The danger of subverting students’ views in schools

This paper is firmly grounded in the position that engaging with students’ voices in schools is central to the development of inclusive practices. It explores the tensions that can be created when efforts are made to engage with students’ voices in relation to their experiences of learning and teaching. An example from a three-year research and development project, which worked alongside teachers to use students’ voices as a way of developing inclusive practices, is used to illustrate these tensions. This project, though showing that students’ voices can be a powerful means for understanding learning and teaching in schools, also encountered challenges with these processes. This paper focuses on the experiences of one secondary school which (possibly inadvertently) subverted and undermined students’ voice initiatives and explores the potential negative impacts of this on individual students, on students as a whole, and on teacher development. By doing this, suggestions as to how such tensions can be avoided in schools are offered, with the aim being to allow a genuine engagement with the views of students.     

On transitional space,unresolved conflicts,and an uncertain teacher education

This research project began as an effort to redesign a learning theory course as transitional space and evolved into an analysis of how unresolved conflict from younger learning selves influence graduate preservice teachers’ acquisition of teacher identity. The study draws upon work by Elizabeth Ellsworth on transitional space and Deborah P. Britzman’s work that deconstructs teacher education development. The data for the study were collected throughout a three‐semester graduate teacher education program and include narrative and formal writing using theoretical discourses. Foucauldian concepts of discourse analysis were used to interpret the initial data set; discourse analysis maps were then employed to further develop data interpretation. Two case study illustrations of preservice teachers resulted from this work. These illustrations demonstrate how transitional space is troubled space and the unevenness of teacher development. The study raises the question, ‘What will teacher education do with uncertainty?’     

Search tactics used in solving everyday how-to technical tasks: Repertoire,selection and tenacity

With greater access to computational resources, people use search to address many everyday challenges in their lives, including solving technology problems. Although there are now many useful ‘how-to’ resources online (especially videos on YouTube), it can still be difficult to identify, understand, and resolve certain kinds of technical problem. While research tasks have been studied for many years and we know the tactics people use, we know far less about searchers’ tactics for how-to technical tasks that involve actually being able to apply found information to resolve a problem. Crucial to our study was developing and studying a highly realistic, how-to technical task, for which there was no single guidance resource: making a phone safe for a child. After providing 39 participants with an actual phone to fix, and a search engine to perform the task, we analysed their search tactics using retrospective cued think aloud interviews. Our primary contribution is a set of 77 tactics used, in three categories, along with detail of how common they were. We conclude that people had a lot of tactics in their repertoire. Although it was not hard for participants to find relevant information, what was hard was for participants to find information they could use; indeed only 23% of participants successfully completed the entire task. Domain knowledge affected the choice of tactics used (although not necessarily towards better task success). We discuss these influences and make design recommendations for how future search systems can support those in resolving how-to technical tasks.     

Developing and testing a method to measure academic societal impact

This paper aims to extend understanding of the business and societal impact of academic research. From a business school perspective, it has taken stock of the role of academic research and relevance in business and society. The proposed conceptual framework highlights the forces influencing the pursuit of academic rigour and relevance in scholarly outputs. A theoretical model for measuring the societal impact of academic journal articles—the Academic Rigour and Relevance Index (AR2I)—was developed. This index comprises six key parameters, which are assessed by three stakeholder groups connected with academic research into business issues, these groups being: business practitioners, society and academics. The behaviour of the AR2I model was evaluated using the Monte Carlo simulation model. Taking into account the relationships between the standard deviations and the differences of classification between articles with different levels of rigour and relevance, it is demonstrated that the AR2I model is an effective tool.     

The Greek Publishing Industry and Professional Development

In the Greek publishing industry, tradition and the desire for innovation go hand in hand. The industry is influenced by European developments in publishing and bookselling in terms of book promotion methods, the role of chain bookstores and the impact of information technology. Greece shares the features of other small book markets in Europe, whilst retaining the individuality defined by the Greek language and the country’s cultural and social conditions. This article provides an overview of the publishing industry in Greece through a review of the relevant literature and the available statistics. This work also focuses on the need to develop publishing skills through publishing education and continuous professional development.     

A guide for the perplexed: Scientific educational research, methodolatry, and the gold versus platinum standards

The paper opens by characterizing recent discourse about empirical educational research as the “new Babel”-critics, using different theoretical vocabularies and making different deep assumptions about the nature of social life, are failing to communicate with each other. After locating some of the critical positions on a left-right continuum, the main discussion focusses upon the end of this continuum where there are located the recent attempts to restore rigor to educational research by using the so-called “gold standard” of randomized field trials. It is argued that positions at this end of the continuum misrepresent the nature of science, and some examples are briefly mentioned in order to covey the point that it is fruitful to view scientists as making convincing cases, cases that appeal to a wide variety of evidence. This assessment of scientific cases is called the “platinum standard”.     

Learning under conditions of hierarchy and discipline: the case of the German Army, 1939–1940

To survive in and adapt to dynamic, turbulent, and complex environments, organizations need to engage in learning. This truism is particularly relevant for army organizations in times of war and armed conflict. In this article a case of army operations during World War II is analyzed on the basis of ?rtenblad’s integrated model of the learning organization and Argyris and Schön’s theory of action approach. Among others, it is found that survival of and adaptation to combat conditions is possible through single-loop learning, provided that this learning takes place in an open and productive learning climate. This and other conclusions have important implications for theory and practice of organizational learning under conditions of hierarchy and discipline.