Individuals,Communities of Practice and the Policy Context: School teachers' learning in their workplace

Current theorising about learning at work comes from a predominantly participatory perspective, emphasising the social and communal dimensions of learning. This paper seeks to develop such a perspective further, devoting particular attention to the interrelationships between individual worker dispositions to learning, community of practice and wider organisational and policy contexts. This is done through the case study examination of the learning of one secondary school teacher, and of the art department of which she was part.     

Social moderation,assessment and assuring standards for accounting graduates

Evidencing student achievement of standards is a growing imperative worldwide. Key stakeholders (including current and prospective students, government, regulators and employers) want confidence that threshold learning standards in an accounting degree have been assured. Australia’s new higher education regulatory environment requires that student achievements are benchmarked against intended programme learning outcomes, guided by published disciplinary standards and a national qualifications framework, and against other higher education providers. Here, we report on a process involving academics from 10 universities, aided by professional practitioners, to establish and equip assessors to reliably assure threshold learning standards in accounting that are nationally comparable. Importantly, we are learning more about how standards are interpreted. Based on the premise that meaning is constructed from tacit experiences, social interactions and intentional reflection on explicit information, we report outcomes of three multi-part calibration interventions, situated around judgements of the quality of the written communication skills exhibited in student work and their related assessment tasks. Qualitative data from 30 participants in the calibration process suggest that they perceive that the process both assists them both in developing a shared understanding of the accounting threshold learning standards and in the redesign of assessment tasks to more validly assess the threshold learning standards.     

BBC Radio Ulster: Public Service Radio in Northern Ireland’s Divided Society

BBC radio has been broadcast in Northern Ireland since shortly after the establishment of the country in the early 1920s. Throughout this period it has been faced by the challenge of how to deliver public service radio in a divided society, one that has for many years experienced violent conflict. Today as BBC Radio Ulster, the station has the highest audience reach of any BBC network radio service or those nations services in Scotland and Wales. This article outlines how BBC policy serves to deliver this performance, by examining a BBC Trust Service Review in relation to culture and diversity.     

Computational auditory scene analysis: listening to several things at once

The problem of distinguishing particular sounds, such as conversation, against a background of irrelevant noise is a matter of common experience. Psychologists have studied it for some 40 years, but is is only comparatively recently that computer modelling of the phenomenon has been attempted. This article reviews progress made, possible practical applications, and prospects for the future.     

Ethnicity as a Moderator of the Theory of Planned Behavior and Physical Activity in College Students

Most college students do not meet physical activity (PA) guidelines, and ethnic disparities exist. The present study examined the utility of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) in explaining PA intentions and behavior in black and white college students and whether any TPB relationships were moderated by ethnicity. Black (n = 170) and white (n = 180) students completed a baseline TPB questionnaire and PA assessment 2 weeks later. Hierarchical latent variable regression analyses showed that affective attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control (PBC) were significant predictors of intention for both ethnic groups, whereas the PBC-intention relationship was significantly stronger for white students. Intention significantly predicted PA for both ethnic groups. Furthermore, common and ethnic-specific beliefs were identified.     

Foot strike patterns and ground contact times during high-calibre middle-distance races

Abstract The aims of this study were to examine ground contact characteristics, their relationship with race performance, and the time course of any changes in ground contact time during competitive 800?m and 1500?m races. Twenty-two seeded, single-sex middle-distance races totalling 181 runners were filmed at a competitive athletics meeting. Races were filmed at 100?Hz. Ground contact time was recorded one step for each athlete, on each lap of their race. Forefoot and midfoot strikers had significantly shorter ground contact times than heel strikers. Forefoot and midfoot strikers had significantly faster average race speed than heel strikers. There were strong large correlations between ground contact time and average race speed for the women's events and men's 1500?m (r?=?-0.521 to -0.623; P?相似文献   

Lesson Study and Pedagogic Literacy in Initial Teacher Education: Challenging Reductive Models

This paper argues that teacher learning is not reducible to lists of ‘performative’ standards. Funded by the Society for Educational Studies, we used ‘lesson study’ as a vehicle to develop new teacher expertise, following which we concluded that conceptualising ‘learning to teach’ as acquisition of standards is insufficient for understanding the process of teacher growth. We propose an alternative holistic vision.