Policy Reservations: Early Childhood Workforce Registries and Alternative Pedagogy Teacher Preparation

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Education, 2015Due to narrowly defined quality measures, teacher preparation in Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio and LifeWays pedagogies is not recognized in many state ECE professional development systems. The problem is compounded by Quality Rating and Improvement System’s child care program ratings, which rely on teacher qualifications as a component of program ratings. Limitations, due to philosophical dissimilarities pertaining to the spirit of the child, ill-fitting measurements of quality, and policy exclusion make it difficult for alternative pedagogy communities to meet qualifications or to obtain scores that count. This is exacerbated by narrow definitions regarding national versus regional accreditation in teacher preparation programs.Using a transformative, mixed-methods approach, this study asks, “What is the role and relevance of alternative pedagogy teacher preparation to the professional development system, and where does it fit in the current policy landscape nationwide?” As a follow up question, the study seeks to answer, “What is the process for change?” Through the use of surveys, interviews, and a cultural context model, a way forward is mapped. Registry policy makers in 28 states and 46 teacher preparation directors, across three types of alternative-pedagogy teacher preparation programs, assisted in data collection, resulting in a recognition baseline. Public sources were used to triangulate a composite snapshot of this national policy situation, demonstrating appropriate policy inclusion in six out of 17 states’ career pathways and/or data collection in ECE workforce registries. Cumulative data revealed alternative pedagogy teacher recognition levels across the country and revealed how relevant policies evolved to become system inclusive. The study concludes by inviting community representatives to respond and to share their experiences and thoughts. Actionable study outcomes, community-developed recommendations, and an advocacy map were circulated in three of four alternative pedagogy communities. Using a cultural equity paradigm, the study elucidates power relationships between alternative pedagogy teacher preparation and national/state efforts towards ECE professional development and quality improvement policy systems, illuminating where federal and state policy/initiatives are shaping, responding to, and limiting the alternative-pedagogy teacher preparation pipeline in the United States. Recommended courses of action encourage policy collaboration and a cultural shift from policy power over, to power with policy

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Technology and Australia's Future: New technologies and their role in Australia's security, cultural, democratic, social and economic systems

Chapter 1. Introducing technology -- Chapter 2. The shaping of technology -- Chapter 3. Prediction of future technologies -- Chapter 4. The impacts of technology -- Chapter 5. Meanings, attitudes and behaviour -- Chapter 6. Evaluation -- Chapter 7. Intervention -- Conclusion - adapt or wither.This report was commisioned by Australian Council of Learned Academies

An empirical investigation in the decision-making processes of new infrastructure development

The aim of this research is to present and discuss the development and deployment of Lean thinking models and techniques applied to improve the decision-making within the planning and design processes of new infrastructures, within a healthcare organisation. In the UK, healthcare organisations are responsible for planning, designing, building and managing their own infrastructures, through which their services are delivered to the local population (Kagioglou & Tzortzopoulos, 2010). These processes are long and complex, involving a large range of stakeholders who are implicated within the strategic decision-making. It is understood that the NHS lacks models and frameworks to support the decision-making associated with their new infrastructure development and that ad-hoc methods, used at local level, lead to inefficiencies and weak performances, despite the contractual efforts made throughout the PPP and PFI schemes (Baker & Mahmood, 2012; Barlow & Koberle-Gaiser, 2008). This is illustrated by the long development cycle time – it can take up to 15 years from conception to completion of new infrastructure. Hence, in collaboration with an NHS organisation, an empirical action research embedded within a mixed-methodology approach, has been designed to analyse the root-cause problems and assess to what extent Lean thinking can be applied to the built environment, to improve the speed and fitness for purpose of new infrastructures. Firstly, this multiphase research establishes the main issues responsible for the weak process performances, via an inductive-deductive cycle, and then demonstrates how Lean thinking inspired techniques: Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) using ER and AHP, Benchmarking and Quality Function Deployment (QFD), have been implemented to optimise the decision-making in order to speed up the planning and design decision-making processes and to enhance the fitness for purpose of new infrastructures. Academic literatures on Lean thinking, decision theories and built environment have been reviewed, in order to establish a reliable knowledge base of the context and to develop relevant solutions. The bespoke models developed have been tested and implemented in collaboration with a local healthcare organisation in UK, as part of the construction of a £15 million health centre project. A substantial set of qualitative and quantitative data has been collected during the 450 days, which the researcher was granted full access, plus a total of 25 sets of interviews, a survey (N=85) and 25 experimental workshops. This mixed-methodology research is composed of an exploratory sequential design and an embedded-experiment variant, enabling the triangulation of different data, methods and findings to be used to develop an innovative solution, thus improving the new infrastructure development process. The emerging developed conceptual model represents a non-prescriptive approach to planning and designing new healthcare infrastructures, using Lean thinking principles to optimise the decision-making and reduce the complexity. This Partial & Bespoke Lean Construction Framework (PBLCF) has been implemented as good practice by the healthcare organisation, to speed up the planning phases and to enhance the quality of the design and reduce the development cost, in order to generate a competitive edge. It is estimated that a reduction of 22% of the cycle time and 7% of the cost is achievable. This research makes a contribution by empirically developing and deploying a partial Lean implementation into the healthcare‟s built environment, and by providing non-prescriptive models to optimise the decision-making underpinning the planning and design of complex healthcare infrastructure. This has the potential to be replicated in other healthcare organisations and can also be adapted to other construction projects