Changing Educational Practices Research Articles

Metacognitive strategies improve self-regulation skills in expert sports coaches

Self-regulation is linked to the ability to learn successfully, adapt to change, and project one’s future behavior. This study aims to evaluate the impact of metacognitive strategies on self-regulation skills in the creation of educational content. Nine expert sports coaches participated in the research, and a mixed-methodology research plan was used to conduct the research. The results highlight the transformative effects of metacognitive strategies on self-regulation skills and sports coaches’ experiences. The use of metacognitive strategies had a positive effect on the improvement of self-regulation skills. The facilitation program based on metacognitive questioning significantly affected the expert sports coaches’ self-reported self-regulation skills. The results of the thematic analysis revealed that coaches’ behavior was characterized by greater freedom in organizing their professional activities. Development of self-regulatory skills through changing educational practices encourages coaches’ curiosity and openness to innovation, recognition of otherness, broadening of horizons, understanding of complexity, and disclosure of connections.

Beyond omission: analysing the erasure of disability and inclusion in the developmentally appropriate practices

ABSTRACT The 4th edition of the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s (NAEYC) guidelines for developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) had an opportunity to provide the field an inclusive blueprint. While there was an attempt in this edition to respond to decades of critiques (e.g. Bloch [1992]. “Critical Perspectives on the Historical Relationship Between Child Development and Early Childhood Education Research.” In Reconceptualizing the Early Childhood Curriculum: Beginning the Dialogue, edited by S. Kessler, and E. B. Swadener, 3–20. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.; Cannella [1997]. Deconstructing Early Childhood Education: Social Justice and Revolution. New York, NY: Peter Lang.; Escayg [2019]. “Who’s got the Power?”: A Critical Examination of the Anti-Bias Curriculum.” International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy 13 (1): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-019-0062-9.; Langford [2010]. “Critiquing Child-Centered Pedagogy to Bring Children and Early Childhood Educators Into the Center of a Democratic Pedagogy.” Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 11 (1): 113–127. https://doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2010.11.1.113.; Pérez and Saavedra [2017]. “A Call for Onto-Epistemological Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Care: Centering Global South Conceptualizations of Childhood/s.” Review of Research in Education 41 (1): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X16688621.; Souto-Manning and Rabadi-Raol [2018]. “(Re)Centering Quality in Early Childhood Education: Toward Intersectional Justice for Minoritized Children.” Review of Research in Education 42 (1): 203–225. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X187595.), the new edition continues to centre dominant developmental approaches where adults hyperfocus on children’s differences or individual characteristics rather than on changing educational structures and practices that promote inequity (Ferri and Bacon [2011]. “Beyond Inclusion: Disability Studies in Early Childhood Teacher Education.”). The revised guidelines do not go far enough to address inequity and to give teachers and programmes tools for addressing injustice for all young children. This manuscript builds on previous critiques of DAP by explicitly addressing the exclusion of disabled children from the guidelines.

Bridging gaps: a systematic literature review of brokerage in educational change

Bridging gaps between educational stakeholders at the classroom, school, and system levels is essential to achieve sustainable change in primary and secondary education. However, transferring knowledge or building capacity within this network of loosely coupled stakeholders is demanding. The brokerage concept holds promise for studying these complex patterns of interaction, as it refers to how specific actors (brokers) link loosely coupled or disconnected individuals (brokering). However, different research traditions, in terms of theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches, and various stakeholders examined in their role as bridge builders make understanding the role of brokers, brokering, and brokerage in changing educational practice challenging. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the current literature on these concepts in educational change research. In a systematic literature review based on 42 studies, we analyzed each study’s theoretical assumptions, methodological approach, scope in terms of stakeholders involved, and empirical findings. First, the literature review revealed that research on educational change refers to four different theoretical frameworks when focusing on brokers, brokering, or brokerage. Second, our results indicate that predominantly qualitative approaches have been applied. Third, using content network graphs, we identified teachers and principals as among the most frequently analyzed brokers. Fourth, four relevant aspects of the empirical findings are presented: brokers’ personal characteristics, conditions that enable brokering, successful brokering strategies, and outcomes of brokerage. Finally, we outline a future research agenda based on the empirical evidence base and shortcomings.

Supporting Pacific clinicians’ medical education practice change through faculty development: A qualitative case study

Introduction: In the Pacific region, there is a growing need to support medical education and supervision. Following a faculty development initiative, we pondered a question: To what extent and how do Pacific clinicians change their educational practice in a low-resource setting? Current medical education literature advocates exploring educational change in different contexts. Therefore, we aimed to expand current understandings of educational change and provide recommendations for enhancing faculty development in low-resource settings by exploring if and how clinicians in Fiji translated knowledge learnt during faculty development to their educational practice. Methods: Utilising a qualitative case study approach, we recruited nine clinicians through purposeful sampling. Data collection occurred over 3 months through reflective journals, interviews, lesson plans and videos of teaching. All data were subjected to thematic analysis. Results: Six themes represented the Pacific clinicians’ educational journey: 1) perception of faculty development, 2) reflecting on and evolving educational philosophy, 3) adapting and changing practice, 4) clinicians’ perception of student responses to their teaching, 5) inhibitors to change and 6) enablers of change. Conclusions: We further conceptualised the themes into an educational change model. Our results, together with the international literature, guided key recommendations for medical education faculty development in low-resource settings. The key recommendations included considering cultural organisational influences, clinicians’ prior educational experiences and local enablers and barriers to changing educational practice when developing relevant faculty development programs. Furthermore, clinicians in low-resource settings, such as the Pacific, require support through mentorship, flexible learning, feedback, developing communities of practice and the promotion of reflective practice to facilitate sustainable educational change.

Leading change of practice: a study of challenges and possibilities from the position of preschool management

ABSTRACT This article explores the conditions required for preschool managers to support change through research aimed at developing educational practice. It examines factors that enable and constrain support of change and the arrangements that can be identified in relation to these factors. The results suggest that arrangements that support a more technical and accountable form of practice constrain managers’ capacity to support research aiming to change practice. However, the findings also show thatmanagers do have possibilities to support such research. One key factor is whether the research is in line with their goals and efforts. Another is whether they have trust in the researchers and the educators implementing the change. The results also indicate that one way for leaders to enable change is by creating meaningful spaces for sharing experiences and developing practices. This involves the reframing of leadership practices into a more democratic and collaborative approach, and implies that cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements are needed to support such approach. Hence, for research projects aimed at changing educational practice, it is necessary to identify the specific arrangements connected to that practice. This is especially important in times when practice-based research is promoted as a way to attain educational goals.

Opening up participatory spaces: a way of rethinking school practices linked to territory

ABSTRACT Background For education to be underpinned deeply by the principles of inclusion and interculturality, there is a need for school to be reconceptualised as an institution which is strongly linked to its territory and capable of being an agent of social change. As part of a wider project exploring processes of democratic participation for social transformation, this article reports on a research study that supported schools to review and reformulate their educational practices through a school-based Participatory Action Research (PAR) project. Purpose The study sought to support participating schools to examine, review and transform practices by using participatory social diagnosis (PSD) strategies. In particular, it aimed to explore the ways in which PSD practices enabled the review of practices linked to territory, encouraging a process of transformative participation towards inclusion. Method Through participatory projects across four infant (3- to 6-year-old pupils) and primary (6- to 12-year-old pupils) schools in different locations in Spain, case studies were developed to examine participation and community building in the context of each case. Data, including recordings of focus group sessions, were transcribed and analysed qualitatively, using content analysis techniques. Findings Across the four case studies, analysis suggested that, in a variety of ways, spaces and times were created for shared reflection, and participatory techniques generated creative forms available to the entire community to contribute to the analysis and transformation of practices. The findings indicated that PAR techniques had enabled a means of participation that led to a process of circulation and collective production of knowledge, allowing a rethinking of inclusion and territory. Conclusions : Our small scale, in-depth study highlights the implications of opening up participatory spaces with regard to the concept of community, social change and territory. This research may provide insights for future researchers and school communities with similar goals of changing educational practices to address participation from an inclusive and intercultural approach.

Educación, formación humana y valores cooperativos: una propuesta de revitalización de las prácticas educativas brasileñas para el rescate del hombre social y fraterno

La modernidad trajo en su esencia la posibilidad del hombre ejercer la plenitud de su capacidad racional, estableciendo un proceso evolutivo basado en la conformación del conocimiento y desarrollo de la ciencia. En un momento más reciente, en la postmodernidad, el hombre pierde el sentido de la sociabilidad y de la fraternidad, y pasa a vivir detenido en sus intereses personales, alejado de los demás y de las necesidades del mundo. Por ello, el trabajo tiene como objetivo el análisis de las finalidades de los niveles educacionales en Brasil, para que se pueda establecer una posibilidad de cambio de las prácticas educativas, a través de la utilización de los valores cooperativos en la formación educacional como supuesto de rescate del hombre fraterno y sociable.
 Recibido: 24 mayo 2017Aceptado: 04 julio 2017

Orienting Assessment toward Serving Students Reaction to Contributions of Edmund Gordon: We Need to Change Educational Practice and Assessment Together

Orienting Assessment toward Serving Students Reaction to Contributions of Edmund Gordon: We Need to Change Educational Practice and Assessment Together

Teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism in a course on translanguaging

In recent years new ideas about multilingualism and translanguaging have been widely debated in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. A growing number of studies have investigated different aspects of translanguaging. Thus far only a few studies have focused on teachers’ beliefs, attitudes or ideologies. In an earlier study, we found monolingual assumptions to be strong among teachers in the Basque Country and in Friesland. In the current study in-service teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism and translanguaging are discussed in relation to the key role that teachers can play in changing educational practices. During a course of continuing professional development in-service teachers received training on multilingual approaches. Before, during and after the course data were collected on their beliefs about multilingualism and translanguaging. The outcomes reveal some important changes in the teachers’ beliefs about separating languages, mixing languages and languages supporting each other and the application of those beliefs in the classroom. The complex relationship between professional development and changes in teachers’ beliefs and practices is placed in a broader context of multilingual approaches to teaching.

‘Too young to read’: early years practitioners’ perceptions of early reading with under-threes

ABSTRACTThis research paper investigates how graduate early years practitioners support under-threes with early reading; presenting their perceptions and daily encounters. Previous research into the practice and pedagogy of early reading appears to have resulted in the latest overarching policy investment in phonics. This paper suggests that this neoliberal policy agenda influences practitioner’s pedagogy with under-threes. This paper reports the findings of an empirical study, involving an initial survey, followed by practitioner interviews and reflective Zines. Findings from this study indicate that the increased emphasis on school readiness is affecting experienced, graduate level practitioners’ perceptions of early reading. Intrinsically, early years practitioners are being driven to adopting a ‘policy compliant’ [Fisher, J., and E. Wood. 2012. “Changing educational practice in the early years through practitioner-led action research: an Adult–Child Interaction Project.” International Journal of Early Years Education 20 (2): 114–129, 12] approach; consequently, resulting in a deficit model of provision for under-threes in terms of the resources, activities and experiences necessary to encourage and enthuse children to engage with reading. This research concludes that there is an urgent need to support early years practitioners in understanding what ‘early reading’ is in practice.

When the Girls Come Out to Play: Teenage Working-Class Girls’ Leisure between the Wars by Katherine Milcoy

<i>When the Girls Come Out to Play: Teenage Working-Class Girls’ Leisure between the Wars</i> by Katherine Milcoy

Prospective Teachers' Perceptions on Education Policy: A Metaphor Analysis

This study aiming to determine the metaphorical perceptions of prospective teachers regarding Turkey’s education policies was modelled in the ‘phenomenological pattern’ which one of the qualitative research methods. The study group was 150 prospective teachers. Data was collected using a metaphor form and via focus group interviews. Descriptive analysis and content analysis techniques were used for data analysis. Prospective teachers produced 135 valid metaphors. The most frequently repeated metaphors were chameleon, jigsaw puzzle, play dough, exchange rate, seasons, Black Sea’s weather, domino stones, human life, Indian silk, swamp, traditional agriculture, tuning of the oriental instrument, vegetable soup, and weather forecast. The main categories were uncertainty, changeability, inevitableness, subjectivity, anxiety, desperation, instability, inconsistency, and awareness. The metaphors and focus group interview results show that the prospective teachers perceive negatively the frequent changing policies and educational practices.

Can Mobile Technology Enhance Learning and Change Educational Practice?

Gambo, Jean M. MS, RNC; Bahreman, Nasreen T. MSN, RN, PCNS-BC; Watties-Daniels, Denyce MSN, RN; Neal, Maggie PhD, RN; Swoboda, Sandra M. RN, MS, FCCMEditor(s): Alexander, Susan DNP, ANP-BC, ADM-BC Author Information

Announcing the Alan C. Purves Award Recipients (Volume 49): Critical Approaches to Language Research with the Potential to Change Educational Practice: This Year’s Purves Award Honorees

Announcing the Alan C. Purves Award Recipients (Volume 49): Critical Approaches to Language Research with the Potential to Change Educational Practice: This Year’s Purves Award Honorees

Effect of curriculum changes to enhance generic skills proficiency of 1st-year medical students

Background. Curriculum review is a dynamic, iterative process, and the effect of change may not always be wholly predictable. At Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa revision of the MB,ChB curriculum was undertaken to meet enhanced and changing educational and medical practice, and to provide opportunities to enhance optimal generic skills underpinning effective learning, implemented in 2008. Objective. To determine the extent to which the newly implemented revised curriculum had an effect on experience in necessary generic skills of students in their first year of study. Methods. Students provided annual formal end-of-module evaluation in addition to focus group interviews. Evaluation by teaching staff was conducted by individual in-depth interviews. A validated generic skills questionnaire completed at the end of each academic year monitored the effect on students’ generic learning skills experience. Results. Feedback from these different evaluation methods identified specific needs in the newly implemented revised curriculum, including contextualisation of interventions, unnecessary duplication of content and malalignment of assessment. This led to minor curriculum changes and an educational capacity-building programme. These responsive curriculum changes after evaluation had the intended positive effect on students’ self reported acquisition of generic learning skills. Conclusion. The objective of the curriculum evaluation was to monitor content output and the acquisition of crucial generic learning skills. Implementation of a revised curriculum combined with ongoing responsive changes aligned with careful multimodality evaluation can ensure that, in addition to scientific knowledge and skills, generic learning skills development of students is facilitated.

Knowledge and reality as educational tools of violence

When we look at institutional education, we see that behavioural approaches to teaching still dominate in educational reality. From this perspective, learning is completely dependent on teaching, just as students are under the authority of the teacher. In a sense, this is a situation of a specific kind of symbolic violence. It has its sources in traditional ways of understanding education as a particular form of training produced in the school. But this is not the only reason. Another one is a tacit assumption about the correctness of naïve realism: the belief that we can obtain objective and universal knowledge of the external world. In this article I argue that this generates the situation in which students’ thinking is subordinated to the system. Such education kills free and critical thinking, as well as effectively blocking social change. In other words, the current public educational system is oppressive at its very basis, because of its epistemological assumptions. However, before we start changing educational practice we should first change our way of looking at knowledge. Here, I discuss selected controversies around the traditional model of knowledge and learning, as well as suggesting different paradigms of knowledge and education.

The HumBox: Changing educational practice around a learning resource repository

The HumBox is a learning resource repository for the Humanities educational community in the UK. Over the last three years the challenge for HumBox has been to act as not only a shared library for its community, but also to change the working practices of individuals in that community by encouraging them to work in a more open way and to actively share their materials and ideas with others. Getting users to engage with and adopt innovative systems is a well-known problem; with the HumBox our approach was to focus on user-experience (UX) design through agile development and ongoing participatory and co-design activities. In this paper we present a mixed-methods evaluation of the success of this engagement over the past three years, focusing especially on the way that users have appropriated the system and its services in order to solve real problems. Our evaluation reveals that for many HumBox users we have been successful in creating a technology that is invisible (meaning beneath the level of notice and concern) and that the result of this is less micro-appropriation (users adopting and using specific features in new ways) and more macro-appropriation (users adopting and adapting the site as a whole). We conclude that in the case of HumBox invisible technology coupled with the social framework of co-design and user engagement activities, has allowed a diffusion of ownership, and created a safe social and technical environment where the community can debate high-level issues, and that this has led to changes in both professional and pedagogical practice.

Interprofessional Education

The past decade witnessed momentum toward redesigning the U.S. health care system with the intent to improve quality of care. To achieve and sustain this change, health professions education must likewise reform to prepare future practitioners to optimize their ability to participate in the new paradigm of health care delivery. Recognizing that interprofessional education (IPE) is gaining momentum as a crucial aspect of health care professions training, this article provides an introduction to IPE programs from three different academic health centers, which were developed and implemented to train health care practitioners who provide patient-centered, collaborative care. The three participating programs are briefly described, as well as the processes and some lessons learned that were critical in the process of adopting IPE programs in their respective institutions. Critical aspects of each program are described to allow comparison of the critical building blocks for developing an IPE program. Among those building blocks, the authors present information on the planning processes of the different institutions, the competencies that each program aims to instill in the graduates, the snapshot of the three curricular models, and the assessment strategies used by each institution. The authors conclude by providing details that may provide insight for academic institutions considering implementation of IPE programs.

Examining epistemic frames in conceptual change research: implications for learning and instruction

Recently, research on the role of epistemic beliefs in conceptual change has increased dramatically. The focus of that research has largely been on students’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing; that is, how one understands what it means to know. In this article, we consider the characteristics of knowledge and knowing (i.e., epistemic frames) manifest in conceptual change investigations conducted by contemporary researchers. To accomplish this purpose, we took several steps. First, we reviewed philosophical writings pertaining to epistemology and epistemological beliefs, selected prominent stances toward epistemology (i.e., epistemic frames), and delineated the defining features of each (e.g., stances regarding knowledge or justification of knowledge). Then, to illustrate how these philosophical frames might translate into psychological research, we constructed prototypic conceptual change studies for each frame. Finally, we searched the conceptual change literature for studies manifesting evidence of the various epistemic frames. We conclude with potential applications of the epistemic frames in future conceptual change research and educational practice.

From the Editors' Desk: Renewing the Call for Innovations in Medical Education

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new JGIM feature, Innovations in Medical Education (IME). We recognize the need to share ideas with potential to transform health professions education, and hope that IME will encourage authors to disseminate their pioneering education efforts. IME evolved from the previous Education Innovations category, but has been reconceptualized to reflect the higher standards of scholarship now expected of medical education research. 1 We wish to take this opportunity to elaborate on what we look for in an IME article. First, we use Glassick's 2 criteria for the assessment of scholarship, namely clear goals, adequate preparation, appropriate methods, significant (important, not necessarily statistically significant) results, effective presentation, and critical reflection. We refer readers to our previous commentary on these criteria 1 for a further discussion. Second, we subscribe to the adage that guides decisions for all submissions to JGIM: 3 Is it new (have others done this)? Is it true (are the conclusions valid, as evaluated using appropriately rigorous methods)? Will it change what we do (how will this change educational practice)? In the following paragraphs, we explain how these questions apply to IME.