The Use of Dialogue in Education: Research, Implementation and Personal/Professional Evaluation

As I reflect back on my learning through the Program in Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT), The Dialogue Process course (CCT 616) has been the pivotal experience for my current research and future career direction. Research and observations I have made in my work show that dialogue practice in elementary classrooms leads to overall learning through community building in the classroom, and to more effective student thinking and meta-cognitive strategies. Although I believe in the importance of dialogue in education, I have struggled with implementing it into my own teaching. The struggle itself has stimulated a deeper examination of the obstacles as I see them. It has also required personal and professional reflection on my process through CCT, and communicating my ideal vision of dialogue in the larger scheme of my work and life. My synthesis highlights my learning experiences through the CCT program and the influences it had on my career. It discusses some of the critical points of my experiences in connection to my specific interest in Dialogue. Without this reflection on past learning, my current reflection would be impossible. Naming those skills and ideals that I have drawn from my coursework, has enabled me to reconnect with my passion for education itself, as well as the value the dialogue process holds for learning and teaching. By asking myself the question of why I am finding implementation of dialogue so difficult, I’ve been able to answer this and other questions relating to the question of where I am headed with my professional life and why

Racial / Ethnic and Gender Diversity in the Orchestra Field

For all cultural institutions, knowledge and information are becoming critical tools in the work of navigating a course through this new landscape. In particular, there is a recognized value in learning from the past in order to inform action for the future. By offering a new baseline, Racial / Ethnic and Gender Diversity in the Orchestra Field provides a clear and comprehensive picture of the demographic composition of orchestras: musicians, conductors, board members, and staff. Of course, each orchestra has its own unique story to tell. Nonetheless, the field-wide data in this report provides an essential foundation for analysis, understanding, debate, and action.Our report looks back over nearly four decades of orchestra demographics data to present an analysis intended to promote learning and action among orchestra stakeholders, inform public dialogue, and serve as a stimulus for further research. In this report, we present an analysis of the following data sets:Musicians: Race and Ethnicity (1980-2014); Gender (1978-2014)Conductors: Race and Ethnicity (2006-2016); Gender (2006-2016)Staff: Race and Ethnicity (2010-2014); Gender (2010-2014)Board Members: Race andEthnicity (2010-2014); Gender (2010-2014)Our analysis is shaped by available data, and the terms that we use to categorize people by race, ethnicity, and gender reflect those employed within our data sources

Creative constructions - a plunge into the mind of the inspired

The thesis explores literature on creativity research through separate dialogues with two artists. It links together theories on creativity with experiences from within a creative profession through the participation of a musician and a painter. The background research consists of scientific publications singled out with potential parallels with participant’s everyday life in mind. The intention is to deepen the understanding of creativity as a phenomenon through the discussions as support for the writer’s future profession of art education. The overview of the literature on creativity is carried out with possible relevance for the dialogues and participants in mind. The dialogue is used as a tool for a deepened understanding of the topics. The participants share their experiences on creative processes and receive information on creativity research. The dialogue as a method is chosen to enable a flow of thoughts that a structured interview might not permit. The quoted dialogues are present within the paper as cut-out side stories with highlighted parts of interesting thoughts. The discussions were carried out in Finnish and English. The thesis consists of seven main chapters. The first chapter introduces the intentions of the thesis, the participants of the dialogues, and makes the distinction between everyday creativity and innovation. The second chapter locates creativity within the domain, the field and the person, and explores the interaction of these. The third chapter traces back interest in a domain through a childhood experience and explores the characteristics of a creative mind. The fourth chapter dives into different ways of problem solving. In the fifth chapter the process from an idea to the final evaluation of a finished work is presented. The sixth chapter illuminates two areas of positive psychology: intrinsic motivation and the flow-experience. The seventh and final chapter summarises the chosen parts of creativity research, reflects upon the relevance of the knowledge for the writer as a teacher and evaluates the dialogue as a method. Several interesting approaches to creativity research have been rejected due to the abstract nature and the inability to tie them to the dialogue. The dialogue has been an effective tool but not without difficulties. Exceptions were made in order to cover all of the desired information. The approach broadened the understanding of the complex topic. It illuminated the creativity research and offered a window into the mind of the participants. The creativity research became approachable and received a position in reality. The deepened knowledge on the subject became a tool for teaching and positioned art education within creativity as a wider phenomenon

Understanding the Skills Necessary for Advanced Practice Nurses in Oncology to Deliver Bad News to Patients with Cancer: The Results of a Delphi Analysis

Overcoming the dichotomy of providing bad news in a compassionate, empathetic manner that strengthens dialogue and enhances a caring environment is the ultimate challenge advanced practice nurses (APN) face in oncology. This study aims to understand the skills necessary for APNs in oncology to deliver bad news to patients with cancer. Using a Delphi analysis, an established method of developing a consensus, a novel, patient-centered survey tool has been developed designed to extract as much information as possible about the present issue from an expert panel. Oncology APNs were recruited via Facebook. The survey tool was administered using a web-based survey tool. Content analysis was applied to the stories and responses to open-ended questions that panelists submitted. Results were collected and then presented back to the panel for ranking. Twelve expert panelists reached a consensus on a practice-based method focused on teaching empathy and self-awareness. The results of this pilot project serve as the foundation for future research and for the development of a curriculum to educate new APNs or those new to the field of oncology

Scholars Forum: A New Model For Scholarly Communication

Scholarly journals have flourished for over 300 years because they successfully address a broad range of authors' needs: to communicate findings to colleagues, to establish precedence of their work, to gain validation through peer review, to establish their reputation, to know the final version of their work is secure, and to know their work will be accessible by future scholars. Eventually, the development of comprehensive paper and then electronic indexes allowed past work to be readily identified and cited. Just as postal service made it possible to share scholarly work regularly and among a broad readership, the Internet now provides a distribution channel with the power to reduce publication time and to expand traditional print formats by supporting multi-media options and threaded discourse. Despite widespread acceptance of the web by the academic and research community, the incorporation of advanced network technology into a new paradigm for scholarly communication by the publishers of print journals has not materialized. Nor have journal publishers used the lower cost of distribution on the web to make online versions of journals available at lower prices than print versions. It is becoming increasingly clear to the scholarly community that we must envision and develop for ourselves a new, affordable model for disseminating and preserving results, that synthesizes digital technology and the ongoing needs of scholars. In March 1997, with support from the Engineering Information Foundation, Caltech sponsored a Conference on Scholarly Communication to open a dialogue around key issues and to consider the feasibility of alternative undertakings. A general consensus emerged recognizing that the certification of scholarly articles through peer review could be "decoupled" from the rest of the publishing process, and that the peer review process is already supported by the universities whose faculty serve as editors, members of editorial boards, and referees. In the meantime, pressure to enact regressive copyright legislation has added another important element. The ease with which electronic files may be copied and forwarded has encouraged publishers and other owners of copyrighted material to seek means for denying access to anything they own in digital form to all but active subscribers or licensees. Furthermore, should publishers retain the only version of a publication in a digital form, there is a significant risk that this material may eventually be lost through culling little-used or unprofitable back-files, through not investing in conversion expense as technology evolves, through changes in ownership, or through catastrophic physical events. Such a scenario presents an intolerable threat to the future of scholarship

How to Transform Food Systems: 7 Calls to Action

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food has developed seven bold Calls to Action that we believe are critical pathways for creating a better future of food. How to Transform Food Systems: 7 Calls to Action presents this collection. Elevated time and again by our members, partners, allies, and those we have collaborated with over the last eight years, each of the Calls to Action address the critical underlying structures that hold back much-needed systems transformation. These statements crystalize all of our dialogue and research into seven practical pathways designed to stimulate local and global action, and accelerate much-needed and deep structural change:Ensure inclusive, participatory approaches to governance as a way to address the structural inequities in food systems.Increase research for the public good that emphasizes indivisible ecological, health, social, and economic goals.Account for the environmental, social, and health impacts of food systems policies and practices in order to inform better decision-making.Direct public sector investment toward ecologically-beneficial forms of farming, healthy food, and resilient livelihoods and communities.Unlock investment opportunities in sustainable food systems and align private, philanthropic, and multilateral funders with national food systems actors.Create enabling environments where agroecology and regenerative approaches flourish.Promote nutritious, sustainable, whole-food diets adapted to local ecosystems and socio-cultural contexts.To understand how the Calls to Action can be acted upon, we share an illustrative story of an initiative drawn from our Beacons of Hope program of work. The Beacons of Hope initiatives showcase the groundswell of people transforming food systems and each is an inspiring example and provides evidence that transformation is possible

Software-based dialogue systems: Survey, taxonomy and challenges

The use of natural language interfaces in the field of human-computer interaction is undergoing intense study through dedicated scientific and industrial research. The latest contributions in the field, including deep learning approaches like recurrent neural networks, the potential of context-aware strategies and user-centred design approaches, have brought back the attention of the community to software-based dialogue systems, generally known as conversational agents or chatbots. Nonetheless, and given the novelty of the field, a generic, context-independent overview on the current state of research of conversational agents covering all research perspectives involved is missing. Motivated by this context, this paper reports a survey of the current state of research of conversational agents through a systematic literature review of secondary studies. The conducted research is designed to develop an exhaustive perspective through a clear presentation of the aggregated knowledge published by recent literature within a variety of domains, research focuses and contexts. As a result, this research proposes a holistic taxonomy of the different dimensions involved in the conversational agents’ field, which is expected to help researchers and to lay the groundwork for future research in the field of natural language interfaces.With the support from the Secretariat for Universities and Research of the Ministry of Business and Knowledge of the Government of Catalonia and the European Social Fund. The corresponding author gratefully acknowledges the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Banco Santander for the inancial support of his predoctoral grant FPI-UPC. This paper has been funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación under project / funding scheme PID2020-117191RB-I00 / AEI/10.13039/501100011033.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Placing student voices at the heart of institutional dialogue

This article is based on a workshop delivered by the two authors at the SEDA Spring Conference 2008 on Engaging with Student Expectations (Flint and Oxley, 2008)