The changing UK careers landscape : tidal waves, turbulence and transformation

This article explores how the UK careers landscape in each of the four home nations is changing in response to neo-liberal policies. In this context, careers services are increasingly under pressure to demonstrate their added value, impact and returns on investment. As fiscal arrangements tighten and governments state their preferences and priorities for national careers services, differing strategic responses are beginning to emerge. A quasi-market, experimental approach is now the dominant discourse in England, in contrast to differing and complementary arrangements in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The article suggests that insofar as these developments are transforming national careers services, they are also creating significant challenges which require new forms of policy imagery and imagination for high-impact, all-age careers services

Creativity Skills Applied to Earth Science Education: Examples from K-12 Teachers in a Graduate Creativity Class

NOTE: This is a large file, 10.7 mb in size! This article briefly explores different aspects of creativity, and then examines K-12 teachers' reactions to exercises applied to earth science concepts in a graduate creativity class. Different types of puzzle activities centering on geoscience content include a quiz game based on Odyssey of the Mind spontaneous problems, and other exercises related to embedded words, transformed cliches, remotely associated word sets, and wordsmithing. Teachers used visualization for an imaginary interview with a geoscientist, along with personal analogy of an earth science feature. As a culminating activity, teachers fashioned a geoscience curriculum material with a given set of items. Ideas for applying the activities to geoscience classes at various grade levels are included. Educational levels: Graduate or professional, Graduate or professional

\u27I do lots of things that the University would not approve of\u27. What counts as professional knowledge in the eyes of pre-service and beginning teachers -implications of the encounter for the role of teacher educators in pre-service middle school preparati

This paper is an account of teacher educator perceptions of the take-up by beginning teachers of the values and practices advocated in pre-service education. Methodologically grounded in a critical ethnographic account, two teacher educator/researchers retell their understanding of the one-month experience as middle school classroom teachers in an allocated school. The paper examines the consequences of what counts as professional knowledge in the eyes of pre-service and beginning teachers and the implications of the encounter for the role of teacher educators in preservice preparation. The purpose of the research is to consider the well-researched issue of the rejection of academic training (to greater or lesser extents) that is experienced by very many preservice and beginning teachers at some stage after experience in schools. As an exemplary colleague teacher said to us as we negotiated our participation in the school: &quot;I do lots of things that the University would not approve of&quot;. Our argument is that teacher education needs the kind of participatory inquiry represented by the undertaking and methodology of this project. The paper is the \u27primary record\u27 (Carspecken 1996) of the research and works to open the next phase, the dialogical stage of the research process.<br /

“I wanted to be Darcey Bussell”: Motivations and expectations of female dance teachers

Dance, analogous to professional sport, constitutes an interesting occupation in that there are relatively few vocations in which the athleticism of the body is inextricably linked to the ability to perform and teach. Dance-teachers could pursue teaching as a career as a way to remain involved in the physicality of dance to maintain a sense of self as a dancer. Dance-teachers make up a large proportion of the professional dance world in the United Kingdom and yet little is known about their role, training, continuing professional development and motivations to engage in a dance-teaching career. To address this lacuna, research was undertaken with ten female dance-teachers (24 to 71 years). Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data, from which two key themes emerged as salient: (i) staying in dance; (ii) dance teaching as a career: challenges and skills. Pursuing a career in dance-teaching was viewed as a way to maintain a sense of self as a dancer. Participants who had been dance-performers appeared to view teaching as a natural career progression. The complex skills required of a dance-teacher were highlighted and participants positioned dance-teaching as a highly specialist career

Media literacy at all levels: making the humanities more inclusive

The decline of the humanities, combined with the arrival of students focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), represent an opportunity for the development of innovative approaches to teaching languages and literatures. Expanding the instructional focus from traditional humanities students, who are naturally more text-focused, to address the needs of more application-oriented STEM learners ensures that language instructors prepare all students to become analytical and critical consumers and producers of digital media. Training students to question motives both in their own and authentic media messages and to justify their own interpretations results in more sophisticated second language (L2) communication. Even where institutional structures impede comprehensive curriculum reform, individual instructors can integrate media literacy training into their own classes. Tis article demonstrates ways of reaching and retaining larger numbers of students at all levels—if necessary, one course at a time.Published versio