A narrative approach to professional identity

The construction of identity for early years practitioners in England – the workforce who support the care, learning and development of very young children - is potentially problematic because their roles lie at the intersection of care and education, shaped by the discourse of powerlessness. Historically, such employment was largely the preserve of working class women. Recent moves to professionalize this workforce include raising their qualification levels, a stronger emphasis on multi-agency working, and the introduction of job titles and workplace terminology that steers their roles towards educational outcomes (DfE, 2013). These moves are driven by the government bodies who fund and regulate the early years sector, rather than by the workforce themselves, and have the potential to stifle the development of an individual practitioner’s understanding of their professional identity (Osgood, 2006; Moss, 2006). Our research takes a narrative approach to gathering data about how these practitioners define themselves and the nature of the professionalism they value, particularly exploring the tension between an identity as a skilled technician meeting externally set competences, and a values-based identity including reflective and critical thinking (Moss, 2006). Such an approach recognises the individual’s right to agency in defining themselves and the professional values and practices they consider central to their particular roles. However, we recognize that in gathering and interpreting such idiosyncratic data, issues of validity and reliability arise in terms of the truth of our interpretations and the generalizability of our conclusions. By using multi-layered readings and presentations of our data (Mauthner and Doucet, 1998; Lewis, 1963) to maximize transparency in our analyses, we hope to address these. Our round table discussion will centre on this aspect of our work to explore how agency and individuality can be maintained in our data gathering, without compromising the reliability of our findings

Mentoring, coaching and supervision

This chapter considers the purpose of coaching, mentoring and supervision in early childhood eduaction and care. It examines a number of different approaches and considers the key skills required for effective coaching, mentoring and supervision

Concept mapping: Is it a useful method when there is no \u27correct\u27 knowledge on the topic?

Concept mapping is a research method often used to assess participants\u27 knowledge of a topic. Our project studied how preservice teachers\u27 knowledge of challenging behaviour changes (or not) during their final professional teaching experience. We asked the participants to make a concept map before and after their final professional teaching experience because we anticipated it would (1) provide reflective space for the preservice teachers to think about \u27what\u27 they knew about challenging behaviour, without feeling like they were being \u27tested\u27 in an interview, and (2) illustrate knowledge change during their final professional teaching experience. However, our use of concept maps was not without trepidation because of the type of knowledge under investigation. Concept mapping to assess an individual\u27s knowledge can be epistemologically rigid because (regardless of the quantitative or qualitative analytic approach used) maps are typically assessed against a \u27correct\u27, \u27factual\u27 knowledge-base. We, on the contrary, were interested in participants\u27 knowledge of a contentious issue and our theoretical framework supported the existence of multiple knowledges. This case describes how we negotiated the boundaries of existing concept mapping methods to facilitate analysis of participants\u27 understandings of \u27messy\u27 knowledge and how this changed over time

‘Students that just hate school wouldn’t go’: educationally disengaged and disadvantaged young people’s talk about university education

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on widening university participation and brings a focus on the classed and embodied nature of young people’s imagination to existing discussions. We interviewed 250 young people living in disadvantaged communities across five Australian states who had experienced disengagement from compulsory primary and secondary schooling. We asked them about their education and their educational futures, specifically how they imagined universities and university participation. For these young people, universities were imagined as ‘big’, ‘massive’ alienating schools. The paper explores how the elements of schooling from which these young people disengaged became tangible barriers to imagining and pursuing participation in university education. The primary barrier they described was their relationships with school teachers. Our analysis shows how relationships with teachers can impact the imagined improbability/probability of university participation. We offer suggestions for how barriers to university created by poor relationships with teachers may be overcome

'You have to be a leader but don't want to come across as taking over' : Leading Practice in Early Childhood Education and Care

In the emerging field of leadership in ECEC it is suggested that the practice leader should rely on influence and not authority to bring about change. However, little has been written about how to exert such influence in a sector where traditional associations of leadership with authority are hard to shift. Drawing on findings from my Doctoral research I propose a model of leadership which will support the practice leader to exert influence. The model is relational and contextual and in line with the principles of ECEC

Reactions to Supporters of the 2016 Presidential Candidates

Two experiments were carried out to explore responses to supporters of 2016 Presidential candidates. In Study 1, a field experiment was carried out on the effect of political affiliation on an individual’s willingness to reciprocate a smile. The prediction that more participants (90 females, 90 males) on the SHU campus would return a smile to confederates wearing Trump vs. Clinton vs. a Neutral t-shirt was not supported. In Study 2, 253 participants volunteered to participate in a social perception experiment in which they rated confederates wearing a neutral, Trump, or Clinton for President t-shirt. In line with the hypothesis, MANOVA results showed that Trump supporters were perceived as more prejudiced (p \u3c .003) and Clinton supporters as more liberal (p \u3c .000)

Chapter 4, Challenging the myth that ‘the parents don’t care’: Family teachings about education for ‘educationally disengaged’ young people,

This chapter focuses on families as sites of pedagogical work. We take up a focus on the pedagogical work of families in relation to formal education and educational exclusion. When describing families' pedagogical work in relation to formal education, we pay particular attention to their teachings about the school and university. Family pedagogies that impact upon educational participation and exclusion are important to consider in parallel with this book's focus on family pedagogies in relation to health. This is because there is a close relationship between levels of educational attainment and health; the more years of formal education that a person experiences, the better their health outcomes (ABS, 2013; Cutler and L1eras-Muney, 2010; Egerter et al, 2006). Our aim is to demonstrate that family pedagogies of formal education are key to practices of educational inclusion and exclusion and as such they are important to understand, and to reconsider in educational theory. It is simply not the case that all young people who are disengaged from education (either not attending at all or attending sporadically) have a background lacking in family pedagogies connected with education. Young people who are educationally disengaged or at the margins of formal education are rarely consulted in educationalliterature and policy-making (Bland, 2012; Duffy and Elwood, 2013; Harwood and Allan, 2014; Morgan et al, 2008). It is not surprising, therefore, to find that while there is a rich literature on families' pedagogical work on young people's position in education (Brooks, 2003; Lucey et al, 2006), less iIterature is available on pedagogical work of families of young people not engaged in education (Stein, 2006). This lack of attention is gradually being redressed. Yet there are assumptions we encounter anecdotally in our experience with teacher education students (in the UK and Australia), that these parents 'don't care' or they set 'bad examples'. Such anecdotes echo literature that describes teachers' deficit understandings of socioeconomically disadvantaged and 'disengaged' children and young people (Comber and Kamler, 2004; D'Addio, 2007; Machin, 1999). This chapter seeks to contribute an understanding of the pedagogical work of families of young people who are currently disengaged from or at the margins of formal education. The young people in our study are, hereafter, summarily described as 'disengaged' from education because they all experienced precarious relationships with mandatory schooling, further and higher education. The school-aged participants were not attending school or attending sporadically, they were excluded from schools, or they were pursuing alternative education programmes. Those participants who were legally old enough not to attend school were also not participating in further or higher education. Whilst we are not claiming that post-school pursuits other than further or higher education lack value, we can state that participants were not involved in post-school formal education options and so may still be described as not educationally engaged. We discuss how these educationally disengaged participants' family pedagogies relating to education are not homogenously negative. We will argue that their pedagogical work is varied, complex and often positive. Following a brief description of the study, the chapter is structured into three sections that reflect the findings from our data: families as sites of pedagogy and learning about 'education'; families' implicit teaching about education; and lastly, families' explicit teaching about education. Theoretically, we use Cambourne's (1995) Conditions of Learning to think through the family's explicit and implicit teachings

Matching anonymous participants in longitudinal research on sensitive topics: Challenges and recommendations

The purpose of this study was to examine the final analytic sample of a longitudinal randomized control trial (RCT) evaluation of a sexual violence prevention program at a university after facing challenges with the implementation of a self-generated identification code. The matched and unmatched samples (e.g., all unique surveys across all time periods) included 10,135 surveys. Eighty-eight percent of these surveys were matched into the final longitudinal dataset. Findings suggest that students with certain characteristics were more likely to be matched over time (i.e., students who participated in student government, Latino/a students, and Asian students). In addition, students who did not comply with RCT protocol were less likely to be matched. Student history of victimization or perpetration of sexual violence was not associated with being matched over time. This study provides recommendations for preventing matching problems in longitudinal studies, a process for rectifying matching issues and a critique of studies that do not address issues of matching-related sample bias in their final analytic sample

Computational modelling of solvent effects in a prolific solvatomorphic porous organic cage

Crystal structure prediction methods can enable the in silico design of functional molecular crystals, but solvent effects can have a major influence on relative lattice energies sometimes thwarting predictions. This is particularly true for porous solids, where solvent included in the pores can have an important energetic contribution. Here we present a Monte Carlo solvent insertion procedure for predicting the solvent filling of porous structures from crystal structure prediction landscapes, tested using a highly solvatomorphic porous organic cage molecule, CC1. We use this method to rationalise the fact that the predicted global energy minimum structure for CC1 is never observed from solvent crystallisation. We also explain the formation of three different solvatomorphs of CC1 from three structurally-similar chlorinated solvents. Calculated solvent stabilisation energies are found to correlate with experimental results from thermogravimetric analysis, suggesting a future computational framework for a priori materials design that includes solvation effects

Final Report: Evaluation of the AIME Outreach Program

The AIME (Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience) Program was established in 2005 when 25 students from the University of Sydney volunteered to work with 25 Indigenous children from local high schools. Since 2005 more than 3000 mentors have been recruited to work with 3542 Indigenous school students in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. The AIME Program is based on the recruitment of university students as mentors who provide advice and personal support to Indigenous school mentees from years 7 to 12. Its overall goals are to improve retention rates of Indigenous high school students to Year 12 and to encourage the transition of Indigenous students to university