Teaching history in postmodern times: history teachers' thinking about the nature and purposes of their subject

This thesis investigates how secondary school history teachers at the start of their teaching careers view the nature and purposes of their subject and how they think these views impact on their practice. Data were collected through in depth individual qualitative interviews with eleven teachers completing their initial training. These focused on: how these beginning teachers conceived of the nature of their discipline; the rationale they presented for the purposes of their subject in the school curriculum; the origins of their views on the nature and purposes of history; and how they are manifest in what and how they teach. In order to maintain coherence and to represent the richness and complexity of each teacher’s own story these were written, analysed and presented as narrative accounts. A summary is given of each the accounts with three presented in full. The accounts show these beginning history teachers’ views on the nature of history as reflecting the dominant discourse that characterises history as an academic subject, being largely Constructionist and emphasising the objective analysis of historical evidence. The teachers’ rationales for the purpose of history emphasised broader educational, social and moral purposes. More postmodern perspectives are apparent in the emphasis given to the importance of historical interpretations. Family background, lived experiences, literature and the media are significant influences on the teachers’ beliefs about the nature and purposes of history. These beliefs seem to impact on classroom practice and pupil learning in the subject. They influence teaching style, choice of learning activities and the areas of historical understanding emphasised, with, for example, views of the past as an uncontested body of knowledge leading to a pedagogy dominated by the transmission of substantive knowledge; and views which emphasise the more constructed nature of history leading to more pupil centred skills based approaches. Teachers’ views on the nature and purpose of the subject are a significant influence on their mediation of the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum for History has increasingly provided opportunities for interpretations more sympathetic to the postmodern orientation but research and inspection evidence suggest that these opportunities are often poorly realised in schools. One reason for this is proposed as history teachers’ lack of engagement with postmodern perspectives on history. It is important for teachers to engage with such approaches as without further consideration of their implications history teachers are unable to teach aspects of secondary History. Teachers also need to recognise and make explicit different orientations towards history in order to facilitate pupil learning, to engage pupils and to provide them with the skills necessary to be critical consumers of the range of histories presented to them in society. The research has implications for history teaching, pupil learning and the initial training and professional development of teachers. The case is made for further consideration being given to postmodern perspectives on the nature of history in initial and continuing teacher education in order to improve teaching and learning. The initial teacher education of history teachers needs to ensure that those on programmes have the syntactical knowledge necessary to develop effective teaching strategies and approaches, to enable pupil learning, and to develop their own subject knowledge and ability to reflect on their own practice and development. This research also emphasises the need for all those involved in training to critically engage with subject orientations as where beginning teachers’ beliefs conflict with the dominant discourse of history teaching this can lead to problematic experiences of teaching and of teacher training

Meteorological training for the digital age: A Blueprint for a new curriculum

Almost all professional meteorologists take part in meteorological training during their undergraduate or graduate study or professional job training in the public or private sector. Increased benefits can be accrued by employers and employees, if this training is based on the same underpinning skills and attributes, aimed to equip people entering meteorology for the wide range of future roles they might undertake. While there is a great deal of excellent, innovative practice in our community, the time is now right to look again at the nature of the meteorological curriculum. Meteorology faces significant challenges in the 21st century to deal with the twin challenges of increases in the number and severity of extreme weather events and the increased complexity of forecasts demanded by end-users. Here, a blueprint which describes a number of key principles which should be used to design, evaluate and enhance curricula for students entering our field in the next 10 years is proposed. The blueprint does not discuss in detail the core mathematical and physical principles which underlie any high quality training in meteorology but rather focuses on the key skills and attributes needed to make the next-generation of meteorologists innovative and effective which include: • Meteorological competencies, • Personal and inter-personal attributes, • Core skills as a scientist and • Ethical and professional interaction with broader society. The blueprint is intended to encourage debate about how we equip new meteorologists for the digital age. We plan to use these principles to review and enhance our own curricula in the near future

The Brighton musculoskeletal Patient‐Reported Outcome Measure (BmPROM):An assessment of validity, reliability, and responsiveness

Background: In response for the need of a freely available, stand-alone, validated outcome measure for use within musculoskeletal physiotherapy practice, sensitive enough to measure clinical effectiveness, we developed a musculoskeletal patient reported outcome measure. Objectives: This study examined the validity and reliability of the newly developed Brighton musculoskeletal Patient Reported Outcome Measure (BmPROM) within physiotherapy outpatient settings. Methods: Two hundred and twenty four patients attending physiotherapy outpatient departments in South East of England with a musculoskeletal condition participated in this study. The BmPROM was assessed for user friendliness (rated feedback, n=224), reliability (internal consistency and test-retest reliability, n=42), validity (internal and external construct validity, n=224) and responsiveness (internal, n=25). Results: Exploratory factor analysis indicated that a two-factor model provides a good fit to the data. Factors were representative of ‘Functionality’ and ‘Wellbeing’. Correlations observed between the BmPROM and SF-36 domains provided evidence of convergent validity. Reliability results indicated that both subscales were internally consistent with alphas above the acceptable limits for both ‘Functionality’ (α = .85, 95% CI = .81- .88) and ‘Wellbeing’ (α = .80, 95% CI = .75- .84). Test-retest analyses (n= 42) demonstrated a high degree of reliability between ‘Functionality’ (ICC= .84; 95% CI = .72-.91) and ‘Wellbeing’ scores (ICC= .84; 95% CI = .72- .91). Further examination of test-retest reliability through the Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated that the difference between ‘Functionality’ and ‘Wellbeing’ test scores did not vary as a function of absolute test score). Large treatment effect sizes were found for both subscales (Functionality d = 1.10; Wellbeing 1.03). Conclusion: The BmPROM is a reliable and valid outcome measure for use in evaluating physiotherapy treatment of musculoskeletal conditions

Patients’ Expectations of Physiotherapy Treatment for Musculoskeletal Conditions

Relevance Research shows that the expectations a patient brings to treatment have important influences on the clinical relationship, experiences of treatment, the treatment process, outcomes and satisfaction with care. This influence means that patients’ expectations are important for physiotherapists, service providers and researchers to take into account in approaches to care and treatment evaluations. Research highlights the need for a better understanding of expectations of physiotherapy treatment for Msk problems to enable more effective, high quality and cost-beneficial care. Purpose The aim of this qualitative study was to explore prospective responses to an open comment item on patients’ expectations of their physiotherapy treatment that was nested within a larger research project developing and validating the Brighton musculoskeletal Patient Reported Outcome Measure (BmPROM). Methods/Analysis The BmPROM is a generic patient self-report outcome measure developed to evaluate the effectiveness of physiotherapy treatment for musculoskeletal conditions. A validity and reliability study was undertaken with patients newly referred into five NHS physiotherapy outpatient departments in SE England. The outcome tool has open-comment items, which included a pre-treatment invitation to provide expectations of their physiotherapy treatment. A thematic analysis was undertaken of the expectations expressed to gain insights for physiotherapy practice and patient care. Results Analysis was undertaken of 563 expectations of physiotherapy treatment expressed from 224 participants (mean 50.7yrs [17-88yrs]; 60% female) experiencing a range of Msk conditions (Lower limb:30%, Upper limb:25%, Spine:28%, Other/multiple sites:17%). Five key themes were identified. Three themes were outcome-related and desired effects of treatment; Relieving symptoms, predominately pain relief; Regaining and maintaining physical abilities and function; and Improving psychological well-being by enabling coping, confidence and control. Theme four was process-related; Explanation, advice and education, where physiotherapy was seen as a resource to acquire better knowledge, skills and strategies to support resolution, management or prevention. The final theme involved recovery expectations conveyed within responses; Problem resolution and responsibility, where responses implied an expectation of a cure or one of problem management and control. Discussion and conclusions The findings provide an understanding of domains considered important or appropriate by patients when seeking care for Msk problems. The themes show overlap with studies using retrospective explorations and surveys of treatment expectations, and research on outcomes considered important to evaluate within Msk PROMs. The study has also shown that a written method of eliciting expectations can be a valuable clinical tool for use to support discussions concerning treatment aims, strategies, desired outcomes and responsibilities. These communication processes are also likely to be integral to achieving the qualities in the therapist and clinical encounters considered important to patients, of feeling listened to, consulted with and respected, and associated with satisfaction with physiotherapy and features of patient-centred care. Impact and implications Healthcare is changing as evidence-informed practice and cost-benefit drivers influence what and how care is provided. Shifts from traditional understandings about Msk problems and their management makes exploring and addressing patients’ expectations particularly important. Developing ways to support appropriate expectations of physiotherapy treatment remains an important endeavour that is integral to its effectiveness and demonstrating its value

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

History teachers’ thinking about the nature of their subject

This paper addresses how secondary history teachers view the nature and purposes of their subject and how they think these views impact on their practice. Data were collected through individual qualitative interviews with eleven UK history teachers at the start of their careers. Their views on the nature of history are broadly empiricist with postmodern perspectives having been less influential. Their rationales for the subject emphasise broader educational purposes. The case for further emphasis on subject understandings in teacher education is made through a consideration of the implications of a lack of emphasis of more postmodern perspectives on classroom practice