Critically reflective dialogues in learning communities of professionals

Communities in which professionals share and create knowledge potentially support their continued learning. To realise this potential more fully, members are required to reflect critically. For learning at work such behaviour has been described as critically reflective work behaviour, consisting of six aspects: challenging groupthink, critical opinion sharing, an openness about mistakes, asking for and giving feedback, experimentation and research utilisation. We studied whether and how these aspects can be distinguished in dialogues of seven different communities of veterinary professionals (critically reflective dialogues). Our exploration of the nature of critically reflective dialogues resulted in an analytical framework. Within each aspect four different modes of communication were identified: interactive, on an individual basis, non-reflective and restricted. We assume that professionals use learning opportunities most in the interactive mode of communication. The framework was employed to study the extent to which dialogues showed these modes of critically reflective dialogues. The results demonstrate that in these communities the modes of communication within aspects were largely non-interactive (i.e., individual, non-reflective). The developed framework discriminates between communities in terms of their critically reflective dialogues. Interventions to improve the effectiveness of learning communities should focus on enhancement of members addressing each other's reasons and reflections.     

The effects of control-display gain on performance of race car drivers in an isometric braking task

Abstract

To minimise lap times during car racing, it is important to build up brake forces rapidly and maintain precise control. We examined the effect of the amplification factor (gain) between brake pedal force and a visually represented output value on a driver's ability to track a target value. The test setup was a formula racing car cockpit fitted with an isometric brake pedal. Thirteen racing drivers performed tracking tasks with four control-display gains and two target functions: a step function (35 trials per gain) and a multisine function (15 trials per gain). The control-display gain had only minor effects on root mean-squared error between output value and target value, but it had large effects on build-up speed, overshoot, within-participants variability, and self-reported physical load. The results confirm the hypothesis that choosing an optimum gain involves balancing stability against physical effort.     

Kevin: “I Gotta Get to the Market”: The Development of Peer Relationships in Inclusive Early Childhood Settings

This study describes the lived experience of Kevin, a young child with physical disabilities who is placed in an inclusive classroom, a classroom where children with and without disabilities are educated together, with extra support provided for the child with disabilities. Children with disabilities who are placed in inclusive early childhood settings tend to be rejected or neglected more than their typically developing peers and are involved more with the adults in the classroom than with their peers. Kevin’s experiences are framed in the context of the current emphasis on inclusive practices. The study documents that adult assistance and curriculum activities both play an important role in either facilitating or constraining social interaction with peers. When the assigned assistant functions as the child’s playmate and mostly chooses table activities, both of these seem to limit opportunities for social interaction with peers. This study also documents that, without the assistant present, the child makes independent choices such as where and with whom to play. The dramatic play area serves as a conduit for meaningful verbal and nonverbal communication with peers. At the same time, Kevin’s strong desire to play in this area seems to be the impetus for physical development—he walks alone for the very first time. Suggestions are given for teacher facilitation of dramatic play.     

Research quality and efficiency: An analysis of assessments and management issues in Dutch economics and business research programs

Assessments of quality and productivity of academic research programs become more and more important in gaining financial support, in hiring and promoting research staff, and in building academic reputation. Most assessments are based on peer review or on bibliometric information. In this paper we analyze both bibliometric data and peer review assessments of 169 research groups in economics, econometrics and business administration. The evaluations are achieved in two independent rounds in 1995 and in 2001, permitting replication of our study.The purpose of this study is twofold. In the first part we want to see to what degree bibliometric information relates to peer review judgments. The results convey how evaluators weight different output categories in their final overall judgment of academic quality. The results also have practical meaning, since they indicate what the predictive ability of bibliometric data is for future peer review outcomes. In the second part of this study we aim at explaining differences in research output quality and productivity by organizational factors, like size of the research group, composition of staff, sources of research funding and academic discipline. In this part, a composite indicator is used to represent the review committees’ overall assessment. The bibliometric data most strongly related to the peer reviews’ overall assessment are used to construct data envelopment analyses’ efficiency scores as measure of research productivity.The main conclusions from our study are that the number of publications in international top journals is the best predictor of peer review assessment results. Changes in the classification of bibliometric information, as introduced in the second evaluation round, do not alter this conclusion. Size of the research group appears to be the only permanent characteristic associated with research quality and productivity. Size is positively related to research quality but negatively related to research productivity. Larger groups appear to have the potential to improve quality, but as groups become larger, they also experience problems in maintaining the research productivity of the research team's members. The remaining organizational characteristics appear to be temporarily related to research quality and productivity. In the first evaluation round, research productivity and quality are associated with the discipline variable: research programs in more quantitative areas and characterized by a higher level of paradigm development like econometrics and operations research achieved higher levels of research quality and productivity than programs in more diverse and less quantitative areas like business administration. This relation however is not permanent, since it becomes insignificant in the second evaluation round. Instead, funding relations become more apparent in the second review round. The relative amount of national funding in the research group's funding becomes positively related to academic quality, whereas the portion of income from committed research is negatively related to academic quality of the programs’ research output. This may have been caused by the increased importance of alternative sources of research funding in the period of the second review.     

A meta-analysis of the effect of education on social capital

To assess the empirical estimates of the effect of education on social trust and social participation – the basic dimensions of individual social capital – a meta-analysis is applied, synthesizing 154 evaluations on social trust, and 286 evaluations on social participation. The publication bias problem is given special emphasis in the meta-analysis. Our statistical synthesis confirms that education is a strong and robust correlate of individual social capital. The meta-analysis provides support for the existence of a relative effect of education on social participation, and of a reciprocity mechanism between the dimensions of social capital. The analysis also suggests that the erosion of social participation during the past decades has coincided with a decrease of the marginal return to education on social capital. Finally, we find differences in the return to education between genders, between US and other nations, and variations for different education attainments.     

Measurement of active drag during crawl arm stroke swimming

In order to measure active drag during front crawl swimming a system has been designed, built and tested. A tube (23 m long) with grips is fixed under the water surface and the swimmer crawls on this. At one end of the tube, a force transducer is attached to the wall of the swimming pool. It measures the momentary effective propulsive forces of the hands. During the measurements the subjects' legs are fixed together and supported by a buoy. After filtering and digitizing the electrical force signal, the mean propulsive force over one lane at constant speeds (ranging from about 1 to 2 m s-1) was calculated. The regression equation of the force on the speed turned out to be almost quadratic. At a mean speed of 1.55 m s-1 the mean force was 66.3 N. The accuracy of this force measured on one subject at different days was 4.1 N. The observed force, which is equal to the mean drag force, fits remarkably well with passive drag force values as well as with values calculated for propulsive forces during actual swimming reported in the literature. The use of the system does not interfere to any large extent with normal front crawl swimming; this conclusion is based on results of observations of film by skilled swim coaches. It was concluded that the system provides a good method of studying active drag and its relation to anthropometric variables and swimming technique.     

Ethics of care in participatory health research: mutual responsibility in collaboration with co-researchers

In the field of participatory health research (PHR) and related action research paradigms, limitations of standard ethical codes and institutional review processes have been identified. PHR is highly situational and relational, part of a hierarchical health care context and therefore ethics of care has been suggested as a helpful theoretical approach that emphasises responsibilities and relationships. The purpose of this article is to explore the value of Tronto’s second-generation ethics of care for reflection on ethical challenges experienced by academic researchers. Using the design of a collaborative auto-ethnography, this article starts from a story of a researcher who deals with dilemmas in responsibility to care for co-researchers with lived experiences during a PHR study in the field of acute psychiatric care. By analysing the challenges together with all co-researchers, using a framework of ethics of care, we discovered the importance of self-care and existential safety for an ethical PHR practice. The reflexive meta-narrative shows that the ethics of care lens is useful to untangle moral dilemmas in all participatory research-related paradigms for all engaged.     

Lexical decision and oral reading by poor and normal readers

The primary goal of this study was to compare a paper-and-pencil version of the lexical decision task, which can be administered groupwise, with reading aloud a differently ordered list of the same words and pseudowords. Participants were first and second graders (“normal readers”) and students from schools for children with learning difficulties. On the average, the latter “poor readers” scored at the same oral reading level as the normal readers, but were older. The correlation between both tasks appeared to be high and both tasks had comparable correlations with third variables, suggesting that performance is determined by the same processes. Because the lexical decision task showed little evidence for guessing, it may be an — even better — alternative for oral reading. No differences between participant groups were found that point to different reading strategies. Error analysis, however, indicates that the poor readers probably have a specific problem in the oral reading of pseudowords.     

The quality of teachers’ interactive conversations with preschool children from low-income families during small-group and large-group activities

This study examined the quality of preschool teachers’ interactive conversations with three- and four-year-olds in two Head Start classrooms serving children from low-income families in the United States. Over a period of 20?weeks, 10 bi-weekly observations of conversations (totaling 15?h per classroom) were conducted in one small-group (Play Time) and two large-group (Breakfast Time and Circle Time) contexts. The teacher–child verbal interactions were transcribed and coded using the Teacher Interaction and Language Rating Scale (TILRS) to determine the frequency of responsive language strategies employed by the teachers across the three contexts. The two teachers applied Child-Centered Strategies and Interaction-Promoting Strategies the most during Circle Time, followed by Play Time, and the least during Breakfast Time. While it was observed that both teachers did talk to the children face to face frequently across contexts, they rarely used Language Modeling Strategies to engage them in cognitively challenging conversations. Implications for professional development are discussed.     

Dutch adolescents’ narratives about democracy: ‘I know what democracy means,but not what it means to me’

In the last decade, educational scholars have studied various aspects of adolescents’ citizenship narratives. This paper reports on a qualitative study into the narratives about democracy of 27 adolescents from an urban area in the Netherlands. The aim of the study was to gain an insight into the type of democratic engagement that Dutch adolescents develop. Fourteen vocational and 13 pre-university students were selected. Each student was interviewed twice. Narrative thematic data analysis revealed that only five students had developed a strong conception of democracy. Our findings suggest that few students had spent time developing and challenging their narratives about democracy, and that few students have developed a greater sense of democratic engagement. Our paper concludes with several suggestions for furthering the study and practice of democratic citizenship education.