A strategic approach to developing e-learning capability for healthcare

Objectives: This article examines a strategic approach to developing e‐learning capability to enhance learning opportunities for the workforce of a healthcare organization. Emphasis is given to the procurement of a bespoke Managed Learning Environment (MLE). Strategic organizational issues impacting on future e‐learning developments are considered. Methods: The 2‐year implementation plan was evaluated through a two phase external research project. The first phase focused on the effectiveness of a training programme designed to build capacity for e‐learning within the Northern area and also included a virtual learning environment usability study which informed the MLE specification. The second phase evaluation is ongoing during 2005 and interim findings are presented. Results: The MLE has been piloted and on‐line learning packages have been acquired. There has been a phased take‐up of e‐learning opportunities and e‐tutor training. Some virtual Communities of Practice have been established. Key organizational issues have been identified and ongoing findings are informing strategic planning. Conclusions: The healthcare MLE is offering enhanced learning opportunities and assisting area healthcare providers in training their dispersed workforces. Blended learning strategies are most successful. The need for protected time for e‐learning is a key issue, financial savings are available. Progress has been slowed by identified organizational constraints—the MLE's benefits are widely recognized.     

Word co-occurrences on Webpages as a measure of the relatedness of organizations: A new Webometrics concept

Web hyperlink analysis has been a key topic of Webometric research. However, inlink data collection from commercial search engines has been limited to only one source in recent years, which is not a promising prospect for the future development of the field. We need to tap into other Web data sources and to develop new methods. Toward this end, we propose a new Webometrics concept that is based on words rather than inlinks on Webpages. We propose that word co-occurrences on Webpages can be a measure of the relatedness of organizations. Word co-occurrence data can be collected from both general search engines and blog search engines, which expands data sources greatly. The proposed concept is tested in a group of companies in the LTE and WiMax sectors of the telecommunications industry. Data on the co-occurrences of company names on Webpages were collected from Google and Google Blog. The co-occurrence matrices were analyzed using MDS. The resulting MDS maps were compared with industry reality and with the MDS maps from co-link analysis. Results show that Web co-word analysis could potentially be as useful as Web co-link analysis. Google Blog seems to be a better source than Google for co-word data collection.     

Quality assurance of higher education in transition countries: Accreditation ‐ accountability and assessment

Abstract

One issue facing countries in transition concerns how to ensure quality for a broader and more diverse set of institutions. Quality assurance processes (i.e. accreditation, accountability and assessment) have particular relevance today as higher education undergoes dramatic changes in countries in transition, as the world becomes more internationalised, and as private higher education institutions increase in number and enrol increasing numbers of students. Three questions emerge. Do differences among transition countries relative to central control prior to independence explain the current set of quality assurance mechanisms? Has the growth of private higher education in transition countries affected how quality assurance is conceptualised? Have quality assurance mechanisms been affected by the opening of branch campuses in transition countries?     

Pre-service educators’ dispositions toward inclusive practices for students with emotional and behavioural difficulties

ABSTRACT

In response to challenging behaviour from students with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD), teachers around the world often label students as challenging, defining them by their disability. Negative views of students with EBD are a barrier to their inclusion and a major challenge for policy in the United States and elsewhere associated with access to the education system for students with disabilities. Pre-service teacher education has been highlighted as an optimum time to instil in pre-service educators a more equitable disposition toward behaviour management and inclusive practices. Therefore, the purpose of the current mixed-methods study was to assess whether or not an undergraduate course focused on relationship-based approaches to positive behaviour support could impact pre-service educators’ dispositions toward inclusive classroom practices for students with EBD. Survey results from 41 pre-service educators indicated that participants made significant improvements in their knowledge and understanding of compassionate behaviour management, intentional relationship building, and establishment of a welcoming classroom environment. Analysis of participants’ written responses to open-ended questions revealed several themes regarding changes in dispositions toward students with EBD. Implications for pre-service educator preparation and inclusion of students with EBD are discussed.     

Meeting special educational needs in infant classes: A discussion of evidence from HMI reports on individual schools

The debate over who in the family makes the selection of a preferred new school is an important one for many reasons. This paper presents some of the positions in that debate and attempts to resolve some of the apparent contradictions and anomalies in previous findings by using a new three step model of choice. This model clearly suggests that the reported role of both parents and children are susceptible to variations over time during the process of choice and that some of the differences discernible in previous studies may be due to this. In addition the model predicts that a simple division of families into 'alert' and 'inert' or 'disconnected' and 'privileged' or parent-centred and child-centred will not work in making sense of the complex micropolitics of choice in most families.     

Translanguaging: origins and development from school to street and beyond

The article traces the Welsh origins of “translanguaging” from the 1980s to the recent global use, analysing the development and extension of the term. It suggests that the growing popularity of the term relates to a change in the way bilingualism and multilingualism have ideologically developed not only among academics but also amid changing politics and public understandings about bilingualism. The original pedagogic advantages of a planned use of translanguaging in pedagogy and dual literacy are joined by an extended conceptualisation that perceives translanguaging as a spontaneous, everyday way of making meaning, shaping experiences, and communication by bilinguals. A new conceptualisation of translanguaging is in brain activity where learning is through 2 languages. A tripartite distinction is suggested between classroom translanguaging, universal translanguaging, and neurolinguistic translanguaging. The article concludes with a summary of recent research into translanguaging with suggestions for future research.     

Australian Early Childhood Teacher Education: Developments and Concerns

The history of early childhood teacher education in Australia dates back to 1897 with the establishment of the Kindergarten Union Teachers' Training College in Sydney. Since the 1970's, small, specialized, private teachers' colleges in each state have emerged to become part of the national government system of Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE's). These institutions had as a primary goal to teach rather than to conduct research about teaching. CAE's have historically been primarily responsible for vocationally-oriented professional courses of study such as nursing, teaching, social welfare, media and communications, fine arts and health studies. It was in this CAE's system where students were prepared to be early childhood, elementary, and secondary teachers. These programs lead to a three-year Diploma of Teaching or a four-year Bachelor of Education. This approach was based on the Australian pattern of specialized teacher training which was generally provided immediately upon graduation from high school. Universities provided training in early childhood-related areas such as psychology, psychiatry, social work and medicine but did not include specialized early childhood teacher preparation per se (although they do provide secondary teacher preparation).     

Turning Academics into Teachers: A discourse on love

As a contribution to the debate, this article analyses the different meanings of the word 'love' and uses this analysis to demonstrate that good teachers love both their subject and the teaching of it, and that this involves them in respecting researchers in both their subject and in pedagogy.     

Swarm Intelligence: Rethinking the Multitude from within the Transversal Commons

Abstract

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that contemporary political and economic struggle entails reappropriating the monster as a potent image of multitudinous insurgency against Empire. This essay critically appraises the status of the monstrous in Hardt and Negri's work by bringing the field of critical animal studies into dialogue with Hardt and Negri in order to demonstrate how their conceptualisation of the monstrous nature of the multitude is not monstrous enough. While gesturing toward a posthumanist understanding of the multitude as a monstrous and unformed flesh of resistance and transformation, Hardt and Negri provide no clear discussion of the role of nonhuman animals within the multitude. Instead, nonhuman animals are reduced to mere allegories for the swarm intelligence of a decisively human multitude. The monstrous nature of the multitude remains mired within an anthropocentric speciesism that does not recognise the linguistic, cognitive and material resources that nonhuman animals may bring to the development of a swarm intelligence capable of overcoming the domination of nature inherent in Empire.