Postgraduate coursework beyond the classroom: Issues in implementing flexible delivery

In Australia, new technologies for course delivery have coincided with rapid enrolment growth in postgraduate coursework programs. During 1995 we conducted a national study of flexible delivery in postgraduate education, by questionnaire and case study. We discovered an increasingly complex blend of delivery options, but only a modest uptake of electronic technologies. This paper examines the broad management implications, by addressing factors that inhibit implementation. Three issues are discussed: concern about academic standards, the impact on academic work, and cost and infrastructure requirements. We argue that the realisation of widespread flexible delivery of postgraduate education will depend on further attention to policy in these areas.     

Priority-setting in the roll out of South Africa’s National Integrated ECD Policy

The South African National Integrated Early Childhood Development Policy was approved by the South African Cabinet in 2015. Given capacity and financial constraints, all services outlined cannot be implemented in a single step. Priorities must be set. We examine the budget implications (total cost and cost per child) and benefits of the four largest components of the Policy: interventions to improve pregnancy outcomes; home visits for at-risk mothers of children under 2 years of age; community-based playgroups for mothers and children, and center-based early childhood development services. Further, we identify which services are based on the strongest evidence, the value-based trade-offs that characterise the prioritising decisions, and which logistical factors favour alternative orderings of services. The interventions to improve pregnancy outcomes are low cost, based on sound evidence and would make use of the established healthcare infrastructure. Home visits for at-risk mothers are associated with improved development for targeted children and consequential benefits for caregivers and broader society. Playgroups are a promising low-cost intervention, but further evidence is required to determine their effectiveness. Centre-based services are expensive and generate smaller developmental returns, but provide childcare. The results highlight the value judgements required to determine the appropriate sequencing of interventions.     

Enhancing Clinical Librarian Work Processes and Communicating Service Impact with REDCap and Data Visualization

Due to staffing changes, clinical librarians in a large pediatric health care system needed to streamline how user requests were received and how best to handle the shared workflow. This article describes how REDCap and SAS were implemented to improve the management of requests, capture comprehensive user statistics, and convey the value of the library services through enhanced reporting.     

The role of the blended action learning facilitator: an enabler of learning and a trusted inquisitor

This paper reports on a research study that involved the use of blended action learning to support leadership development within the New Zealand education sector. An important contributor to the success of this technology-enabled approach to professional learning was the role taken by the blended action learning facilitator. Two complementary aspects of this role were: enabling learning, the main focus of which was encouraging participation in online interactions; and acting as a trusted inquisitor, a process involving both supporting and challenging participants in their leadership learning. This study found that the balance between these two roles varied over the course of the blended action learning groups and this led to the identification of five distinct stages of blended action learning facilitation.     

The (im)materiality of literacy: the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research

This article deconstructs the online and offline experience to show its complexities and idiosyncratic nature. It proposes a theoretical framework designed to conceptualise aspects of meaning-making across on- and offline contexts. In arguing for the ‘(im)materiality’ of literacy, it makes four propositions which highlight the complex and diverse relationships between the immaterial and material associated with meaning-making. Complementing existing sociocultural perspectives on literacy, the article draws attention to the significance of relationships between space, mediation, materiality and embodiment to literacy practices. This in turn emphasises the importance of the subjective in understanding how different locations, experiences and so forth inflect literacy practice. The article concludes by drawing on the Deleuzian concept of the ‘baroque’ to suggest that this focus on articulations between the material and immaterial helps us to see literacy as multiply and flexibly situated.     

Discourse analysis as theory,method, and epistemology in studies of education policy

ABSTRACT

Discourse has featured in studies of educational policy as an analytic and methodological tool, theoretical frame, realm of implication, and even a foundational definition of educational policy itself (e.g.) Despite the centrality of discourse as a frame for exploring educational policy and its implications, the ways that discourse is defined or operationalized in educational policy research are often left implicit which can lead to murky relations to larger onto-epistemological questions of how we construct findings from data as well as the nature of policy. In this interpretive analysis, we synthesize a corpus of 37 peer-reviewed journal articles that bring together educational policy and analyses of discourse from varying theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to better understand the breadth and scope of how discourse is defined and operationalized in studies of educational policy, including in ways that are sometimes incommensurate with authors' stated theoretical and methodological positions. After first laying the theoretical groundwork for analyses of discourse in the field of educational policy, we then illustrate how discourse analysis is used differently, and sometimes inconsistently, within contested paradigmatic landscapes. We conclude with an argument for discussions across theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms about how the concept of discourse lends itself to different epistemological vantage points on educational policy.     

Does self-determination predict the school engagement of four different motivation types in adolescence?

In order to enhance our understanding of inter-individual differences in scholastic motivation, this study examined if self-determination predicts the school engagement of four different motivation types (MT) in a large sample of adolescent students (N = 1088) from Brandenburg, Germany: (1) peer-dependent MT, (2) teacher-dependent MT, (3) peer-and-teacher-dependent MT and (4) peer-and-teacher-independent MT. Using structural equation modelling (SEM), the four types were first compared on latent variables (perceived self-determination and school engagement) and then, a latent multigroup SEM was conducted to test whether self-determination (competence, relatedness and autonomy) would predict emotional and behavioural school engagement separately by MT. The findings underscore the relevance of the typology as well as important inter-individual differences in the association between students’ psychological needs (competence, relatedness and autonomy) and their school engagement.     

EVALUATING AN INNOVATION

Investigations into EATE's particular style of development, and its effectiveness of approach in introducing and sustaining innovations, were thought to be important aspects in the identification of noteworthy strategies for bringing about change in issues relating to enterprise, economic and industrial awareness in institutions of initial teacher education. This article describes the composite thinking and support underpinning the eclectic evaluations of EATE‐funded initiatives. It discusses two essential, and sequential, steps — initial thinking about issues which need to be clarified before embarking on an evaluation, and the strategies for action, i.e. the practical activities which can then be carried out. The article is written with reference to the EATE initiative but ideas and considerations could, with ease, be applied to other innovations.     

The implementation of equitable teaching strategies by high school biology student teachers

Teachers can perpetuate stereotypic cultural beliefs regarding girls' ability in, aptitude for, and suitability for science by their teaching practices and behaviors. As teachers have a major influence on girls' career choices their equitable teaching practices in the classroom are important to encourage all students, but especially girls, to continue with science. Researchers have studied science classrooms and have defined common strategies and practices that can help create an equitable classroom environment. The purpose of this study was to determine if high school biology student teachers could transfer learned equitable teaching strategies to actual teaching and the support conditions necessary for that transfer. Two support conditions were assessed: cooperating teacher and peer group support. Seven preservice teachers were placed into three groups. One group had both support conditions, the second group had only one condition (peer support), and the third group did not have either support condition. Both qualitative and quantitative data sources were collected. Results showed that preservice teachers could transfer learned equitable teaching into actual teaching practice. However, they were more successful in achieving the transfer if they were supervised by cooperating teachers who are sensitized to the issue of gender equity in education. Being involved in a peer support group was not as crucial to using the strategies as having a supportive cooperative teacher.     

‘A new life in the countryside awaits’*: interactive lessons in the rural utopia in ‘farming’ simulation games

ABSTRACT

This paper critically analyses the legitimation of exploitative human–nonhuman animal relations in online ‘farming’ simulation games, especially the game Hay Day. The analysis contributes to a wider project of critical analyses of popular culture representations of nonhuman animals. The paper argues that legitimation is effected in Hay Day and cognate games through: the construction of idyllic rural utopias in gameplay, imagery, and soundscape; the depiction of anthropomorphized nonhumans who are complicit in their own subjection; the suppression of references to suffering, death, and sexual reproduction among ‘farmed’ animals; and the colonialist transmission of Western norms of nonhuman animal use and food practices among the global audience of players. Hay Day thereby resonates with the wider cultural legitimation of nonhuman animal exploitation through establishing emotional connections with idealized representations of nonhuman animals at the same time as they inhibit the development of awareness and empathy about the exploitation of real nonhuman animals.