Thinking through practice: exploring ways of knowing,understanding and representing the complexity of teaching

In recent times there has been a cross-disciplinary amplification of interest in the concept of practice. In this context, there is a growing body of research considering how teaching and teacher education might be viewed using the conceptual lens of practice. In this article, I explore practice theories to identify common themes and principles that constitute a conceptual framework for the investigation of the lived experience of teaching. From this foundation, a methodological framework based on collaborative inquiry and postmodern emergence is derived. Examples are offered of the way the conceptual framework and methodological approach have been activated through the first stage of a research programme that collaboratively engages the dual voices of academic researcher and classroom practitioners as co-researchers. Analysis of qualitative data reveals the potential and limitations of this practice-based foundation as a way to know, understand and represent the complexity of teaching. In conclusion, the article develops a number of propositions as the basis for further research.     

Visualizing the politics of innocence in the age of AIDS

We are concerned with the ways in which social constructions of age can contribute to reducing or exacerbating the vulnerability of young people, and for this reason we refer to the issue as one of ‘the politics of innocence’. The focus of this paper is on gender, youth and HIV prevention/AIDS awareness in the context of South Africa and investigates the uses (and abuses) of images of ‘childhood’, ‘youth’ and ‘adolescence’ in the age of AIDS. Notwithstanding the particular case of South Africa where the incidence of new cases of HIV infection amongst young people is at crisis proportions, the impetus for our work on the visual representations of youth, gender and AIDS comes out of a recognition of the increasing risk of youth to sexually transmitted infections, HIV and AIDS, and within that the particular vulnerability, worldwide, of young women.     

Factors affecting the speed of free writing

Factors affecting the free writing speed of 11‐year‐old students were investigated using the Group and Individual Assessment of Handwriting Speed. Intelligence, gender, legibility and whether the student has special educational needs or speaks English as an additional language were all found to impact on writing speed to a significant extent. In one of the two schools studied, the students wrote significantly faster than the students in the other school. This ‘teacher effect’ was found to be independent of the other significant factors examined in the study and was attributed largely to instructional differences between schools and teachers. The average writing speed was 36% lower than published norms for this test, implying that 70.2% of the students would be eligible for extra time in examinations and raising doubts regarding the validity of these norms. It was concluded that vulnerability to teacher effects and other factors makes free writing an unreliable method of measuring writing speed, especially when group administered, and calls into question its use to justify the provision of examination access arrangements or accommodations.     

THE DISSEMINATION OF A UNIVERSITY FIELD PLACEMENT PROGRAM: IMPACT ON RECRUITMENT,SATISFACTION AND EFFECTIVENESS

Community college field placements often reflect a “vocational education” approach to outside‐the‐classroom learning, attempting to train students in specific skills and prerequisites for predetermined job slots. In the human services area, however, this may not be the most advantageous approach to producing innovative workers who will generate creative solutions to persistent and serious social problems. This study examined the impact of utilizing one popular university approach to field learning‐experiential learning coupled with social change agentry—with community college students. A criterion‐group field experiment was conducted, looking at paper‐and‐pencil measures, interviews, and archival data. It was found that the community college students were as willing to participate, were equally satisfied with the experience, and were as effective with their assigned cases as were the university students in this rigorous and demanding field placement. Community college administrators who are seeking to broaden their human service field settings should also consider successful university models of experiential learning as alternatives.     

Why they sat still: the ideas and values of long‐serving teachers in challenging inner‐city schools in England

Within the UK there are grave concerns about retention and attrition rates within the teaching profession, particularly in challenging schools. These are compounded by worries about the gap that will be left as long‐serving teachers reach retirement age. This article is about the working lives of long‐serving teachers in three high‐poverty urban schools in England. In a climate in which teaching is tightly controlled and suffering from problems of retention and recruitment, the teachers discuss intensely personal and emotional commitments to their work‐place. Qualitative in‐depth interviews with 20 long‐serving teachers, all of whom had management responsibilities, are used to explore their lives and careers. These histories evoke a strong sense of the ideas and values that make up their personal and professional identities. These are then contrasted with the ideas and values in officially mandated views of progression within the profession. Within the stories of their professional lives, the teachers talk about the emotional dimensions of their work and the emotional ties of their ‘work‐place’. The article concludes that recognition of the emotional dimensions within teachers’ work at an official level could go some way to helping with recruitment and retention in schools facing challenging circumstances.     

Getting to the heart of the problem: Using the problems of practice approach as a starting place for creating problem‐centered instruction

It is often difficult to transfer learning from one situation to another. Learning is more likely to be transferred if instruction is situated within a realistic context, using a problem‐centered instructional approach. However, it can be challenging to create problem‐centered instruction that authentically represents the needs and activities of the workplace and profession. This article describes the problems of practice approach––an iterative, guided process for developing problems for problem‐centered instruction.     

Sporting reunions,contemporary collections and collective biographies: a case study of Harry Batt’s 1971 England team

ABSTRACT

This article centres on a reunion held at the National Football Museum in 2018 of women football players active before 1993, particularly the England team for the unofficial Women's World Cup in 1971. After outlining the organisation of the tournament, the experience of the three youngest England players is articulated using oral history case studies. Finally the argument suggests that social strategies, such as reunions, enable a degree of reminiscence therapy and provide museum and archives with potential material, currently in the private domain, to build contemporary collections, provided that players are willing to gift or loan their items.     

Who are We?

This article scrutinises the usage of the words “we”, “us” and “our” by BBC radio journalists when reporting and discussing news and current affairs. By analysing reports and discussions on the “flagship” Radio 4 Today, a daily news programme whose centrality to political and public debate is widely recognised, the article raises substantive questions about clarity, accuracy and impartiality in senior broadcast journalists’ choice of language. In exploring the assumptions which may underlie the invocation, via such language choices, of an implied community, and against the backdrop of the BBC's commitment to impartiality in its Editorial Guidelines, the article identifies numerous recent examples where the choice of words and identifiers can be seen as undermining the BBC's impartiality and which show several of its senior journalists adopting the first-person plural “we” when reporting on matters of public policy. The findings therefore indicate a general need to codify norms which are seen to integrate the need for accuracy as well as impartiality, and for these norms to take into account issues which might at first glance seem to be inconsequential, micro-level features of the journalists’ language. The evidence suggests that more fine-grained guidelines on permissible circumstances for BBC journalists’ usage of “we” and “our” need revising and disseminating in the light of these findings.     

The perceived value of work placements and part-time work and its diminution with time

This paper explores the perceptions of degree students at two UK universities regarding their work placement and part-time working activities, to assess if the two activities converge. The research comprises three stages: interviews for preliminary exploration of students’ perceptions towards work placement and part-time work; interviews to examine how placement opportunities link with career aspirations; a survey of students who had completed a placement, and those currently on placement. Students acknowledged part-time working helped their placement activity, providing transferable skills beneficial to both study and career aspirations. A significant finding was with respect to time: the closer to the placement activity the data was collected, the stronger the impact of appreciating the value of placement. The paper therefore highlights the value of timing in the assessment of work placement. It also offers value for universities’ by providing insight into students’ perceptions regarding embedded external work activities that can enhance graduate employability and career prospects.