What motivates higher education educators to innovate? Exploring competence,autonomy, and relatedness – and connections with wellbeing

ABSTRACT

Background: High quality tertiary teaching is important for maximising the impact of tertiary education for students, employers and society, as well as for institutional reputation and accountability. Varied interpretations exist regarding what counts as ‘innovative’ tertiary teaching.

Purpose: This study sought to explore the deeper drivers of motivations of tertiary educators to initiate and implement teaching innovations.

Method: Drawing from the data from semi-structured interviews from a wider study into innovative teaching in a tertiary education institution in Aotearoa New Zealand, we analysed the rationale of 13 expert tertiary educators for teaching in novel ways. The framework for analysis was based on Self-Determination Theory: data were analysed in relation to three basic psychological needs known to impact on motivation and wellbeing – competence, autonomy and relatedness.

Findings: Our analysis suggests that tertiary educator motivation to innovate in their teaching is related to feelings of all three needs. Findings suggest that innovative pedagogical change was linked to educators’ need for feelings of competence in relation to subject area content, pedagogy and developing student competence. Enhancing autonomy for the educators themselves, or for their students, was also an important factor motivating innovative practice. Developing relatedness between students, between themselves and students, and between students and society were reported as motivations for innovative teaching. Some teaching innovations were motivated by the educator’s desire for greater personal or student wellbeing.

Conclusions Educators’ motivations for being innovative in their tertiary pedagogical practice encompassed content, pedagogical, personal and social dimensions. None reported that their innovation was motivated by institutional policy or expectations. The reported challenges to innovative teaching practice, including institutional structures and processes, lack of access to specific technologies, and the time needed to develop and implement changed practice, indicate that educators must be strongly committed to making change in their practice to sustain the effort required.     

Secondary school students’ attitudes to practical work in biology,chemistry and physics in England

ABSTRACT

Background: In England, practical work is a major part of secondary school science and yet little research has examined students’ attitudes specifically to practical work.

Purpose: To examine students’ attitudes to practical work in biology chemistry and physics in secondary schools in England.

Sample: The study involved 607 students from Year 7 to Year 10 (aged 11–15) drawn from three state-maintained secondary schools in England. The schools were, broadly speaking, representative of schools in England in terms of academic measures such as GCSE outcomes, value-added performance and socio-economic area.

Design and methods: The research considered students’ attitudes in terms of an established analytical framework incorporating the affective, behavioural and cognitive (ABC) domains and used a mixed methods approach involving questionnaires, lesson observations, and focus group discussions.

Results: Whilst secondary students’ attitudes to practical work were, generally speaking, positive they were not constant and homogenous but change over time. The affective value of practical work was found to vary by subject although in all three sciences this value decreased, albeit at different rates, as students approached their General Certificate in Secondary Education examinations (GCSE) taken at age 16.

Conclusion: The affective value of practical work needs to be considered on a subject by subject basis, rather than, as is often the case currently in school, in terms of a generic attitude to science practical work. Furthermore, the affective value of practical work can be maximised by using more at the start of secondary education (Key Stage 3 – ages 11–14) with a gradual, subject-specific, reduction as students approach their summative public examinations (age 16) when their preference for non-practical, exam orientated, teaching increases.     

Thinking critically about learning analytics,student outcomes,and equity of attainment

Abstract

This is the introduction to the special edition on learning analytics.     

Inclusivity,participation and collaboration: Learning in interactive groups

ABSTRACT

Background: Interaction, participation and collaboration are thought to be important factors for supporting successful second or foreign language learning. The use of Interactive Groups (IGs) is regarded as helpful in creating the conditions in which interaction, participation and collaboration are increased to create effective dialogic learning. However, there is limited understanding of the role of IGs in supporting second or foreign language learning.

Purpose: The aim of the present study was to explore the opportunities that IGs generated for supporting interaction, participation and collaboration in a situation where students were learning English as a foreign language.

Method: A communicative methodology was used to collect and analyse observational and interview data from three classrooms where teaching and learning was organised through IGs, each in a different school in Spain involved in Schools as Learning Communities: Successful Educational Actions (SEAs). Across the three classrooms, there were 58 students, three teachers and 14 volunteers, whose role was to support and encourage communication. The schools served low SES communities. We conducted eight classroom observations and 17 semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed qualitatively.

Findings: The thematic analysis suggested that, in the classrooms that were studied, there was evidence that participants and observers felt that IGs promoted effective conditions for the inclusive participation of all learners, created a favourable climate for collaborative interactions regarding the target language and raised learning expectations for all students. In addition, the contribution of the volunteers was identified as crucial to the successful functioning of the IGs.

Conclusion: This small scale, qualitative study highlights the potential for IGs to create favourable conditions for the learning of English and other languages as a foreign language. More extensive studies are needed to determine the best way to use IGs for the teaching and learning of foreign languages in other contexts.     

Studying Quality of Caregiving Behavior: The Roles of Infant,Mother, Father,and Culture

SYNOPSIS

This study showed that prenatal quality of caregiving behavior toward a crying simulator infant predicted the postnatal quality of caregiving behavior of both mothers and fathers.     

Emotional labour,teaching and burnout: Investigating complex relationships

ABSTRACT

Background: In common with other service-oriented occupations, teaching is a profession that requires employees to engage in emotional labour. In order to perform their day-to-day roles effectively, teachers are expected to manage and utilise their emotions in nuanced ways, with a high degree of control. As research suggests a complex relationship between emotional labour and occupational burnout, it is essential to examine this further in the context of teaching, so as to better understand the issues associated with teacher burnout.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the literature on emotional labour and burnout, using the lens of sociological research to examine how multiple contexts shape people’s experiences in occupations. We present a theoretical discussion on how expectations for emotion displays and management, alongside structural factors, may shape the experiences of teachers.

Sources of evidence: We reviewed literature on emotional labour and burnout to examine this relationship within the context of contemporary constraints, including educational policies, accountability and emergent interpersonal dynamics in the everyday lives of school teachers. We focussed mainly on the United States public school system and used search terms including emotional labour, emotion work, emotion management and feeling rules. An inductive analytic strategy was used to identify common themes in the literature.

Findings and Conclusion: The thematic analysis of literature suggested that the intertwining of structural- and interactional-level expectations for emotional labour fosters close yet complicated relationships with teacher burnout. In bringing attention to these relationships, we offer suggestions as to the directions education researchers and administrators might take to better comprehend and address teacher burnout.     

Against the Tide: Critics of Digitalization; Warners,Sceptics, Scaremongers,Apocalypticists. 20 Portraits by Otto Peters

Distance Education: A Spectrum of Studies. Edited by B. N. Koul and Janet Jenkins. (London: Kogan Page, 1990, 260 pp., £25).     

Academic Attitudes,Expectations, and Achievement

Scholars Who Teach: The Art of College Teaching: Edited by Steven M. Cahn: Nelson-Hall, Chicago, 1978, Cloth $14.95, Paper $7.95, 246 pages. Reviewed by Marilyn L. Schaefer.

Support for Teaching at Major Universities: Edited by Stanford C. Ericksen with John A. Cook.: Ann Arbor, Michigan: The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, Fall, 1979. $3.00. Reviewed by Kurt F. Geisinger.     

Commentary on Stone and McMichael,Whitaker, and Amada

Abstract

This commentary discusses policy issues relating to the delivery of mental health care on university and college campuses, as seen in the context of national health care policy issues.     

King PARS,Academic Nebuchadnezzer

The Modern American College: Responding to the New Realities of Diverse Students and a Changing Society By Arthur W. Chickering and Associates San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, xvii + 783 pages, $27.95 Reviewed by James L. Bess

Teaching Values in College Richard L. Morrill San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1980, 169 pages, index, $13.95 Reviewed by Frederick Stirton Weaver     

On Building Bridges: Cultural Agnosia,HipHopEd, and Urban Education

Abstract

In this article, the author describes a lens for engaging in research and practice in urban education rooted in deep cultural understandings of the concept of building bridges and the impact of cultural agnosia.     

Recurrent Education: Strategy for Change,or Cooptation?

Abstracts

English

Is recurrent education a practical strategy for change? This research paper reports some of the reactions of the Australian legal profession to recurrent education and suggests that a covert alliance between the profession and its educators results in a strong resistance to this rather radical approach to education.     

Knowledge of secondary school pupils regarding sexual health education

Objective: To assess the sexual health knowledge of secondary school pupils in order to ascertain whether the current government public health and education policies are having any impact on pupils' sexual health.

Design: Results obtained from a questionnaire as part of a two‐phase intervention study.

Setting: Nineteen mixed‐sex, state secondary schools in central England.

Participants: Year 8 pupils (350 male, 345 female), year 9 pupils (300 male, 325 female) and year 10 pupils (310 male, 329 female).

Intervention: A questionnaire survey to assess the knowledge of pupils' sexual health education.

Main outcome measures: Questionnaires distributed to pupils as baseline to assess their knowledge of sexual health, contraception and sexually transmitted infections.

Results: Sexual health knowledge improves with age. A significant difference across all age groups was found, although knowledge regarding sexually transmitted infections and emergency contraception is poor for all age groups.

Conclusions: Current sexual health education provision is not providing young people with adequate knowledge regarding sexual health and contraception.     

Teaching aspects of the interrelationship between science and technology: a research report on the design,enactment and evaluation of a teaching proposal

Background: Helping upper elementary and lower secondary school students develop an awareness of various aspects of the nature of science (NOS) and nature of technology (NOT) is a widely recognized goal of science teaching. In this study, we focus on the connections between science and technology (S&T).

Purpose: We report on the design, development, enactment and evaluation of a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) that combines hands-on activities in geometrical optics with explicit epistemological discourse for reflection purposes. The design of the TLS draws on perspectives from the inquiry-oriented and design-based teaching and learning frameworks.

Sample: The enactment of the TLS involved a class of 17 sixth-grade students, aged 10–11 years old, of a public elementary school in Cyprus.

Design and methods: We present findings from written responses to both closed and open-ended tasks as well as follow-up semi-structured interviews that probed students’ understanding of the difference between the main goals of S&T.

Results: The results illustrate elementary students’ readiness to engage with epistemic issues and demonstrate the potential of prompting young learners’ ability to develop informed awareness of the NOS and NOT. The results also provided feedback for the revision of the TLS so as to further enhance its effectiveness in achieving the stated learning objectives.

Conclusion: We discuss the implications of our findings for the teaching of the NOS and NOT and for the design and validation of TLSs. It is possible for students of this age group to develop an awareness of issues related to the NOS and NOT. TLSs can be improved through design-based research approaches to serve as productive tools to this end.     

Philosophical debates on curriculum,inequalities and social justice

Abstract

The paper provides an historical but critical context for examining the relation of the pursuit of greater equality in schooling to the development of curriculum. This requires a brief account of what one means by the principle of equality, before showing the different ways in which there have been curriculum responses underpinned by philosophical understandings which need to be examined closely. These different ways are explained in terms of: ? ‘rational curriculum planning’ with its detailed definition of ‘aims, objectives, methods and evaluation’—and thereby a ‘science of teaching’;

? ‘forms of knowledge’ or ‘realms of meaning’ to enable all pupils to have a basic understanding of the physical, social, and moral worlds they inhabit;

? the pursuit of enquiry through which, for all learners, understanding is enlarged;

? provision of common curriculum experience as a basis for citizenship;

? taking diversity seriously; and

? equalisation of opportunities through a common system of national standards and assessments.

However, in the light of greater government involvement in the minutiae of curriculum reform, mainly through changes in qualifications and examinations, there is clearly a need to ask what sort of evidence is relevant to ‘what works’.     

Attitudes towards science and views of nature of science among elementary school students in terms of gender,cultural background and grade level variables

Background: There is a growing interest in investigating attitudes towards science and views of Nature of Science among elementary grade students in terms of gender, cultural backgrounds, and grade level variables.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes toward science and views of Nature of Science among Spanish students, Spanish students of gypsy ethnicity and second-generation Spanish students with east-European heritage, and to determine if their attitudes are related to their views of Nature of Science.

Sample: Data for this study was gathered from seven elementary schools in Spain, forming a convenience sample of 149 students enrolled from 2nd to 5th grade.

Design and Methods: The Nature of Science Instrument (NOSI) and an adaptation of the Test of Science Related Attitudes scale (TOSRA) were used. Follow-up structured interviews were performed with 15 participants.

Results: Regarding gender, boys had better attitudes toward Science than girls but more naïve views of the empirical Nature of Science. In relation to cultural background, second generation Spanish students with east-European heritage reported significantly better attitudes toward Science than Spanish students and Spanish students of gypsy ethnicity. No differences in Nature of Science views were found. Concerning grade level, third graders had more positive attitudes toward Science than fifth and sixth graders and more informed views of the tentative Nature of Science. Finally, no relation between Nature of Science views and attitudes towards Science were identified.

Conclusion: This study stress the need to address the steady decline in positive attitude toward Science and to improve students’ views of Nature of Science from early elementary grades, and to use gender and culturally inclusive science teaching strategies.     

Magnes,the Champion of Justice

Introduction

In years past, Jewish supplementary education has been the basis of religious growth for thousands of youngsters. Congregational and communal schools throughout the country have touched the lives of many Jewish youth.