather than exclusively analytical.     

国家与教师教育

20世纪70年代以来,全球教育领域逐渐形成了两大研究重心,一是教育政策研究,二是教师教育研究。世界各国日益重视教师教育的改革与发展。在我国,怎样更好地培养专业化的教师、增强教师教育的专业性不断成为研究人员关注的焦点。从国家角度看,政府是更加关心怎样以合理的成本供应足够数量的、相当素质的教师队伍呢,还是更加关注教师职业的专业性建设呢?国家、大学、教师教育的权力关系又是怎样的呢?英国的教师教育改革为了解当今世界各国专业、国家与教师教育的历史发展提供了一个视窗。     

Myths and realities of teacher health

This paper reports a series of myths and realities derived from a study designed to answer two basic questions: What is the experience of an educator who develops a health disabling condition? In what ways are these educators similar to or different from teachers who do not leave the classroom? The study of 422 educators included four groups: all teachers currently on long-term disability; all teachers on LTD within the last five years who had subsequently returned to work; a selected group of teachers who had acknowledged interest in leaving the profession, and a selected group of teachers who were identified by area administrators as satisfied with teaching as a career, and who were judged to be physically and emotionally well. Interviews and questionnaires were used. This article is restricted to reporting the highlights synthesized from the combination of the qualitative and quantitative methodologies and reported as myths and realities.     

The importance of networks for newly qualified teachers in upper secondary education

Background and purpose:?The interest in raising the competence of teachers through networks and network activities is increasing. This article is based on the voices of four newly qualified teachers who give us the opportunity to listen to experiences in authentic surroundings. The purpose of this article is to gain better insight into the type of networks newly qualified teachers maintain, develop and create to develop as teachers. The research question is: What is the importance of networks for the professional development of newly qualified teachers in upper secondary education?

Main argument:?The main finding of the article, based on in-depth interviews with four newly qualified teachers, is that being acknowledged by colleagues is decisive for professional development. Furthermore, the school’s programme of meetings to some extent contributes to developing the respect and trust of the newly qualified teachers, who also need to find time and opportunities for reflection in personal networks outside school. The relational and emotional aspects of the teaching profession produce a need for guidance processes where the ethical dilemmas of the profession can be raised. When these dilemmas arise, the newly qualified teachers actively look outside school to grasp opportunities for professional development. The teachers appear to be very active in their own professional development, and they have ambitions to develop as teachers for the benefit of the pupils and the school.

Conclusions:?Systematic guidance is highlighted as fundamental for these teachers’ learning.     

An Enquiry Into the Role and Importance of Ethics in Scientific Research

In this essay the importance of spirituality (or ethics) in the life of a research scientist is explored. The following four questions are considered: a) Why should the problem be studied? What are the benefits? and For whom? b) How should we approach this problem? c) What if the results of this investigation contradict other theories? What should we do in case of disagreements? and, d) What are the consequences of this study? Who or what is going to be harmed? What are the effects on the environment?

     

高师公共教育学课程价值论辩

对于普通师范生来说,专业精神和职业情感是他们从事教师职业的基本前提和职业准备。他们缺少的不是系统的教育理论知识,而是对教育专业的基本了解和认识。为他们提供教育生活的丰富体验和感受是公共教育学的首要任务。而案例、视频和活动教学则是适应体验教学的最好形式,也是培养学生专业精神和职业情感的最佳途径。公共教育学需要打破公共教育学课程价值的传统定位,重新设计公共教育学课程的教学过程。     

Legal Defensibility of Standards: Issues and Policy Perspectives

What legal issues may arise in setting content or performance standards? What precedents are relevant? What practices are defensible?     

The Centrality of Test Use and Consequences for Test Validity

What are the origins of consequential validity? What is the role of intended test use in validation? Is the study of unintended effects part of validation? What practical problems does this pose?