Working with uncertainty to support the teaching of critical reflection

This paper explores the cumulative reflections of lecturers examining their tacit assumptions of teaching practice. Despite extensive literature on the educational value of reflection, there is less visible research on teachers assessing their own reflective thinking. This longitudinal interpretive study uses Larrivee's assessment framework with a purposive sample of UK business students. Findings reveal insights for teaching reflection; acknowledging the discomfort of reflexive practice encourages learners to experiment with knowledge interpretation. The students' struggle to engage in reflection resonated with lecturers' parallel difficulties. The teaching approach balances deliberate structure with uncertain outcomes to trigger fresh interpretation of developmental theory and workplace relevance. Practice implications for lecturers are that harnessing uncertainty can provoke deeper insights that enable students to direct their learning and develop reflective skills. This case study offers a practical assessment example to enrich reflexive teaching, with scope to compare and replicate in different disciplinary settings.     

The idea of impact and its implications for academic development work

In the current context of higher education, those working in academic development feel the need to demonstrate the impact that their work makes on achieving desired institutional outcomes. In this paper, we examine the concept of impact, consider the various meanings of impact and review ways that the term has been used rhetorically and conceptually in relation to academic development. We explore our experience of working in an academic development unit (ADU) and what role impact may have played in our motivations and outcomes. Specifically, we document the changes in the focus, format and language of the ADU's annual reports over three years and reflect on what these revealed to us about our approach to academic development work and the idea of impact.

Dans le contexte actuel de l'enseignement supérieur, ceux qui oeuvrent dans le domaine du développement pédagogique ressentent le besoin de démontrer l'impact de leur travail en relation avec les résultats institutionnels escomptés. Dans cet article, nous examinons la notion d'impact, nous étudions ses diverses significations et nous passons en revue les façons avec lesquelles cette notion a été utilisée aux plans rhétorique et conceptuel en lien avec le développement pédagogique. Nous explorons notre expérience de travail au sein d'une unité de développement pédagogique (ADU) et quel rôle l'impact a pu jouer à l'égard de nos motivations et de nos résultats. De façon plus spécifique, nous documentons les changements de focus, de format ou de langage observés dans les rapports annuels de notre ADU sur une période de trois ans et réfléchissons à ce que cela nous a révélé au sujet de notre approche à l'égard du travail de développement pédagogique et de la notion d'impact.     

Gender-blind racism in the experience of schooling and identity formation

Much of the research dealing with education and race has concentrated on the experiences of black males. Research now needs to address the issue of how schools affect the production of black femininities. The aim is to explore how both black males and females adapt to schooling, and school exclusion in particular. Previous theoretical models often situate black women within the stereotype of the ‘superwoman’ and negate the experiences of black females in families that are not female-headed. Previous research also suggests that much of the black male pupil response to schooling is based on the way in which teachers equate disaffection with black masculinity. The study draws on research in schools with pupils aged from 13 to 15 years when observed and interviewed. Many pupils responded to schooling in a way that cut across race and gender. Pupils often attempted to subvert the traditional relationship of teacher as powerful and pupil as powerless, reacting to this relationship through their own racial and gendered backgrounds. It is argued that teachers often speak of black pupils in homogeneous ways when in fact gendered differences exist. The issue of how schools construct blackness is addressed and it is argued that too often this is simply to equate race with masculinity.     

Standards-based accountability: reification,responsibility and the ethical subject

Over the last two decades, teachers in Australia have witnessed multiple incarnations of the idea of ‘educational accountability’ and its enactment. Research into this phenomenon of educational policy and practice has revealed various layers of the concept, particularly its professional, bureaucratic, political and cultural dimensions that are central to the restructuring of educational governance and the reorganization of teachers’ work. Today, accountability constitutes a core concept of neoliberal policy-making in education, both fashioning and normalizing what counts as teacher professionalism in the ‘audit society.’ This article focuses specifically on the recent introduction by the Australian Federal Government of standardised literacy testing in all states across Australia, and raises questions about the impact of this reform on the work practices of English literacy teachers in primary and secondary schools. We draw on data collected as part of a major research project funded by the Australian Research Council, involving interviews with teachers about their experiences of implementing standardised testing. The article traces the ways in which teachers’ work is increasingly being mediated by standardised literacy testing to show how these teachers grapple with the tensions between state-wide mandates and a sense of their professional responsibility for their students.     

LibQUAL Revisited: Further Analysis of Qualitative and Quantitative Survey Results at the University of Mississippi

This paper updates an earlier 2010 longitudinal study of LibQUAL qualitative and quantitative data from the University of Mississippi libraries with an additional year of LibQUAL data, collated with other library-collected data such as gate-count numbers. In doing so, it identifies several results that are not satisfactorily analyzed by LibQUAL, and it concludes that a more specialized local survey may be helpful to supplement or supplant LibQUAL.     

Living with a disability that others do not understand

Last year, Martyn Rouse organised a project focused on inclusive education for the British Council. As part of the link between the University of Cambridge, the Ministry of Education in Kenya and Kenyatta University, your editor was lucky enough to be invited to visit Kenya. Martyn and I spent much of our time running workshops and attending meetings, but we were also able to visit some schools in far-flung rural areas. I recall walking into one village where a group of school children were walking down the street in an orderly line. When they saw us, their curiosity and excitement overtook them and they started to call out: 'mzungu! mzungu!', which means 'white man'. They laughed and waved and it was an unusual, and rather pleasant, feeling for me to be regarded as something so exotic and rare. But when I met Alex Munyere, at a workshop on inclusive education in Nakuru, I came to see another side to the experience of being perceived as different. Alex has albinism, which means that he has blond hair and white skin and experiences some difficulties with his sight. He is also a member of the Maasai community, who traditionally live under the broad, tropical skies of the heartlands of Kenya. In this article, Alex Munyere recalls his childhood and his life at school. He provides a fascinating first-hand account of the experience of living with a disability. Alex is now a respected professional who works with children with special educational needs in the assessment centre in Kajiado district in Kenya. He is a quiet and dignified man but he is passionately committed to the development of inclusion in his country. These qualities are evident in the thoughtful reflections he provides here on the relationships between specialist provision and the development of an inclusive society. I suggest that Alex's story can be instructive for us all.     

Simulation of gait asymmetry and energy transfer efficiency between unilateral and bilateral amputees

Efficient walking or running requires symmetrical gait. Gait symmetry is one of the key factors in efficient human dynamics, kinematics and kinetics. The desire of individuals with a lower-limb amputation to participate in sports has resulted in the development of energy-storing-and-returning (ESR) feet. This paper analyses a case study to show the effect of symmetry and asymmetry as well as energy transfer efficiency during periodic jumping between simulated bilateral and unilateral runners. A custom gait analysis system is developed as part of this project to track the motion of the body of a physically active subject during a set of predefined motions. Stance and aerial times are accurately measured using a high speed camera. Gait frequency, the level of symmetry and the non-uniform displacement between left and right foot and their effects on the position of the Centre of Mass (CM) were used as criteria to calculate both peak energies and transformation efficiency. Gait asymmetry and discrepancy of energy transfer efficiency between the intact foot and the ESR are observed. It is concluded that unilateral runners require excessive effort to compensate for lack of symmetry as well as asymmetry in energy transfer, causing fatigue which could be a reason why bilateral amputee runners using ESR feet have a superior advantage over unilateral amputees.