An Australian designed and built helicopter is ready for flight tests at the Royal Newcastle Aero Club at Cessnock, New South Wales.
Eugene F. Asola and Samuel R. Hodge
In this chapter, we discuss health-related physical fitness and motor development assessments for students with physical disabilities or other health impairments in special…
Abstract
In this chapter, we discuss health-related physical fitness and motor development assessments for students with physical disabilities or other health impairments in special education using traditional and innovative techniques. Traditional assessment techniques are those that are more standardized and formalized, while innovative assessment techniques refer to new variations or ways (alternative/authentic) to assess the abilities of students with physical disabilities and other health impairments. According to the United States Department of Education (2009), students with disabilities must be included in State and local assessments. Even though there has been significant growth in numbers, diversity and academic orientation of persons with physical disabilities, assessments practices have largely remained the same over the years. Adopting innovative pedagogies and emerging innovative assessment techniques may address some unmet needs of current students with disabilities faced with assessment biases.
Details
Keywords
George Okechukwu Onatu, Wellington Didibhuku Thwala and Clinton Ohis Aigbavboa
Aims to examine current debates about the recruitment and retention of teachers and explore the views of Local Education Authority Human Resource Advisors, governors and teachers.
Abstract
Purpose
Aims to examine current debates about the recruitment and retention of teachers and explore the views of Local Education Authority Human Resource Advisors, governors and teachers.
Design/methodology/approach
Addresses the issue of whether the Government is actually achieving its stated aims of best value in selecting, recruiting and retaining the most effective teachers in primary and secondary education.
Findings
The conclusion for the appointment of teachers in schools is that structured panel interviews, with trained panel members, and preferably including an HR professional, would represent best practice.
Originality/value
Raises serious concerns about the delegation of HR practice.
Details
Keywords
Grace Nalweyiso, Samuel Mafabi, James Kagaari, John Munene, Joseph Ntayi and Ernest Abaho
This paper aims to investigate whether relational agency fosters relational people management using evidence from micro and small enterprises in Uganda, an African developing…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate whether relational agency fosters relational people management using evidence from micro and small enterprises in Uganda, an African developing country. Specifically, the paper examines whether the individual relational agency dimensions (shared learning, mutual cooperation, collective efficacy and interaction enablement) also affect relational people management.
Design/methodology/approach
A cross-sectional survey design using a quantitative approach was used in this study. Data were collected from 241 micro and small enterprises in Uganda using a structured questionnaire and were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists.
Findings
The results indicate that relational agency is positively and significantly associated with relational people management. Findings further indicated that collective efficacy, mutual cooperation, shared learning and interaction enablement individually matter in relational people management.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study may be among the first to demonstrate that relational agency and its individual dimensions (interaction enablement, shared learning, mutual cooperation and collective efficacy) foster relational people management in the context of micro and small enterprises of Uganda, an African developing country. Consequently, this study contributes to both theory and literature via the cultural historical activity theory, hence, adding to the scant existing literature on relational agency and relational people management.
Details
Keywords
This chapter is concerned with the question that is indigeneity, and its situation within literary and juridical imaginaries. As a persistently unsettling presence, indigeneity…
Abstract
This chapter is concerned with the question that is indigeneity, and its situation within literary and juridical imaginaries. As a persistently unsettling presence, indigeneity appears outside the law, before the law and beyond the law – indeed, in Derrida's terms, as an evocation of the unconditional. Whereas the law determines indigeneity to recognise it, I propose that its expression in Indigenous literature evokes a Derridean unconditional to which the law must perpetually, if momentarily, respond. This chapter elaborates a conception of indigeneity, as expressed in Indigenous literature, as disruptive and deconstructive of non-Indigenous law, opening its narratives to transformation.
Jeanne Lonergan, Geraldine Mooney Simmie and Joanne Moles
The purpose of this paper is to share findings from a Master's study exploring teacher professional learning needs with the purpose of elucidating the needs of teachers, and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to share findings from a Master's study exploring teacher professional learning needs with the purpose of elucidating the needs of teachers, and mentor teachers, within the school cultural context in the Republic of Ireland. This study coincides with a relentless neo‐liberal drive to outsource most of what was traditionally seen as state investment across all public services, including education.
Design/methodology/approach
The research methodology is a small scale qualitative research study exploring the perceptions of experienced teachers in two secondary schools. It examines the conditions which may account for different levels of engagement in this regard.
Findings
The key findings show very different levels of engagement in school based teacher professional learning in the two secondary schools.
Research limitations/implications
These findings have serious implications for the type of whole school mentoring that needs to be offered within schools at a time when policymakers are mandating teacher professional learning and requiring the development of critical reasoning capacities for all pupils in a global knowledge world.
Originality/value
This study is concerned with the readiness of the experienced teacher to mentor beginning teachers, and student teachers, in ways that value co‐inquiry, care, agency and critical thinking within the ecology of a whole school environment. Mentoring has become a popular construct in everyday usage. The originality of this research lies in the use of productive mentoring as a framework developed by the authors and under continual interrogation.
Details
Keywords
Abayomi O. Ibiyemi, Yasmin Mohd Adnan and Md Nasir Daud
The study aims to build up knowledge for collateral exploration of the classical Delphi survey method for assessing the industrial sustainability-related correction factor using a…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to build up knowledge for collateral exploration of the classical Delphi survey method for assessing the industrial sustainability-related correction factor using a real field study in Nigeria.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper elicits the character and the operational approaches using an example study to provide a critical review of the method. It estimates the correction factor for appraisal purposes by transforming expert opinion into a valid group consensus.
Findings
The work considers the specific parameters of the method, design and analysis for interpretation to prove the reliability and the validity for the research results. Moreover, it emphasises that the validity of the traditional Delphi research demands cautious theoretical and practical applications by the coordinating researcher. The paper establishes the current validity and effectiveness of the classical Delphi method of foresight and streamlines their efficient implementation for theory building despite its numerous weaknesses.
Originality/value
It explores desirable futures for the method while analysing what is possible and probable.
Details
Keywords
Carsten Quesel, Michael Mittag and Guido Moeser
The Delphi study Educate Northwest Helvetia is part of a multi-stakeholder approach to define common challenges and priorities for public schooling in a federal setting. This…
Abstract
Purpose
The Delphi study Educate Northwest Helvetia is part of a multi-stakeholder approach to define common challenges and priorities for public schooling in a federal setting. This paper aims to take stock of the outcome of expert ratings and group discussions.
Design
Based on a literature review of megatrends, 21st century skills and sustainable development goals, the study focused on four domains: digital change, economic change, sociocultural change and ecological change. Opinions of teachers, principals and other experts were collected in the first wave via an online survey (n = 707). In the second wave, findings of the survey were discussed in ten online workshops, and participants refined priorities for schooling 2030 via real-time online scoring. Quantitative data were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.
Findings
Analysis of quantitative data shows an emphasis on soft skills, self-organization, equity and transversal competencies. The enhancement of computational thinking and teaching on sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics are important minority concerns.
Practical implications
The study delivers a manageable set of 12 priorities addressed to cantonal ministries of education, teacher unions, associations of principals and other stakeholders.
Research limitations/implications
Since these priorities are rather abstract, qualitative in-depth research concerning uptake and impact is needed.
Originality/value
This study provides new perspectives for the dialogue on evidence-based policymaking in settings of consensus democracy. It also provides valuable pointers for school improvement and teacher education that can be further explored.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to expand understanding of how Gestalt psychotherapy theory and practice can support the facilitation of change management efforts in organisations.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to expand understanding of how Gestalt psychotherapy theory and practice can support the facilitation of change management efforts in organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology is based on action research approach in which the author has applied Gestalt principles to her work as a change management practitioner. Case study material is used to support the development of an emergent model for change management based on Gestalt psychotherapy theory and praxis.
Findings
This paper emphasises the need to attend in change management efforts to three interrelated capabilities: Sensing, Supporting and Sustaining. Together these emphasise the need to track and stay responsive to the organisational environment; to ensure the right amount of support and challenge is present in the change effort and finally, to provide a focus on experimentation and the embedding of learning for sustainable change.
Research limitations/implications
This contribution is limited by looking at only four cases in the private sector and the current paper should be considered as a preliminary/exploratory research.
Practical implications
This study has two key implications for scholars and practitioners. First, it shows the usefulness of continuous sensing into the phenomenological experience of the organisation throughout the lifetime of a change project. Second, this study shows that learning and experimentation with new ways of being is crucial to an organisation that wants to grow and remain fluid and responsive to its environment.
Originality/value
This article offers a conceptualisation of how the theory and practice of relational Gestalt psychotherapy theory can shape the practice of organisational development practitioners. Its uniqueness lies in that it offers to Gestalt practitioners a sense of the applicability of Gestalt theory to large‐scale organisational interventions; and for non‐Gestalt informed OD practitioners it offers new insights into a theory base that promotes a relational, holistic and emergent view of change.