Participating in a Collaborative Action Learning Set (CAL): beginning the journey

Action learning is being increasingly utilised as a strategy to underpin practitioner focused development and research projects in healthcare generally and nursing in particular. Whilst facilitators of and participants in action learning have a variety of resource materials to guide their practice and participation, there continue to be few systematic and/or evaluative accounts of the experience of participating in action learning for potential action learning participants to draw upon. This paper attempts to address this agenda. The paper presents an interpretive evaluation of the experience of nurses participating in action learning as the learning strategy underpinning a 3-year emancipatory practice development/practitioner research programme. In particular, the paper focuses on the experience of ‘joining a learning set’. This focus has been adopted as the theory of action learning emphasises the principle of ‘voluntariness’, but yet action learning is increasingly being pre-prescribed as a component of development and research programmes. Such was the case with the programme reported on in this paper. The paper describes an approach used to evaluate learning that was adopted in this programme and in particular the initial evaluation stage that focuses on participants' feelings about joining an action learning set. The data collection and analysis processes are described and the key themes arising from the analysis (‘self-preservation’ versus ‘development of self’) discussed. It is concluded that working with principles of enlightenment is essential to successful action learning and the transformation of workplace cultures.     

How Science Teachers DiALoG Classrooms: Towards a Practical and Responsive Formative Assessment of Oral Argumentation

Journal of Science Education and Technology - We present lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence...     

Instructional design of interactive multimedia: A cultural critique

Instructional design is socially and culturally constructed. The article explores the proposition that the selective traditions of instructional design consist of values, ideologies and images which act in the interests of particular cultural (class and gendered) groups. It examines this premise and argues for multiple cultural, rather than multicultural, contextualization of instructional design. It situates the multiple cultural model in an eclectic paradigm that appropriately combines elements from (a) behaviorist, constructivist, and critical theory paradigms and (b) weak and strong culturally contextualized design strategies. Cultural context is the very stuff, the scaffolding, of instructional design if users are to be positioned as active participants who are given and take responsibility in the learning-teaching paradigm. Her fields of teaching and research interest concern the cultural contextualization of instructional design of interactive multimedia (IMM) and the World Wide Web (WWW). Other research interests focus on the mental models, thinking processes, and teaching-learning strategies used by teachers and learners when interacting with electronic databases, IMM, and the WWW.     

School-age passwords: C.I.A.

CIA does not stand for what you ordinarily would think, The Central Intelligence Agency! These initials can be quite meaningful to caregivers and definitely beneficial to school-agers who are involved in before and after school care. CIA—Creativity, Imagination and Anticipation! These are key words and functions which can enhance a school-age program.     

The role of schools in explaining individuals’ subject choices at age 14

Abstract

The subjects that young people study from age 14 onwards may have important consequences for their future academic and labour market outcomes. These decisions are shaped by the schools in which they find themselves. Schools also face constraints of their own. This paper explores the extent to which individuals’ decisions are affected by the school they attend and to what extent this is affected by the composition of schools in terms of academic attainment, gender, and socioeconomic background. We use multi-level variance decomposition models applied to administrative data on the subjects that young people in mainstream state-funded schools in England study between ages 14 and 16. Our results highlight the important role that constraints on schools play in subject choice decisions. We also note the particular role of attending a non-selective school within a selective schooling district.     

What makes for effective feedback: staff and student perspectives

Since the early 2010s the literature has shifted to view feedback as a process that students do where they make sense of information about work they have done, and use it to improve the quality of their subsequent work. In this view, effective feedback needs to demonstrate effects. However, it is unclear if educators and students share this understanding of feedback. This paper reports a qualitative investigation of what educators and students think the purpose of feedback is, and what they think makes feedback effective. We administered a survey on feedback that was completed by 406 staff and 4514 students from two Australian universities. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted on data from a sample of 323 staff with assessment responsibilities and 400 students. Staff and students largely thought the purpose of feedback was improvement. With respect to what makes feedback effective, staff mostly discussed feedback design matters like timing, modalities and connected tasks. In contrast, students mostly wrote that high-quality feedback comments make feedback effective – especially comments that are usable, detailed, considerate of affect and personalised to the student’s own work. This study may assist researchers, educators and academic developers in refocusing their efforts in improving feedback.     

Conditions that enable effective feedback

ABSTRACT

Despite an increasing focus on assessment feedback, educators continue to find that simply replicating an effective feedback practice from one context does not guarantee success in the next. There is a growing recognition that the contextual factors surrounding successful practices need to be considered. This article reports on a large-scale mixed methods project and proposes 12 conditions that enable successful feedback in higher education. The conditions were distilled from seven rich case studies through multiple stages of thematic analysis, case comparison and reliability checking. The conditions were also evaluated by surveying senior leaders of Australian universities. These conditions highlight the importance of carefully designing feedback processes, along with the need for addressing capacity and culture for feedback. This helps to explain why there are such variances in effective feedback across contexts, and offers insight into how it may be achieved.     

FOUR YEARS ON – A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE DIP. H.E. IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AT AVERY HILL COLLEGE, 1979–83

A thorough process of evaluation, both ongoing throughout the four years and an in-depth exercise in 1982, prior to submission of the revised course to CNAA for renewal of approval, has identified the various strengths and weaknesses of the course as a whole, and of constituent parts of the course. Of interest is the extent to which the course has attracted the mature student (75% or more of the students are mature entrants) and the success that these and the other students have had in transferring directly into the third year of degree programmes at linked institutions. Also of note is the extent to which students have been attracted to the notion of taking a broadly‐based programme of study for two years, which has enabled them to keep their options open for future direction, and the extent that students have subsequently been able to determine a direction for further study by the end of the second year. Another point of interest, and one which was entirely unanticipated, is the way that a proportion of the entrants, which was recruited via the Professional and Executive Register, obviously viewed the generalist study in a course such as this as a means of career reorientation, as well as a route back into Higher Education. All these points have served to vindicate the open policy operated in the selection of students joining the course.