Building capacity: teachers thinking and working together to create new futures.

This paper is based on research illuminating organisation-wide processes used during a whole school revitalisation process, IDEAS (Innovative Designs for Enhancing Achievement in Schools). It explores the organisation-wide processes that engage teachers in futuristic thinking and the creation of shared meaning. The paper explores how teachers engaging in processes of school revitalisation think and work together to add significant value to their successful practices. The school revitalisation process at the heart of this research centres on the work of teachers and recognises the fundamental importance of teacher leadership in successful school change. Creative organisation-wide processes link personal pedagogical work with the work of the broader professional community of the school. This linking of personal and school wide pedagogical aspirations and understandings provides a foundation for culture building and the creation of new futures. It enables the professional community to build the capacity of the school to add value to classroom and school wide practices - improving teaching and learning as a result

Meaning-filled metaphors enabling schools to create enhanced learning cultures

It is interesting to speculate on metaphor as an instrument capable of facilitating actions leading to powerful consequences. Metaphors remain in the consciousness longer than facts and therefore actions based on specific facts in one context become transferrable to another context through the use of metaphoric symbolism. Current research in schools that have undertaken the Innovative Designs for Enhancing Achievements in Schools (IDEAS) improvement process indicate that collectively developed metaphor use has the dynamic power to facilitate cognitive connections across whole school communities. In so doing, schools engaged in the IDEAS process are developing and utilising significant new knowledge for whole school achievement through cultures of collaboration and commitment. This chapter recognises that when schools are constantly bombarded with the need to undertake substantial changes in practice, the utilisation of a contextual unifying metaphor is capable of assisting wide spread and aligned change processes to unfold

Wine and metaphor: cross-cultural [dis]harmony

When influential Australian wine judge and critic James Halliday describes an Australian 2008 Shiraz as 'an undoubtedly full-bodied wine, with a peacock's tail display of blackberry fruit, dark chocolate and vanillin oak, and with impeccable balance and line, the finish subtle' (Dan Murphy's, 2011, October, p. 7) he endeavours to capture its essence in prose. The use of such expressive and evocative language is intended to conjure visual, emotive and synaesthetic perceptions from his audience. This chapter explores the bond between metaphorical language and wine discourse in the specialised genre of wine tasting notes

The tree of life as a methodological metaphor

The Tree of Life is an ancient motif that appears in many cultures and religions. The Tree is symbolic of the interconnected nature of our world(s) and is often used as a reminder of the sacredness of life and its connection to the earth. This chapter uses the Tree of Life from a Native American worldview as a metaphor for a critical participatory action research methodology. I explore the multifaceted nature of being a practitioner of this methodology from the perspective of a university researcher working with a group of school teachers. Critical participatory action research as a method often is reliant on an emergent design and a practitioner is never quite sure what is around the corner in a project. The Tree of Life metaphor can provide guidance and help the practitioner stay faithful to their original intent and the project's aims

Metaphors in yoga education research

This chapter draws together three seemingly distinct and disparate traditions namely metaphor, educational research and Yoga philosophy and examples how such a synthesis can provide new understanding or appreciation of these fields. As this chapter will demonstrate, however, these traditions have been and remain closely linked. This chapter refers to a qualitative study on how Yoga teachers incorporate the notions of spirituality within their Yoga teacher trainings. Yoga philosophy and its education have utilised metaphor to explain its spiritual underpinnings for a long time. This chapter initially discusses the concept of metaphor and then provides examples of its use within the literature of Yoga. Then, the research project is described. Finally an ancient Hindu model which views the individual as a series of interconnected and interdependent characteristics will be utilised as a metaphor to help provide both a pathway to educate novice Yoga teachers as well as a way to inform the analysis interview data

'Join Us On Our Journey': developing a new model of care for children and young people with type 1 diabetes Final report for NHS Diabetes

The aims of this research were to develop a model of care that will deliver the aspirations of the policy document, ‘Making Every Young Person with Diabetes Matter’ and improve the care provision for children and young people with Type 1 diabetes in England. Children and young people with Type 1 diabetes, their families and professionals, in nine acute trusts throughout the Yorkshire and the Humber region, participated in talking group discussions and individual interviews to find out about their experiences of diabetes care provision. Findings show that there are certain aspects of the care pathway that need to be addressed. In particular, diabetes care, resources, education, psychological support, school/college and transition were found to be the main areas of concern. Recommendations have been made indicating how current practice needs to change if the care of children and young people with Type 1 diabetes is to improve

Schools and civil society : corporate or community governance

School improvement depends upon mediating the cultural conditions of learning as young people journey between their parochial worlds and the public world of cosmopolitan society. Governing bodies have a crucial role in including or diminishing the representation of different cultural traditions and in enabling or frustrating the expression of voice and deliberation of differences whose resolution is central to the mediation of and responsiveness to learning needs. A recent study of governing bodies in England and Wales argues that the trend to corporatising school governance will diminish the capacity of schools to learn how they can understand cultural traditions and accommodate them in their curricula and teaching strategies. A democratic, stakeholder model remains crucial to the effective practice of governing schools. By deliberating and reconciling social and cultural differences, governance constitutes the practices for mediating particular and cosmopolitan worlds and thus the conditions for engaging young people in their learning, as well as in the preparation for citizenship in civil society