Reflections on personal development within a Professional Doctorate: what development framework is appropriate?

In my career I have worked concurrently in academia and professional practice in sport. Having completed a professional doctorate I am now engaged in designing and delivering on DProf programmes. My experiences have led me to question whether current academic personal development frameworks are relevant for DProf learners. Current frameworks, such as the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF), focuses almost exclusively on the development of the student as a researcher. However, my experience suggests that many DProf learners are not undertaking their doctoral journey with the aim of becoming researchers. My own DProf experience highlighted the disconnect between personal ambition and the RDF. My DProf goal was aimed at bridging a gap between theory and practice with the aim of impacting widely on practitioners. I knew that to achieve this outcome I needed to be ‘multi-lingual’. I had to be able to speak the language of both practice and research and be able to effectively translate between the two. The ‘Engagement’ domain of the RDF is the one that was ostensibly most relevant to my ambition. However, within it the idea of ‘professional practice’ is not mentioned. The framework makes limited mention of presenting to ‘non-expert audiences’ and using ‘non-academic’ publication outlets but the primary thrust is about researcher engaging with researcher. In contrast, I believe that to be an effective ‘translator’ requires specific skills. You have to learn to listen to the evolution of professional language, to keep adjusting your message to maintain cultural relevance, to simplify ideas without losing coherence or accuracy. None of these ‘skills’ were touched upon in the framework guiding my DProf journey ergo it did not develop me in relation to my ambition. I suggest that academia needs to rethink its personal development frameworks to address the needs of a widening population of doctoral students

Meeting the challenge of introducing L8 thinking in a diverse context: a new approach.

M2M2 is a company specialising in professional development solutions for large corporate organisations and is working with NATO to support their transformation agenda. NATO identified a need for greater internal research capability and has collaborated with M2M2to design an in-house Professional Development Programme (PDP) in research skills. There are now two cohorts of learners on the programme (n=40). The intent in the programme is to enhance learners’ research ability and prepare them for DProf study. The learners on the programme include both civilian and military staff with extensive professional experience in roles ranging from financial control to military intelligence. Selection on to the programme was by application and as part of the process each learner had to outline a preferred research project that would contribute to NATO’s transformational objectives. The PDP is comprised of three learning themes that focus on core research skills (literature searches, critical writing), transformational thinking (creativity, reflective practice) and critical thinking (research philosophy, design and ethics). Delivery staff are drawn from a range of UK HEIs and all have extensive experience of delivering DProf material. Embedding the programme in the organisation has created three main benefits. Firstly, during the programme PDP learners are utilising enhanced research skills within their primary role without further study. Secondly, the individual learner can commence a DProf journey from within a ‘known’ environment rather than step across into academia immediately. In the early stage of their learning journey they are working within a cohort of similar learners which has increased learner confidence. Finally, the positioning of the PDP ‘in-house’ means it is independent from any specific HEI. M2M2 has constructed a network of supporting HEIs so learners can continue on to access a wide range of DProf structures (e.g. portfolio, thesis etc) and subject specialisms. All of the network HEIs grant RPL for the taught elements of their DProf so work is not repeated whilst learners can access a DProf that is most applicable to their project. Embedding a professional development programme in an organisation rather than an HEI has potential as a mechanism to encourage more organisations to systematically engage with L8 CPD

Towards a concept of Performance Literacy

The development of talent in young athletes is an issue that has been the focus of a considerable volume of research attention globally. The pursuit of international sporting success has been, and remains, a clear goal within national sports policy in many developed countries (de Bosscher, Shibli, Westerbeek, & Bottenburg, 2015). Unfortunately, talent development systems based on instrumental philosophies haven’t necessarily created positive life outcomes for many of the young athletes you have been through those systems. In contrast the concept of physical literacy has long been seen as defining a holistic, positive approach to the development of the child. It’s monist existential approach to pedagogy supports the holistic development of the child through sport rather than focusing on outcomes. However, it remains unclear how the fundamental philosophical approach captured in physical literacy can be translated into talent systems and talent coaching. Currently there seems to be a divide between practice/research focused on physical literacy and practice/research focused on talent development. This paper will report on two complementary strands of practice and research that consider how can we might bridge the gap between the holistic perspective of physical literacy and the instrumental approaches being pursued in talent systems. Drawing from the researchers applied experiences we will consider how sport might better facilitate creating talent environments that develop the whole person as well as the athlete. The paper will present arguments as to why coaching needs to develop the concept of performance literacy to sit alongside the more established concept of physical literacy

Effective Recreation Visitor Communication Strategies: Rock Climbers in the Bitterroot Valley, Montana

A four-stage model o f decisionmaking was investigated in the context o f low-impact practices among rock climbers in the Bitterroot Valley o f Montana. Previous research has suggested that knowing what to do to minimize environmental and social impacts m ay not be the only factor limiting compliance with recommended visitor behaviors. Results from a sample o f climbers at Kootenai Creek indicate that the way people are introduced to the sport has an important influence on attitudes toward low-impact practices. Significant differences were found between those who learned to rock climb indoors and those who learned to rock climb outdoors, as well as between those who were introduced to the sport o f climbing with fixed anchors versus those introduced with removable climbing equipment. Summary recommendations for effective natural resource com munications focus not just on what visitors are being asked to do, but also when, why, and how it is socially appropriate for them to do so

Combining degradations: The effect of background noise on intelligibility of disordered speech

The effect of background noise on intelligibility of disordered speech was assessed. Speech-shaped noise was mixed with neurologically healthy (control) and disordered (dysarthric) speech at a series of signal-to-noise ratios. In addition, bandpass filtered control and dysarthric speech conditions were assessed to determine the effect of noise on both naturally and artificially degraded speech. While significant effects of both the amount of noise and the type of speech were revealed, no interaction between the two factors was observed, in either the broadband or filtered testing conditions. Thus, it appears that there is no multiplicative effect of the presence of background noise on intelligibility of disordered speech relative to control speech. That is, the decrease in intelligibility due to increasing levels of noise is similar for both types of speech, and both types of testing conditions, and the function for dysarthric speech is simply shifted downward due to the inherent source degradations of the speech itself. Last, large-scale online crowdsourcing via Amazon Mechanical Turk was utilized to collect data for the current study. Findings and implications for this data and data collection approach are discussed

Winter visitors to Yellowstone National Park, their value orientations and support for management actions

The idea of a National Park contains a diversity of values and missions. This paper takes a multi-dimensional, context- specific approach to measuring the perceived values of Yellowstone National Park. It is an initial step in recording how perceptions of National Parks are changing over time. Responses of 1064 winter visitors to 24 park value items were factor and cluster analyzed to produce four groups. Examination of the relationship between cluster membership and support / opposition to a variety of management actions showed significant differences for all 19 proposed actions. Groups of visitors with different value orientations showed correspondingly different levels of support for management actions. The National Park Service (and other natural resource agencies) can, therefore, expect to encounter and manage for a diversity of perceived values and conflicting attitudes towards park management and planning

Disordered speech disrupts conversational entrainment: a study of acoustic-prosodic entrainment and communicative success in populations with communication challenges

Conversational entrainment, a pervasive communication phenomenon in which dialogue partners adapt their behaviors to align more closely with one another, is considered essential for successful spoken interaction. While well-established in other disciplines, this phenomenon has received limited attention in the field of speech pathology and the study of communication breakdowns in clinical populations. The current study examined acoustic-prosodic entrainment, as well as a measure of communicative success, in three distinctly different dialogue groups: (i) healthy native vs. healthy native speakers (Control), (ii) healthy native vs. foreign-accented speakers (Accented), and (iii) healthy native vs. dysarthric speakers (Disordered). Dialogue group comparisons revealed significant differences in how the groups entrain on particular acoustic–prosodic features, including pitch, intensity, and jitter. Most notably, the Disordered dialogues were characterized by significantly less acoustic-prosodic entrainment than the Control dialogues. Further, a positive relationship between entrainment indices and communicative success was identified. These results suggest that the study of conversational entrainment in speech pathology will have essential implications for both scientific theory and clinical application in this domain