We can be as busy as a bee: a grounded theory study of Filipino elderly prisoners’ engagement

ABSTRACT

The centrality of social relationship for older adults living in prison cannot be underestimated. While previous studies have investigated the loss of social functioning among older prisoners, there is no known information pertaining to how engagement is experienced among this vulnerable group. This grounded study purports to describe the process by which engagement is experienced among a select group of incarcerated Filipino elderly. Strauss and Corbin’s Grounded Theory design was utilized. A total of 25 incarcerated Filipino elderly in the largest penitentiary in the country were purposively chosen to participate in semi-structured interviews. Field texts were subjected to thematic analysis involving open, axial, and selective coding. Finally, themes were validated via member checking procedure. Interestingly, the study afforded the development of de Guzman, Herrera, Hernando, Hipe, and Valdez Zipper of Engagement Theory among incarcerated elderly. Interestingly, three phases relative to engagement emerged, namely: Initiating, Connecting, and Enabling. Primarily, the Initiating phase involves feelings of fear and nervousness as the incarcerated elderly familiarize themselves with the prison environment. The Connecting phase typifies recognition of the benefits of engagement leading to voluntary participation in activities. Finally, in the Enabling phase, inmates empower themselves and others to grow as they fully acquire the sense of engagement. Gerontological education and research implications are discussed.     

Using Mind Maps to Make Student Questioning Effective: Learning Outcomes of a Principle-Based Scenario for Teacher Guidance

Research in Science Education - Student questioning is an important learning strategy, but rare in many classrooms, because teachers have concerns if these questions contribute to attaining...     

TechCheck: Development and Validation of an Unplugged Assessment of Computational Thinking in Early Childhood Education

Journal of Science Education and Technology - There is a need for developmentally appropriate Computational Thinking (CT) assessments that can be implemented in early childhood classrooms. We...     

What can evidence-use in practice learn from evidence-use in policy?

Abstract

Background: This paper approaches evidence-informed practice from the perspective of evidence-informed policy-making. Using the findings of a recent study of evidence-use by educational policy-makers to raise questions about evidence-use by educational practitioners, it seeks to explore what such a study might tell us about how to understand and improve evidence-use by educational practitioners.

Purpose: The paper aims, therefore, to identify potential connections, shared insights and common issues between evidence-use in policy and evidence-use in practice. It does this by focusing on two specific areas: the nature of the evidence (i.e. what evidence is used) and the nature of the use (i.e. how evidence is used). The paper outlines what was found about each of these aspects of evidence-use in policy, and then considers what questions and issues these findings might raise for evidence-use in educational practice.

Sample: The empirical study on which this paper is based was an in-depth study of the use of evidence within educational policy development in Australia. It focused on the development of three specific education policies within one Australian state education department and involved interviews with 25 policy-makers who were actively involved in the development of these policies.

Design and methods: The policy-based study involved the following data collection processes: (i) in-depth semi-structured interviews with 25 policy-makers who were involved in the development of the selected policies; (ii) documentary analysis of policy documents, background research reports and other relevant papers relating to the selected policies; (iii) unstructured observation (where possible) of meetings and events connected with the development of the selected policies; and (iv) feedback from 40 wider policy staff who took part in a verification workshop to discuss the project’s emerging findings.

Findings: Drawing on the findings from the original policy study, two areas of potential connection to evidence-use in practice are explored. First, in relation to ‘varieties of evidence and uses’, the negotiation of diverse evidence types and the potential for using evidence in multiple and varied ways appear to be features of evidence-use that are common to educational policy-makers as well as educational practitioners. Secondly, in relation to ‘narrowness of evidence sources’, there is potential for both policy-makers and practitioners to use a narrow (rather than broad) selection of evidence, due to a tendency to work with certain evidence types as a starting point (e.g. performance data) and a tendency to draw on certain evidence sources more frequently (e.g. well-known, familiar research sources).

Conclusions: This paper emphasises: (i) the need for more integrated (or joined-up) understandings of evidence-use across contexts of practice and contexts of policy; (ii) the importance of continued efforts to understand and represent evidence-use more effectively within educational practices; and (iii) the value of paying careful attention to the quality and qualities of evidence-use within and across the different settings of educational practice and policy.     

Elements affecting the development of professional learning communities in schools

This article focuses on the development of professional learning communities (PLCs), which are communities within schools, composed of voluntary participating teachers facilitated by school principals with a specific task to accomplish as part of a larger innovation project. Four PLCs were observed during 3 years by using questionnaires and participatory research. The questionnaires revealed that PLCs differed in their group characteristics, collective learning processes and outcomes. Through participatory research, we explored seven elements affecting the development of PLCs, namely, task perceptions, group composition, tensions between roles, beliefs about alignment, reflective dialogues, socialisation and ownership. Beliefs about alignment, ownership and socialisation had sufficient impact on the development of the PLCs. A case study including two contrasting PLCs indicated interrelations between task perceptions and ownership by members and between ownership and socialisation activities. Regarding implications, this research suggests to explicitly create and facilitate reflective dialogues and ownership over time for PLCs to flourish.     

Infant Attention Is Dynamically Modulated With Changing Arousal Levels

Traditional accounts of developing attention and cognition emphasize static individual differences in information encoding; however, work from Aston‐Jones et al. suggests that looking behavior may be dynamically influenced by autonomic arousal. To test this model, a 20‐min testing battery constituting mixed photos and cartoon clips was shown to 53 typical 12‐month‐olds. Look duration was recorded to index attention, and continuous changes in arousal were tracked by measuring heart rate, electrodermal activity, and movement levels. Across three analyses, we found that continuous changes in arousal tracked simultaneous changes in attention measures, as predicted by the Aston‐Jones model. It was also found that changes in arousal tended to precede (occur before) subsequent changes in attention. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

The COVID-19 epidemic in Brazil: how statistics education may contribute to unravel the reality behind the charts

Educational Studies in Mathematics - The world is now facing the most severe health, social, and economic event of the last hundred years, which has made the need to acquire statistical thinking to...