Teachers’ experiences as practitioner researchers in secondary schools: A comparative study of Singapore and NSW

The aim of this study was to illuminate teachers’ experiences as practitioner researchers in secondary schools in NSW and Singapore to explore to what extent their experiences are similar or different and how context - such as differences in culture or policy – are factors in shaping teachers’ experiences. Practitioner research is undertaken in-situ and thus will look very different under different educational regimes. As Schatzki (2005) and later Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008) remind us the “sayings” and “doings” of practitioner research are all mediated by the historical circumstances that underpin them. Adopting the philosophies of Schatzki and Freire, this thesis explores what teachers think and feel about doing practitioner research; their understanding of policy; their motivation for doing research; the types of research they do; the type of learning and support they receive; the difficulties they face; and whether they find the experience beneficial or not. This interpretive case study offers perspectives from two different academic and educational communities and involved 42 participants, including academics, policy makers and teachers. Teachers have considerable agency to shape practices and change their immediate classroom practice but function in a world that is largely pre-formed, meta-practices acting to prefigure, enable or constrain practices (Kemmis, 2009; Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Schatzki, 2002, 2010). The thesis argues that sufficient differences existed between the two sites explored so that practitioner research was prefigured and remodelled distinctively in each context. Definitions and understandings of practitioner research varied greatly between respondents within each culture. These definitions and understandings in turn were often inconsistent with extant definitions in the literature, thereby provoking questions about the distinction between professional learning and research. Respondents often did not have sufficient common background knowledge to be able to agree about what practitioner research was in words (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008, p.53). Their “sayings” and “doings” and the way they related to one another were not “bundled” together in a characteristic way (Schatzki, 2002) nor were they “mutually intelligible” (2006, p.1868). Practitioner research occurred across and within the two settings as a series of disparate practices, the two educational bureaus, sometimes even different regions or schools, adopting different research paradigms, assumptions and orientations. Accordingly, practitioner research was innate to the setting in which it was practised. But as a broad generalisation, in Singapore, research was often used in schools to confirm the effectiveness of an intervention rather than to explore an issue (Tan, Macdonald & Rossi, 2009) and there was a tendency to favour a scientific or quasi-experimental research design and quantitative data. Interventionist studies were often undertaken “to see if a hypothesis works”. In comparison, in NSW, respondents believed that schools and teachers generally use research to modify and improve local conditions, teachers showing a predilection for qualitative methodologies despite the pressure for them to use quantitative data. Research tended to be used to spawn or produce change rather than to measure it. In summary, in Singapore research was used to measure an innovation and in NSW to generate innovation, teachers in Singapore thereby favouring a “deductive theory” model as described by Ezzy (2002) and in NSW, an “inductive theory building” approach. The central education authorities had developed different policies and programmes to encourage practitioner research in schools and practitioner research was transmitted as a practice in a variety of ways. Identity and disposition greatly shaped teachers’ attitudes towards practitioner research acting as either a powerful enabler or constraint. Although teacher capacity was commonly perceived as a significant enabling factor, there was not a homogenous, systematic or comprehensive means for training staff across either teaching force. It has been asserted that practitioner research is not just a matter of instrumental behaviour and following rules but should be a consultative process where proponents proceed towards consensus about what to do (Kemmis, 2010). However, adopting a critical Freirian perspective (1974, 1985, 1987), it could be argued that in many instances teachers were “silenced” and not “given voice” in that they had limited facility to decide the research focus, especially in Singapore, or limited opportunities to broadcast findings, particularly in NSW. Furthermore, we are reminded that practitioner research should not merely generate knowledge of the world but aim to effect social change and good so as to achieve a better, more just world (Freire, 1974, 1985, 1998; Kemmis, 2010). As might be expected, the teachers involved in this study, displayed an awareness of the larger world in which they function as teachers; the mesh of practices or meta-practices that enables and constrains possibilities for action in education. However, often they stated or implied they were perhaps powerless to effect change at this meta-level. It would appear that many teachers had adopted a “fatalistic” approach. Respondents citing the need for systemic change appeared to stop at this point and did not contemplate “the untested feasibility, the constructable future” (Friere, 1985, p.154) or embark on “praxis” as described by either Freire (1974, 1985, 1998), Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008), or Kemmis and Smith (2008). Results of the study indicated that teachers tend to lock themselves into the technical aspects and an instrumental approach to research, which is viable in its own right, but limited. They were not so much interested in the kind of interpretive, hermeneutic knowledge interest, where one is trying to actually understand the phenomenon that is being explored, or an emancipatory or liberatory knowledge interest. The type of practitioner research largely undertaken by teachers as described by participants tended to focus on a teacher’s immediate class or school. It appeared that teachers had become sensitised to their local situations, able to look only at their local environment, but perhaps not able to look at macro issues. Or perhaps they had not contemplated with any rigour or determination the meta-practices that enmesh their own practices. Essentially, there is an order of actions, intentions and “acceptable ends” within any practice (Schatzki, 2009, p.39). This thesis argues that the “ends” that are acceptable to teachers, such as technical improvement in classroom practice, are perhaps deficient for Kemmis or Freire, who desire social justice and an emancipatory outcome. The thesis concludes by noting that the potential of practitioner research remains to be fully actualized. Recommendations suggest that: policy on practitioner research needs to be more clearly and coherently communicated across the teaching spectrum with models of research being more explicitly stated; teachers should also be provided with more comprehensive and systematic training in practitioner research; and greater emphasis should be put on the bridging of cultures and traditions to foster an enhanced interchange of ideas, insights, understandings and dialogue among all involved in practitioner research. Perhaps, then practitioner research may become successfully embedded into the culture of education process and practice and support educational transformation in both Singapore and NSW

A Common Language? The Use of Teaching Standards in the Assessment of Professional Experience: Teacher Education Students’ Perceptions

There is a strong critique of the reductionist, technical and instrumentalist impacts of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers from critical policy researchers in education. At the same time, advocates of the standards espouse their potential as providing a common language of teaching. We argue that both views are based on logical rather than empirical warrants. Therefore, this study sought to gather empirical data via a survey of 229 teacher education students followed by focus groups in an endeavour to record their perceptions on the use of the standards as assessment criteria for professional experience. The findings are that a majority of the students were advocates of the standards as a learning scaffold. This was especially true in contexts where their supervising teachers were not au fait with the standards. The implications of this study for teacher educators are that the formative assessment potential of the standards requires pedagogical consideration in professional experience alongside their more commonly understood role as summative assessment criteria

The Challenges of Practitioner Research: A Comparative Study of Singapore and NSW

Practitioner research is considered an integral form of professional learning for teachers but in its implementation it will often encounter significant challenges. This qualitative comparative case-study of teachers in Singapore and NSW investigated the range of challenges they encountered during their work as practitioner researchers. The study employs Schatzki’s practice theory to analyse the impact of practitioner research on the existing practice architectures of schools. A total of 42 participants from NSW and Singapore were interviewed for this study. The results explicate the various challenges teachers encountered and how these act to prefigure and remodel practitioner research as a practice within each of the two different settings. The findings are of interest to teacher educators working with teachers across the career span who are considering using practitioner research in their professional learning repertoire

Continental breakup and UHP rock exhumation in action: GPS results from the Woodlark Rift, Papua New Guinea

We show results from a network of campaign Global Positioning System (GPS) sites in the Woodlark Rift, southeastern Papua New Guinea, in a transition from seafloor spreading to continental rifting. GPS velocities indicate anticlockwise rotation (at 2–2.7°/Myr, relative to Australia) of crustal blocks north of the rift, producing 10–15 mm/yr of extension in the continental rift, increasing to 20–40 mm/yr of seafloor spreading at the Woodlark Spreading Center. Extension in the continental rift is distributed among multiple structures. These data demonstrate that low-angle normal faults in the continents, such as the Mai'iu Fault, can slip at high rates nearing 10 mm/yr. Extensional deformation observed in the D'Entrecasteaux Islands, the site of the world's only actively exhuming Ultra-High Pressure (UHP) rock terrane, supports the idea that extensional processes play a critical role in UHP rock exhumation. GPS data do not require significant interseismic coupling on faults in the region, suggesting that much of the deformation may be aseismic. Westward transfer of deformation from the Woodlark Spreading Center to the main plate boundary fault in the continental rift (the Mai'iu fault) is accommodated by clockwise rotation of a tectonic block beneath Goodenough Bay, and by dextral strike slip on transfer faults within (and surrounding) Normanby Island. Contemporary extension rates in the Woodlark Spreading Center are 30–50% slower than those from seafloor spreading-derived magnetic anomalies. The 0.5 Ma to present seafloor spreading estimates for the Woodlark Basin may be overestimated, and a reevaluation of these data in the context of the GPS rates is warranted

Quantization of pure gravitational plane waves

Pure gravitational plane waves are considered as a special case of spacetimes with two commuting spacelike Killing vector fields. Starting with a midisuperspace that describes this kind of spacetimes, we introduce gauge-fixing and symmetry conditions that remove all non-physical degrees of freedom and ensure that the classical solutions are plane waves. In this way, we arrive at a reduced model with no constraints and whose only degrees of freedom are given by two fields. In a suitable coordinate system, the reduced Hamiltonian that generates the time evolution of this model turns out to vanish, so that all relevant information is contained in the symplectic structure. We calculate this symplectic structure and particularize our discussion to the case of linearly polarized plane waves. The reduced phase space can then be described by an infinite set of annihilation and creation like variables. We finally quantize the linearly polarized model by introducing a Fock representation for these variables.Comment: 11 pages, Revtex, no figure

Land system science and sustainable development of the earth system: A global land project perspective

Land systems are the result of human interactions with the natural environment. Understanding the drivers, state, trends and impacts of different land systems on social and natural processes helps to reveal how changes in the land system affect the functioning of the socio-ecological system as a whole and the tradeoff these changes may represent. The Global Land Project has led advances by synthesizing land systems research across different scales and providing concepts to further understand the feedbacks between social-and environmental systems, between urban and rural environments and between distant world regions. Land system science has moved from a focus on observation of change and understanding the drivers of these changes to a focus on using this understanding to design sustainable transformations through stakeholder engagement and through the concept of land governance. As land use can be seen as the largest geo-engineering project in which mankind has engaged, land system science can act as a platform for integration of insights from different disciplines and for translation of knowledge into action

Archaeological Landscapes during the 10–8 ka Lake Stanley Lowstand on the Alpena‐Amberley Ridge, Lake Huron

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136243/1/gea21590.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136243/2/gea21590_am.pd

Live-attenuated influenza vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization in children aged 2-6 years, the first three seasons of the childhood influenza vaccination program in England, 2013/14-2015/16.

INTRODUCTION: In 2013, the United Kingdom began to roll-out a universal annual influenza vaccination program for children. An important component of any new vaccination program is measuring its effectiveness. Live-attenuated influenza vaccines (LAIVs) have since shown mixed results with vaccine effectiveness (VE) varying across seasons and countries elsewhere. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of influenza vaccination in children against severe disease during the first three seasons of the LAIV program in England. METHODS: Using the screening method, LAIV vaccination coverage in children hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed influenza infection was compared with vaccination coverage in 2-6-year-olds in the general population to estimate VE in 2013/14-2015/16. RESULTS: The overall LAIV VE, adjusted for age group, week/month and geographical area, for all influenza types pooled over the three influenza seasons was 50.1% (95% confidence interval [CI] 31.2, 63.8). By age, there was evidence of protection against hospitalization from influenza vaccination in both the pre-school (2-4-year-olds) (48.1%, 95% CI 27.2, 63.1) and school-aged children (5-6-year-olds) (62.6%, 95% CI 2.6, 85.6) over the three seasons. CONCLUSION: LAIV vaccination in children provided moderate annual protection against laboratory-confirmed influenza-related hospitalization in England over the three influenza seasons. This study contributes further to the limited literature to date on influenza VE against severe disease in children

Acute effects of breaking up prolonged sitting on fatigue and cognition: a pilot study.

OBJECTIVES: To compare the acute effects of uninterrupted sitting with sitting interrupted by brief bouts of light-intensity walking on self-reported fatigue, cognition, neuroendocrine biomarkers and cardiometabolic risk markers in overweight/obese adults. DESIGN: Randomised two-condition crossover trial. SETTING: Laboratory study conducted in Melbourne, Australia. PARTICIPANTS: 19 overweight/obese adults (45-75 years). INTERVENTIONS: After an initial 2 h period seated, participants consumed a meal-replacement beverage and completed (on 2 days separated by a 6-day washout period) each condition over the next 5 h: uninterrupted sitting (sedentary condition) or sitting with 3 min bouts of light-intensity walking every 30 min (active condition). PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Self-reported fatigue, executive function and episodic memory at 0 h, 4 h and 7 h. SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Neuroendocrine biomarkers and cardiometabolic risk markers (blood collections at 0 h, 4 h and 7 h, blood pressure and heart rate measured hourly and interstitial glucose measured using a continuous glucose monitoring system). RESULTS: During the active condition, fatigue levels were lower at 4 h (-13.32 (95% CI -23.48 to -3.16)) and at 7 h (-10.73 (95% CI -20.89 to -0.58)) compared to the sedentary condition. Heart rate was higher at 4 h (4.47 (95% CI 8.37 to 0.58)) and at 7 h (4.32 (95% CI 8.21 to 0.42)) during the active condition compared to the sedentary condition. There were no significant differences between conditions by time for other variables. In the sedentary condition, changes in fatigue scores over time correlated with a decrease in heart rate and plasma dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) and an increase in plasma dihydroxyphenylglycol (DHPG). CONCLUSIONS: Interrupting prolonged sitting with light-intensity walking breaks may be an effective fatigue countermeasure acutely. Fatigue levels corresponded with the heart rate and neuroendocrine biomarker changes in uninterrupted sitting in this pilot study. Further research is needed to identify potential implications, particularly for the occupational health context. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ACTRN12613000137796; Results