Conversation Going Research Articles

Using Teacher Study Groups to Enhance Teaching Effectiveness of English Language Teachers in East Gojjam Zone

Teachers’ professional development is the core of educational improvement. The study investigated the role of participation in a Teacher Study Group in enhancing English language teachers teaching effectiveness by engaging them in a teacher study group and thereby designing teacher study group procedures that can enhance teaching effectiveness of teachers in the schools. Focus group discussion, document analysis and classroom observation were used as methods of data gathering. The teachers were engaged in a regularly customized TSG activities on the basis of Tripod 7Cs to investigate what they improve on their teaching effectiveness. A thematic crossover analysis is used to present the data.As learned from this case study, it is evident that the teacher’s collegiality and open mindedness to involve in a dialogic TSG has improved. Moreover, as reflected by the teachers, their teaching effectiveness (as self-admitted and measured by Tripod 7Cs) has improved due to participation in TSG. This justifies the worth of a statement nearly a century ago that ‘…there is no workable alternative to working together, respectful of differences and eager to keep the conversation going.” John Dewey, 1938). However, further studies should confirm the viability of TSG discussion focusing on verifying the statistical significance and dimensions of teaching effectiveness TSG brings before it is considered as an alternative CPD modality. Keywords: TSG, Teaching Effectiveness, 7Cs DOI : 10.7176/JEP/10-7-02 Publication date :March 31 st 2019

The Experience of a Pain Patient

The Experience of a Pain Patient

Teaching Neuroscience: A Primer for Psychotherapists.

From the beginning of their psychotherapy training, students need to think about how talking changes the brain, how development is encoded in the body, and how connecting neuroscience and psychotherapy can help us improve psychosocial interventions to optimally help patients. But teaching neuroscience doesn't come naturally to many psychotherapy educators—myself included. We were trained as clinicians, not as researchers, so for many of us, reading and searching the neuroscience literature is challenging. Over many years, and with the help of wonderful colleagues, I am learning to read neuroscience papers and to incorporate what I learn into my psychotherapy teaching.When I teach neuroscience in a psychotherapy course, I do it with great humility. I make it very clear to my students that I'm not a neuroscientist and that I'm not an expert in the field. Instead, I learn with my students, as together we try to understand the science and what it can tell us about the mind, development, and psychotherapy.I also make it very clear that I'm not presenting this material as if it proves something about psychotherapy. We don't know enough about the neuroscience of psychotherapy to do that. Rather, I'm trying to get my students as excited as I am about what neuroscience can teach us about psychotherapy. My hope is that it will stimulate them to think about connections between neuroscience and psychotherapy when they are talking to patients, thinking about formulation, conceptualizing experiments and choosing their careers.Over the years, I've found that using carefully chosen neuroscience papers that I can understand really helps me to get the neuroscience/psychotherapy conversation going in a classroom. To that end, I offer five papers that I use when I teach psychotherapy. They are all written by top researchers and published in the nation's premiere scientific journals. Each one provides interesting potential insights into a different aspect of psychotherapy.

Ethical leadership and why health information management professionals need to be involved. Commentary on Health information is central to changes in healthcare: a clinician's view (Hoyle, 2019).

Philip Hoyle presents a compelling argument for the significant and highly valued role that the management of health information plays in the Australian healthcare system and the delivery of health services in this country. However, he also brings to our attention the ill-defined nature of the ethical oversight of this very information. Hoyle uses words such as "honesty," "commitment to beneficence," "commitment to equity" and "respect for variation" when describing the characteristics of ethical leadership. He singles out health information management professionals - Health Information Managers (HIMs) and Clinical Coders (CCs) - as the key professional group who need to step up and seize the initiative, get conversations going, form partnerships, do research and publish findings, so the knowledge and insights that the health information management profession has the potential to offer are not only more widely known and understood but also more useful to others working in the healthcare arena. Hoyle calls on health information management professionals to step out from behind the scenes and take responsibility for the ethical use of the information they help produce. Hoyle's words resonated powerfully with me, particularly with respect to the clinical coding workforce in Australia, which is made up of trained CCs and qualified HIMs. In a truly ethical environment, HIMs and CCs would not be asked to meet performance indicators for increased funding metrics or to change codes to avoid triggering certain indicators; they would simply be asked to ensure complete, accurate coding for every episode of care. This is what ethical leadership would look like. I am concerned about our clinical coding workforce. I am now asking, are our CCs and HIMs up to the task of taking back absolute and unchallenged ownership of their particular skill set, which makes them the keepers of the clinical coding standards and the experts in accurate and complete code assignment?

CLASSROOM COMMUNICATIVE STRUCTURE: EXCHANGE STRUCTURE IN EFL CLASS IN PUBLIC SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL 3 MOJOKERTO

This article reported the study about classroom communicative structure between teacher and students in English class in Public School High School 3 Mojokerto. This study aims to identify the elements of minimal exchange structure and general exchange structure in communication in classroom. This study uses minimal exchange structure theory of Strenstrom (1994) by qualitative descriptive method. Data in this study are obtained from the recording of conversation among teacher and students of XI grade in Speaking class. The result shows that there are three (3) types of act as the element of exchange structure:  Initiating, Responding, dan Following-Up (I-R-F). Minimal exchange structure consists of: Initiating-Responding (I-R) or Initiating-Responding-Following Up (I-R-F). General structure of exchange in classroom situation consists of: greeting, followed by any kinds of functions such as giving information, giving order, and asking question. In conversation, teacher tends to has initiative to start it, meanwhile, the students tend to give respond by doing activity (evade) which are instructed by the teacher. The students sometimes did not answer the question, therefore teacher keeps the conversation going by undergone initiative actions such as giving information, asking question or giving instruction. This study shows that teacher has power to supervise and keep going the class activity. It is needed to do further study on power aspect in classroom communication.

Response to commentaries

We would like to begin by thanking all the commentators for taking the time to read and reflect on our dialogue and offer their own reactions; it can be particularly challenging to insert oneself as a third interlocutor within a dialogue between two people, but as Rizvi remarks at the end of her commentary, the important thing is to keep the conversation going and so what started as a dialogue between two people is now a dialogue between six. As a collection, though, the commentators provide a very diverse set of views and perspectives, which means that picking up common threads is not an easy option. Instead, we will try and respond to each of the commentators in turn, addressing what we see as their key points.

Palliative Care and the Family Caregiver: Trading Mutual Pretense (Empathy) for a Sustained Gaze (Compassion).

In this conceptual piece, we survey the progress of palliative care communication and reflect back on a chapter we wrote a decade ago, which featured the communication concept of mutual pretense, first described by Glaser and Strauss (1965). This work will include an update on family caregivers and their role in cancer caregiving as well as a review of current palliative care communication curriculum available for providers. And finally, we will spotlight the conversation and research going forward on the subject of health literacy for all stakeholders; patients, families, providers, and systems. We feature one family’s story of incurable cancer and end of life to revisit the needs we identified ten years ago, which are still present. Goals for going forward in chronic and terminal illness are suggested in a health care context still too void of palliative care communication resources for providers, patients, and especially family caregivers.

Theory before ‘Theory’: W.D. Terry and the semantics of Alfred Korzybski

Theoretical work undertaken by W.D. Terry in 1950, well before the ‘theory wave’ of the 70s and 80s reached South Africa, sets out to scrutinize the semantic presuppositions of Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics, comparing them with those of I.A. Richards. Terry’s conclusion is that neither of these attempts to remodel linguistic communication to meet the scientific revolution of the early twentieth century could conceivably meet with success. Terry’s work shows how these efforts become nugatory attempts to escape the thrall of ‘within-the-skin’ human experience, whereas the unique struggles of poets preserve and share that experience in language, a medium they are continuously refreshing and renovating. Terry’s study is robustly grounded in mid-twentieth century thought, while nonetheless demonstrating that Korzybski and Richards were participating in a conversation going back to Socrates, Clement and Origen. The article recuperates a fleeting episode, sparked by JYT Greig at Wits, when the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski had some traction in South African English Departments through a textbook, Language in Thought and Action, by S.I. Hayakawa, one of Korzybski’s students; a moment which quickly vanished, leaving little trace other than Terry’s study.

Putting on the Armour: A Response to Richard Utz

There was a time not all that long ago when what is now known as medievalism was largely disregarded, so I take it as a mark of distinction to have my book Medievalism: A Critical History scrutinised as closely as it has been and given such generous attention by Richard Utz. As a still somewhat inchoate field, medievalism is still a volatile and changeable one. The following remarks are offered more in the spirit of keeping a critical conversation going within that context, than out of any desire to correct or to “get it right”.

Mother's Influence Child’s On the Speech Development in Kenya

Mothers have key roles in their children’s speech development. Sibling a child true love is an essential step in speech development. Simply talking to a child and getting a conversation going by means of emotional expression, gestures and sounds equally important while doing this, it is necessarily to follow the child’s lead signs, expressions, gestures, emotions, praising and appreciating what the child’s manages to do and helping him or her to focus on his or her attention, thus sharing the child’s experiences. Mothers therefore, play a big role in helping their children to learn rules, limits values and more importantly develop their speech in a natural manner.

Keep the conversations going: engagement-based customer segmentation on online social service platforms

Most businesses and organizations develop online services as a value-added offering, which is a significant revenue stream from their existing user base. Such services may be enhanced with social elements to serve as value-added tools for user attraction and retention. Social elements may allow users to post content, share information and directly interact with each other. Investments in these social features are for naught if they do not encourage users to engage on the platform effectively. However, common ways to segment customers by their engagement is hindered by the statistical nature of behavioral data based on social elements. To address this important concern, this paper presents a methodological framework for engagement-based customer segmentation able to appropriately consider signals from social elements. It argues why the traditional approaches for user segmentation is ill-suited and advocates for the integration of kernel functions with clustering to segment, identify and understand user engagement profiles. The framework is demonstrated with real data from a large, very active OSS.

The Use of Communication Strategies among Indonesian Young Learners of English in Early Total Immersion Program

This study aims at describing how Indonesian young learners of English act in responding to the interlocutor’s move to keep a conversation going. The research questions are (i) what speech functions are involved in the kindergarten students’ conversation; and (ii) what communication strategies are used by the learners? The participants of the research are kindergarten students of Mondial School of the Academic Year of 2015. The study uses descriptive qualitative research. The section of analysis is move(s). The learners’ speech is recorded, transcribed and identified to figure out what speech functions are involved in the conversation. The data are then analyzed and interpreted to reveal what communication strategies are used by the learners. The findings suggest that the learners use communication strategies involving four major speech function choices: opening, continuing, react responding, and react rejoinder moves. The learners produce initiation and react-responding the most. Opening in the form of demanding information and react responding in the form of replying answer moves are mostly realized through declarative clauses. Regardless the incongruent or congruent of mood types, it proves that they are able to sustain the conversation. The learners use three basic types of communication strategy: interpersonal negotiation, logico-semantic negotiation, and “channeling” negotiation. It is reasonable to argue that their conversation is natural. The conversation is also meaningful because the children are involved in the process of exchange. It is recommended that total immersion program can be applied in Indonesia as it provides precious opportunities for learners to speak.

Keep the conversations going: engagement-based customer segmentation on online social service platforms

Keep the conversations going: engagement-based customer segmentation on online social service platforms

Keep the conversation going.

The launch of RCNi Nurse Awards 2017 is a lovely reminder of this fantastic event in 2015, when I became nurse of the year for supporting victims of domestic abuse. The story continues, as I sit waiting to do an interview with ITV about domestic abuse, keeping the conversation going.

The Use of Communication Strategies among Indonesian Young Learners of English in Early Total Immersion Program

This study aims at describing how Indonesian young learners of English act in responding to the interlocutor’s move to keep a conversation going. The research questions are (i) what speech functions are involved in the kindergarten students’ conversation; and (ii) what communication strategies are used by the learners? The participants of the research are kindergarten students of Mondial School of the Academic Year of 2015. The study uses descriptive qualitative research. The section of analysis is move(s). The learners’ speech is recorded, transcribed and identified to figure out what speech functions are involved in the conversation. The data are then analyzed and interpreted to reveal what communication strategies are used by the learners. The findings suggest that the learners use communication strategies involving four major speech function choices: opening, continuing, react responding, and react rejoinder moves. The learners produce initiation and react-responding the most. Opening in the form of demanding information and react responding in the form of replying answer moves are mostly realized through declarative clauses. Regardless the incongruent or congruent of mood types, it proves that they are able to sustain the conversation. The learners use three basic types of communication strategy: interpersonal negotiation, logico-semantic negotiation, and “channeling” negotiation. It is reasonable to argue that their conversation is natural. The conversation is also meaningful because the children are involved in the process of exchange. It is recommended that total immersion program can be applied in Indonesia as it provides precious opportunities for learners to speak.

Former RCN Nurse of the Year to be honoured for her victim abuse training.

Award-winning nurse Amanda Burston, pictured, will be fêted for her work supporting victims of domestic abuse at the Women of the Year lunch in October, an event celebrating women's achievements. 'I am delighted to to be invited on behalf of every victim of abuse,' she said. 'I accept every opportunity to keep this vital conversation going.'

Connected Material Histories: A response

In giving the very first lecture that first-year History of Art undergraduates at Oxford will hear, I usually employ the practice of giving them a sheet of paper with nothing on it but the outlines of the land masses of the globe, and ask them to draw a line round ‘the West’. The idea was inspired by a reading of Lewis and Wigen's 1997 bookThe Myth of Continents(‘justly celebrated’, as Sanjay Subrahmanyam says), and remains a useful pedagogic act, up to a point, for the reasons so clearly laid out in that book; also, it breaks the ice, it gets a buzz of conversation going in the room, it certainly foregrounds the topic, central now to art historical enquiry, of the way in which ‘representations are social facts’. But the reason I do not ask them to draw a map round ‘the East’ is that I suspect it would be too easy, or at least done too quickly, and indeed the boundaries of both ‘East’ and ‘Orient’, as ‘Europe's Other’, can be shown to have fluctuated much less than have the boundaries of what, for most Oxford students, is still, if somewhat tenuously, ‘us’ or ‘here’. Wherever ‘the East’ is, it all lies (as Subrahmanyam points out in his lecture) in that assuredly -etic part of the world called Asia. I might, in the privacy of my own hard drive, choose to categorize those European images which I need for teaching as ‘Non-Eastern’ (to balance the ‘Non-Western’ rubric on which my specialist options appear in the syllabus). But that is not a category widely used, or at least not in my own discipline of art history.

Keeping the conversation going about SLC support

While government funding for I CAN's Early Learning Development Programme has ended, the organisation is determined to build on its success by encouraging more practitioners to take up its training.

Conversation Piece?

The human conversation, which academics learn from and contribute to in their inquiries, requires that they take sides to suggest radical change. Here, I reflect on ways in which those adopting a pragmatic stance may contribute to this elastic conversation. The means available for analytic inquiry include assemblage, bricolage, collage, critical reading, and all forms of writing. A pragmatic approach may help academics suggest radical action to address what Dewey called the problems of man but does not purport to offer a final analysis. Instead, pragmatists are committed to experiment and to keep the conversation going.

The Alexamenos Graffito and Its Rhetorical Contribution to Anti-Christian Polemic

Since its discovery in 1857 in a room of the Domus Gelotiana, the Alexamenos Graffito has been one of the widely known inscriptions exhibiting Roman attitudes toward Christianity. Early on, the graffiti was described and interpreted by a host of nineteenth century international scholars. These scholars provided descriptions of the physical layout of the domus Gelatiana, speculated on the date of the inscription and its interpretation and sought to place the graffiti in the context of other graffiti that otherwise appeared on the domus’ plaster walls. A good amount of that commentary was merely descriptive in nature and did little to go beyond the guidebook content required of the typical Victorian traveler. Even after the passage of a century, few attempts have been made to transcend the typical and near cliche description of the Graffito as a “blasphemous representation of Jesus of Nazareth” and few appear to have been interested in compiling and analyzing the collective record involving the Graffito. This has led to the unfortunate situation where no understanding has been achieved of the greater rhetorical implications of the inscription nor has a place been assign to the Graffito in the realm of anti-Christian polemic discourse. This paper seeks to advance scholarship regarding the Alexamenos Graffito by (1) surveying the available literature related to the inscription with the aim of understanding the physical context in which the Graffito was found; (2) assigning an approximate date to the Graffito; (3) understanding the polemical implications of the Graffito; and finally, (4) assigning a place for the Graffito in the larger conversation going on in the first through third centuries about Christianity’s place in Roman Empire. In doing so, the paper will argue first, that the Graffito belongs to the third century when the back and forth between pagan critics and Christian apologists was becoming most acute throughout the Empire; and second, that the Graffito is not a sincere expression of Gnostic religion as argued by John Henry Middleton, Marice Haupt and Richard Wunsch; and third, the Graffito is likely a polemical inscription aimed at denigrating Christianity, it is unique among pagan polemics against Christianity in that it raises arguments, albeit symbolically, that criticize Christianity as an offshoot of Judaism, lumping both together as religions not worthy of a citizen of Rome.