THE LECTURER'S LOT: MYTH AND REALITY

A number of reports of the use of time analysis systems as a basis of self‐evaluation is available. This article provides data collected over a year by a head of department performing a lecturer's role. While of value as a means of self evaluation, the data raises some major issues in terms of the management of departments in general and of those in the public sector of higher eduction in England and Wales in particular. The implications in relation to presumed conditions of service and to the elaboration of the role of the lecturer with the growth in demands for accountability and participation in decision‐making are examined.     

Humanizing paediatric care

This paper deals with the development of a paediatric team approach to the care of children in the 70 bed paediatric unit in the Royal Hobart Hospital in Tasmania, Australia, and describes the measures used to help children and their parents adapt to life in hospital with a limited budget. The staff includes paediatricians and pediatric surgeon, resident staff, nurses, teachers, social worker, physiotherapist and pharmacist. There are no visiting hours but the wards are open to parents and relatives at any time. Parents are encouraged to stay in hospital and their accommodation is either in flats at the end of wards or in single or double bed wards using foldup beds. Each young child has a personal details form completed and placed on the end of the cot allowing a nurse to discover likes, dislikes, methods of feeding and sleeping, etc. Parents are asked to complete questionnaires at the time of the child's discharge, asking for their assessment of the standards of care their child received. Playleaders are rostered for evenings and weekends and they work with, and direct Red Cross volunteer ladies. Two full-time teachers cooperate with the child's school in maintaining the child's educational progress. Volunteer visitors entertain children whose relatives are unable to visit or stay in hospital. The methods used to raise the standards of paediatric nursing are also described. Community groups, particularly kindergarten and primary school children, are encouraged to visit the paediatric unit and each group is usually given a brief health education talk by a member of staff.     

What’s in a word? Practices associated with ‘feedforward’ in higher education

Abstract

The term ‘feedforward’ is increasingly employed in higher education, and this paper focuses on the way in which it fits into contemporary debates about feedback and its impact on practitioners. Semi-structured interviews were used to investigate the practices academics associate with feedforward and the ways in which their intentions and understandings varied. The term resulted in practices being framed as a process and prompted academics to consider the points in the future when students were expected to deploy information and improve. Three future horizons were identified: the ‘within-module’ future horizon dominated, while the challenges of ‘beyond-module’ and ‘beyond-programme’ horizons became apparent. Written comments, guidance, formative assessment and design practices were associated with feedforward, comprising both transmission and student-focused approaches. It is concluded that the modular system restricts longer-term future horizons and sustainable practices, and more must be done to address the divide between theoretical and practitioners’ perspectives.     

Admiration,attraction and the aesthetics of exemplarity

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to show that an aesthetics of exemplarity could be a useful component of projects of moral self-cultivation. Using Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarism, I describe a distinctive, aesthetically-inflected mode of admiration called moral attraction whose object is the inner beauty of a person—the expression of the ‘inner’ virtues or excellences of character of a person in ‘outer’ forms of bodily comportment that are experienced, by others, as beautiful. I then argue that certain moral traditions deploy inner beauty within their practices of moral self-cultivation—a good example being Confucianism. Advocates of exemplarist moral education should therefore take seriously the ways that an aesthetics of exemplarity can play roles within projects of moral self-cultivation.     

Research capacity for local innovation: the case of conservation agriculture in Ethiopia,Malawi and Mozambique

Purpose: The limited uptake of improved agricultural practices in Africa raise questions on the functionality of current agricultural research systems. Our purpose is to explore the capacity for local innovation within the research systems of Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique.

Design/methodology/approach: Using Conservation Agriculture (CA) as a case study, we qualitatively explore with 26 locally based agricultural researchers the context of CA research and promotion, including their perceptions on persistent research gaps and issues in closing them.

Findings: Respondents identified that CA was not yet a finished product, with concerns regarding the benefit, feasibility and relevance of CA implementation. They asserted that while further adaptation was required, they were unable to do this due to institutional constraints within their research, extension and policy contexts.

Practical implications: We find that CA continues to be considered a donor-driven intervention in its current form and requires substantial further adaptation to local contexts before researchers will deem it ready for farmer uptake. The five research gaps identified by respondents highlight practical areas where further adaptations must occur.

Theoretical implications: Our findings suggest a lack of participatory research and extension most likely reflects limited financial, human and social capital to implement more participatory approaches. Without addressing these capacities, widespread adoption of complex farming systems change appears unlikely.

Originality/Value: Whilst many studies have identified a need for local innovation to enable CA utilisation, few have qualitatively explored directly with local researchers the capacity of such systems to do so. We address this gap in the literature.     

BLIND MARKING AND SEX BIAS IN STUDENT ASSESSMENT

Three studies are reported which investigated the existence of sex bias in the marking of undergraduate degrees. Study 1 failed to find any evidence that females were marked less extremely than males by second markers, as has been found in previous research. Study 2 found that marker disagreements were not resolved upwards more frequently for male candidates, again contradicting the results of some previous research. Study 3 failed to find any of the expected differences between an institution using blind marking and one using non‐blind procedures. In the light of this negative evidence and of the confusing picture presented by. previous research, it is concluded that there is little firm evidence for sex bias in marking. Despite this, it is likely that there will be increasing pressure to adopt blind marking in the future.     

‘Educare’ in Australia: analysing policy mobility and transformation

Abstract

Background: Early childhood education and care has been an area of significant policy attention, public investment and private market activity in Australia over the past three decades. Australian educationists and policy-makers have looked to international examples for evidence, policy design and institutional models. However, this area is under-researched in Australia, with regard to how these knowledge flows are theorised, and how policy is implemented on the ground.

Purpose: The paper’s purpose was to contribute new Australian-focussed conceptual and empirical insights on the trajectories, development and implementation of evidence-based policy in the field of early childhood education and care.

Sources of evidence: The paper is based on three main sources of evidence: ? the critical literature on policy transfer and policy mobility

? policy statements, reports and planning documents produced by national- and state-level governments

? data from fieldwork analysis of new capital works and programmes in the early childhood field.

Main argument: International research and evidence on the benefits of investment in early learning has had a significant impact on the framing of Australian policy. So too has a move in several countries to align early childhood institutions with schools. However, a dominant paradigm of policy transfer, reliant on pluralist and rationalist frameworks of policy-making, fails to account for the dynamics of policy development and implementation across and within jurisdictions and geographical space. Conceptualising a new alignment in Australia between children’s centres and schools as ‘educare’, this article employs the theoretical lens of policy mobility to account for the circulation and transformation of educare policy in Australian settings. Through an empirical analysis of a new educare centre in the growth corridor of western Melbourne, the article demonstrates the extent to which neoliberal policy settings outside the educational sphere, around public finance, partnership, place and infrastructure provision, influence the implementation of ‘educare’ policy.

Conclusions: The educare discourse in Australia addresses a complex and multiscalar set of policy problems that associate child development with concerns around human capital formation, economic efficiency and productivity, place making and community building, and the role of the public sector in neoliberal democracies. International circuits of knowledge, policy design and institutional models in the educare field have been significant in shaping recent Australian policy, despite well-publicised views expressed in Australia on the disconnection between academic research and policy. The strength of policy mobility as a theoretical lens to assist our understanding of these influences lies in its critique of formalism in policy-making and in its attention to fluidity and transformation. The mobility lens encourages new empirical research that focuses on spatial and institutional dynamics, assisting our reading of on-the-ground developments in Australia’s fastest growing city.