Teachers' Professional Identity: a study into how teachers in one Slovenian primary school talk about their professional identity and work following participation in NLP-based CPD in comparison with other teachers

The study investigates how teachers in one Slovenian primary school talk about their professional identity and work following participation in Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) based CPD in comparison with other teachers. NLP is usually defined as a behavioural model and a set of explicit techniques, developed by Bandler and Grinder (1976) by studying patterns created in interaction between brain, language and body. This study has defined NLP as an approach to developing professional practice through modelling. The background to the study was the researcher's personal experience of being a teacher in the midst of the conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the main aim has been to explore the teachers' subjective experiences and representations of their professional identity and their work with a hope of developing the professional practice. The study examined comparatively two groups of teachers (14 Slovenian primary school teachers) looking for similarities and differences in the way they talk about their professional identity and their work. The epistemological position of the study is interpretivism combined with several overarching frameworks including 'constructive' critical theory and a 'constructive' action research approach. Semi-structured interviews, non-participant structured observations, reflective diaries and video-stimulated interviews were used for data collection and the data was coded both deductively and inductively. The study showed significant differences and some similarities between the two groups of teachers and their way of talking about professional identity and their work. The teachers who attended NLP-based CPD tended to see themselves as nurturers/carers and awakeners, underpinning their professional identity with values such as fun, curiosity and enjoyment. The teachers who did not attend NLP-based CPD emphasized the importance of being an instructor, underpinning it with values such as responsibility, equality and fairness. Evidence suggests that teachers who attended NLP-based CPD talk about themselves as more self-sustained and in more positive terms than other teachers. They also appear more prepared to maintain their professional identity irrespective of personal, social or political changes/critical events. There was also evidence of similarities in the two groups' perception of the teacher identity as being multifaceted and teaching being a calling. The study can have interesting implications for the design of continuing professional development (CPD) courses, where less focus on skills and knowledge and more focus on beliefs, values and identity might be more effective

CONNECTING ARTS ACTIVISM, DIVERSE CREATIVITIES AND EMBODIMENT THROUGH PRACTICE AS RESEARCH

Environmental artists are ecologically and politically motivated to change the way we view our world. Artists undertake the production of art and activism, where the art-making becomes more than art; it becomes activism; a way that allows for raising awareness; a way to retrieve, express and communicate a political message. Here, diverse creativities (including intercultural, interdisciplinary, and artistic creativity) enable forms of authorship with particular kinds of power and capacity. In this chapter, We draw on three activist enquiry practices which embody: (i) intercultural creativity through an activist choreographic practice involving a Greenlandic and Scandinavian dance company; (ii) transdisciplinary creativity through an arts-based environmental education practice inspired by an activist sculpture involving a primary school in the UK; and (ii) artistic creativity inspired by an artist activist residency practice in a Higher Education setting in the UK. Each practice features artist-researcher collaborations. Each practice involves arts as activism. Each practice makes explicit an understanding of the body as inscriptor, where the relationship between the body, power and the authoring of diverse creativities is crucial in the embodiment of arts practice as research and arts education. Each practice as research stimulates reflection and discussion by teachers, students, artists, researchers and policy makers interested in what it might mean to live the arts-as-political-as-embodiment in creating practice as research where arts activism, diverse creativities and embodiment is manifest

The state of play in European coaching & mentoring

This report provides an overview of the main findings from the 2017 European Coaching and Mentoring Research Project, undertaken by Jonathan Passmore and Hazel Brown, in partnership with the EMCC and the wider European coaching and mentoring industry. The study was planned in 2016 and undertaken during a 12-week period, between March and May 2017. This is one of a number reports published. This Executive Report is available free of charge, along with a National Report in countries that achieved over 50 coach or mentor participants. Each National Report is published in the language chosen by of the respective national coaching community. The aim of these national reports is to deepen understanding of coaching and mentoring and to widen engagement with coaching and mentoring.peer-reviewe

NEW MEDIA AND CHANGES IN COMMUNICATION TYPES

From the early social thinkers we find a systematic change in thinking from pure existence in the physical world to interpreting the imagined communities that we create due to our thinking process. Today, we are faced with emphasized changes of the types of mediums on the base of way of communication. Studying these changes in the sphere of media and communication in a given social context, starts from two bases, mutually connected assumptions. First, this studying presents existence and appearance of a new technology and new media, which brings to changes of the communicative types, within, this change is connected with certain type of economy, more precisely with a question of globalization, understood in one wider sense. Second, the contents of the media system are put into question, and from this and the dominant model of communication practice

Building Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Bridges: Where Theory Meets Research and Practice

An open accesse-book of selected articles from 'BIBAC2016 International Conference'BIBACC Publishing, 2017