Postgraduate Professional Development Research Articles

Taking a stance: promoting deliberate action through online postgraduate professional development

This article provides six case studies situated in an online community of practice relating to a module in a university Master of Arts in Education programme. During the module the online community allowed students to immerse themselves in problems brought to the community by their tutor. Students continued to participate in the online community of practice following the module, bringing their own professional issues to the forum to be discussed, with some interactions facilitated by the tutor. Six participants' experiences in the community are explored, contrasted, and related to those of the rest of the cohort, and the success of the community in challenging and changing the stances teachers take towards professional issues in their day‐to‐day practice is considered. Although the findings are encouraging, the link from particular example of positional exploration and change to long‐term professional identity change is complex, unclear and subject to many influences.

Developing teacher expertise: teachers and students doing mathematics together

This article provides an exploration and evaluation of teachers’ experiences of participating in a Postgraduate Professional Development opportunity where they learnt alongside their students, thus allowing teacher expertise to grow within a complex web of distributed knowing and collaborative learning. A group of thirteen teachers, each accompanied by a small group of their students, attended a mathematics masterclass at their local university led by a professor of mathematics education. Both students and teachers were supported in working as mathematicians together, but were debriefed separately. The students reflected together on what they had learned about how mathematicians see the world, whilst the teachers critically reflected on how the expert mathematician supported the learning of novices, comparing this to learning in their classrooms and devising implications for their future practice. The teachers’ views of this process were recorded in an ongoing reflective journal, as were their contributions to an end of course evaluation session. Teachers completed a questionnaire and a sample was interviewed three months after the final session. These data are analysed raising implications for teacher learning and future research.

Postgraduate Professional Development for teachers: motivational and inhibiting factors affecting the completion of awards

Many more teachers begin studying for masters’ level awards than complete them. This situation is a concern to participants, providers and funders of courses. The research project reported here explores teachers’ perceptions of factors affecting their success in completing assessed work. Questionnaire and interview responses from 46 students in three higher education institutions (HEIs) emphasise a number of motivational and inhibiting factors experienced by teachers. Some of these, including styles of assessment and access to resources, can be influenced positively by HEIs through course design and structures of institutional support. Other influential factors included time, personal circumstances and support in the workplace. Although these factors are not controlled by HEIs, they might be influenced by partnerships between tutors, school managers and local advisory staff working together to plan participation from course design to final impact. The research, although small‐scale and exploratory, will thus be of interest to HEIs and their local and national partners who seek to increase participation, retention and completion rates of teachers engaged in Postgraduate Professional Development.

The development of reasoning skills and expertise in primary care

WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN IN THIS AREA• The acquisition of clinical reasoning skills from novice to advanced student has been described and compared with experienced clinicians Research from the field of cognitive psychology suggests that development of such skills depends upon organizing packages of information into coherent structures which are quickly accessible from memory. These are called 'instance scripts?. Various strategies are employed in reasoning, starting with step-by-step analysis by novices, moving towards categorisation processes in-advanced practitioners (e.g. pattern recognition).WHAT THIS WORK ADDS• This work suggests a reference framework for reasoning skills and expertise development from novice to experienced practitioner within primary care. It extends ideas from existing Studies using medical students into postgraduate professional development, encompassing various transitions from newly qualified doctor to training registrar, and from new principal towards the experienced practitioner.• Within these transitory stages, reasoning strategies are highlighted, including potential problem areas and appropriate educational implications. The role of follow up mechanisms for GP registrars is suggested to enable validation of illness vectors in the natural history of disease and recovery. Extension of training schemes to provide for expertise development in primary care is proposed as the logical context where such skills can be improved.SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH• Current research in medical education in the UK appears to be heavily concentrated upon skills and competency assessment. These are more easily measured than cognitive skills. However, the impact of early clinical contact in UK medical schools upon cognitive skills could be compared with other countries where clinical contact is still delayed. Early patient contact may shift acquisition of some cognitive skills back in the proposed framework.• In addition to this, the impact of the foundation programme upon doctors subsequently entering primary care will provide the biggest stimulus for research, assuming that cognitive attributes, such as decision-making skills, are assessed alongside practical competencies.

More than a confessional: postmodern groupwork to support postgraduate supervisors' professional development

Academics are experiencing pressures related to accountability and appraisal, excellence, effectiveness and efficiency. These pressures can intensify when the role of postgraduate supervisor is added to an already crowded professional and personal life. Although support and discussion groups for supervisors have been used in professional development programmes, merely ‘confessing’ concerns and inadequacies has limited value. Supervisors need processes that enable them to explore and analyse the complexity of the postgraduate experience. The postmodern, narrative approach to groupwork outlined in this paper—the story-dialogue approach—invites supervisors to examine the metaphors and myths that surround the postgraduate research experience. Story-dialogue groupwork opens to supervisors the possibility for change in their professional practice through greater depth of understanding of the postgraduate experience and the supervisory relationship in that context. It moves the focus of professional development programmes from training to reflective practice.

The Artist‐Teacher Scheme as Postgraduate Professional Development in Higher Education

AbstractThe Artist‐Teacher scheme has been established in recent years to encourage, revive and maintain the creative practice of visual arts teachers. Higher education institutions providing postgraduate qualifications have completed their pilot phases of the scheme, and the first postgraduate certificates and degrees have been awarded. This paper describes and illustrates work of students on these courses, and the relationship of their renewed creativity to their experience as professional teachers. The information was drawn from interviews with students, staff and initiators of the scheme, as well as student evaluations. There is a summary of the history of the scheme and a description of its recent manifestation in the pilot postgraduate programmes. The paper also includes a discussion and analysis of features of the Artist‐Teacher scheme: the gallery collaborations, the relationship of theory to practice and to pedagogy. Students' responses to the scheme are discussed and, finally, emerging evidence of the positive impact that the Artist‐Teacher scheme is having on classroom performance is considered. Although ATS continues to exist in a number of forms, such as summer schools and day/evening classes and part‐time postgraduate certificate/Masters degrees, it is the mainly latter that is the focus of this paper.

Pharmacy continuing education available on the Internet.

Access to interesting and pertinent continuing education material would be expected to encourage pharmacists to pursue postgraduate professional development. The Internet is one means of providing accessible and timely instructional material. Twenty-nine Internet sources of continuing education available for pharmacists were identified. Criteria for inclusion included free educational credit and accreditation by a recognized body. Evaluation criteria were currency of the offerings, author and sponsor identification, software requirements in addition to a browser, and methods for submitting examination answers and receiving certificates of credit.