An Introduction to Menstrual Management for Women who have an Intellectual Disability and High Support Needs

This paper describes a project researching the management of menstruation for women who have severe or profound intellectual disability (high support needs). Its mandate was to develop materials, processes and resources to support menstrual management for women who have high support needs. Intervention processes are described via an illustrative case study. The impact of care providers’ attitudes on menstrual management for these women is considered. Partial participation in menstrual self‐care is discussed. Reference is made to a ruling by the High Court of Australia which requires the consent of the Family Court of Australia for surgeryresulting in sterilisation of young women under the age of 18 years.     

Extent,Type, Preferences and Consequences of Crisis Intervention Training for Teachers

This study addresses the issue of including crisis intervention training as a component of teacher preparation programs. Results demonstrated that (a) few teachers receive training as a component of formal coursework, but the substantive majority are expected to perform crisis intervention at varying levels of involvement; (b) measurable improvements in self‐efficacy to perform interventions were achieved with short‐term training; (c) recognition and delivery training produced higher self‐efficacy than recognition training alone; and (d) recognition training using behavioral cues, rather than life events, was the preferred approach. Noting the important need for training of this type in teacher preparation programs, it was concluded that, if mental health instruction cannot be expanded generally, crisis intervention training should be provided specifically.     

Understanding stories of professional formation during early childhood education and care practice placements

Narrative inquiry as a methodological approach enables us to examine how people represent their experiences and selves through storytelling (Chase, S. E. 2005. ‘Narrative Inquiry: Multiple Lenses, Approaches, Voices.’ In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln, 651–679. London: Sage). To understand these constructions, other kinds of knowledge are required. Theories of social life, for example, help to interpret areas which narrative inquiry is good at revealing about human experiences such as the animation of temporality, sociality and place (Clandinin, J., V. Caine, A. Estefan, J. Huber, M. S. Murphy, and P. Steeves. 2015. ‘Places of Practice: Learning to Think Narratively.’ Narrative Works 5 (1). Accessed November 30, 2017. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/NW/issue/view/1799). Drawing on interviews with practice educators and final-year undergraduate early childhood education and care (ECEC) students in North-West Ireland, this paper considers how narrative inquiry and education theories work together to illuminate key learning experiences of ECEC undergraduate students during 12-week practice placements. In this paper I attempt to show how two education theories – ‘Threshold Concepts’ and ‘Communities of Practice’ – shed light on the nature of these key learning experiences. The paper suggests that narrative inquiry offers an emancipatory research approach by uncovering human and reflective elements of learning journeys made by ECEC students during their practice placements.     

Learning to see the familiar: Technological assemblages in a higher education (non)classroom setting

If an objective of public higher education is to engage with a diversity of communities, then coursework should be less insulated within classrooms. This work describes and analyzes a university course design that supports undergraduate students to experience learning as relational and transformational via Site Visits within various communities. We focus on “technological assemblages” as a way to understand students’ reorientation to the process and purpose of learning (and teaching). We analyze experiences within the course as moments of disorientation, reassembly and stabilization in which students use their mobile devices, bodies and interactions-in-place to understand familiar locations as socially and historically contingent sites of learning (and teaching). We argue that this instructional model does important work of putting students at the nexus of building relationships between the university and other community settings around the city.     

Internationalising a learning environment instrument for evaluating transnational online university courses

This article describes the adaptation and validation of the Constructivist OnLine Learning Environment Survey (COLLES) for use in the transnational higher education context. As higher education becomes a more global phenomenon, ‘borderless’ education, either online or by distance education, is becoming a reality and there is a need for remote evaluation of course delivery and student learning. Curtin University of Technology is managing supported online delivery of Business Studies Degree and Diploma courses to four partner institutions of the African Virtual University, an initiative based in Nairobi, Kenya. Evaluation of students’ learning has included an online survey about the provision of resources and the quality of the learning environment in the various computer-based classrooms. Embedded in this instrument has been the adapted COLLES, providing a concomitant opportunity to test the properties and usefulness of the learning environment instrument. Problematic issues surrounding adaptation of the instrument have included the consequences of modifying the wording and establishing or confirming the meaning of the latent constructs in partially online courses and for transnational students. The process of establishing the validity and reliability of the scales is discussed.     

The role of students’ employability perceptions on Portuguese higher education choices

In a context where mass higher education has eroded the job security once guaranteed by higher qualifications, students are more likely to view higher education as an ‘investment’ which should yield return in terms of their employability. The aim of this study is to understand whether Portuguese students consider employability as the main reason to choose to enrol in higher education, to choose a specific programme and to choose a specific higher education institution. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 60 first-year students, from universities and polytechnics, both public and private, and from three first-cycle study programmes (Arts, Pharmacy and Computer Engineering). The analysis is based on a qualitative study exploring Portuguese students’ perceptions underlying their higher education choices. Findings suggest that the majority of the students interviewed considered employability as the major reason to enrol in higher education, although its importance was largely undervalued in the choice of study programme and of institution.     

Policy mobilities and methodology: a proposition for inventive methods in education policy studies

ABSTRACT

The argument of this paper is that new methodologies associated with the emerging field of ‘policy mobilities’ can be applied, and are in fact required, to examine and research the networked and relational, or ‘topological’, nature of globalised education policy, which cuts across the new spaces of policymaking and new modes of global educational governance. In this paper, we examine the methodological issues pertaining to the study of the movement of policy. Informed by contemporary methodological thinking around social network analysis and the ethnographic notion of ‘following the policy’, we discuss the limitations of these approaches to adequately address presence in policy network analysis, and the problem of representing speed and intensity of policy mobility, even while these attempt to solve the problem of relationality and territoriality. We conclude that the methodologies of policy mobility are inexorably intertwined with the (constantly) changing phenomena under examination, and hence require what Lury and Wakeford describe as ‘inventive methods’.     

‘We can't make him fit into the system’: parental reflections on the reasons why home education is the only option for their child who has special educational needs

This small-scale study investigates the perspectives of parents whose children have special educational needs/disabilities and who have elected to withdraw their children from the state-maintained education system in England and educate them at home. The study draws on data gathered from seven parents and their perspectives of home education following a government-commissioned review of home education in 2009, subsequently known as the ‘Badman Report’. The former New Labour government commissioned this review to assess the merits of the system of supporting and monitoring home education in England. Findings identified a number of issues, including the lack of understanding by staff within school settings around the issues of special needs and particularly in the area of autistic spectrum disorders, the failure to engage in partnership with parents and the impact that the school environment had upon the children.