Purpose – This study explored agentive and sustainable teacher development as part of literacy coaching that employed a reflective framework and video with an apprenticeship…
Abstract
Purpose – This study explored agentive and sustainable teacher development as part of literacy coaching that employed a reflective framework and video with an apprenticeship stance. This chapter examines principles of apprenticeship and the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model to analyze the transition of responsibility for reflection from coach to teacher.
Design/methodology/approach – An earlier seven-month multiple case study of literacy coaching with four secondary level teachers revealed seven joint actions (i.e., revoice, build, ask questions to develop understanding, ask dissonant questions, suggest, disagree, reconceptualize) and four categories of joint action (i.e., directive/consonant, directive/dissonant, responsive/consonant, and responsive/dissonant) within a model of joint action for literacy coaching (Reichenberg, 2018). This analysis mapped those joint actions onto the GRR model (McVee, Shanahan, Hayden, Boyd, & Pearson, 2018; Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). This chapter explicates reasoning for variability in responsibility and the potential relationship between variability and the development of teachers’ thinking and action through in-depth analysis of a single coaching session. Examples from other teachers’ coaching sessions are included.
Findings – Synthesis of the two models shows that joint actions initiated by the coach that were directive/dissonant fell on the left side of the GRR model with primary coach responsibility. Actions initiated by the coach that were classified as directive/consonant came next on the journey toward the middle, followed by responsive/dissonant actions. Responsive/consonant actions encompassed the middle region of shared responsibility. The same actions initiated by the teacher mirrored this progression. Principles of apprenticeship in this gradual release of responsibility highlight the bi-directionality of expertise in situated action informed by historical and dynamic context (Mercer, 2008). Evidence of teachers’ growing agency and sustainability were present in joint actions they initiated within the context of literacy coaching.
Research limitations/implications – Analysis of the actions of a literacy coach and teacher as directive, responsive, consonant, and dissonant add complexity to the discussion about how to transfer responsibility for reflection from coaches to teachers. Awareness of how joint actions map onto the GRR model can inform coaches’ and teachers’ decisions as they thoughtfully move toward greater teacher agency within coaching interaction.
Practical implications – The reflective framework employed in this study is applicable to a variety of settings such as instructional coaching across the disciplines, coaching by in-service literacy specialists, and the preparation of pre-service literacy coaches. The model of joint action for analyzing coaching interaction could be used by in-service literacy coaches, pre-service literacy coaches, and teachers who are being coached.
Originality/value – This chapter analyzes the transition of responsibility for reflection from coach to teacher. Principles of both the GRR model and apprenticeship theory provide a theoretical explanation for how these teachers achieved greater agency and sustainable development of a reflective stance.
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Zeynep Aksehirli, Yakov Bart, Kwong Chan and Koen Pauwels
In this conceptual essay, the purpose of this paper is to argue that the structure of databases and other information systems provides valuable information beyond their content…
Abstract
Purpose
In this conceptual essay, the purpose of this paper is to argue that the structure of databases and other information systems provides valuable information beyond their content. The author contends that reading databases – as a separate, distinct activity from retrieving and reading the documents that databases contain – is an under-studied form of human-information interaction. Because the act of reading databases encourages awareness, reflection, and control over information systems, the author aligns the author’s proposal with “slow” principles, as exemplified by the slow food movement.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents an extended argument to demonstrate the value of reading a database. Reading a database involves understanding the relationship between database structure and database content as an interpretation of the world. For example, when a supermarket puts vermicelli in the pasta section but rice vermicelli in the Asian section, the supermarket suggests that rice vermicelli is more “Asian” than “noodle.” To construct the author’s argument, the author uses examples that range from everyday, mundane activities with information systems (such as using maps and automated navigation systems) to scientific and technical work (systematic reviews of medical evidence).
Findings
The slow, interpretively focused information interactions of reading databases complement the “fast information” approach of outcome-oriented retrieval. To facilitate database reading activities, research should develop tools that focus user attention on the application of database structure to database contents. Another way of saying this is that research should exploit the interactive possibilities of metadata, either human-created or algorithmically generated.
Originality/value
This paper argues that information studies research focuses too heavily on seeking and retrieval. Seeking and retrieval are just two of the many interactions that constitute our everyday activities with information. Reading databases is an area particularly ripe with design possibilities.
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Putting engineering subjects into the school curriculum is not the best way to get more boys interested in technology. This is the opinion of Sir Patrick Linstead, Rector of…
Abstract
Putting engineering subjects into the school curriculum is not the best way to get more boys interested in technology. This is the opinion of Sir Patrick Linstead, Rector of Imperial College of Science and Technology. In his presidential address to the Association for Science Education, he warned against further specialisation in schools. He told 2,000 science teachers meeting in London last month: ‘Personally, I am against the idea of having an engineering sixth as well as a science sixth.’
Olof Sundin and Jenny Johannisson
To show that the neo‐pragmatist position of Richard Rorty, when combined with a sociocultural perspective, provides library and information science (LIS) with a forceful…
Abstract
Purpose
To show that the neo‐pragmatist position of Richard Rorty, when combined with a sociocultural perspective, provides library and information science (LIS) with a forceful epistemological tool.
Design/methodology/approach
Literature‐based conceptual analysis of: historical development of pragmatism in relation to other epistemological positions; neo‐pragmatism as a non‐dualist, both purpose and communication oriented, epistemology; and a sociocultural perspective within pedagogy, originated from the Russian researcher Lev Vygotsky.
Findings
Brought together, a neo‐pragmatist, sociocultural perspective contributes to a focus on people's actions through the use of linguistic and physical tools. As a tangible example of how neo‐pragmatism can be applied as an epistemological tool within LIS, information seeking seen as communicative participation is discussed. This article unites a perspective on information seeking as communicative participation with the neo‐pragmatist concepts of “tools” and “communities of justification”. The article is concluded by an assessment of neo‐pragmatism as an epistemological position within LIS, including those research issues that arise from this position and that are introduced along the way.
Practical implications
In its focus on usability, the neo‐pragmatist position provides a possible bridge between academic and other professional practices in the field of LIS.
Originality/value
Provides, through the means of neo‐pragmatism, an argument for the necessity of epistemological argumentation within LIS.
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Johnmarshall Reeve and Sung Hyeon Cheon
Our ongoing program of research works with teachers to help them become more autonomy supportive during instruction and hence more able to promote students’ classroom motivation…
Abstract
Purpose
Our ongoing program of research works with teachers to help them become more autonomy supportive during instruction and hence more able to promote students’ classroom motivation and engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
We have published five experimentally based, longitudinally designed, teacher-focused intervention studies that have tested the effectiveness and educational benefits of an autonomy-supportive intervention program (ASIP).
Findings
Findings show that (1) teachers can learn how to become more autonomy supportive and less controlling toward students, (2) students of the teachers who participate in ASIP report greater psychological need satisfaction and lesser need frustration, (3) these same students report and behaviorally display a wide range of important educational benefits, such as greater classroom engagement, (4) teachers benefit as much from giving autonomy support as their students do from receiving it as teachers show large postintervention gains in outcomes such as teaching efficacy and job satisfaction, and (5) these ASIP-induced benefits are long lasting as teachers use the ASIP experience as a professional developmental opportunity to upgrade the quality of their motivating style.
Originality/value
Our ASIP helps teachers learn how to better support their students’ autonomy during instruction. The value of this teaching skill can be seen in teachers’ and students’ enhanced classroom experience and functioning.
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Explains the background behind the Business Expansion Scheme (BES).Considers how BES can be used for residential development under theassured tenancy rules. Considers the way…
Abstract
Explains the background behind the Business Expansion Scheme (BES). Considers how BES can be used for residential development under the assured tenancy rules. Considers the way general property development can be carried out within the parameters of BES. Concludes that BES lends itself well to assured tenancy but outside that ambit, its complications make it less attractive.
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Educators have had good reason to be concerned with social justice in a context where diversity has become more pronounced in both our schools and communities, with widening…
Abstract
Educators have had good reason to be concerned with social justice in a context where diversity has become more pronounced in both our schools and communities, with widening divisions between the advantaged and the disadvantaged. Internationally, increasing emphasis has been placed on utilizing the role of school leadership to address issues of social justice and equality, within a scenario where comparative studies of the performance of educational systems dominate the policy imagination globally, thus leading to increased pressure on school systems. This chapter presents a problematization of the social justice concept within education as presented in the literature, while setting out to critique this concept as an educational goal, as well as the role educational leadership is expected to play in the promotion of equity and social justice discourses through the lens of Actor-Network Theory (ANT). This theoretical chapter has implications for theory, policy, and practice.
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Peter Bramley and Heather Hullah
The article by Buckley and Caple which described the concept of the Training Audit seemed to us to be both interesting and stimulating. So much so that we used it as a discussion…
Abstract
The article by Buckley and Caple which described the concept of the Training Audit seemed to us to be both interesting and stimulating. So much so that we used it as a discussion paper on two workshops designed to help training managers to evaluate training. When we were preparing for the workshops, we felt some unease with the scope of the article, and this was confirmed in the workshops themselves.
Xiaohui Liu and Chang Shu
This paper investigates the causal links between financial development and economic growth in China by employing the Granger causality test within a VARECM framework…
Abstract
This paper investigates the causal links between financial development and economic growth in China by employing the Granger causality test within a VARECM framework. Bi‐directional causality is found between financial development and growth, suggesting that economic growth and financial development are mutually reinforcing under the open‐door policy.