Miss, what's my name? New teacher identity as a question of reciprocal ontological security

This paper extends the dialogue of educational philosophy to the experience of beginners entering the teaching profession. Rather than impose the ideas of any specific philosopher or theorist, or indeed official standard, the exploration presented here owes its origins to phenomenology and the use of grounded theory. Working from a narrative data base and focussing on the knowing of name in the first instance, the authors develop their emergent ideas on self and identity in relation to children taught, through connection to a wider literature that includes reference to Giddens, Illeris, Deleuze and Heidegger, for example. The paper is thus also an exercise in suggesting that research on practice by academics working in professional education, who are non-philosophers, can lead to constructive and relevant engagement with philosophy in developing theory from and about about practice, even though the approach, in the initial stages, may well be serendipitous and eclectic in nature

Software engineering

Today's software systems generally use obsolete technology, are not integrated properly with other software systems, and are difficult and costly to maintain. The discipline of reverse engineering is becoming prominent as organizations try to move their systems up to more modern and maintainable technology in a cost effective manner. The Johnson Space Center (JSC) created a significant set of tools to develop and maintain FORTRAN and C code during development of the space shuttle. This tool set forms the basis for an integrated environment to reengineer existing code into modern software engineering structures which are then easier and less costly to maintain and which allow a fairly straightforward translation into other target languages. The environment will support these structures and practices even in areas where the language definition and compilers do not enforce good software engineering. The knowledge and data captured using the reverse engineering tools is passed to standard forward engineering tools to redesign or perform major upgrades to software systems in a much more cost effective manner than using older technologies. The latest release of the environment was in Feb. 1992

Finding an identity and meeting a standard : connecting the conflicting in teacher induction

This article has the apparently contradictory aims of describing a discourse of new teachers that is at odds with the policy-derived competence-based discourse of the professional standard for teachers, but of also seeking to find some points of connection that may help start a dialogue between policy and research. The experience of new teachers is conceptualized as personal stories of identity formation with a clear emotional-relational dimension and a sense of self and intrinsic purpose in which others, especially colleagues and children, are central - themes not visible in the standard. The empirical context is that of new teachers in Scotland but the argument is supported through a wider literature that extends beyond the traditional limits of teacher education, drawing on, for example, notions of self-identity, pure relationship and ontological security in the work of Giddens. Whether a more constructive dialogue can begin depends partly on the extent to which the formal standard can be expected to capture the complex, personal nature of the beginner's experience, and partly on the possibility of research identifying particular areas of competence, such as understanding difference, that connect in some way to the standard

'The Work of Teacher Education' : Final Research Report

Partnership teacher education – in which schools work with universities and colleges to train teachers – works and there is abundant existing evidence in support of this fact. But our small-scale study across England and Scotland shows that it is the higher education tutor who seems to make it work, often at the cost of research-informed teaching and research. The most time-intensive activity for the higher education tutors in our sample was maintaining relationships with schools and between schools and individual trainee teachers. The need to maintain relationships to such a degree is caused in part by the creation of a marketplace of ‘providers’ of teacher education who compete for funding on the basis of inspection and quality assurance data and also by the very early school placements that characterise the English model of initial teacher education in comparison to other European models such as that of Finland

Teachers' views on providing for children with special needs in inclusive classrooms:a papua new guinea study

The purpose of having inclusive education is to value children with special needs so they can participate equally in all educational activities alongside their peers without special needs. There should not be any discrimination, segregation or isolation of these children with special needs from being educated rather they must be given an equal opportunity to participate alongside children without special needs. This study seeks to investigate primary school teachers' views and experiences in implementing the Inclusive Education Policy in regular schools. The study was conducted in five districts of the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea. Six primary schools were selected and involved 77 teachers who responded to questionnaire items, while 12 teachers within the group were chosen to be involved in interviews. Data for the study were gathered and analysed from the questionnaires, and the interview transcripts. The findings from the study revealed that most teachers supported the notion of Inclusive Education Policy and would like to implement it. However, they indicated that there needed to be a change in attitudes of teachers, peers, boards of management, and parents/caregivers to provide assistance for children with special needs. Most teachers felt that there needs to be more awareness of the principle and the importance of inclusion. Teachers' limited knowledge of teaching children with special needs was also highlighted. In this study teachers admitted they needed more training in the field of educating children with special education in order to accommodate and teach children with special needs. This shows that teachers' colleges and universities need to have trained lecturers to develop more courses in special education. Teachers expressed concern that school inspectors do not know enough about the inclusive education concept and need to be trained as well so collaboratively they could implement the policy. Government support is needed to effectively implement the inclusive education policy. This includes training of specialists to support teachers, funds for teaching and learning resources and facilities in schools. The cultural implications and geographical issues have also had some impact on the implementation of the Inclusive Education Policy, while the issue of children with HIV and AIDS was raised that teachers needed to be prepared in order to accommodate and teach those infected children. All these issues highlighted are very important and it is hoped that the outcome of the findings will provide the Department of Education with new strategies to improve and strengthen their commitment to implement Inclusive Education Policy

New teachers as learners : a model of early professional development

This project was designed to improve the learning of new teachers by developing a research-based, practical model of early professional learning. In addition to detailing the main part of the learning process that statutory standards neglect, the research implies that existing standards should be differentially weighted to reflect the multidimensional development process we have identified. In so doing, we have shown that it is possible to 'connect the conflicting' experience and standard through a more sophisticated recognition of early professional learning

Building Relationships with Aboriginal People: A Cultural Mapping Toolbox

This article describes a cultural mapping tool developed specifically for working with Aboriginal people experiencing mental health problems. The tool has broad scope, drawing from ecological and systems approaches. It will assist social workers to understand cultural and family obligations and build relationships with Aboriginal service users. Students learning about cultural diversity have expressed concern about asking culturally-sensitive questions. Australian human service workers typically state they feel inadequate in addressing Aboriginal culture in their practice approaches. The three components of the cultural mapping toolbox, (a) the social and emotional wellbeing cluster map, (b) the community and cultural diversity map, and (c) the migration map, provide social workers with a way of supporting a culturally connected lifestyle in contemporary society

The informal learning of new teachers in school

The purpose of this paper is to present what the study of the experiences of beginning teachers and their informal learning says about the process of learning to teach, and to discuss the main emerging themes in relation to a wider literature. The design of the paper is essentially ethnographic and building of grounded theory, based on an accumulation of data derived from interviews with beginning teachers and connecting to extant theory. The findings are that a focus on the informal learning of beginners in teaching leads to the notion of learning as becoming that is predominantly emotional and relational in nature with the emergence of teacher identity. The research is limited in its exploration of the cognitive dimension of professional learning, a dimension which may be elicited using a more tightly focused and structured method. The implications are that learning to teach is not determined by a professional standard and that a revised standard would need to take account of these findings. The value of the paper lies in the pursuit of informal learning as a research area in teaching to reveal a greater complexity of learning in that specific professional context; and showing how the understanding of learning to teach can be enriched through a wider appreciation of the school as workplace, workplace learning and connections to a wider philosophical literature