Area 1: An Overview of Evidence for the National Approach to Professional Learning in Education

This report reviews published literature on the way that countries around the globe have organised and systematised professional learning for teachers in a time of curriculum change. It first reviews country specific literature and then presents evidence on the organisation of professional learning from more general literature, which is more concerned with improvements in practice. All literature used is either from peer-reviewed journals or from academic books. The literature was found by using scholarly search engines, searching under various terms indicating professional learning. In this way literature was uncovered that will be used to support or to question the approach that the Welsh Government takes towards professional learning in education

Well rounded Postdoctoral Researchers with initiative, who are not always “tied to the bench” are more successful academically

This article reports the development, application and results of a baseline investigation of contract research staff in 2007 in the Medical School at the University of Sheffield which was carried out in order to develop a specifically tailored training and career development programme and allow for future impact evaluation of the scheme. Postdoctoral researchers reported on their perceived skill levels, academic achievements, career motivations and the current research environment. Results indicated that transferable skills related to communication and awareness of the process of research (i.e. the process of acquisition of funding, commercialisation of research outputs) were lacking. Furthermore, these skills were associated with higher publication outputs, and improved with mobility between institutions at postdoctoral level. This paper also describes how the findings from the baseline evaluation were used to develop a programme to address the lower ranking skills and evaluate the impact of the programme

A Comparison of Compensatory and Non-Compensatory Decision Making Strategies in IT Project Portfolio Management

In IT project portfolio management, selecting and prioritizing the various projects can be viewed as a decision making task requiring input from various stakeholders in the organization. Based on theories from the psychology literature on compensatory and non-compensatory individual decision making, this study evaluates the effectiveness of both strategies in the context of IT project prioritization. We compare the results of a frugal and fast non-compensatory decision making strategy with a more cognitively intense, attribute-based compensatory strategy and hypothesize that both will generate similar results. In addition, we hypothesize that the additional cognitive effort associated with the compensatory strategy will result in the compensatory strategy as being perceived as more accurate by the evaluator. For the conference, the hypotheses will be tested, and the preliminary results reported

The Role of Liminality in Transitioning and Learning from Project Failures

In the information technology project management literature, much has been written about the types of project failures and reasons for project failure. However, less research has focused on how project managers cope when a project in which they have been managing is considered a failure. In this study, we examine how project managers transition and learn from project failures that are due to termination of the project before it was completed, or due to a project that was completed but had a disappointing result. Specifically, we focus on the concept of liminality that occurs due to project failure, which is a state of ambiguity during a time of transition. The results of this study will be useful in understanding how project managers effectively (or ineffectively) transition to new projects and learn from failure

Implications of Blockchain Data Architecture: Research and Teaching an Emergent Innovation

The paper will frame teaching and research strategies based on experience of teaching and researching emergent technologies and particularly focus on Blockchain distributed data architecture

Learning through Interactions: Improving Project Management Capabilities through Inter-organizational Communities of Practice

Communities of practice are a possible a mechanism for improving knowledge sharing among project managers both within and between organizations. Based on social capital theory and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, we theorize a model of participation intensity by project managers in communities of practice. Specifically our research model expands on the various motivational drivers and perceived outcomes of project manager participation in communities of practice