Three pathways to support the professional and career development of casual academics

Almost half of current academic staff will need to be replaced within three years in the Australian academic workforce. Literature suggests that casual academics are a potential solution, yet they are frequently excluded from the career development opportunities that would allow them to fulfil an ongoing academic role. Most academic development programmes designed for and delivered to casual academics are constructed by academic developers with little or no input from casual academics themselves. This paper documents what casual academics determine to be their academic development needs and how they could be addressed using three pathways of professional and career development.     

Electing to speak: professional dialogue in the context of Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy

Written submissions are traditionally used in the assessment of applications for Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, with dialogue offering an alternative approach. Quite why individuals elect for dialogue has received little attention. Using a mixed methods approach, data were gathered from two Universities offering dialogic and written routes in their Fellowship schemes. Most individuals elected for dialogue, although this decision varied between Fellowship categories. Reasons for the choice were highly individual. This study demonstrates that dialogic approaches are popular with staff. However, we argue the importance of choice in Fellowship assessment options and recommend this to other academic developers.     

突破职业认同困境 谋求农村学校体育教师专业发展

教师整体素质主要取决于教师专业化水平。关注农村学校体育教师生存现状,探索个体自我发展的内驱式教师专业自我发展路径,增强农村学校体育教师专业自我发展意识,督促在岗体育教师制定专业发展自我规划,优化专业知识结构,开展教师行动研究,是农村在岗体育教师专业发展的有效策略。     

Brand equity of academics: demystifying the process

The current study endeavours to find out whether there is a relationship between university academics’ competence and their customer-based brand equity from the perspective of students. It also seeks to investigate the mechanism of the proposed relationship through trust, likability, and commitment. Data were collected from 384 postgraduate students in Malaysian universities using a structured questionnaire. Results of analysis using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) revealed there is a significant relationship (total effect) between academics’ competence and customer-based brand equity. We found that the path from competence to brand equity goes through trust, likability, and commitment. Given the growing popularity of higher education in the new millennium and important role of academics in leading students to success, findings of the present study can enhance our understanding of academics’ branding and universities’ overall image. The implications and contributions of the study to university administrators and academics are discussed.     

Storytelling as dialogue: how teachers construct professional knowledge

This study shows how a group of English language lecturers use storytelling as a form of professional dialogue. The aim of the study is to highlight the dialogic role of storytelling in supporting the construction of lecturers' professional knowledge and not to identify lecturers' professional knowledge. In a professional development project, 12 lecturers created digital stories about their experiences of professional development. These stories were shared with colleagues who then responded with their own digital stories. A narrative framework was used to analyse stories for the types of connections lecturers made between stories. Five dialogic processes were identified: connecting, echoing, developing, questioning and constructing. Excerpts of stories are used to demonstrate how lecturers construct professional knowledge through storytelling. The study concludes by outlining the potential and limitations of storytelling as an approach to professional development and proposes further research into the dialogic capacity of storytelling in a professional development context.     

Positioning adult educators in discourses of professional development

This article explores the discursive work done by different notions of professional development in adult education. In particular we outline the ways in which the discourses 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. We suggest that these discourses help to shape the negotiations between economies of performance and ecologies of practice within which professionals operate. We argue that much of this work is implicit in the pedagogies and curriculum of programmes for adult educators and that there is a need for detailed empirical research on the pedagogies of professional development and practice in adult education. With moves in Europe to develop professional standards for adult educators we suggest that studying the rhetoric of professional development provides an opportunity to open some existing diverse practices to new forms of scrutiny.     

The role of trust in creating value and student loyalty in relational exchanges between higher education institutions and their students

The globalization of educational services and the increasing competition coming from the private sector have forced higher education institutions to market their programs more aggressively and to look at student loyalty as the key for future success. Student loyalty to higher education institutions represents not only a more stable financial basis for such institutions but also continuing support for them after graduation. The present research examines the relational exchange process between higher education institutions and their students. Specifically, it explores the process by which trust is first developed and then translated into students' perceived value of the higher education institutions, ultimately leading to the development of student loyalty toward those institutions. The identification of the components and the outcomes of student trust are presented on the basis of Sirdeshmukh, Singh, and Sabol's trust–value–loyalty framework.     

学院人的“癖好”与大学的制度安排

在研究型大学中,学院人是一个有着独特精神气质的群体,它反映了大学内部学术活动的特征和以学术为志业的人们的职业习性。也正是这种职业活动的特殊性,决定了大学制度安排中所存在的相对松散的倾向,以及对学者们带有典型的“个人主义”取向的宽容,没有对这种倾向的容忍,就很难有真正意义的学术创新。     

专业学位研究生教育的定位问题探究

明确定位是教育的主要问题之一。专业学位研究生教育乃学术性与职业性的辩证统一。具体而言,就是在专业设置、招生就业、“双师型”师资队伍建设、产学研相结合的教学设计、质量评价标准等多方面,都应贯彻学术性与职业性并重的基本理念。不仅如此,还应结合学术前沿的探索与职业发展的预判,引领专业学位研究生的教育。     

Sources of research confidence for early career academics: a qualitative study

There is a paucity of studies investigating how early career academics (ECAs) form attitudes towards aspects of their work and gain skills in research, teaching and service. This is especially the case with respect to research. A review of the pertinent literature revealed the prominence of a notion of research self-efficacy (or confidence) and how it was aligned with the other issues distilled from the literature. Employing a qualitative approach, the author of the study sought to develop a better understanding of how ECAs generate research confidence. Interview data were analysed using a process drawing together analytic induction and constant comparison methods. Six themes emerged from this analysis, namely, graduate student research experience, priorities, isolation, researcher identity, mentorship and a vote of confidence. These themes are discussed in detail and the implications of the results for university managers and lecturers are then considered.     

Professional dialogues: exploring an alternative means of assessing the professional learning of experienced HE academics

Courses are widely used to provide professional qualifications for higher education (HE) practitioners. However, the question of how experienced academics might gain recognition as professional educators without completing a course is not well explored. This paper introduces the use of professional dialogue for this purpose, describing an approach being applied within four UK universities. The paper discusses the value of the professional dialogue, drawing on assessors’ and participants’ voices to provide empirical evidence. Findings from the study suggest that ‘assessed dialogues’ provide a more authentic route to professional recognition for experienced HE academics, effectively synthesising professional development, the individual and organisational learning.     

The value and valuing of continuing professional development: current dilemmas,future directions and the case for action research

This paper explores and challenges the rationale for current, mainstream approaches to teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) within schooling systems. Such approaches are significantly influenced by neoliberal and managerial pressures, evident in advocacy for generic, individualistic models of teacher learning, often focused on specific state-sanctioned domains. The paper draws upon a précis of recent action research literature, and empirical research from Sweden, to argue for an alternative paradigm, based on the practices and principles of participatory and collaborative action research. Action research is not presented as a simplistic ‘method’ which can be ‘applied’ regardless of context, but is explicitly focused on situated, specific, local sites. While more managerial and neoliberal practices can close down debates necessary for effecting real improvements in practice, evidence suggests action research, in its emancipatory iterations, enables a rich conception of educational practice which cannot be ‘managed’ into existence by a simplistic application of ‘what works.’     

用“对话”解读鲁迅的经典作品

作为中国现代文学的经典,鲁迅作品在中学语文教学中备受推崇,但也面临着许多尴尬和无奈。教师和学生对鲁迅及其作品的距离感是导致这一现象的根源。打通鲁迅与师生之间的隔膜就成为当务之急。“对话”是沟通过去和现在的最佳途径。通过“对话”感悟鲁迅,用经典的魅力滋养我们的心灵。     

Distance,dialogue and reflection: Interpersonal reflective equilibrium as method for professional ethics education

The method of reflective equilibrium (RE) is well known within the domain of moral philosophy, but hardly discussed as a method in professional ethics education. We argue that an interpersonal version of RE is very promising for professional ethics education. We offer several arguments to support this claim. The first group of arguments focus on a changed practice that is more team-oriented, inter-professional and aims at shared decision-making with patients and clients. The second group of arguments relate to the core aim of professional ethics education, namely to stimulate critical moral reflection. This central aim is a core professional moral competence that entails both a dialogical approach to practice and one’s own moral beliefs as well as a more detached viewpoint on practice, reflection on types of cases and one’s attitude as a professional in practice.     

Theory and legitimacy in professional education: a practitioner review of reflective processes within programmes for new academic staff

The authors review research literature on coherent theoretically based approaches to the use of reflective processes within programmes of initial professional education for new academic staff. Employing a novel methodology that incorporates practitioner perspectives, they establish a framework that highlights the role of personal and social factors, and also pedagogic and theoretical considerations, in shaping reflective processes. The included studies identified participants who had engaged in certain categories of reflection. Certain fundamental outcomes, however, such as changes in professional commitment, were never seen across an entire cohort. The article thus discusses the intended learning outcomes that programmes might legitimately seek to meet.

Dans cet article, nous examinons la littérature de recherche portant sur les approches théoriques cohérentes sur l’usage des processus réflexifs dans le cadre de programmes d’éducation professionnelle initiale pour le personnel académique novice. A l’aide d’une nouvelle méthodologie incorporant les perspectives du praticien, nous établissons un cadre qui met en lumière le rôle des facteurs sociaux et personnels, de même que les considérations théoriques et pédagogiques, mettant en forme les processus réflexifs. Les études visées par l’article ont permis d’identifier des participants s’étant engagés dans certaines catégories de réflexion. Des conséquences fondamentales, telles que le changement au niveau de l’engagement professionnel, n’ont cependant pas été observés pour l’ensemble de la cohorte. Nous discutons donc des objectifs d’apprentissage que les programmes pourraient, de façon légitime, chercher à atteindre.     

Part-time academics’ perception of their role and academic development: a case study from Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Employing part-time and casual academics is now a widely accepted practice in higher education globally. We explored the issue of the identity of part-time academics in Indonesian higher education through interviews with 14 part-time and 11 full-time academics. Both groups identified more strongly with their teaching roles than with other roles. However, they differed in their perceptions of opportunities to enact their chosen academic roles and of the kind of academic development they needed. The current standardised model of academic development needs to be rethought to offer more flexibility and to invite departments’ participation in the development of their academics.     

Instructional Design as a Professional Development Tool-of-Choice for Graduate Teaching Assistants

Institutions need effective and efficient methods of professional development for preparing graduate students to teach. These skills are important both for their immediate roles as teaching assistants (TAs) and for their eventual roles in the professoriate. An iterative process model from instructional design can function as a cognitive organizational framework for the development of teaching expertise. It facilitates expertise by supporting TAs in connecting new and existing knowledge about teaching and learning in meaningful ways that reflect the cognitive processes of expert teachers. Thus, it can support both the current and future development of teaching expertise and facilitate the application of knowledge in the form of teaching strategies. Patricia L. Hardré earned her Ph.D. in Education at the University of Iowa. She specializes in Instructional Design and Technology with emphases on cognition and instruction, human motivation, and educational assessment. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Oklahoma. Her current research pursuits include K-12 teacher education, TA training and development, high school students' motivation to learn and persist in school, and the effects of computer-based administration of research instruments.