Skills for Life: insights from the new ‘professionals’

This article originates in a networking project that facilitated the coming together of a group of Skills for Life (SfL) teachers from different Further Education (FE) contexts across the West Midlands region of England. The original impetus was to explore and develop a model of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) that was shaped by the needs of SfL teachers. The project created a forum in which the participants were empowered to share their experiences outside their college settings. Through this discursive process a textured picture emerged of similar experiences and common concerns. The congruence of these experiences suggested that, in certain respects, there was a degree of commonality across the various FE institutions the participants were working in, at least in the way that SfL provision was taking place. Furthermore, the data yielded specific insights into the meaning of professionalism for SfL practitioners. Foremost amongst these findings was the sense that the participants felt marginalised and perceived their professional identity as situated on the bottom rung in a hierarchy of subject specialisms. Another important outcome that related to CPD was that through participation in the network project, these teachers reported feeling that despite the managerialised nature of their workplaces, their agency was re‐energised and their sense of themselves as teachers affirmed.     

Using Design-Based Latent Growth Curve Modeling With Cluster-Level Predictor to Address Dependency

The authors compared the effects of using the true Multilevel Latent Growth Curve Model (MLGCM) with single-level regular and design-based Latent Growth Curve Models (LGCM) with or without the higher-level predictor on various criterion variables for multilevel longitudinal data. They found that random effect estimates were biased when the higher-level predictor was not included and that standard errors of the regression coefficients from the higher-level were underestimated when a regular LGCM was used. Nevertheless, random effect estimates, regression coefficients, and standard error estimates were consistent with those from the true MLGCM when the design-based LGCM included the higher-level predictor. They discussed implication for the study with empirical data illustration.     

Creativity in the Hong Kong classroom: What is the contextual practice?

A review is offered of Hong Kong's current education reform that sites a key role for creativity. This key role leads us to ask “Creativity in the Hong Kong Classroom: what is the contextual practice?” To address this question 27 Primary classroom teachers across three subject areas were observed and rated using the Classroom Observation Form [Furman, A. (1998). Teacher and pupil characteristics in the perception of the creativity of classroom climate. Journal of Creative Behavior, 32(4), 258–277]. The creativity potential of these teachers was then measured against the Creativity Fostering Teacher Index [Soh, K. C. (2000). Indexing creativity fostering teacher behavior: A preliminary validation study. Journal of Creative Behavior, 34(2), 118–134] and the Creative Personality Scale [Gough, H. G. (1978). A creative personality scale for the adjective check list. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(8), 1398–1405]. Their class students then completed the Chinese Creativity Tests [Wu, J. J., & Chen, F. X. (1998). A study on the new creativity test. Taiwan: Education Bureau and Foundation for Scholarly Exchange]. Findings support and extend current understandings of both system and componential theory [Csikzentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Collins; Amabile, T. M. (1996). The social psychology of creativity. New York: Springer–Verlag; Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in context. Boulder: Westview Press]. Instrument limitations and a need for interpretative cautions are discussed and their significance for further research indicated.