Citizen–government collaboration on social media: The case of Twitter in the 2011 riots in England

How social media can enable opportunities for collaboration between citizens and governments is an evolving issue in theory and practice. This paper examines the dynamic aspects of collaboration in the context of the 2011 riots in England. In August 2011, parts of London and other cities in England suffered from extensive disorder and even loss of human lives. Based on a dataset of 1746 posts by 81 local government Twitter accounts during or shortly after the riots, we explore how local authorities attempted to reduce the effects of the riots and support community recovery. Using Twitter's conversational and rapid update features, they produced a variety of informational and actionable messages with clear calls for offline or online action. In some cases, collective against the riots evolved in a mutual way: not only citizens were mobilized by local authorities, but also local authorities actively promoted actions initiated by citizens.     

Adult numeracy and the totally pedagogised society: PIAAC and other international surveys in the context of global educational policy on lifelong learning

This paper aims to discuss the emergence, form and likely effects of international surveys of adults’ skills by locating them in the global context of policies on education and Life Long Learning (LLL). It focuses on adults’ numeracy and discusses its conceptualisation and assessment in the Project for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), which is the most recent survey. Drawing on critical theoretical resources about new forms of governance in education and transformations in the pedagogic discourse, the paper further substantiates existing critiques of global policy trends, namely that they are motivated by human capital approaches to education and LLL. In particular, we show that the apparently commonsensical appeal of evaluative instruments like PISA and PIAAC is based on a competency model of knowledge, which embodies a narrow notion of competence. Relatedly, the notional curricula promoted by such surveys potentially articulate a more radical idea of LLL, captured by Bernstein’s conception of trainability as the mode of socialisation into a Totally Pedagogised Society. The paper presents a dual approach to understanding international adult performance surveys in general—in that, besides deploying the theoretical resources already indicated, it also raises a number of methodological issues relevant to the valid interpretation of these studies’ results. Ultimately, it argues for the importance of mobilising resources from critical educational perspectives to support the development of potentially powerful knowledge like numeracy and to prevent its being reduced to a narrow competency.     

Leadership for professional development and learning: enhancing our understanding of how teachers develop

The educational research community has made great strides in clarifying and enhancing our understanding of professional development and how it occurs. Yet in relation to one question – How do people develop professionally? – this knowledge base falls short, for while much research has been directed at addressing the question, findings have tended to lack the specificity that offers the kind of elucidation that may usefully inform professional development-focused leadership policy and practice. In particular, the micro-level cognitive process of professional development – what occurs inside an individual’s head in order for her/him to experience a professional development ‘episode’ – remains under-examined in educational research. This article makes a contribution towards addressing this short-fall. It presents the author’s conceptual analyses of professionalism and professional development – revealing the multidimensional componential structure of each – and examines how understanding of this multidimensionality may help school leaders promote and facilitate professional development.     

Ideational border crossings: rethinking the politics of knowledge within and across disciplines

This article explores the merits, possibilities and difficulties of making intra and trans-disciplinary ‘border crossings’ essentially of an ideational kind. Drawing ideas from complexity literature, the article lauds the potential of ‘concept studies’ as means of making such crossings and addressing enduring issues (e.g., of equity and health) within education, Physical Education (PE) and Health. The article suggests, however, that the culture of neoliberalism and extant power relations may prohibit rather than nurture and encourage any willing exchange of ideas or sharing of resource, presaging border closure rather than ‘border crossing’. Talk of the latter in periods of austerity may become shorthand for ‘rationalisation’, offering new language for a newly invigorated politics of erasure, rather than announcing desire to nurture and actualise new voices and new ways of sharing ideas towards investigating and dismantling enduring social hierarchies and trends.     

A visual-based approach to the mapping of generic skills: its application to a Marketing degree

With increasing complexity in the world, universities continue to face pressure to demonstrate that their graduates have acquired skills beyond discipline-based knowledge. These are generic skills like critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, problem-solving and so forth. In order to demonstrate this, universities have to show how their teaching contributes to the fostering of these skills. This can be a challenge for many reasons. Our mapping approach overcomes most of the obstacles by developing multiple indicators for each generic skill, making it easy to involve the lecturers-in-charge, summarising all their evaluations into important dimensions and, finally, representing the data in a three-dimensional visual map. This allows all the marketing subjects to be simultaneously evaluated in their ability to foster different generic skills, generating useful insights for effective curriculum development in a Marketing program. We illustrate this methodology using eight generic skills and 18 marketing subjects from a major Australian university.     

Feedback about Teaching in Higher Ed: Neglected Opportunities to Promote Change

Despite ongoing dissemination of evidence-based teaching strategies, science teaching at the university level is less than reformed. Most college biology instructors could benefit from more sustained support in implementing these strategies. One-time workshops raise awareness of evidence-based practices, but faculty members are more likely to make significant changes in their teaching practices when supported by coaching and feedback. Currently, most instructional feedback occurs via student evaluations, which typically lack specific feedback for improvement and focus on teacher-centered practices, or via drop-in classroom observations and peer evaluation by other instructors, which raise issues for promotion, tenure, and evaluation. The goals of this essay are to summarize the best practices for providing instructional feedback, recommend specific strategies for providing feedback, and suggest areas for further research. Missed opportunities for feedback in teaching are highlighted, and the sharing of instructional expertise is encouraged.     

Group in‐course assessment promotes cooperative learning and increases performance

The authors describe and evaluate a method to motivate medical students to maximize the effectiveness of dissection opportunities by using In‐Course‐Assessments (ICAs) to encourage teamwork. A student's final mark was derived by combining the group dissection mark, group mark for questions, and their individual question mark. An analysis of the impact of the ICA was performed by comparing end of module practical summative marks in student cohorts who had, or had not, participated in the ICAs. Summative marks were compared by two‐way ANOVA followed by Dunnets test, or by repeated measures ANOVA, as appropriate. A cohort of medical students was selected that had experienced both practical classes without (year one) and with the new ICA structure (year two). Comparison of summative year one and year two marks illustrated an increased improvement in year two performance in this cohort. A significant increase was also noted when comparing this cohort with five preceding year two cohorts who had not experienced the ICAs (P <0.0001). To ensure that variation in the practical summative examination was not impacting on the data, a comparison was made between three cohorts who had performed the same summative examination. Results show that students who had undertook weekly ICAs showed significantly improved summative marks, compared with those who did not (P <0.0001). This approach to ICA promotes engagement with learning resources in an active, team‐based, cooperative learning environment. Anat Sci Educ 7: 224–233. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

Understanding channel choice in users' reporting behavior: Evidence from a smart mobility case

Public service producers are heavily investing in the development and implementation of more efficient new digital channels to engage users in citizen sourcing efforts, such as the reporting of public service-related issues. Nevertheless, user-reporters have continued to favor earlier implemented channels including traditional (e.g., phone, office) and e-government channels (e.g., web, email) over new digital channels such as m-government channels (e.g., mobile applications). Drawing on channel choice literature and theories, this study aims at explaining users' reporting behavior by examining the role of users' personal factors, including digital divide determinants, users' service experience, and channel satisfaction. We use a combination of survey and log data on actual reporting behavior among smart bike-sharing users to explain users' channel choice. Using a multinomial logistic regression, we found that the digital divide predicts user-reporters' channel choice. Moreover, user-reporters with a longer service membership favor traditional and e-government channels, over the newly implemented m-government channels. Finally, user-reporters' satisfaction with the mobile application is negatively associated with the user-reporters' choice of traditional and e-government channels. Our results expand and update the empirical evidence on channel choice at the user level, and provide insights for public service producers who aim at enhancing public service delivery through digital users' engagement.