A reconstructive analysis of the potential for critical learning and change in recognition of prior learning: a Habermasian analysis

This paper analyses a recognition of prior learning (RPL) placement process where health care assistants' prior learning is recognised through dialogue with and observation by tutors. This process is part of a procedure that uses RPL for accreditation through the administration of an in‐service training program in the health care sector. The aim of the reconstructive analysis in this paper is to examine the potential for critical learning and change in the RPL placement process by analysing this procedure using Habermas's theory of communicative action. Although prior research has justifiably been critical of the use of RPL for accreditation, these critiques are not always helpful. Rather than simply rejecting this form of RPL, this paper argues for a balance between the social environment (i.e., lifeworld) in the workplace and the education system. Viewed and analysed from the angle of communicative action, the paper argues that when RPL for accreditation is founded within worthwhile learning experiences and conducted through mutual understanding, critical learning and change can be achieved. RPL for accreditation can then be something more than a process of instrumental assessment.     

RPL for accreditation in higher education – As a process of mutual understanding or merely lifeworld colonisation?

This article focuses on a process of recognition of prior learning (RPL) in higher education. It is based on experiences from a project carried out in collaboration between the University of Lund, Linköping University and two trade unions in Sweden. The aim of the project was to find ways of recognising prior learning for accreditation of course credits at university level. In the project and its analysis, Habermas’ theory of communicative action was used as theoretical underpinning. During the project we carried out a thematic analysis based on interviews. The analysis suggested that the participants had a mystified view of higher education that RPL must be considered a learning process and that the participants’ prior learning can be characterised as practical wisdom. These themes guided the development of the project. In a retrospective analysis, language proficiency seemed to play a significant role for the outcome of the process. The conclusion suggests that a more fair and valid assessment of the participant’s prior learning could be accomplished by focusing on RPL as a process of mutual understanding. However, a critical appraisal of the process suggests that RPL for accreditation is problematic and could be seen as a colonisation of the lifeworld.     

Closing the Circle: Action research partnerships towards better learning and teaching in schools

This paper addresses the call for evidence-based practice by describing an initiative in school-university partnership that has led to the establishment of a community of teacher researchers whose investigations provide the evidence upon which they make decisions to improve their teaching. This is a new way of approaching the idea of evidence-based practice, where the evidence comes through personal testimony that 'rings true'. In this mode of research the processes of research are shared so that the outcomes of the research may be disseminated through 'transferability' rather than 'generalisability'. The first part describes the partnership, which involved the adaptation of existing structures in the school (staff development) and the university (accreditation) to create a new more democratic, more productive relationship. The second part of the paper describes the work of one teacher who applied the principles from her own learning within the teacher group to her management of her students' learning in such a way that the excitement of independent learning that had been a feature of the teacher group was transferred to the students. The third part of the paper addresses the politics of such research and makes a case for including teachers' and students' knowledge of their own practice as evidence to inform policy development.     

STUDENT EXPERIENCES WITH MULTICULTURAL AND DIVERSITY EDUCATION

This study of 434 students enrolled at seven southern California community colleges investigated student learning experiences in courses with multicultural and diversity content. Student perceptions of (a) what was learned in courses with multicultural and diversity content, (b) feelings about themselves when learning these types of content, (c) the values learned, (d) the amount of learning achieved, (e) feelings about the teacher, and (f) desire for more courses with multicultural and diversity content were identified. Some research has demonstrated that community colleges are doing very little to provide multicultural educational experiences for students. However, to date, there have been no comprehensive studies of community college students' experiences with multicultural and diversity education. Results of this study indicated that community college students desire courses with multicultural and diversity content. Students' learning experiences are enriched when courses contain these types of content. Although women and members of minority groups are most desirous of multicultural and diversity content, White male students need the experiences. The values taught in these courses seem to enhance the understanding of differences. Although learning about gays and lesbians is problematic for some, students do want to learn more about diversity than what frequently is associated with ''culture.'' Along with multicultural content, information concerning gender, sexual orientation, ageism, classism, and disabilities should be infused into college curricula.     

Preservice teachers' capacity to teach self-regulated learning: Integrating learning from problems and learning from successes

Using a quasi-experimental design, we integrated systematic learning from problematic and successful experiences into teachers' preparatory programs and examined how such learning affected preservice physics teachers' capacity to teach students self-regulated learning (SRL). Results indicated that preservice teachers who contemplated both problematic and successful experiences improved more in their actual teaching of SRL strategies and in their actual arrangement of SRL environments, compared to preservice teachers who contemplated only problematic experiences. The current study suggests the need to integrate systematic learning from problematic and successful experiences into teachers' preparatory programs as means of developing preservice teachers' capacity to promote students' SRL.     

What has Happened in the Teaching of Politics in Schools in England in the Last Three Decades,and Why?

During the last three decades there have been very different approaches to political learning in schools in England. Very generally, prior to the 1960s, if anything was done explicitly, there was a concentration on learning facts about the British constitution. The late 1960s and into the 1970s saw a 'burgeoning of interest' (Heater) in political education characterised by attention to skills within a broader definition of politics than had been used in British Constitution courses. The 1980s saw the birth or, in some cases, redevelopment, of a whole raft of adjectival educations concerned with peace, development, the environment, 'race', in a way that was more holistic and affective than earlier initiatives. The current period has been described as 'the decade of the citizen' (Dahrendorf), which for most of the 1990s seems to have meant some attempt at learning about responsibilities within a framework of officially sanctioned values, and opportunities to undertake voluntary action in the local community. Very recent developments shift education for citizenship into more enlightened waters but there may be little cause for optimism that widespread implementation will occur. The reasons for such shifts are discussed and trends and consequences (actual and likely) are explored.     

Primary special school teachers' knowledge and beliefs about supporting learning in numeracy

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of a group of 12 teachers in primary special schools in Scotland for children with moderate learning difficulties. It sets out an analysis of classroom observations and interviews that explored teachers' knowledge and beliefs about teaching and learning in mathematics with children with moderate learning difficulties. The teachers were interviewed pre‐ and post‐intervention; this was a research‐based professional development programme in children's mathematical thinking (Cognitively Guided Instruction) which teachers then developed in their classrooms. The findings showed that prior to the professional development, the teachers had a limited knowledge of children's mathematical development with teaching frequently informed by intuitive beliefs and dated and sometimes discredited practices. Most teachers had low expectations of children with learning difficulties. Post‐intervention, the teachers reviewed this stance and affirmed that a deeper understanding of children's mathematical thinking provided a more secure knowledge base for instruction. They also recognised the extent to which learners were constrained by existing classroom practices. The paper argues for the commonality of this knowledge base and considers the problematic nature of viewing such knowledge as sector specific.     

Getting in Step: Accountability,accreditation and the standardization of teacher education in the United States

The background to the 'standards movement' in education in the United States is explained. It is argued that it has had a negative impact on teacher education and teacher education accreditation. An illustrative example is provided from a recent accreditation review of the application of an overly narrow understanding of standards and of legitimate evidence, and a possible alternative and more responsive and responsible view of assessment is suggested. The value of standards as guidelines for improving practice in teacher education is not questioned. Rather we aim to cast light upon what we see as their troubling reduction to templates under the often unrecognized influence of market assumptions about teaching and learning.     

The educational (im)possibility for dietetics: a poststructural discourse analysis

Inquiring into the theoretical underpinnings of dietetic curriculum provides a means for further understanding who dietitians are (identity) and what dietitians do (performativity). Since dietetic curriculum exists as a structural influence on the dietetic student identity, it is worth inquiring into how such a structure is theoretically informed, especially considering that until now, this process has not be undertaken. This research attempts to illuminate how dietetic knowledge is generated and how various institutional structures reinforce this knowledge. Since dietetic education in Canada is standardized by a means of national accreditation, the accreditation texts were analyzed following a poststructural discourse analysis method. Those aspects of the Accreditation Manual concerning dietetic education were scrutinized to illuminate the presence/absence of curricular theory, knowledge assumptions, and educational values. Findings of the discourse analysis indicate that there is no explicit curricular theory framing dietetic education, learning processes are sequential and apolitical, and dietetic knowledge is decontextualized from the social world. These findings have implications for dietetic education, the scholarship of teaching and learning within the profession, and dietetic epistemology. With further attention to these issues it is hoped that dietetic educators will be encouraged to reflect on the historical and theoretical foundations of their curricula and will consider how teaching and learning, and ultimately dietetic knowledge could be enhanced through a socially integrated feminist science of food and nutrition.     

Real or Imagined Women? Staff representations of international women postgraduate students 1

In Australia's globalising universities many support staff and teaching staff now work with international women postgraduate students. But are they aware of the issues facing these women, and is their understanding of them adequate? Indeed, how do they represent them? In this paper we draw on a small-scale pilot study involving key university personnel. We argue that the ways in which such staff represent this group of students is problematic. Focusing primarily on academic issues and on the literature on learning styles, we analyse these staff members' representations of international women postgraduate students from a postcolonial perspective. We explore the extent to which such representations, and the learning styles literature that reflects and informs them, are what Edward Said calls 'Orientalist'. In so doing, we point to both the constitution of the international woman student as postcolonial female subject and show how this situates her in relation to the prevalent learning styles discourse. Further we argue that such representations of the students differ in crucial ways from the students' self-representations, suggesting that in certain subtle ways such staff members are engaging with 'imagined' rather than 'real' women.     

Toward Improving Student Learning: Policy issues and design structures in course-level outcomes assessment

Conscientious instructors at all levels are constantly making decisions about how to improve their teaching. This is a natural, intuitive part of being a good instructor, but even faculty who value student learning and work hard to improve their teaching can fail to make the connection between what they do in the classroom and the continuous improvement philosophy of outcomes assessment. The connection can be missed because understanding course-level outcomes assessment requires understanding evaluation policies and structures that differ markedly from those employed for unit-level program accreditation. The purposes of this paper are two-fold: first, to address policy issues that impede adoption of systematic, course-level outcomes assessment for improving student learning; and second, to describe a design structure for applying outcomes assessment that addresses factors under control of the instructor that affect students' learning. The paper concludes with observations on the crossed purposes of collecting information for judging faculty merit in the annual review process as opposed to collecting information for course improvement in the outcomes assessment process.     

Note-taking within MetaTutor: interactions between an intelligent tutoring system and prior knowledge on note-taking and learning

Hypermedia learning environments (HLE) unevenly present new challenges and opportunities to learning processes and outcomes depending on learner characteristics and instructional supports. In this experimental study, we examined how one such HLE—MetaTutor, an intelligent, multi-agent tutoring system designed to scaffold cognitive and metacognitive self-regulated learning (SRL) processes—interacts with learner’s prior domain knowledge to affect their note-taking activities and subsequent learning outcomes. Sixty (N = 60) college students studied with MetaTutor for 120 min and took notes on hypermedia content of the human circulatory system. Log-files and screen recordings of learner-system interactions were used to analyze notes for several quantitative and qualitative variables. Results show that most note-taking was a verbatim copy of instructional content, which negatively related to the post-test measure of learning. There was an interaction between prior knowledge and pedagogical agent scaffolding, such that low prior knowledge students took a greater quantity of notes compared to their high prior knowledge counterparts, but only in the absence of MetaTutor SRL scaffolding; when agent SRL scaffolding was present, the note-taking activities of low prior knowledge students were statistically equivalent to the number of notes taken by their high prior knowledge counterparts. Theoretical and instructional design implications are discussed.     

A Content Analysis of Problematic Behavior in Counselor Education Programs

Counselor education programs are obligated by accreditation standards and professional codes of ethics to identify counselors‐in‐training whose academic, clinical, and personal performance indicate problematic behavior that would potentially prevent them from entering the profession ( McAdams, Foster, & Ward, 2007 ; Rust, Raskin, & Hill, 2013 ). Despite these obligations, there are no systematic criteria by which to address problematic behavior. This content analysis describes policies used by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs' doctoral counselor education programs that define, assess, and remediate problematic behavior.     

Hunting and gathering: new imperatives in mapping and collecting student learning data to assure quality outcomes

Assurance of learning (AOL) is a quality enhancement and quality assurance process used in higher education. It involves a process of determining programme learning outcomes and standards, and systematically gathering evidence to measure students' performance on these. The systematic assessment of whole-of-programme outcomes provides a basis for curriculum development and management, continuous improvement, and accreditation. To better understand how AOL processes operate, a national study of university practices across one discipline area, business and management, was undertaken. To solicit data on AOL practice, interviews were undertaken with a sample of business school representatives (n?=?25). Two key processes emerged: (1) mapping of graduate attributes and (2) collection of assurance data. External drivers such as professional accreditation and government legislation were the primary reasons for undertaking AOL outcomes but intrinsic motivators in relation to continuous improvement were also evident. The facilitation of academic commitment was achieved through an embedded approach to AOL by the majority of universities in the study. A sustainable and inclusive process of AOL was seen to support wider stakeholder engagement in the development of higher education learning outcomes.     

National Cultural Values and Their Role in Learning: A comparative ethnographic study of state primary schooling in England and France

This ethnographic study attempts to define English and French cultural and educational values in primary school. It is maintained that pupil attitudes to education are derived from pupils' sociocultural backgrounds and that pupil attitudes predispose pupils to learning. Pupils interpret both what and how they learn through the medium of the culture to which they belong. English and French educational values are identified through classroom observation, teacher discourse and pupil perceptions. The comparative approach allows the contrastive characteristics inherent in each country's culture to emerge. It is argued that pupil understanding of such educational values as authority, thought or 'la pensee', control over learning and educational goals and how to achieve them are related to national culture and that they have an effect on pupil motivation. The paper is both an example of and an exploration into how culture may affect learning. It suggests that cultural values are more significant for learning than pedagogical styles as it argues that underlying educational values give meaning to styles of pedagogy.     

Issues in quality education and the evaluation of nontraditional graduate programs

The traditional hallmarks of quality graduate education may be few but they are powerful. Graduate schools are seen by most academics as fixed entities with no viable alternatives. Accreditation associations, while claiming flexibility, often represent these traditional interests. Ultimately, few institutions, including the traditional, view accreditation with enthusiasm. Is accreditation worth the effort for nontraditional graduate institutions? Despite the weaknesses of the process, nontraditional graduate programs should seek full accreditation. Recognition is likely if, among other suggestions, nontraditional programs don't overpromise and do identify their program design with conceptual clarity.     

The assessment of prior knowledge profiles: A support for independent learning?

Prior knowledge state is an important determinant in the future learning process of adult students. Research on the prior knowledge state has focused on its structure along a set of dimensions. In the theoretical part of this article a distinct approach towards the analysis of the prior knowledge state is outlined. This analysis is based on the idea of the ‘structure of knowledge’. This base is further exploited to define a set of dimensions that are helpful to construct ‘knowledge profiles’ by using different parameters along those dimensions. Two dimensions are distinguished: the behavioural dimension, consisting of the parameters know, insight and apply; the knowledge dimension, formed by the parameters concepts, relations, structures and methods. It is argued that the assessment of the prior knowledge state needs to be done by dedicated prior knowledge state tests. The relevance of using prior knowledge profiles is especially important in a context of independent, distance learning. Student groups that take courses within this context can be characterised as very heterogeneous (e.g. age, education, profession, interest and prior knowledge), but they often have to deal with fairly standardised instruction materials and learning environments. The view is defended that the determination of prior knowledge profiles can be helpful to enhance a student's learning process, to design more flexible learning environments and to provide instructional support.     

Teachers' Self-Regulated Learning Lesson Design: Integrating Learning from Problems and Successes

Teachers' design of a lesson is critical for helping their students develop academically effective forms of self-regulating learning (SRL) in classrooms. Using a quasi-experimental design, the researchers integrated systematic collaborative learning from problematic and successful experiences into teachers' preparatory programs and examined how such learning was associated with preservice physics teachers' SRL-based lesson design. The participants in this study were 132 preservice physics teachers during the practicum phase of their teacher education at four major research universities. Results indicated that preservice teachers who contemplated both problematic and successful experiences developed better SRL lesson-designing skills compared to preservice teachers who contemplated only problematic experiences. This study provides a new outlook for linking collaborative learning from problematic and successful experiences as a means of nurturing teachers' SRL, as well as suggesting implications and further research avenues.     

如何提高学生的在线自我调节学习？——基于先前在线学习经历与家庭背景的比较

在线教学中学生要具备一定的在线自我调节学习能力才能取得好的学习成效,而学生的在线自我调节学习受诸多因素的影响。本研究从先赋性背景和后致性学校过程性因素的视角,基于“新冠疫情期间研究型大学本科生学习体验调查”项目中某大学的数据,考查学生家庭背景和先前在校在线学习经历与在线自我调节学习的关系。研究发现：家庭背景和先前在校的在线学习经历都显著影响学生在线自我调节学习,且先前在线学习经历的影响独立于家庭背景。超过七成的学生在新冠肺炎疫情前有过在线学习经历,且主要是来源于本校的正式在线学分课。这一研究结果的实践启示是：高校可以通过提供正式在线学习的机会抵消学生家庭背景的负面作用来培养学生的在线自我调节学习,这将有助于他们应对紧急情况下大规模在线教学时可能面临的挑战。