Explanations of attitudes to change: Colombian mathematics teachers’ conceptions of the crucial determinants of their teaching practices of beginning algebra

This article arises from a study whose overall purpose was to investigate the relationship between Colombian mathematics teachers’ conceptions of beginning algebra and their conceptions of their own teaching practices. The teachers’ understandings of their teaching practices were explored with a view to unravelling their conceptions of change in their teaching. Focusing on the perspectives of teachers afforded opportunities that exposed the powerful role that the teachers’ conceptions of social/institutional factors of teaching played in their conceptions of their practices. The degree to which the teachers attributed these (external) factors as crucial reasons for what they do in their teaching was the basis of a categorisation of their conceptions of the crucial determinants of their teaching practices into three types. The findings are particularly relevant to our understanding of the stability of mathematics teaching approaches in the Colombian context but have likely implications for a range of international education contexts. Specific implications for the development of the research into teachers’ conceptions of mathematics and its teaching, and for teacher education programmes are presented.

Learning to listen and listening to learn: one student’s experience of small group collaborative learning

The dialogic nature of small group collaborative learning requires verbal contributions from students to progress individual and group learning. Speaking can become privileged over listening as a collaborative act, and an imbalance in these values can become embedded in the classroom culture to the degree that the core value of listening can be invisible to students new to the learning contexts. The focus of this paper is a single case study of the experience of an international Asian-background student (Korean), learning in a Western (Australian) problem-based learning (PBL) physiotherapy context. Video data and interviews highlight his difficulty with learning to listen and listening to learn, and his privileging of speaking over listening. We question whether failure to signal the importance of listening is the result of the current shift in emphasis to learning through speaking, leading to a subsequent loss of attention to the role of listening in collaborative learning. Further, we question the cultural inclusivity of the PBL educational paradigm and recommend specific tutor training on scaffolding students?? listening skills in this dialogic learning context.     

Knowledge,skills, competence: European divergences in vocational education and training (VET)—the English,German and Dutch cases

Policy debates on employability, lifelong learning and competence‐based approaches suggest a convergence of VET approaches across European countries. Against the background of the creation of a European Qualifications Framework, this paper compares the VET systems of England, Germany and The Netherlands. The analysis reveals the distinct understandings and meanings of outwardly similar terms. These meanings are deeply rooted in the countries’ institutional structures and labour processes and still inform national debates and policies today. The paper identifies a major distinction between a ‘knowledge‐based’ VET model in Germany and The Netherlands and a ‘skills‐based’ model in England. There is a need to develop trans‐national categories that take into account the social construction of terms such as ‘skills’ and ‘qualifications’.     

Recruiting the graduate voice: informing higher education initiatives to underpin an emerging,veterinary paraprofession in Australia

In Australia, the inception of veterinary technology, as a higher education discipline underpinning an emerging, mid-tier paraveterinary field, reflected global trends for more highly educated veterinary paraprofessionals to meet changing societal demands. In this study, veterinary technology graduates were surveyed about their experiences in the workforce and reflections on their education. Seeking feedback on how well a new programme has prepared graduates for the workforce is a useful quality assurance tool. Clinical veterinary practice was the primary employment sector with the majority of respondents in full-time employment. Career advancement, professional recognition and salaries were identified as key career challenges. The important roles of the veterinary and veterinary nursing professions, the university, government and graduates in the development of this mid-tier, veterinary paraprofession were elucidated. Graduates’ feedback on criteria that underpinned ‘work-readiness’ revealed seven key domains: communication skills, research skills, knowledge, critical thinking/problem-solving, employability, practical skills and professionalism. Veterinary nursing skills, work placement, practice management and production animal health were flagged as areas for curricular improvement. This study illuminated facilitators and barriers critical to establishing a mid-tier veterinary paraprofession, bridging the divide between the vocational and higher education sectors in Australia.

Abbreviations: AUD: Australian dollar; AVA: Australian Veterinary Association; AVBC: Australasian Veterinary Boards Council; AVMA: American Veterinary Medical Association; BVNA: British Veterinary Nursing Association; CSU: Charles Sturt University; DAF: Department of Agriculture and Fisheries; FWC: Fair Work Commission; GCA: Graduate Careers Australia; HE: Higher Education; NHMRC: National Health and Medical Research Council; QLD: Queensland; RCVS: Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons; UK: United Kingdom; UQ: University of Queensland; VN: Veterinary nursing; VNCA: Veterinary Nurses Council of Australia; VSB: Veterinary Surgeons Board; VT: Veterinary technology; WIL: Work-integrated learning.     

Stalking the Micro‐politics of Schools in Pursuit of a Realistic Research Agenda

The last decade has witnessed a period of endemic reform within educational systems and schools. In particular, changes have been implemented that may entail different configurations of decision‐making at the site level with significant reverberations for the workplace environment of the school. This paper suggests that because of the ubiquity of reform, rich opportunities have been provided for researching educational change. Nevertheless, in order to develop a holistic understanding of the effect of change in schools a perspective is required that takes Into account the socio‐political and cultural context of an organisation. For this purpose, the micro‐political perspective may be able to convey a more realistic depiction organisational behaviour than conventional theory has been able to offer. Therefore, this paper elucidates the major ideas of some prominent micro‐political theorists and makes recommendations for future research into aspects of life in schools. It is hoped that the paper may contribute to a revival of the micro‐political perspective in conducting educational research.     

The role of the content and structure of curriculum material in cognition

Summary and Conclusion What has been reported here is an objective, pre-trial formative evaluation of the core of an ASEP unit designed to show its potential in terms of themes and structure, a revision on the basis cognitive-field learning theory of those sections of the core shown by the analysis to be possibly deficient, and an ongoing field-trial of the original and revised cores. The field-trial results, though only tentative, have demonstrated the use of the Carss (1973) content analysis technique as it may be applied to formative curriculum evaluation since it supplies “... the diagnostic analysis which is at the heart of formative evaluation” (Baumgart; 1972:9). The technique produces, prior to field-trials, usable information with respect to the potential inherant in the text, showing for example where structure is poor or where there is irrelevant or too much information. The technique also allows feedback from field-trials to be used more constructively since general statements or questions, hitherto of little use in giving writers directions for revision, can be linked to themes, the content and distribution of which are available. The use of this technique for the analysis of the manifest content of communication-written or verbal—seems unlimited. The analysis of the teacher and pupils verbal communications in parallel with the textual analysis, and the analysis of “expert” ideas on “what is science?” to obtain the “essence” of science are but two. The technique itself needs further refinement and this refinement and possible uses offer an interesting challenge for future research.     

Hybrid index maintenance for contiguous inverted lists

Index maintenance strategies employed by dynamic text retrieval systems based on inverted files can be divided into two categories: merge-based and in-place update strategies. Within each category, individual update policies can be distinguished based on whether they store their on-disk posting lists in a contiguous or in a discontiguous fashion. Contiguous inverted lists, in general, lead to higher query performance, by minimizing the disk seek overhead at query time, while discontiguous inverted lists lead to higher update performance, requiring less effort during index maintenance operations. In this paper, we focus on retrieval systems with high query load, where the on-disk posting lists have to be stored in a contiguous fashion at all times. We discuss a combination of re-merge and in-place index update, called Hybrid Immediate Merge. The method performs strictly better than the re-merge baseline policy used in our experiments, as it leads to the same query performance, but substantially better update performance. The actual time savings achievable depend on the size of the text collection being indexed; a larger collection results in greater savings. In our experiments, variations of Hybrid Immediate Merge were able to reduce the total index update overhead by up to 73% compared to the re-merge baseline.