Qualitative Methods and Sight-impairment: developing a toolkit for inclusive teaching.

Background Research methods is a key component of a psychology degree and recognised as a challenging topic to learn and teach. However, students who have sight-impairments experience additional barriers to its study, which could inhibit life-long learning in this area. Despite a growing body of literature to guide inclusive teaching practices for quantitative methods, little (if anything) is available for qualitative methods. However, these methods are traditionally taught using visual techniques (e.g. thematic maps), presenting barriers to learners with sight-impairments. This (ongoing) project explores the experience of learning qualitative methods from the perspectives of both students and tutors, in order to develop a “toolkit” to guide inclusive teaching-practice. Developing more inclusive teaching practice would likely benefit all students and help to promote engagement and learning of research methods. Design This inductive qualitative research forms part of a “Students as Academic Partners” project, due to be completed by May 2018. Methods Students and tutors from the University of Worcester, with experience of learning/teaching qualitative methods in relation to sight-impairment will be recruited using opportunistic and snowball sampling. Data will be collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. Results Barriers to learning qualitative methods and strategies adopted to manage these will be explored. In particular, it is important tutors recognise sight-impairment is not “one thing”, and that a range of strategies for adapting teaching-practice is required for diverse needs to be met. Conclusions The experience of learning qualitative methods for students who have sight-impairments has received little attention, making it difficult to identify inclusive teaching-practice in this area. This research outlines a toolkit with practical recommendations that tutors can draw on so their practice can better meet the needs of learners with sight-impairments

Are students too anxious for statistics anxiety workshops?

Statistics is a widely taught subject in Higher Education but for many students, anxiety about statistics interferes with the learning process. Statistics anxiety workshops to help students understand and reduce statistics anxiety were developed by the authors and in 2020/21 delivered collaboratively and remotely with specific cohorts of students at three institutions. Prior to the workshops, all students within the targeted cohorts were asked to complete a survey which included measures of statistics anxiety, and asked if they were interested in attending the voluntary workshop. This enabled a comparison of the characteristics of groups who were interested or not. The workshops successfully attracted the targeted students, since those attending had higher overall statistics anxiety, software and maths anxiety, and anxiety around learning statistics. However, students with higher help seeking anxiety were less likely to attend

The impact of remote teaching on statistics learning and anxiety

In March 2020, staff and students at UK universities had to suddenly transition from on-campus teaching to remote learning as a result of the pandemic, which continued throughout the 2020/21 academic year. Unlike traditional online learners, students may lack the motivation or confidence to learn as effectively online particularly for modules such as statistics which students often find difficult or stressful face to face.This paper uses survey results from students studying elective and compulsory statistics modules in the 2020/21 academic year to gain an insight into remote learning of statistics from the students’ perspective.When compared to previous face to face teaching of statistics, students were less likely to actively engage with material, ask for help or work with peers remotely. Emotional wellbeing, motivation to learn, statistics anxiety and having a suitable learning environment all impacted on being able to learn statistics remotely. Although statistics anxiety in online teaching situations was generally lower, there was no evidence to suggest anxious students would benefit from online learning going forward

Engaging Students: Promoting Mutual Support and Exploration

Prenskey (2005) asserted that a major problem within education is not that the information being taught lacks "relevance" to students lives, but that there is a lack of engagement with educational tasks. When attempting to engage classes, tutors are aiming to draw students into learning activities--to involve them--and thus promote active learning over and above the passive absorption of information which can dominate classes. This article discusses a number of factors that can be considered to promote engagement in class interactions. The author addresses the issue of student diversity and explores some ideas in how to promote engagement through choice

Diet and Nutrition in the Periconception Period of a Subsequent Pregnancy Following a Congenital Heart Defect-affected Pregnancy

Aim This study aimed to examine whether women who have had a former pregnancy affected by a congenital heart defect (CHD) seek to improve their overall nutritional status in the periconceptional period of a subsequent pregnancy. Methods Eight women with a previous pregnancy affected by a congenital heart defect (cases) and five women with previously healthy pregnancies (controls), who were either currently pregnant again or had given birth to a subsequent baby in the past year, completed a questionnaire by telephone interview or self-administered by email. The questionnaire examined nutritional intake in the periconceptional period of a subsequent pregnancy and the extent to which nutritional advice and information was sought and/or received. Nutritional intake and advice or information sought and received were compared between case and control groups by Fisher’s Exact tests. Nutritional intake was also compared against UK Guidelines for healthy eating in pregnancy. Results Overall, no significant differences were seen between cases and controls in any of the measures of nutritional intake, meeting guidelines or wanting and receiving information. However some associations that did not quite reach statistical significance were found. Cases ate fish, particularly oily fish, more frequently and ate high-fat foods less frequently than controls. Cases were more likely to take extra nutritional supplements before pregnancy, and to take a higher than normal (400µg) dose of folic acid. Vitamin D supplement use in pregnancy in both case and control groups was less common than folic acid use. Over 60% of both groups did not eat the recommended five or more portions of fruit and vegetables per day in early pregnancy. Cases may be more likely to meet the majority of the UK nutritional guidelines for pregnancy than controls. Cases may be more likely to want advice than controls, but controls appeared more likely to receive advice than cases. Cases were more likely to receive advice from a specialist doctor. However all these non-significant associations may be due to chance and a larger study is needed. Conclusions Women who have had a previous CHD-affected pregnancy make little change in their nutritional intake in a subsequent pregnancy compared to women with healthy previous pregnancies, and may not be significantly more likely to meet UK recommended guidelines than the control subjects. Some women who have had a previous CHD-affected pregnancy seek and receive advice about periconceptional nutrition prior to a subsequent pregnancy, but the majority do not receive any advice specific to reducing the risk of a recurrence of a CHD in future. Recommendations include improved methodology for future similar studies, and that information on the possibility of reducing CHD recurrence by improved nutrition should be disseminated widely among health care professionals and conveyed to women who have had a baby affected by a CHD

Learning power in the workplace: The effective lifelong learning inventory and its reliability and validity and implications for learning and development

An organisation's ability to learn, to harness collective intelligence and to translate that learning rapidly into action in response to environmental challenges is the ultimate competitive advantage in the constantly changing context of the information age. It is an indicator of the organisations' resilience and adaptability in the face of uncertainty and change. Improving an organisation's capacity to learn will only have the desired impact on performance if it improves employee engagement at the same time. In this paper, we introduce the concept of learning power into the context of the workplace, drawing on what has been learned from its application in education and recent studies in the corporate and community sector in the UK and beyond. The seven dimensions of learning power were identified by Deakin Crick, Broadfoot and Claxton (2004, Assessment in Education Principles Policy and Practice, 11, 247-272) in the development of the effective lifelong learning inventory (ELLI), an assessment tool designed to enable learners to become aware of their own learning power and to turn diagnosis into strategies for improvement. We present the psychometric properties and the validity and reliability statistics of ELLI as the Learning Power assessment tool for learners in the world of work and community, based on an adult workplace population of over 5000. Finally, we explore the implications of these ideas and practices for learning in corporate organisations. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis