Writing and Dialogue In,and Around,a Senior Secondary Literature Classroom

The tradition of teachers engaging in narrative-based inquiry is now well established, as is its value for creating situated knowledge about teaching. This reflexive autobiographical article weaves together narrative accounts around a senior literature classroom environment. The article features two voices: a teacher (Natalie Bellis) and a Year 12 literature student (Jessica Garcia). Through this process of narrative inquiry, the teacher reflects on her experiences of exploring literary texts with senior students within a landscape of high-stakes assessment. In this way, the teacher engages with Dorothy Smith’s notion of ‘writing the social’, by using narrative to illuminate and critically inquire into the lived experience of teaching and learning. The motif, or thread, that binds these three narrative accounts is the act of letter-writing, which serves as a metaphor for the foregrounding of the personal within a context that is shaped by external forces that can result in conformity and generality. This tension between the ‘local actualities’ of experiences and the institutional structures that govern them is theorised using de Certeau’s metaphor of the city map.     

Comprehensive Student Profiling: Furthering Academic and Pastoral Care Objectives

Comprehensive student profiling is described as an alternative to exclusively teacher-controlled, academic subject focused records of students' progress. Features of profiling that are highlighted include its multidimensionality, participatory nature, and formative and summative functions. The rationale for adopting comprehensive student profiling rather than relying only on discrete, norm-referenced performance evaluations is discussed with reference to the historical innovation and eventual nation-wide adoption of profiling in British schools and the developmental objectives of the pastoral care movement in Singapore schools.     

Knowledge elicitation practices for organizational development intervention

Based on a sensemaking methodology and the use of narratives from a case study in a quality assurance department of an electronics manufacturing company, a Group Reflection and Inquiry Protocol (GRIP) technique is developed to solicit judgmental knowledge from the staff of an organization in regard to formulating business strategy. The method combines knowledge elicitation (KE) and organizational development (OD) intervention for the change to be brought about in an organization. An open communication platform is created for the participants, with minimum influence of the consultant, as well as there being no demand for any special expertise of the consultant or researcher in the OD intervention.     

Lessons learned from an evolving DEI programme within a global publisher

• Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is at the core of Springer Nature's mission. Prioritizing DEI helps us become the business we aim to be: one that enables millions of people to access, trust and make sense of the latest insights, to improve and enrich both our lives and the planet.
• We are committed to championing DEI across our content, communities and organization—and also across the whole set of businesses that make up Springer Nature Group—education, health, professional and research.
• Working across our business to harness the varied reach, business capabilities and resources of all our colleagues has been important in this journey, but so too is accountability and the collective efforts of pan-publisher initiatives.
• From editorial guidance to internal mentoring programmes and sustainable development curriculum programmes, our DEI work has been varied and successful, but we have learnt lessons along the way—and still have a way to go. This piece looks at what we have done so far, and our priorities for progress moving forward.

     

Contextualizing privacy with wearable data in higher education

This conceptual study uses dynamic systems theory (DST) and phenomenology as lenses to examine data privacy implications surrounding wearable devices that incorporate stakeholder, contextual and technical factors. Wearable devices can impact people's behaviour and sense of self, and DST and phenomenology provide complementary approaches for emphasizing the subjective experiences of individuals that occur with the use of wearable data. Privacy is approached through phenomenology as an individual's lived bodily experience and DST emphasizes the self-regulation and feedback loops of individuals and their uses of wearable data. The data collection, analysis and communication of wearable data to support learning systems alongside privacy implications for each are examined. The IoT, cloud computing, metadata and algorithms are discussed as they relate to wearable data, pointing out privacy risks and strategies to minimize harm.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Data privacy is a complex topic and is approached through different perspectives, influencing the degree of an individual's data autonomy.
• Wearable technology is increasing in the consumer market and offers great potential to learning environments.

What this paper adds

• Extends extant literature on dynamic systems theory and phenomenology, contributing these perspectives to educational research in the context of student data privacy and wearable technologies.
• Provides a framework to understand the complex and contingent ways that privacy can be understood in the collection, analysis, and communication of wearable data to support learning.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Higher education faculty and educational policymakers should consider various interactions in systems and among systems of how wearable data collection may be analysed, communicated and stored, potentially exposing students to privacy harms.
• Multiple actors in learning systems must engage in continuous and evolving feedback loops around data security, consent, ownership and control to determine who has access to student data, how it is used and for what purposes.
• The EU's General Data Protection and Regulation offers one of the most comprehensive frameworks for higher education institutions and faculty around the world to follow for protecting student data privacy.