Mapping a complex system: what influences teacher learning during initial teacher education?

Despite a growing body of knowledge about what content, processes and arrangements for learning may result in more effective initial teacher education, there remains a problem with the variability of outcomes from teacher education programmes. This paper reports on a multi-perspective exploration of what influences learning to teach in valued ways during initial teacher education. Framed by complexity theory, which emphasises the non-linear nature of social phenomena, the paper presents an analysis of 76 maps of influences on learning to teach (made by teacher candidates, teacher educators, mentor teachers and policy makers), looking for differences and patterns that might point the way to explanations about teacher candidates’ varying ability to enact practice that improves outcomes for all learners.     

Telling the Tale and Living Well: Adolescent Narrative Identity,Personality Traits,and Well‐Being Across Cultures

This study explored links between narrative identity, personality traits, and well‐being for 263 adolescents (age 12–21) from three New Zealand cultures: Māori, Chinese, and European. Turning‐point narratives were assessed for autobiographical reasoning (causal coherence), local thematic coherence, emotional expressivity, and topic. Across cultures, older adolescents with higher causal coherence reported better well‐being. Younger adolescents with higher causal coherence instead reported poorer well‐being. Personal development topics were positively linked to well‐being for New Zealand European adolescents only, and thematic coherence was positively linked to well‐being for Māori adolescents only. Negative expressivity, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness were also linked to well‐being. Implications of these cultural similarities and differences are considered for theories of narrative identity, personality, and adolescent well‐being.     

Curriculum mapping food science programs: An approach to quantification of professional competencies

It is fundamental that students are able to identity where they have developed specific professional competencies during their study. This ensures students can not only articulate their competencies well in job applications and assessments but also draw on their experiences for use in the workplace. The aim of study was to ascertain if desirability of an element or competency as indicated by employers, was reflected in an equivalent level of program content, appropriately perceived by the student. A case study approach mapped elements of the previously developed Competencies for Food Graduate Careers framework against food sciences curricula at University of Nottingham. The mapping process facilitated evaluation of appropriate levels of inclusion of each element in degree programs, by recording types of content and experiences provided, in collaboration with teaching staff. Perspectives of the student experience were captured using an online survey. In addition, guidance from a prior industry survey provided context of the level of desirability for each element across the range of graduate roles in the United Kingdom. The results showed some areas of mismatch, where curricular content did not align with employer expectations or student perceptions. This has informed review of this curriculum, to best reflect “competency development” to meet the needs of the food industry. Recommendations were made to address gaps through enhancement of content, delivery, communication, or assessment. Additionally, the exercise has suggested a more informed development of curricula categorization and coding for future similar mapping activities.     

University administrators and faculty bargaining

This study presents empirical data suggesting that middle-level university administrators tend to oppose faculty bargaining, especially by an aggressive union. Findings cover administrators' perceptions of and attitudes toward faculty bargaining, prebargaining conditions in their work milieu, and expectations as to potential outcomes of bargaining under alternative agents. Factor analysis is used to identify underlying perceptual structures for which specific expectations may serve as indicators. Multivariate analysis suggests that perceptual-attitudinal variables related to prebargaining conditions explain little of the variance in support for bargaining. Most of the variance explained by the model derives from expectations concerning outcomes, perceptions of how well bargaining is working in higher education, and personal political orientation. Policy and research implications are suggested.     

Making death,compassion and partnership ‘part of life’ in school communities

Death can be considered a social taboo, a common source of fear and public avoidance. School communities are not immune to this, as the topic of death is constantly avoided. It is vital to understand how we can socially and culturally cultivate a positive regard for death, dying and bereavement in our school communities. Community members need to discuss these difficult issues and use strategies to enhance compassion, connectedness and support. In this literature review we reason that death is specifically not ‘part of life’ in school communities. Due to the dearth of school community-based literature on this issue and the progressive literature residing in palliative care, we aim to coalesce palliative care and school-based research, evaluate it and highlight compassion and partnership as a way forward for school communities. Essentially, our societal attitudes about death and dying have been profoundly altered and our community ownership of these normal life events has largely disappeared. This is demonstrated for example, by palliative care moving from the social grass roots ‘modern hospice movement’ formed in the 1960s and being reintegrated into the mainstream health care system by the end of the 1990s, resulting in an overall medicalised morphing of death, dying and bereavement issues. Therefore, we recommend that further research be conducted in how to develop compassionate schools to inform us how death may be continually made ‘part of life’ in school communities, for the benefit of students, teachers and families alike.     

Positioning young refugees in Australia: media discourse and social exclusion

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article was to examine how media attention affects the social exclusion of young refugees negotiating their way towards settlement in Australia. Emerging stereotypes and prejudices against young male refugees require new ways of understanding the impact of global, national and local issues on their social exclusion. The article brings together the impact of (a) the global politicisation and backlash against refugees, (b) Australians negative perception of refugees and (c) the increased reporting of young African-Australian and Pasifika-Australians as the perpetrators of youth violence. The article recognises the overlapping dimensions of social exclusion for young refugees and considers their ‘spatial’, ‘relational’ and ‘socio-political’ exclusion. The examination of media reporting of a landmark legal case of discrimination and racial profiling reveals a discourse of media attention that has perpetuated the social exclusion of a group of young African-Australian refugees living on a Melbourne public housing estate. The sensationalist and prejudicial media connection of the landmark legal case, youth violence and young African-Australians living on the Flemington Estate demonstrates the challenges young male refugees face in negotiating their settlement in Australia. This article makes a contribution to understanding the multi-dimensional nature of youth exclusion in contemporary times.     

Resistant leadership: countering dominant paradigms in school improvement

ABSTRACT

In Australia, school leadership is influenced by neoliberal discourses of accountability and performativity. Many schools seek to balance systemic pressures that narrow outcome expectations with a desire to deliver schooling in the broad interests of the students and communities that they serve. In this case, the principal was appointed to a school under threat of closure. To re-establish he purposefully disrupted traditional arrangements using approaches that disregarded many standard school improvement paradigms. The school improved in enrolments, reputation and student learning. This paper examines how this principal found and created spaces for disruptive change within the local context and the broader policy environment. While the value or ethics of the leadership are not the focus of the paper, it is noted that the autocratic position he assumed was problematic. Despite this, the case provides insight into leadership that resisted the confines of normative pressures to support radical school improvement.     

Computer microworlds and reading: An analysis for their systematic application

Learning can be seen as a consequence of problem solving in particular cases. It occurs when one achieves a solution which is able to be used later. Anchoring with variation is a common and important process, providing a framework through which one can discuss coping with something imperfectly understood in terms of what is already well known. Our purpose in the following discussion is to explore some possible implications of this process for reading education as a worked example of how educational technology presents us with an opportunity for reconceptualizing instruction.English has the phonological potential for more than 60 thousand monosyllables. Our analysis asks how many monosyllabic words exist in fact and what organization can be imposed on them to make the phonological code more accessible. We've chosen to represent these monosyllables as an initial phonemic cluster plus residue. The most common 550 residues cover 73 percent of the existing 7000 monosyllables. If children can learn 550 different correspondences between sounds and spelling patterns, their knowledge of these words, coupled with the ability to modify interpretations of letter strings by anchoring with variation, will cover a major portion of the phonetic-orthographic correspondences of the English language. We believe this extensive, concrete foundation of word and sound knowledge will permit children to read well enough that instruction will become primarily a refining and perfection of such knowledge.The primary design conclusion is that, if we create computer-based microworlds using words with the most common residues as the names for their entities and their actions, we will be providing a set of systematically generated monosyllabic anchors which promises to be highly effective for children's interpretation of many words they will encounter in reading English. The potential revolutionary impact of such a prereading curriculum is worth exploring.     

More than activities: using a ‘sense of place’ to enrich student experience in adventure sport

There has been increasing interest in recent years in the significance of a sense of place in the literature of outdoor adventure education. In the UK relationships between outdoor education and the environment still appear largely focused on the science of the natural environment and the activity in question. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from an action research project to demonstrate how a combination of formal and informal pedagogy in a higher education context can lead to a sociocultural and historical understanding of place and enrich the learning experience of students when teaching the classical outdoor adventurous activity of sailing. The sport of dinghy sailing is a module within a Bachelor's undergraduate degree in outdoor education and was taught from a small fishing town in Devon, England. We adopted an integrated and experiential critical pedagogy of place that allowed theory and practice, thought and action to be a holistic experience, and this approach provided opportunities for informal, as well as formal learning. This action research project explored the impact on the student experience when sailing skills were developed along with a sense of place. It used methods including: photo-elicitation, focus group interviews and evidence from the analysis of written student assignments. Our findings show that students discover a significance of the meaningful relationship between the sociocultural history of where that activity takes place and the activity itself and that as a result their experience of the learning and research process was enriched.