A Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) approach to pre-service teacher professional experiences in Australia: organisational friendships

This study explored how students (pre-service teachers) benefit from the support of having a peer with them during their first professional experience in preschool contexts, utilising a PAL (Peer Assisted Learning) approach. International students at a large Australian University were interviewed as part of this qualitative study. We found that peer engagement facilitated the development of friendships and social support among participants. Discussion is situated within a sociological framework of organisational friendship. This study extends conceptions of organisational friendships beyond managerial imperatives and peer relationships are highlighted as supportive, not competitive, engagements. The PAL approach highlights the benefit of collaborative professional learning.     

Gender divergence in academics’ representation and research productivity: a Nigerian case study

Gender equity is increasingly seen as an indicator of development and global acceptance in networks of higher education. Despite this, gender divergence in research productivity of academics coupled with under-representation of women in science has been reported to beset female’s scholarly activities. Previous studies provide differing results, hence a need for each academic institution to know its status for the purpose of formulating appropriate policy towards achieving gender equity without trading off productivity. Using a scientometric method, the present study investigates the representation and research productivity of male and female lecturers in the Faculty of Science, University of Ibadan. The study shows that while female lecturers are significantly less represented in the faculty and publish in journals having lower impact factors, their research productivity in terms of number of publications and citation impact are significantly not different from those of their male counterparts.     

Gatekeeping and Competency-Based Education: Developing Behaviorally Specific Remediation Policies

Gatekeeping has long been an integral component of what is now referred to as the Implicit Curriculum, or the context in which professional social work education occurs. Despite its long-standing role within social work education, gatekeeping elicits conflict for both individual faculty members and entire programs of social work education. Much of this conflict stems from a failure to identify objective and measurable standards on which to base gatekeeping decisions. This article proposes using the Council on Social Work Education’s core competencies as behaviorally specific standards for remediation/termination and provides suggestions for developing gatekeeping policies inclusive of these competencies.     

Handwriting fluency and visuospatial generativity at primary school

Handwriting is a complex activity that involves continuous interaction between lowerlevel perceptual-motor and higher-level cognitive processes. All handwriting models describe involvement of executive functions (EF) in handwriting development. Particular EF domains associated with handwriting include maintenance of information in working memory, inhibition of prepotent responses, and shifting and sustaining of attention. Generativity, an EF domain that has not been extensively studied, may play a role in the acquisition and automation of handwriting. We hypothesized that neuropsychological performances and handwriting fluency would be mutually associated, and that visuospatial generativity could have a specific role in handwriting speed. We enrolled 96 children who completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. The study found that handwriting speed was associated with visuospatial fluency, which involves behavioural execution and initiation. In learning and performing handwriting, there is an inherent non-exclusive role of fine motor skills.     

The reliability and validity of the cultural congruity and university environment scales with Chicana/o community college students

Following the calls for increased research on the educational experiences of Chicana/o community college students, and the development of culturally applicable measures for communities of color, this study examined the utility and the applicability of the Cultural Congruity Scale (CCS) and University Environment Scale (UES) for use with Chicana/o community college students. Applying a psychosociocultural framework, the reliability, construct, and criterion-related validity of the scales for use with a sample of 110 Chicana/o community college students was examined. Results demonstrated adequate reliability and construct validity, with indication of applicability of these scales for the study’s sample. Overall, the study challenges normative practices in educational research that students—despite their race/ethnicity, backgrounds, and histories—face similar educational experiences. Implications are discussed.     

Towards a model of interprofessional preparation to enhance partnering between educators and families

Abstract

Interprofessional education (IPE) involves cross disciplinary learning, teaching, and supervision to foster greater interdisciplinary collaboration. In the field of medicine, this training approach has been adopted to improve collaboration amongst health care professionals. Rarely has this approach been adopted in regard to the preparation of student teachers. Yet professionals from the disciplines of general and special education, school social work, and school psychology often must work together and with families and pupils. A rationale will be forwarded for offering IPE to graduate students in these fields before they graduate. A multi departmental project was undertaken to design a new IPE training programme to foster collaborative knowledge of, dispositions towards, and skills in family school partnering. The components of the programme, the proposed criteria to gauge the success an initial pilot of the programme, and challenges faced in setting up such cross-discipline training will be described with lessons learned for the future.     

Educating for competence in professional practice

In educating for the professions, teachers seek to enable students to engage in professional practice as competent practitioners. In this paper we question the adequacy of traditional approaches for promoting competent practice. These traditional approaches typically view competence in terms of attributes, such as knowledge, skills and attitudes. Competence development is then seen in terms of acquiring the necessary attributes. From an alternative view of competence as based on ways of experiencing practice, we argue that competence development focus on enriching experience of practice. More specifically, we point out that competence development involves change in the structure of the meaning for practice. Change in meaning structure for practice involves both a significant shift from one way of experiencing practice to another, as well as refinement and elaboration of the way of experiencing practice. Implications of this view of competence development for professional education are discussed. In particular, we deal with implications relating to the teaching-learning relation and the form the educational programme takes. In summay, we argue that enabling students to develop competence through experience of engaging in practice is most closely directed to the aims of education for the professions.