Bad Moon Rising

Summary

The profound impact of digital reference claimed by its proponents is overstated. Librarians tend to overvalue technology, assume its intrinsic value in improving library operations and services, and undervalue the human factor of librarian expertise and professional competence. Overstating the impact of trends within librarianship is a cyclically recurring phenomenon and the hype surrounding digital reference is a current example. In most libraries, the adoption of digital reference is not likely to be cost effective nor its utility an improvement on structures already in place and functioning well. Librarians have difficult decisions to make regarding the allocation of resources. The superiority of traditional reference approaches should not be gainsaid by misdirected emphasis on digital reference.     

A Phenomenological Study of Conservative Academic Librarians

Librarianship posits itself as a profession that strives for neutrality, particularly within customer service and information provision; however, factors such as political activity, conference programming, and disproportionate representations of specific viewpoints in the literature indicate that neutrality may be compromised. These factors may alienate librarians who do not subscribe to majority political opinions within librarianship. A phenomenological study was conducted to understand the career experiences of academic librarians who identify as socially or politically conservative. Themes linking service provision, ethics, workplace relationships, and professional engagement emerged that demonstrate the professional impact politicized activity has on practicing librarians in all specialties.     

Introduction

Personal narratives are powerful tools that can be used to introduce competing mindsets into the academic discourse. They are especially powerful if they challenge a master narrative that seeks to portray the weak or powerless, such as Chicanos, in negative images or social contexts. This paper uses personal narrative to examine how Chicanos perceived the 1970s as a period of change in academe, one that would increase their presence and voice. The personal narrative also examines how academe is structured and organized to constrain the Chicano’s search for presence and voice.     

Postmodernist perceptions of teacher professionalism: a critique

This is an era of significant government involvement in schools in England, despite consistent rhetoric from the Department of Education to the contrary. In such a period, signs can be detected of the juncture between a postmodern identity and post-professional status, two models of teacher professionalism supposed in Hargreaves’ work on the fourth age of professionalism. This paper focuses on the former as the nature of the contemporary context. Defining features of postmodernity are considered through a focus on the broad issue of teacher professionalism. For this paper, this is embodied by teachers’ involvement with the development of the Primary National Curriculum for England. Evidence will be drawn from just before its 1988 introduction until 2013 in order to critique several of the key tenets of postmodernity as identified by Hargreaves. This is of particular importance in a context where a strong defence is necessary to enable the sustainment, and growth, of teachers’ professional autonomy. This paper aims to propose some strategies teachers could enact in the face of postmodern challenges.     

An Enduring Ethos

In the twentieth century, in the United States, ideas of professional practice in journalism and journalism education grew up together. Occupational norms and professional practices were inscribed in reporting textbooks, which reflected the values of their era. They show a continuity of praxis, and an “enduring ethos” of journalistic values that survived into the 1960s and 1970s, in time to be picked up by the studies of Johnstone and then later Weaver and Wilhoit. This ethos including notions of public service, often tied to notions of objectivity, accuracy and fairness. This study includes a close reading of 34 textbooks published over a period of nearly 70 years, from the 1890s through the 1960s, drawing from a larger corpus of material that includes 69 textbooks from the same period. As sites of professional discourse making and continuity, textbooks show how journalism's values are passed down through time.     

Journalism Meets Management

The development of news production over the last decade has accentuated the negotiation between two forces of change: professional discourse and managerial discourse. The first characterizes journalistic identity by normative ideals and serves to legitimize journalists as an autonomous and self-regulating group. Managerial discourse, on the other hand, expresses the globalization of values and economy in the labour market, as well as in the area of communication, streamlining organizational models, and suggesting a business thinking common to several industries, in addition to an evolving view of the individual as an entrepreneur. Managerialism has implications for all levels of news work and, above all, emphasizes audience orientation, as the will of the audience becomes imperative. It promotes a form of leadership rather new to Scandinavian news organizations by strongly bringing the key values of profit and efficiency to the negotiating table. This article focuses on the constant negotiation between discourses by drawing empirical support from three survey studies of editors-in-chief and journalists in Sweden. It describes how editors-in-chief perceive their own role to be changing and why, and attempts to relate the new forms of leadership to current professional developments in journalism.     

Contextualizing Teacher Autonomy in time and space: a model for comparing various forms of governing the teaching profession

This study aims to develop a model for comparing different forms of teacher autonomy in various national contexts and at different times. Understanding and explaining local differences and global similarities in the teaching profession in a globalized world require conceptions that contribute to further theorization of comparative and international education. Drawing on a governance perspective and building on considerations of curriculum evaluation, the study argues that teacher autonomy is a crucial factor that has to be conceptualized in its national and historical contexts. It presents an examination of the teaching profession from both an institutional and service perspective. In both perspectives, teacher autonomy, framed by curriculum evaluation, can be regarded as both extended and restricted, but not necessarily at the same time. This point of view enables us to discuss different forms of autonomy in relation to each other. To support this idea, the study discusses cases of teachers in various contexts of time and space.     

New Public Management in an age of austerity: knowledge and experience in further education

This article originates in a piece of educational research into the experiences of further education (FE) student teachers in the West Midlands region of England. This cohort of students experienced significant upheaval in their college workplaces and placements during the 2010/2011 academic year. Pressures on FE funding were exacerbated by a Comprehensive Spending Review by the coalition government in late 2010 – prompted by the on-going global economic crisis. Some of the repercussions of these funding cuts for staff and students in the sector are discussed in this article, as perceived by this cohort of student teachers working in a range of FE providers across the West Midlands. Many of these repercussions can broadly be seen as an extension of existing managerialist practices, as the justification for an increasing squeeze on local resource allocation continues to be a wider appeal to global market ‘realities’. But we theorise that new public management (NPM) plays an important role in a reductive kind of knowledge production for policy-makers which fuels and legitimises on-going policy intervention, and we see this as an important shaping force in the emerging professional identity of these new teachers.     

Pressures,rewards and teacher retention: a comparative study of primary teaching in England and Finland

The article presents some findings from the York‐Jyväskylä Teacher Professionalism project. The project was a follow‐up study to earlier case‐study research in six schools in Finland and six schools in England on the impact of educational reforms on teachers' work. Data were collected by re‐interviewing a sample of teachers from the original schools six years later. The views of English and Finnish teachers concerning the ways in which changes in practice, pay and working conditions affected their perception of teaching as a profession are contrasted. The crucial factors discouraging teachers from remaining in teaching were work intensification, low pay, deteriorating pupil behaviour and a decline in public respect. Positive influences on teacher retention were commitment to children, professional freedom and supportive colleagues. Suggestions are offered as to how policy makers should act to preserve the commitment of primary teachers and to promote their retention.     

The National SCITT

This paper describes a new national programme aimed at placing highly-qualified students in the best schools in the country for the whole of their primary PGCE training year. Students on this scheme are members of the National SCITT (school-centred initial teacher training) in Outstanding Primary Schools programme. The National SCITT is focused on four main functions: primarily the preparation of new teachers, but in the course of this work staff development for all partners, inquiry directed towards the improvement of practice, and the continous improvement of learning for the children in SCITT schools. The paper sets out the arguments for school-based teacher training and relates those arguments to the National SCITT.