Closing the feedback loop? Iterative feedback between tutor and student in coursework assessments

We evaluate the case for using feedback iteratively, to improve student engagement and learning. In this model, students were invited to respond to tutor feedback with students’ own responses. Among the three courses/modules (three tutors) studied, differences in feedback styles were evident from: (a) thematic analysis of tutor comments and, for one course, and (b) comments in a student focus group. Students were inconsistent in their evaluation of tutor feedback but, in a more detailed study of one of the courses, there was clear evidence for the benefits of iterative feedback. Lessons from the main study were then applied to a course that had not previously incorporated iterative feedback. Using this experience, we provide suggestions for applying iterative feedback in assessments.     

Understanding work,learning and the remaking of cultural practices

This paper focuses on dualities in both the process and outcomes of participation in work. Firstly, the process of participation in work activities and interactions draws on contributions of both individuals and the social world in ways that are variably interdependent, that is, relational. The affordances of workplaces shape the array of experiences individuals are able to access and, they in turn, elect how they engage, construe and construct what is afforded them. Both the social and individual contributions are exercisable with different degrees of intensity, focus and intentionality, thereby making the process of participation in work a relational one. Secondly, and consistent with these processes, the outcomes of workplace participation also comprise dualities. These are individuals’ learning or change, on one hand, and the remaking and transformation of cultural practice that comprises work, on the other. In illuminating and elaborating these concepts, this paper draws upon the initial findings of an inquiry that is mapping the working lives of groups of three workers in each of four workplaces. The aim is to understand how these relational interdependences shape the participation, learning and remaking of work practices in these workplaces. Further, the paper identifies the exercise of both affordances and engagement for each participant within their workplaces. The findings emphasise the distinctive bases by which the groups of workers engage with their work and construct meaning and remake practice as a result of that engagement.     

Finding Audiences for Our Research: Rethinking the Issue of Ethical Challenges

This essay is a fleshed-out version of a presentation to the 2011 COST Action workshop on the challenges of audience research. In it, I explore what I see as some overlooked problems in research ethics protocols, relating to the assumptions and models about our relations with research participants which resonate with wider “figures of the audience,” which occur widely. In place of these, I outline a notion of “trust” as the proper goal of researcher-participants relations.     

Exploring the educational landscape of juggling – challenging notions of ability in physical education

ABSTRACT

Background: Research on physical education (PE) shows a prevalence of narrow and reductionist views on what counts as ability. These views tend to privilege certain students and marginalize others, and often equate ability with technique-based sport performance. A lot of research is still directed towards the above problem. However, very few have devoted time and energy to actually resolving this problem. If no alternatives to narrow and reductionist views of ability are presented, then research will struggle to make a difference to the practice of PE. Assuming that movement is a key element in PE, the question of what counts as ability in PE is, we argue, a question of what capabilities a learner needs to develop in order to move in different ways. Investigating what movement capability can mean will provide possibilities for discussing and negotiating the meaning of ability in PE when the learning goal is something other than technique-based sport performance.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to further advance the knowledge base of what movement capability can mean within the context of PE. By achieving this aim, we intend to challenge narrow views on ability and thereby provide enhanced possibilities for PE to make a difference for students’ abilities through education.

Theory and method: The process of coming to know something can be seen as exploring, with all senses, a landscape. Exploration involves recognizing details and nuances of the landscape and their relationships to one another. In this investigation, we examine what there is to know in the landscape of juggling using Ryle’s and Polanyi’s notions of knowing and learning. In line with a focus on the learners’ perspectives, interviews and observations were conducted with students whilst they were coming to know juggling. Ethnographic-type conversations were used to help students describe what they seemed to know or were aiming to know. Students were invited to write diaries with a focus on their experiences during the learning process, which we hoped could extend our insights regarding the experiential aspects in learning.

Findings: Findings of the investigation suggest that in the group of students, four significant ways of knowing the landscape of juggling are important: grasping a pattern; grasping a rhythm; preparing for the next throw and catch and navigating one’s position and throwing. The research challenges the narrow view on ability as technique-based sport performance by providing examples of what movement capability can mean in terms of knowing a movement landscape alternatively to knowing a specific movement ‘in the right way.’     

Understanding teachers: the potential and possibility of discourse analysis

Understanding the ways in which teachers make sense of what they do and why is critical to a broader understanding of pedagogy. Historically, teachers have been understood through the thematic and content analysis of their beliefs or philosophies. In this paper, we argue that discourse analysis (DA) involves a much finer-grained analysis of the ‘lifeworlds’ of teachers and, in our view, provides a more detailed canvas from which inferences can be made. Our argument is structured in four parts. We begin by locating DA within the physical education (PE) literature and discuss what others have referred to as its relatively modest use. Following our location of DA, we outline a conceptual framework that we regard as useful, which contains six interrelated principles. We then introduce the idea of interpretive repertoires, which we consider to have particular explanatory power as well as being a sophisticated way to represent the subjectivities of PE teachers. Finally, we discuss the methodological strengths of interpretive repertoires. The paper concludes with a discussion on the theoretical and practical merits of adopting DA to analyse problems within PE.