Making to measure? Reconsidering assessment in professional continuing education

Drawing on studies of teachers, accountants and pharmacists conducted in Canada, this essay examines models for assessing professional learning that currently enjoy widespread use in continuing education. These models include professional growth plans, self-administered tests, and learning logs, and they are often used for regulatory as well as developmental purposes by professional associations. The essay argues what others have critiqued about such self-assessment models: that their assumptions about learning are problematic and limiting in a number of respects, privileging human consciousness and intention, and literally ‘making’ a particular professional subject that is atomised and conservative. The essay goes on to suggest alternative perspectives that are receiving increasing attention in theorising work-related learning and that may offer fruitful questions for re-considering the nature of professional learning and its assessment. Three perspectives in particular are outlined, all of which shift the focus from the learning subject to practice as material, emergent and systemic: complexity theory, actor-network theory and cultural-historical activity theory. The discussion concludes with possible approaches to assessment of professional practice suggested by these perspectives

Toward Enriched Conceptions of Work Learning: Participation, Expansion, and Translation Among Individuals With/In Activity

Despite the long recognition in HRD theory that learning is socially and materially situated in activity and relations, HRD literature indicates a continuing strong emphasis on individualistic theories representing learning as knowledge acquisition or individual development. It is argued here that understandings of work learning within HRD theory can be fruitfully enriched by more fully incorporating practice-based perspectives. Three contemporary theories that analyse learning as a relation of individuals with/in activity have been selected for discussion here: the participational perspective of situated cognition, the notion of expansion from cultural-historical activity theory, and the constructs of translation and mobilization presented by actor-network theory. While these are not particularly new to HRD, the contribution of this discussion is to bring together these theories, along with published empirical workplace research based on them, to highlight selected dynamics that may be useful tools for HRD theory development. One element in particular is read across the three theories: the dialectic of ‘flying’ and ‘grounding’, or lines of discontinuity and continuity characterising work learning. The argument is theory-driven, drawing from HRD literature of work learning and practice-based theories of social activity and knowledge production

Impact of the microbial derived short chain fatty acid propionate on host susceptibility to bacterial and fungal infections in vivo.

Short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) produced by intestinal microbes mediate anti-inflammatory effects, but whether they impact on antimicrobial host defenses remains largely unknown. This is of particular concern in light of the attractiveness of developing SCFA-mediated therapies and considering that SCFAs work as inhibitors of histone deacetylases which are known to interfere with host defenses. Here we show that propionate, one of the main SCFAs, dampens the response of innate immune cells to microbial stimulation, inhibiting cytokine and NO production by mouse or human monocytes/macrophages, splenocytes, whole blood and, less efficiently, dendritic cells. In proof of concept studies, propionate neither improved nor worsened morbidity and mortality parameters in models of endotoxemia and infections induced by gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae), gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae) and Candida albicans. Moreover, propionate did not impair the efficacy of passive immunization and natural immunization. Therefore, propionate has no significant impact on host susceptibility to infections and the establishment of protective anti-bacterial responses. These data support the safety of propionate-based therapies, either via direct supplementation or via the diet/microbiota, to treat non-infectious inflammation-related disorders, without increasing the risk of infection

Reading educational reform with actor network theory: Fluid spaces, otherings, and ambivalences

In considering two extended examples of educational reform efforts, this discussion traces relations that become visible through analytic approaches associated with actor-network theory (ANT). The strategy here is to present multiple readings of the two examples. The first reading adopts an ANT approach to follow ways that all actors – human and non-human entities, including the entity that is taken to be ‘educational reform’ – are performed into being through the play of linkages among heterogeneous elements. Then, further readings focus not only on the material practices that become enacted and distributed, but also on the otherings that occur: the various fluid spaces and ambivalent belongings that create actor-network(s) but also escape them. For educational research, particularly in educational reform and policy, it is argued that ANT analyses are particularly useful to examine the complex enactments in these dynamics. That is, ANT can illuminate movements of ordering and disordering that occur through minute socio-material connections in educational interventions. ANT readings also can discern, within these attempts to order people and practices, the spaces of flux and instability that enable and protect alternate possibilities

(un)Doing standards in education with actor-network theory

Recent critiques have drawn important attention to the depoliticized consensus and empty promises embedded in network discourses of educational policy. While acceding this critique, this discussion argues that some forms of network analysis – specifically those adopting actor-network theory (ANT) approaches - actually offer useful theoretical resources for policy studies. Drawing from ANT-inspired studies of policy processes associated with educational standards, the article shows the ambivalences and contradictions as well as the possibilities that can be illuminated by ANT analysis of standards as networks. The discussion outlines the diverse network conceptions, considerations and sensibilities afforded by ANT approaches. Then it shows four phenomena that have been highlighted by ANT studies of educational standards: ordering (and rupturing) practice through ‘immutable mobiles’, local universality, tensions among networks of prescription and networks of negotiation, and different co-existing ontological forms of the same standards. The conclusion suggests starting points, drawing from these ANT-inspired network analyses, for examining policy processes associated with educational standards

Full Thermoelectric Characterization of Stoichiometric Electrodeposited Thin Film Tin Selenide (SnSe)

Tin selenide (SnSe) has attracted much attention in the thermoelectric community since the discovery of the record figure of merit (ZT) of 2.6 in single crystal tin selenide in 2014. There have been many reports since of the thermoelectric characterization of SnSe synthesized or manufactured by several methods, but so far none of these have concerned the electrodeposition of SnSe. In this work, stoichiometric SnSe was successfully electrodeposited at −0.50 V vs SCE as shown by EDX, XPS, UPS, and XRD. The full ZT of the electrodeposits were then measured. This was done by both a delamination technique to measure the Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity which showed a peak power factor of 4.2 and 5.8 μW m–1 K–2 for the as deposited and heat-treated films, respectively. A novel modified transient 3ω method was used to measure the thermal conductivity of the deposited films on the deposition substrate. This revealed the thermal conductivity to be similar to the ultralow thermal conductivity of single crystal SnSe, with a value of 0.34 W m–1 K–1 being observed at 313 K

Material matters for learning in virtual networks : A case study of a professional learning programme hosted in a Google+ online community

Date of Acceptance: 13/07/2015Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Circle talks as situated experiential learning: Context, identity, and knowledgeability in \u27learning from reflection\u27

This article presents research that used ethnographic and sociolinguistic methods to study ways participants learn through reflection when carried out as a “circle talk.” The data indicate that participants in the event (a) invoked different contextual frames that (b) implicated them in various identity positions, which (c) affected how they could express their knowledge. These features worked together to generate socially shared meanings that enabled participants to jointly achieve conceptualization—the ideational role “reflection” is presumed to play in the experiential learning process. The analysis supports the claim that participants generate new knowledge in reflection, but challenges individualistic and cognitive assumptions regarding how this occurs. The article builds on situated views of experiential learning by showing how knowledge can be understood as socially shared and how learning and identity formation are mutually entailing processes