Learning stories from IT workers – development of professional expertise

In the knowledge economy, many companies are well aware of the vital need to maintain the professional expertise of their workers at a high level. Though there have been a lot of research studies in the areas of professional expertise and workplace learning, few examined the learning pathways novice workers went through to become experts in their professions. Most of the research studies on expertise focused on the nature of expertise and few on its development. As for workplace learning research, most studies focused on the learning resources and methods workers used and the affordances of the workplace in making learning possible. Based on the accounts of expertise development collected from individual information technology (IT) workers in Hong Kong, this paper proposes a four-phase model of professional expertise development in the workplace and discusses its similarities to and differences from extant theories of expertise and skill development.     

Expertise,competence and reflection in the rhetoric of professional development

This article explores the rhetorical work done by discourses of professional development in education. In particular it outlines the ways in which the rhetoric of technical expertise, competence and reflective practice are deployed to mobilise professional practices and identities in particular ways and position certain practices and dispositions as specifically professional. The article explores the ways in which audiences are mobilised and the strategies to persuade educators that particular discourses of professionalism are about and for them. This is illustrated through an analysis of a particular discourse of professional development for academics in the UK. The authors argue for and illustrate the illuminating potential of rhetorical analysis to an understanding of different practices of professional development.     

Pedagogies of experience: a case of the African American male teacher

Numerous scholars have illustrated how African American teachers’ past experiences provide them a philosophical vision committed to teaching for social and educational change for African American students. This article draws from this body of work by looking at the diverse ways five African American male teachers used their past experiences to shape their vision for working with African American male students. However, this article also extends this body of work by illustrating that while the teachers in this study had similar commitments to working with African American males, their varied life experiences and social locations provided them different sources of practical and philosophical knowledge. These findings illustrate the diversity of experiences these teachers drew from, thus troubling the common sense discourses that essentialize African American male teachers as one-dimensional monolithic role models.     

The challenge of assessing professional competence in work integrated learning

A fundamental aspect of work integrated learning (WIL) is the development of professional competence, the ability of students to perform in the workplace. Alignment theory therefore suggests that the assessment of WIL should include an assessment of students’ demonstration of professional competence in the workplace. The assessment of professional competence in WIL is, however, problematic. It may be impractical for the academic supervisor to directly assess professional competence if there are a large number of students in external placements. If evidence of professional competence is provided by the student, the student’s ability to articulate his or her own capabilities will interfere with the validity of the assessment. If evidence of professional competency is provided by the supervisor then the assessment is heavily dependent on the individual supervisor and may be unreliable. This paper will examine the literature relating to the assessment of professional competence in WIL. The paper will be informed by the author’s experience in coordinating a WIL subject in an undergraduate law course. It will recommend that a mix of evidence provided by the student, the workplace supervisor and the academic supervisor should be used to assess professional competence in WIL.     

Bridging the Workplace and the Academy: Teaching Professional Genres through Classroom-Workplace Collaborations

This article explores the effect of classroom-workplace collaborations on student learning. Drawing on two case studies, I explore how classroom-workplace collaborations help us to teach professional genres. I examine how they replicate workplace activity and convey features of workplace genres and how they serve as transitional experiences for students. I also examine students' reactions to the feedback they received during the projects.     

Advanced skills teachers: professional identity and status

The teaching profession continues to struggle with defining itself in relation to other professions. Even though public opinion positions teachers second only to doctors and nurses in terms of their professional status and prestige research in the UK suggests that teachers still believe that they have much lower status than other professions. With teacher job satisfaction considerably lower today than the past and on-going issues with teacher recruitment and retention, new government policies have set out to enhance the status of teachers both within and outside of the profession. The Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) grade was introduced in 1998 as a means to recognise and reward teaching expertise and was framed as a way of also raising the status of the teaching profession. As to what a teaching professional should look like, the AST was in many ways positioned as the embodiment. Using survey data from 849 ASTs and in depth interviews with 31, this paper seeks to explores the ways that the AST designation impacts or not on teachers’ perceptions of their professional identity. In particular, the paper considers whether such awards contribute in positive ways to a teacher’s sense of professional identity and status. The results from the research suggest that teaching grades that recognise and reward teaching excellence do contribute in important ways to a teachers’ professional identity via an increased sense of recognition, reward and job satisfaction. The results from this research also suggest that recognising the skills and expertise of teachers is clearly important in supporting teacher retention. This is because as it allows highly accomplished teachers to remain where they want to be and that is the classroom.     

Self-processes and learning environment as influences in the development of expertise in instructional design

A major challenge for learning theories is to illuminate how particular kinds of learning experiences and environments promote the development of expertise. Research has been conducted into novice-expert differences in various domains, but few studies have examined the processes involved in learners’ expertise development. In an attempt to understand the development of expertise in instructional design (ID) among graduate students, this study aimed to investigate (1) the patterns of expertise development among ID learners over an extended period; (2) the roles of expert modelling, peer feedback, self-reflection and participation in a supportive learning community in learners’ expertise development; and (3) the interactions of individual differences and the learning environment in learners’ expertise development. A qualitative design was used to investigate students’ expertise development across a range of dimensions. The participants were two cohorts of 11 graduate students in a program on instructional psychology and design. Data, including observations, interviews, design documents, metacognitive essays and peer feedback, were collected for triangulation and in-depth analysis. The results showed that the two cohorts exhibited similar patterns in their ID expertise development. These development processes were influenced by both self-processes and social influences. Self-processes are determined by the perceptions, motivation and prior knowledge that students bring into the learning environment. Social influences are characterised by a learning community that encourages peer interactions and feedback and is supported by expert modelling and scaffolding.     

‘That happened to me too’: young people’s informal knowledge of diverse genders and sexualities

Abstract

This paper explores how young people of diverse genders and sexualities share information about sex, sexualities and genders. Formal approaches to education often fail to consider young people’s communication and information exchange practices, including the circulation of peer knowledge through social media. In the wake of recent Australian backlash against the Safe Schools Coalition, we can observe how homophobia and queerphobia in the broader community can impact upon young peoples’ ability to learn about themselves and their bodies through formal education. Yet young people of diverse genders and sexualities can be observed to support each other in peer spaces, utilising their knowledge networks. This paper explores young people’s informal learning practices, the capacity of peer networks to support and educate young people, and the challenges of recognising such networks in a culture in which health and education discourses present them as ‘risk subjects’ rather than ‘health agents’. These issues are discussed in relation to our own experiences in research and health promotion, including one author’s role as a youth peer educator. Drawing on our workplace experiences, we provide a number of anecdotal examples which highlight the complexities of informal knowledge practice and information circulation, and the ways these can challenge and reform professional health, education, and research approaches.     

Argument and Authority in the Visual Representations of Science

The focus of workplace communication research on visual rhetoric has tended to be the efficient and unproblematically “effective” functioning of visual texts. By suggesting ways in which the visual representations of science are construed by expert readers, this article responds to a call within our discipline for more critically focused contributions to the study of visual literacy. A former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Botany was asked to explain his interpretation of visuals appearing over an 80-year period in that journal; his responses illustrate how visual explanations testify to their creators' authority and how, once established, such authority actuates the rational arguments of science. Rhetorical appeals within and arrangement of visual texts are considered, as is the persuasive power of legends and captions.     

Professional development and teacher aides in inclusive education contexts: where to from here?

During the past 10 years in Australia teacher aides have been employed in mainstream schools as support personnel in special education intervention programmes, and their numbers are increasing. At the same time workplace reform in relation to inclusive education is impacting on their employment and deployment in schools to support students with disabilities and learning difficulties. In Queensland, teacher aides have been offered formal career paths, with increased pay scales, based on the recognition and continuing attainment of qualifications or credentials. However, there is increasing recognition in the educational research community that professional development for any change, and especially the complex changes in culture needed for inclusive education, is about developing and managing a collaborative process of change through reflection on, learning about, and sharing meanings and understandings about effective support of all students, in ways that value the diversities and celebrate the differences of the perspectives of the whole school community. How can we move the process of professional development for teacher aides forward? The experiences and knowledge that teacher aides already can have further inform this process of change through professional development.     

Curriculum making as professionalism-in-context: the cases of two elementary school teachers amidst curriculum change in Cyprus

ABSTRACT

In this paper, two case studies of elementary school teachers in the Republic of Cyprus are constructed to discuss how curriculum making relates to teacher biographies and sense of professionalism, as those are shaped at the intersection of their professional history and projections for the future, informed by and informing their constitution as professionals in local institutional and broader social contexts. Drawing on the ecological model of teacher agency, the two cases are utilised to examine how teachers’ narrated professional experiences in past and current schools were at interplay with their general sense of professional role and purpose as teachers. This complex interplay is simultaneously connected to the ways they perceived and constituted their pupils as well as to the ways they themselves were constituted by others as professionals. The examination of the two cases foregrounds the notions of teacher agency and of curriculum making as contingent, negotiated and negotiable, and opens up the space to consider the politics of both as those are permeated by micro-processes of subjection and subjectivation.     

‘Oh you must be very clever!’ High‐achieving women,professional power and the ongoing negotiation of workplace identity

This paper uses a gender perspective to problematise the connection between high educational achievement and a fulfilling professional career. Drawing data from an Australian study of women working as professional engineers in a range of locations, the paper investigates the ways in which the identities produced in the women’s educational experiences require further negotiation in dealing with the realities of their divergent workplaces. Through a deconstruction of the power relationships that form a key feature of the women’s reported workplace experience, the women are shown to engage in a range of tactics in the effort to achieve a degree of workplace acceptance and some professional recognition. The paper concludes by urging renewed attention to changing engineering education and workplace culture if the profession is to attract and retain able women.     

Fostering wise judgement: professional decisions in development programmes for early career engineers

This paper reviews literature that explores the role of judgement in professional practice. It discusses how workplace decisions, work activities and reflection on these activities may contribute to the development of wise judgements, or ‘wisdom’, and how workplaces can leverage these activities for induction and transition to work programmes. This review of the literature is prompted by survey results inviting engineering graduates and professionals to identify the capabilities they believe are most significant to success in the engineering workplace. The requirement for sound professional judgement resonates in participant responses. The paper summarises views of expertise, the relationship between experience and the development of professional judgement and the broader contribution of expansive and participatory learning environments to developing professional judgement. It concludes that the organisation of work and job design can facilitate the articulation of new engineers to professional practice, and that organisational learning programmes can leverage workplace activities to foster wise judgement in graduate engineers.     

Conflicting goals of educational action: a study of teacher agency from a transactional realism perspective

This study focuses on the different ways in which teachers relate their situational agency and professional assignment to the national curriculum content and curriculum dilemmas. It builds theoretically on transactional realism and empirically on analyses of interviews with teachers, exploring the nature of teacher agency during the enactment of a new Swedish curriculum reform. To uphold a dual perspective of teachers’ relation to the curriculum as both collectively and individually experienced and as both an ideal and realistic–practical relation, we term the future as ‘projective experiences’, the presence as ‘practical-evaluative experiences’ and the past ‘iterational experiences’ in relation to agency. Especially, we are interested in the ‘what’ in the curriculum – what the teachers find intriguing, important or impossible and what affects how they relate to the curriculum as part of the multidimensional structures influencing their agency. This approach reveals that the crucial issue of teacher agency is related to the policy discourse on knowledge and equity as standards and the uniformity of assessment and its pedagogical consequences.     

Developing adaptive expertise in the wake of rehearsals: An emergent model of the debrief discussions of non-rehearsing teachers

This study explores conceptual links between practice-based teacher education and adaptive expertise, drawing on constructs of teacher noticing and position. We specifically examined debrief discussions following rehearsals, focusing on the experiences of non-rehearsing teachers (NRTs) who participate in rehearsals as students. We propose an emergent model of how debriefs can support NRTs’ development of adaptive expertise, through qualitative analysis of debriefs with secondary mathematics teachers. Debriefs provided opportunities for NRTs to socially construct adaptive expertise through making their experiences public and considering implications for teaching. We discuss ways debriefs contribute to the co-construction of adaptive expertise in practice-based teacher education.     

How to persuade honors students to go the extra mile: creating a challenging learning environment

Although universities aim to challenge high-ability students to develop their talents to the full, the question of how to create such challenges remains unanswered. In this study, we examined six different honors courses to discover which factors in the learning environment specifically designed for high-ability students challenged these students and determined how such challenges were established. Perceived challenges (factors and intensity) in the different courses were identified from focus group interviews with students. The interviews were guided by a storyline method which retrospectively discussed students’ experiences of course activities. In addition, course materials and audio-recorded classes were analyzed to describe how challenge was established. Results revealed three challenge factors: autonomy, complexity, and teacher expectations, similar to the ones found in a previous, single-case study. Results showed that the greatest challenge was experienced when the three factors were simultaneously experienced in the learning environment. These three challenge factors were manifested in various and sometimes very subtle ways through course design (e.g. open structure of assignments) and class interactions (e.g. particular ways of questioning).     

Value creation in online communities for educators

The popularity and pervasiveness of online communities have led researchers and practitioners alike to closely examine the utility of online communities for supporting and facilitating professional learning. As economic constraints leave fewer resources available for professional development, educators in particular are examining the potential of online communities to enhance and extend traditional professional development opportunities. Leveraging the potential of online communities requires an in‐depth understanding of the value that members find through their participation. This study used Wenger, Trayner and de Laat's value creation framework to better understand cycles of value creation in online communities. Findings illuminate how members with varying perspectives and levels of expertise co‐construct new forms of meaning and understanding in ways that are individually and collectively valuable, and how they apply that knowledge to their professional practice. Additionally, the study offers insight into the ways in which actions of community leaders and a sponsoring organization support and facilitate value creation through different types of activities, tools and interactions.     

The apprenticeship of observation in career contexts: a typology for the role of modeling in teachers’ career paths

This article extends the literature on teachers’ career paths by attending to the experiences of educators when they were students in secondary classrooms. Grounded in the perspective that biography is central to teaching, we investigate undergraduate pre-service teachers’ educational experiences, views on teaching and learning, and professional plans. We draw upon life history interviews with 40 prospective teachers at three institutions across Pennsylvania, USA. We find that past educational experiences are intricately connected with career choice, intended professional path, and pedagogical focus. This paper identifies and discusses three forms of modeling – disciplinary, mentoring, and empowering – which influence pre-service teachers in powerful and enduring ways. These forms of modeling expand our understanding of teachers’ career intentions and apply the apprenticeship of observation to planned career paths.