Influences concerning faculty use of technology to teach distance education

The purpose of this study is to examine pedagogical and professional beliefs that might illuminate influences to higher education faculty decisions to teach distance education using technology

“We have been magnified for years - now you are under the microscope!": Co-researchers with learning disabilities created an online survey to challenge public understanding of learning disabilities

Public attitudes towards learning disabilities (LDs) are generally reported as positive, inclusive and empathetic. However, these findings do not reflect the lived experiences of people with LDs. To shed light on this disparity, a team of co-researchers with LDs created the first online survey to challenge public understanding of LDs, asking questions in ways that are important to them and represent how they see themselves. Here, we describe and evaluate the process of creating an accessible survey platform and an online survey in a research team consisting of academic and non-academic professionals with and without LDs or autism. Through this inclusive research process, the co-designed survey met the expectations of the co-researchers and was well-received by the initial survey respondents. We reflect on the co-researchers’ perspectives following the study completion, and consider the difficulties and advantages we encountered deploying such approaches and their potential implications on future survey data analysis

The Impact of School Eating Environments on the Wellbeing of Children Transitioning from Full-Day Childcare to Full-Day Kindergarten

This study explored the impact of school eating environments on the wellbeing of children in the Full Day Kindergarten (FDK) Early Learning Program in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and compared childrens experiences of eating in FDK with those in childcare settings. Drawing on critiques of dominant approaches to evaluation, the study employed a wellbeing model that includes material security, relationship, engagement and meaning and used the Mosaic approach to participatory research with young children. Structured across three phases, the study followed a cohort of children in three childcare centre-school pairings as they transitioned from full day childcare to full day kindergarten. Phase 1 involved full day observations, self-reported wellbeing, semi-structured interviews and drawings in the childcare centre. Phase 2 involved two visits and semi-structured interviews in the after-school care setting in the first months of kindergarten. Phase 3, like phase 1, involved full day observations, self-reported wellbeing and semi-structured interviews in the classroom setting throughout the final six months of junior kindergarten (the first year of schooling in the province of Ontario, for children who turned four by December 31 of the school year). Whereas participants reported overwhelmingly positive feelings about lunch time in the childcare setting, reports in the FDK setting showed greater variation with few positive responses relating to the lunch experience itself. In interviews in the school setting, the child participants described not having enough time to eat their lunches, feeling sad that staff worked to prevent them from talking, and being happy about being able to choose some of the items in their lunches. Both parents and staff expressed concerns regarding the kindergarten eating environment and observations revealed the emergence of safety concerns, declining nutritional quality and confirmed both child and adult concerns. The study signals an opportunity for young children to meaningfully participate in wellbeing analyses of their environments. Furthermore, analysis suggests that the kindergarten eating environment is suboptimal and could be improved through the implementation of regulations and practices present in the childcare setting

Negotiating place: an exploration of the educational potential of practising spatial design with primary and secondary pupils in three schools in England

This thesis investigates the educational potential of practising spatial design within primary and secondary schools in England. Four gaps in the literature were identified: the possibilities of children engaging pro-actively in the relationship between architecture and education; a theoretical and empirical understanding of ‘negotiation’ as a model of transformative participation; accounts of participatory design that interrogate and make visible the messy and complex; and qualitative analytic approaches that are relational and spatial. The thesis first develops a relational understanding of the practice of spatial design as inescapably contingent and political, able to operate in both dominant and nondominant modes, each with different educational purposes and potentials. Second, it investigates how the mode of spatial design is operationalised through exploring empirically how different negotiations manifest and unfold during its practice, including the effects of the methods and methodology used. The empirical research drew on a Design Anthropological approach, supported by elements of Critical Art Practice, and was undertaken through the researcher’s active role in three spatial design projects, each using various design methods: explorative walks, examining precedent projects, drawing, and physical modelling. Two took place in English primary schools and one in an English secondary. In this study, material, care, and time are identified as key elements of method and approach that directly affect the mode of participation operationalised within spatial design practices. The study also demonstrates how schools continually produce and are produced-by negotiations between the human, material, policy, regulatory, and financial threads that comprise them; how these negotiations manifest and unfold during design and inhabitation through uses of material, care, and time; and how the particular qualities of materials, care, and time used are thus central to the nature of negotiations and by-extension practices of design and inhabitation. The spatial analytic approach taken shows architects and educationalists the importance of attending to what happens during spatial design, not simply its methods and outcomes, and offers a means to do so. Architects and designers will realise through this study that reflexive, attentional participation is essential to developing relational understandings of inhabitation within schools, and that serious consideration of material-, care-, and time-use is fundamental to this. The study demonstrates to educationalists and policy makers the negotiated, contingent nature of architecture and education’s relationship and thus the value of practising spatial design in schools as a means to continually raise and engage with questions concerning the how, why, and where of education.The PhD is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), under the Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) scheme. It is the third of three doctoral studies to unfold within a collaboration between Dr Catherine Burke – an historian of education in the Faulty of Education at the University of Cambridge – and Dominic Cullinan – a practising architect and partner at SCABAL, a small architecture practice specialising in the design of educational environments, with a focus on schools

Teaching Strategies and Adaptations of Teachers in Multiculturally Diverse Classrooms in Seventh-day Adventist K-8 Schools in North America

Problem. The rapid growth of diverse populations is affecting the educational system, and teachers often have not received training in multicultural education. The goal of this study is to document the multicultural teaching experiences of elementary Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) teachers in the United States and Canada. Method. Survey questionnaires were sent to elementary school teachers to ascertain training, goals, paradigms, and challenges in teaching students from diverse cultures. Through a purposive sampling process, three teachers were chosen for in-depth interviews and observation. Results. Seventy percent of the 1,780 questionnaires sent out were returned. Many teachers reported receiving training in their formal education or during in-service training while 40% reported never having any training. Five multicultural paradigms describe the strategies used by the teachers. The self-concept development paradigm and the ethnic additive paradigm were used by the majority of the teachers. The least used paradigm was the language awareness paradigm. Observations and interviews corroborated the data from the survey. The various paradigms (Banks, 1994) were not closely related to goals (Nel, 1993). The greatest challenges experienced by teachers were language related. Other challenges included teachers’ sensitivity to students’ needs, difficulty in dealing with parents, and several learning barriers. Learning barriers included students’ low self-esteem; lack of academic preparation or motivation; fear of failure, lack of role models; race rivalry and prejudices. Conclusions. The teachers in this study tend to primarily utilize the human relations approach in their multicultural classrooms rather than the social reconstructionist approach

Designing personalised, authentic and collaborative learning with mobile devices: Confronting the challenges of remote teaching during a pandemic.

This article offers teachers a digital pedagogical framework, research-inspired and underpinned by socio-cultural theory, to guide the design of personalised, authentic and collaborative learning scenarios for students using mobile devices in remote learning settings during this pandemic. It provides a series of freely available online resources underpinned by our framework, including a mobile learning toolkit, a professional learning app, and robust, validated surveys for evaluating tasks. Finally, it presents a set of evidence-based principles for effective innovative teaching with mobile devices

Research-Informed Teaching in a Global Pandemic: "Opening up" Schools to Research

The teacher-research agenda has become a significant consideration for policy and professional development in a number of countries. Encouraging research-based teacher education programmes remains an important goal, where teachers are able to effectively utilize educational research as part of their work in school settings and to reflect on and enhance their professional development. In the last decade, teacher research has grown in importance across the three i’s of the teacher learning continuum: initial, induction and in-service teacher education. This has been brought into even starker relief with the global spread of COVID-19, and the enforced and emergency, wholesale move to digital education. Now, perhaps more than ever, teachers need the perspective and support of research-led practice, particularly in how to effectively use Internet technologies to mediate and enhance learning, teaching and assessment online, and new blended modalities for education that must be physically distant. The aim of this paper is to present a number of professional development open educational systems which exist or are currently being developed to support teachers internationally, to engage with, use and do research. Exemplification of the opening up of research to schools and teachers is provided in the chapter through reference to the European Union-funded Erasmus + project, BRIST: Building Research Infrastructures for School Teachers. BRIST is developing technology to coordinate and support teacher-research at a European level

Journalism: New Challenges

In seeking to identify and critique a range of the most pressing challenges confronting journalism today, this book examines topics such as: the role of the journalist in a democratic society, including where questions of truth and free speech are concerned; the changing priorities of newspaper, radio, television, magazine, photography, and online news organisations; the political, economic and technological pressures on news and editorial independence; the impact of digital convergence on the forms and practices of newsgathering and storytelling; the dynamics of professionalism, such as the negotiation of impartiality and objectivity in news reports; journalists’ relationships with their sources, not least where the ‘spin’ of public relations shapes what’s covered, how and why; evolving genres of news reporting, including politics, business, sports, celebrity, documentary, war and peace journalism; journalism’s influence on its audiences, from moral panics to the trauma of representing violence and tragedy; the globalisation of news, including the role of international news agencies; new approaches to investigative reporting in a digital era; and the rise of citizen journalism, live-blogging and social media, amongst many others. The chapters are written in a crisp, accessible style, with a sharp eye to the key ideas, concepts, issues and debates warranting critical attention. Each ends with a set of ‘Challenging Questions’ to explore as you develop your own perspective, as well as a list of ‘Recommended Reading’ to help push the conversation onwards. May you discover much here that stimulates your thinking and, with luck, prompts you to participate in lively debate about the future of journalism