Information-Seeking From Organizational Communication Sources During Healthcare Technology Change

This study collects survey data (n = 345) from a healthcare organization in the early stages of electronic health record (EHR) implementation to understand how a series of organizational communication sources—managers, coworkers, IT personnel, and online organizational sources—impact healthcare employees’ (a) EHR resistance and (b) perceptions of EHR’s relative advantage. Regression results reveal that the levels of EHR information employees sought from coworkers did not predict EHR resistance or perceived relative advantage. Seeking information from managerial sources enhances EHR’s perceived relative advantage and decreases affective EHR resistance but is not related to behavioral or cognitive EHR resistance. Seeking information from IT staff decreased all types of EHR resistance and increased EHR’s perceived relative advantage. Finally, seeking information from online organizational sources increased EHR’s perceived relative advantage and decreased behavioral and cognitive resistance but is not related to affective EHR resistance. Study implications and limitations are offered.     

A New Framework For Quality

Quality emerges as an important theme in the British Government White Paper,'Higher Education: A New Framework' published in May 1991. Quality in both research and teaching receive attention. This article looks particularly at the latter, the differing approaches on each side of the binary line, the likely remit of the emerging audit unit, the difficulties of quality assessment in a single higher education system and the criteria for determining how far degree awarding powers should be bestowed on smaller institutions.     

Teacher Professional Development in the Area of 'School-Reporting-to-Parents'

In recent years there has been increasing interest internationally in the monitoring and reporting of student achievements in school. Australia is no exception regarding this interest. Here some of the developments regarding reporting to parents have also raised a variety of questions for research. The following paper is one attempt to meet the challenge presented. It is concerned with developing an understanding of the impact of school reporting in one Australian state, Western Australia (WA), with the aim of developing a set of propositions for discussion in teacher professional development programmes. While cognisance was taken of the associated research literature in the development of these propositions, they emerged mainly from a project which used a case study approach to develop an understanding of the variety of perspectives which the various stakeholders in WA government schools have on school reports and school reporting--past, present and future.     

Scaffolding students: suggestions on how to equip students with the necessary study skills for studying in a blended learning environment

In this paper we consider the implications of moving from a paper‐based delivery of study support materials to electronic delivery. The paper is based on telephone interviews with 60 students who had received a range of study support materials from a series of ‘student toolkits’, which are printed resource booklets for students of the UK Open University. McLoughlin (2002) sees the integration of electronic delivery at the primary, secondary and tertiary education levels as requiring an extension to current concepts of scaffolding. The extension we propose in this paper is the need to establish study skills plus the ways and means to seek support in a resource‐based environment. However, there is a delicate balance between increased provision and overloaded provision in resource‐based learning.     

Beyond the polarization of pedagogy: models of classroom practice in Tanzanian primary schools

Debate on teaching in low‐income countries has tended to assume an over‐simplified conceptualization of pedagogy as either teacher‐centred or learner‐centred. If theory is to address itself to the complex challenge of improving the quality of teaching within under‐resourced education systems then it will have to move beyond this polarized view of pedagogy. This paper applies Basil Bernstein’s performance and competence modes to the findings of fieldwork in Tanzania. It thereby arrives at a more nuanced understanding of primary school teachers’ classroom practice, which allows for teachers working with a mixed palette of techniques and ideas. Bernstein’s pedagogic modes were constructed from his studies of education in Britain. Their application to the Tanzanian setting, however, highlights the limitations of analytical frameworks developed in western contexts. It is argued that appreciation and critique of pedagogy in low‐income countries could be deepened through linking with comparative literature that compares across English and non‐English‐speaking countries.