Activist dispositions for social justice in advantaged and disadvantaged contexts of schooling

This article advances current conceptions of teacher activism through an exploration of the social justice dispositions of teachers in advantaged and disadvantaged contexts of schooling. We interrogate the practices of teachers in a government school, with a high proportion of refugee students and students from low socio-economic backgrounds, in a high-fees, multi-campus independent school, and in a disadvantaged Systemic Catholic school to illustrate how Bourdieu’s notion of dispositions (which are constitutive of the habitus) and Fraser’s distinction between affirmative and transformative justice are together productive of four types of teacher activism. Specifically, we show that activist dispositions can be characterised as either affirmative or transformative in stance and as either internally or externally focused in relation to the education field. We argue that the social, cultural and material conditions of schools are linked to teachers’ activist dispositions and conclude with the challenge for redressing educational inequalities by fostering a transformative activism in teachers’ practices.     

Improving and Maintaining Torque Accuracy in Aerospace Manufacturing: A Case Study

Needs assessment is a systematic and systemic process intended to identify and define gaps between current performance and desired performance. Needs assessments are most beneficial if they address issues that affect successful accomplishment of operational or tactical processes as well as outcomes that allow an organization to meet its overall strategic goals. A team of graduate students took on a needs assessment project to ascertain the causes of declining accuracy in a key task in an aerospace manufacturing process. The project encountered numerous barriers within the client organization, but the team systematically applied human performance technology methods in multiple stages to gather and analyze the available data. The end result was a set of identified root causes and recommended interventions focused on improving performance.