Can research realise a bit of utopia? The impact of action research on the policy of childcare in Flanders

For the past 10 years, there has been ongoing research at the University of Ghent on professionalism in childcare (the 0–3 age group) in the Flemish Community of Belgium. This research has been inspired by the ‘Contesting Early Childhood’ movement, which is based on the premise that pedagogic research can lead to social change. The first studies dealt with the relationship between gender and professionalism (2002–2010). These ‘Men in Childcare’ studies were embedded in a campaign to increase the number of male workers. Between 2005 and 2008 a PhD study focused on the de-professionalisation that has taken place within the Flemish childcare sector. This study, ‘The construction of a new profession’, was part of a large European Social Fund project involving many partners across Europe. This article aims not only to shed light on the results of these studies, but also to delve into the influences that these projects and studies have had on political decision-making through their embedding in large ‘communicative spaces’.     

Pedagogical bricolage and teacher agency: Towards a culture of creative professionalism

The way in which educators choose to engage with learners and to offer opportunities to share knowledge of both the physical world and the world of ideas is an ongoing area of international research interest but remains diffuse and difficult to systematise. This idiosyncratic quality underscores the privileged position of teachers as creative professionals. By exploring Claude Lévi-Strauss’s conception of how and for what purpose we share knowledge within society, this paper explores the relationship between perceptions of teachers’ professional role and the challenges they face working within formal education systems. The artisan quality of teachers’ practice, gained through experience, association and personal commitment, makes possible a visualisation of teacher professionalism as bricolage that, when read alongside theories of teacher agency, generates an affirmative picture of how teacher professionalism may be reframed as creative and responsive rather than homogenous and mechanistic.     

Assessment and teacher professionalism

ABSTRACT

This paper draws from a multi‐site qualitative case‐study research project entitled From Policy to Practice funded by the University of Exeter. The research sought to identify the impact that the Key Stage 3 tests would have on the working practices of eight heads of English departments and their staff in mixed maintained comprehensive schools in different regions of England.

The paper begins by presenting the way that the national assessment system has undergone change since its inception, highlighting that the function of assessment is to act as the most significant indicator of a school's performance through government policy that promotes and prioritizes the measurement of pupils’ achievements through each key stage.

The English teachers’ responses to the revisions of the English National Curriculum Programmes of Study are described and the paper documents the thoughts and feelings of these teachers as they had to try to make sense of the changes in their classroom working practices. They are articulate in categorizing those aspects of their pedagogical practice that the assessment process has stifled and those that the assessment process has encouraged. The paper then offers an interpretative analysis of the impact that the externally imposed curriculum and assessment changes have had on the teachers’ sense of being professionals.     

《学记》中教师专业化思想探微

《学记》作为我国先秦儒家教育思想的总结,是中国教育史上最早较系统地论述教育理论的专著,其中对教师专业建设作了详尽的论述。用历史的视角解读《学记》中对当今教师专业化发展的积极资源,对努力实现有效的教育建构,促进我国教师专业化发展有很重要的现实意义。     

教师的专业化发展与职业化进程

教师专业化是世界教师发展的趋势和潮流，培养具有专业化水准的教师成为国际教师教育改革的目标。教师专业化实质上反映教师培养和管理模式的变化和转化，体现了教师与教育管理机构之问的变化和改革，隐含着教师地位的变化。教师的专业化(professionalization)发展和职业化(professionalism)进程是这一过程的两个方面，前者是内部特质的表现，后者是外部特性的确定，两者在发展过程中相互转换。认清这一问题有助于推进教师专业生涯的发展和社会地位的确立。     

Measuring change in professionalism attitudes during the gross anatomy course

By design or default, anatomy educators are often responsible for introducing students to medical professionalism. Although much has been said about the role of anatomical education, there are no published reports suggesting how to measure change. This study investigated what professionalism attitudes, if any, change during a gross anatomy course. Additionally, the influence of four dichotomous variables related to student identity and preparation for medical school were analyzed for their effect on professionalism attitudes. A cross‐sectional time‐one (T1; beginning of the course), time‐two (T2; end of the course) study using the Penn State College of Medicine Survey of Professionalism was conducted. A multivariate analysis of variance identified the main effects and interaction effects of categorical variables. A Mann Whitney U test verified significant differences. This study found a reprioritization of professionalism attitudes in favor of altruism (P = 0.04 with a Cohen's d = 0.26) at T2. Female students (P = 0.03, Cohen's d = 0.38) and students from a science background (P = 0.04, Cohen's d = 0.36) changed the most in favor of altruism. Interestingly, though several factors correlated with dissimilarities in professionalism values at T1, gender was the only factor to show a significant difference in professionalism attitudes at T2. This cohort of students reported a statistically significant increase in altruism and no significant decreases in other professionalism attitudes concurrent with the gross anatomy course. Anat Sci Educ 3:12–16, 2010. © 2009 American Association of Anatomists     

Parallel professionalism in an era of standardisation

Today’s American educational context is characterised by increasing standardisation coupled with heightened accountability. While some view standardisation as a lever for equity, many view it as problematic for the work of teachers. Efforts to improve student achievement by focusing on the activities of teachers have resulted in an over-riding sense that teachers have lost control over their work and that teachers’ professional identities are being worn away by the changes asked of them. Research has demonstrated the ways in which understandings of teachers’ professionalism have changed over time. Here, I argue that not only have views of professionalism changed over time, but that different teachers or here different groups of teachers, experience and understand professionalism differently. In this article, I first look at teachers’ professionalism across two decades using data from a large national database and then focus on how different generations of teachers experience professionalism in a context of standardisation in multiple ways based on qualitative interviews. The findings show that unlike veteran teachers from the Boomer generation (born 1943–1960) who started their careers as idealists but have become increasingly bitter about changes being asked of them, many Generation X (born 1961–1981) teachers are able to accommodate the changes asked of them in a more neutral fashion. While these teachers do not particularly like all aspects of standardisation, they feel that it is just part of the work they do, not who they are. This flexibility is not a function of diminished professionalism but rather a generational difference, as teachers from Generation X tend to be more flexible, less rule-bound than those from the Boomer generation whose mission is who they are. The data presented demonstrate the need to understand professionalism in a new light. Some teachers feel more control in this era of standardisation, and some feel less. Rather than viewing professionalism as a singular phenomenon that everyone experiences in the same way, it is increasingly important to view it as a complex phenomenon that can be experienced in unique ways at the same time by disparate groups of teachers. In this sense, professionalism can morph from more than ‘old’ or ‘new’ to complex, or what I term in this article parallel professionalism.     

Examining students’ perspectives on gender bias in their work-integrated learning placements

ABSTRACT

Work-integrated learning (WIL) affords students opportunities to apply skills and knowledge to practical work placements. Students potentially learn professional behaviours appropriate to their chosen industry sector. However, students may also face challenges they may not be prepared to navigate. One of these is gender bias due to assumptions about women and work, particularly within STEM sectors. This article presents findings from a pilot study that explores WIL students’ perspectives on gender bias related to experiences at their internship placements or other jobs. The findings suggest that the potential lack of gender neutrality within organizations such as WIL placements, is nuanced through an underlying bias around thinking about gender, women and work, and demonstrated through institutional structures such as branded recruitment campaigns or the individual micro aggressions of co-workers and supervisors. Further research needs to focus on the impact of gender bias on students’ sense of value within different organizations, and the strategies they employ to navigate bias. In the short-term, all students need tools to help them understand how gender is constructed within organizational processes and how to develop strategies to help them confront gender bias within the organizations in which they work.     

教师知识与教师专业化

制约教师专业化有许多因素,既有外在社会因素,也有教师内在的信念、知识和能力因素。本文从内部着手,通过对教师素质构成的分析和对教师知识的分类,认为在以往的教师教育中只注意到教师的“内容知识”,而没有认识到教师的“实践性知识”,提出应从提升教师实践性知识来促进教师职业的专业化,并给出了相应的措施。     

Primary school leadership in England: performativity and matters of professionalism

This article presents interview data from a study involving nine primary school leaders. Five are leaders of local authority schools while four are leaders of schools within a large academy chain. The article examines their perspectives about the current regimes of performativity in the English education context and, in particular, the accountability demands of Ofsted. Mindful of contemporary concerns about the tensions between performativity and professionalism in education, the analysis highlights the different ways in which each group responds to external accountability demands. The article illustrates how investments in traditional and entrepreneurial professionalism continue to impact on how the current demands of performativity are understood. It highlights the significance of conceptualising educator professionalism beyond dichotomies that idealise the former at the expense of the latter and the importance of an ongoing critical focus on the ways in which professionalism is currently being articulated in schools.     

Gendered pedagogic identities and academic professionalism in Greek medical schools

Feminist scholarship has considered how pedagogical identities and emotions are implicated in the gender politics of belonging and othering in higher education. This paper examines how gendered and embodied pedagogy is mobilised in Greek medical schools to construct notions of the ideal academic and assert women’s position women in Academic Medicine. I employ thematic analysis to illustrate that formations of pedagogy and academic professionalism are bound up with emotions and embodied practices of relating, connecting, creating learning communities and promoting virtuous academic citizenship. Women’s gendered accounts of pedagogy and their boundary practices of identification demonstrate agency, intentionality and operate as highly political actions of legitimacy and resistance within the patriarchal realm of Greek higher education. I argue that gendered discourses of pedagogy in Greek medical schools become resources for resisting neo-liberal notions of academic work, individualism and women’s exclusion in the highly prestigious discipline of academic medicine in Greece.     

The Pedagogical Experiences and Practices of Family Child Care Providers

The work in family child care is becoming increasingly more professional, moving from an image of ‘mothering’ toward one of educare. The growing demand for expertise and competence in family child care providers can be examined in light of their pedagogical experiences and the ways in which children engage in learning in providers’ homes. This article is based on a phenomenological study conducted with four certified family child care providers, each with 10 or more years of experience with a wide age range of children. Data revealed that providers foster a pedagogical relationship with children along five dimensions of learning: children’s skills for learning, essential opportunities for learning, two forums for learning, socio-emotional learning, and meaningful learning. The authors conclude with implications for further research.     

Case studies in making assessment efficient while developing student professionalism and managing transition

It is known that assessment drives learning and hence a good assessment design is key to effective student development. This paper gives some case studies in effective assessment strategies within engineering. The main contribution is to demonstrate how one can simultaneously meet a number of requirements with individual assessments and therefore be efficient in both the student and staff assessment load. The paper also proposes that assessments should be challenging and the benefits of expecting students to rise to this challenge and also how one can meet many independent learning objectives in a single assignment in order to manage the overall assessment load for staff and students.     

大学生科研能力的培养与教师专业化发展的实践探索

教师专业化发展已成为当代教育领域师资队伍建设的强劲浪潮。社会的不断发展，对教师队伍的素质要求也越来越高。未来的教师队伍不仅需要具备高质量地完成教学任务的能力，还需要具备娴熟的科研能力。加强对大学生科研能力的培养，有助于推动教师专业化发展。     

音乐教师教育专业化存在的问题与对策研究

近百年来,我国音乐教师教育在办学机构、政策法规、课程设置等方面做了大量的基础性工作,但距离专业化标准要求还有很大差距。如办学单位专业水准低、法规建设不够健全、课程设置不够合理等。重新评估音乐教师教育办学单位、继续建立健全音乐教师教育法规、尽快全面实施科学合理的课程方案等,是加快我国音乐教师教育专业化进程、提高其专业化水平的当务之急。     

Threshold for noise in daycare: Noise level and noise variability are associated with child wellbeing in home-based childcare

This study focuses on the association of noise levels and noise variability with children's wellbeing in home-based childcare. The sample contained 103 toddlers with their caregivers. Wellbeing was observed by independent researchers during three 8-minute episodes of regular childcare activity. Noise levels in decibels were measured during these observation episodes. Average noise level and noise variability (i.e., the average standard deviation of noise level across observation episodes) were related to child wellbeing, over and above child and childcare characteristics. Both relations were nonlinear: only when observed scores rose above a critical threshold, noise and noise variability were negatively related to wellbeing. We found no interaction effects for child gender, age, and temperament. Results indicate that noise variability as well as average noise level matters for child wellbeing in home-based childcare.     

Revisioning professionalism from the periphery

Abstract

The issue of who should be included and recognised as professionals in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) service system is both contested and pressing in the current policy climate. At stake is a high-quality early childhood care and education service system that is both responsive and appropriate to the constituency it serves. A review of the history of ECEC professionalism reveals complex entanglements and debates regarding professional belonging. Services that deliver education and care to children and families living in high poverty contexts are often excluded from ECEC professionalism debates. Drawing on notions of rationality, emotionality and criticality presented in recent accounts of ECEC professionalism, we use data collected from interviews with service providers delivering services to children and families living in high poverty contexts in Australia to develop an account of criticality that is pertinent to current funding and policy contexts. We argue that these service providers’ perspectives about their own professionalism have much to offer broader debates.     

Postmodernist perceptions of teacher professionalism: a critique

This is an era of significant government involvement in schools in England, despite consistent rhetoric from the Department of Education to the contrary. In such a period, signs can be detected of the juncture between a postmodern identity and post-professional status, two models of teacher professionalism supposed in Hargreaves’ work on the fourth age of professionalism. This paper focuses on the former as the nature of the contemporary context. Defining features of postmodernity are considered through a focus on the broad issue of teacher professionalism. For this paper, this is embodied by teachers’ involvement with the development of the Primary National Curriculum for England. Evidence will be drawn from just before its 1988 introduction until 2013 in order to critique several of the key tenets of postmodernity as identified by Hargreaves. This is of particular importance in a context where a strong defence is necessary to enable the sustainment, and growth, of teachers’ professional autonomy. This paper aims to propose some strategies teachers could enact in the face of postmodern challenges.