Professional standards in teacher education: tracing discourses of professionalism through the analysis of textbooks

This article explores aspects of the relationship between professional standards for teachers and the curriculum for teacher education in the lifelong learning sector in the United Kingdom. Drawing on an analysis of different editions of three core textbooks for teacher education in the lifelong learning sector, which are positioned as acting as proxies for the teacher education curriculum, the article explores the relationship between professional standards and the curriculum for teacher education in the sector. Starting from a standpoint that foregrounds the material nature of professional standards – that is, that the standards need to be conceptualised and made sense of as an embodied, physical textual artefact – the argument presented here is that in order to understand any impact that professional standards might have beyond the discursive, the ways in which the standards as a material text might be seen as interacting with other relevant texts that embody different aspects of the profession – such as textbooks – must be considered. The article concludes that whilst curricula can and ought to be expected to change over time, the impact of professional standards on curriculum change would appear to be relatively minor

‘Very positive’ or ‘vague and detached’? Unpacking ambiguities in further education teachers’ responses to professional standards in England

During the last two decades, a number of successive policy initiatives have attempted to professionalise the further education sector in England: professional qualifications have been rewritten, made compulsory and then returned to voluntary status; professional bodies have been established, briefly promoted, and then neglected; professional licences have been considered and rejected; and a new professional status has been introduced. This article, which combines both theoretical and empirical perspectives, argues that all of these processes of professionalisation are problematic due to the inherent flaws in any set of professional standards, and that the ambiguous manner in which the latest set of professional standards is being read and understood by practitioners within the sector reflects a continuation of a flawed process of professionalisation in further education that has been underway since 1999

Ethnography, materiality, and the principle of symmetry: problematising anthropocentrism and interactionism in the ethnography of education

In this article we draw on actor-network theory (ANT) in order to challenge the methodological and empirical orthodoxies of anthropocentrism and interactionism that have long informed dominant discourses of ethnographic work. We use ANT to open new possibilities for understanding education as emergent in relational fields where non-human forces are as equally necessary as and possess an agency equivalent to, human forces: the principle of symmetry. We argue that this generates important conceptual as well as political possibilities in constituting different possible outcomes in the accomplishment of ethnographies of education. We draw attention to the problematic of the decentring of the human subject and the critical investigation of the interface between people and objects that frame this special issue, and also propose a methodological response framed by a commitment to empirical research through ethnography as well as a theoretical response framed by relational materialism, operationalised here through recourse to ANT

Teaching Higher Education Courses in Further Education Colleges

It can be comprehended that the models and theories which are currently used to reinforce teaching depict the education practices of transmitting knowledge from teacher to students, which is more traditional, linear, input-output construction of teaching that has dominated adult education for decades including the last half century. As numerous studies (e.g. QAA, 2018) emphasizes that both the needs of learner and learning in enterprise and entrepreneurship education (EEE) context is different from other disciplines and mainstream higher education (HE). This requires further development of teaching methods and practices that can encourage the aspirations of the learner in this particular education setting. When investigating the theories and approaches that are used to examine teaching in HE, the relevance and adequacy of them to review teaching practices in this 21st century and EEE context is a question. Thus, the need of new theoretical models and frameworks can be clearly observed. For example, to investigate teacher’s role in EEE setting, there is a need of adopting more context specific, individual-focused research methods. When the recent outcomes associated with the UK higher education are taken into account, there is an emerging key debate; i.e. are universities actually turning off potential entrepreneurs. Whether these outcomes are due to teaching, learning environment or other activities within universities, is still largely a question, hence requires further research to find answers

The Assessment of Trainee Teachers: An Ethnography.

Dominant discourses of quality assurance in UK higher education posit assessment as a transparent and rigorous process through the ascription of the two key and inter-related concepts of validity and reliability. Drawing on ethnographic research into the assessment procedures and practices of one teacher-training course in England (a part-time course for teachers in the learning and skills sector which is delivered on a franchise basis across a network of further education colleges), this thesis demonstrates that claims to assessment validity and reliability are contestable. The thesis draws on three complementary social practice theories (communities of practice, new literacy studies and actor-network theory) in order to reveal assessment as being a complex, localised practice characterised by contingency and improvisatory behaviours on the part of both tutors and students, mediated by a variety of genres of textual artefacts. These divergent and complex practices are shown to disrupt dominant managerialist discourses of assessment practice in higher education. They are also shown to disrupt dominant definitions of learning, teaching and assessment in higher education, which predominantly rest on models of individual cognition and transferable skills, and which this thesis critiques through the use of social practice accounts of learning within communities of practice. The thesis demonstrates that assessment is more contingent and complex than dominant discourses of assessment practice in HE allow, thereby problematising claims to reliability and validity. The thesis makes contributions to current literature and research in two ways. Firstly, it concludes by offering a series of suggestions as to how assessment validity and reliability might be enhanced or reframed. Secondly, it demonstrates how communities of practice theory can be used critically to explore pedagogic activity, including assessment, within formal educational settings

Testing environmental controls on methane generation during microbial degradation of coal and oil from the Cherokee basin, Kansas

Master of ScienceDepartment of GeologyMatthew KirkBiodegradation of crude oil to methane has long been known to exist in shallow petroleum reservoirs. It is only in the past decade, however, in which the concept of in-reservoir petroleum biodegradation has changed from a model emphasizing aerobic crude-oil degradation (with oxygen delivered down from meteoric waters) to a more recent model in which crude-oil degradation is driven by anaerobic processes (methanogenic microorganisms). In this study, we examine controls on microbial conversion of crude oil and coal into methane in middle-Pennsylvanian strata in the Cherokee Basin, Kansas, USA and how access to oil or coal influence microbial communities. Specifically, we considered the following hypotheses: 1) microorganisms in the basin are capable of generating methane by degrading crude oil or coal and 2) potential controls on the rate of methane formation include microbial diversity, formation water chemistry, nutrient abundance, and carbon dioxide abundance. To test these hypotheses, we used three sets of laboratory experiments constructed of materials from the Cherokee basin, Kansas. One set tested environmental controls on methane generation from oil, another from coal, and a third was a control experiment that utilized methanogenic substrates rather than oil or coal. In the experiments with oil and coal, environmental factors tested ammonium/phosphate availability, feedlot wastewater injection, and carbon dioxide abundance. Our experiments also tested the influence of salinity, by including materials from a well producing water with relatively low salinity and a well producing water with relatively high salinity. The cultures were allowed to incubate from approximately 75 to 170 days, during which headspace of oil and coal bioreactors were sampled periodically and analyzed for methane concentrations. Post incubation analyses included microbial DNA sequencing. We determined that a higher concertation of methanogens existed in the lower salinity well, which has higher potential for practical stimulatory injection. Of methane produced, the only significant (Mann Whitney) treatment had access to oil in lower salinity formation water. Access to coal resulted in no significant results. Microbial diversity, in the form of methanogenic archaea abundance, formation water chemistry (salinity), and wastewater nutrient often correlated with increased, yet insignificant, rates of methane production, while carbon dioxide abundance showed no benefit. Of methanogenic substrates consumed, we determined that most Cherokee basin methanogens preferred methanol over hydrogen and acetate

Exploring Content, Pedagogy, and Literacy Strategies among Preservice Teachers in CASE Institutes

Educational leaders implement professional development activities to facilitate teacher learning and growth. Each summer, scores of secondary agriculture teachers attend Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (CASE) institutes as a form of professional development. Recently, teacher preparation programs have begun offering CASE institutes for preservice teachers. This study explored the lived experiences of preservice teachers in two CASE institutes. Three central themes emerged from the data: 1) preservice participants wrestled with adoption of inquiry teaching strategies as a teaching method, 2) contextualized literacy in the agriculture classroom helped preservice participants understand their role as a teacher of literacy, and 3) participant content knowledge growth was intertwined with self-growth in formative assessment, classroom management/grouping, and literacy strategies. The findings were presented through vignettes to provide a thick, rich description of the case. Recommendations include offering modified CASE institutes for preservice teachers, use of lead teachers who are familiar with the developmental challenges of preservice teachers, and monitoring participant content knowledge to facilitate growth in pedagogical content knowledge

Le Sujet de l’Acteur. An Anthropological Outlook on Actor-Network Theory

In the past few years, the Actor-Network Theory of French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour has become a hotly debated topic in the humanities. From a philosophical perspective, his theory of things keeps being reevaluated: is it possible for ‘Human and Non-Human Actors’ (Latour) to be analyzed as equally important actors? Does Latour’s theory of a simultaneous ‘agency’ of things and concepts indeed move beyond a subject-object relation? If it does, how far does it in fact go? Is it possible to develop a common new ontology by moving away from the notion of substance, and instead reducing any kind of entities to what they reveal in the course of their (inter)action? The contributions to Le Sujet de l’Acteur are looking for interferences between the idea of ‘agency’ and cultural dynamics. How can we relate questions of (social) action with those of cultural manifestations? Focusing on questions of symmetry or dissymmetry between the world of ‘things’ and ‘human beings,’ the volume includes contributions from the fields of social studies, literary studies, and philosophy. Although the contents are categorized in systematic and historical aspects, all contributions draw on the importance of case studies for the theoretical framework, either starting with systematic questions that are then answered exemplary, or starting from historical cases as well as theoretical options

Sociomateriality: A Theoretical Framework for Studying Distributed Medical Education

Distributed medical education (DME) is a type of distance learning in which students participate in medical education from diverse geographic locations using Web conferencing, videoconferencing, e-learning, and similar tools. DME is becoming increasingly widespread in North America and around the world. Although relatively new to medical education, distance learning has a long history in the broader field of education and a related body of literature that speaks to the importance of engaging in rigorous and theoretically informed studies of distance learning. The existing DME literature is helpful, but it has been largely descriptive and lacks a critical "lens"-that is, a theoretical perspective from which to rigorously conceptualize and interrogate DME's social (relationships, people) and material (technologies, tools) aspects. The authors describe DME and theories about distance learning and show that such theories focus on social, pedagogical, and cognitive considerations without adequately taking into account material factors. They address this gap by proposing sociomateriality as a theoretical framework allowing researchers and educators to study DME and (1) understand and consider previously obscured actors, infrastructure, and other factors that, on the surface, seem unrelated and even unimportant; (2) see clearly how the social and material components of learning are intertwined in fluid, messy, and often uncertain ways; and (3) perhaps think differently, even in ways that disrupt traditional approaches, as they explore DME. The authors conclude that DME brings with it substantial investments of social and material resources, and therefore needs careful study, using approaches that embrace its complexity