Practitioner Research Research Articles

From “Let Me Show You Something Cool” to “What Do You Notice?” Preparing College Interns for Floor Facilitation in a Natural History Museum

ABSTRACT The use of facilitators to engage visitors in conversations at collections-based institutions has the potential to greatly impact and deepen visitor experience. The job requires the development of complex skills across specific strands of study. In this article, we share details on the strands of study in the training of youth floor facilitators from diverse backgrounds for work in a collections-based museum. This training program has been developed over several years. In this article, we review lessons learned, discuss issues we continue to grapple with, and recommend opportunities for further research for practitioners and researchers.

The transformative power of practitioner inquiry: collaborative autoethnography, norm critique and research circles in Swedish education

ABSTRACT This article builds on the social justice and critical and emancipatory dimensions of practitioner inquiry in education. The aim is to demonstrate the potential and challenges of collaborative autoethnography for institutional change, transformative learning and norm critique. Taking Jack Mezirow’s and Paulo Freire’s theoretical framework as a starting point, I analyse four autoethnographic cases conducted by Swedish teachers. I demonstrate the ways in which autoethnography may help teachers realise their own silence and unresponsiveness regarding oppression related to ethnicity, gender, professional role and generational hierarchies in preschools and schools. The collaborative autoethnography also instigates teachers’ realisation of space-time dynamics and other institutionalised constraints and their constitutive power over practices, feelings, understandings and social relations. The transformative learning that has emerged from collaborative autoethnography has led us to recognise the necessity and challenges of conducting empirical analysis, engaging in self-reflection and dialogue, and transforming institutionalised and personal practices and norms. While bringing about institutional change has been challenging, individual and relational transformation has been more achievable. I argue that top-down initiated practitioner inquiry with colleagues and superiors at one’s workplace may be more challenging, and I also argue for the benefits of engaging in practitioner inquiry with people outside one’s own organisation.

The teacher guidance model for practitioner research: a longitudinal case study

ABSTRACT This study investigated whether and how a teacher guidance model could be applied by researchers to guide Dutch elementary school teachers in learning to conduct practitioner research. The authors’ guidance model is inspired by the cognitive apprenticeship approach and comprises four phases with different guidance strategies to scaffold and fade support for teacher learning. Over the course of three years, two researchers facilitated four teacher teams (7–11 members per team) during three phases of the model. The researchers and teachers both appraised the guidance strategies; teachers also rated their proficiency in conducting practitioner research before and after each phase. Results showed that teachers’ confidence increased and that they considered the guidance strategies valuable. Thus, the teacher guidance model provides a good starting point for researchers aiming to support teachers in learning to conduct practitioner research. Future research should aim to refine the guidance strategies within the model.

Research and Evaluation for Busy Students and Practitioners: A Survival Guide, Helen Kara

Research and Evaluation for Busy Students and Practitioners: A Survival Guide, Helen Kara

Civic Place Literacies: Tracing Urban Migrant Girls' Democratic Meaning‐Making Through Virtual Transnational Practitioner Research

AbstractHistorically marginalized youth shape public life through civic literacies that are rooted in their identities and experiences with systemic injustices. Literacy scholarship has accordingly traced how practitioner inquiry, a participatory approach to knowledge production, can educationally support the flourishing of these literacies. But while marginalized youth negotiate public life across multiple national contexts of inequality, this research has remained mostly nation‐bound. This paper extends prior scholarship in a comparative, cross‐national direction by exploring how, in a virtual transnational practitioner study, two urban migrant girls based in the United States and India—multiply marginalized youth from two of the world's largest and most unequal democracies—engaged in democratic meaning‐making. Tracing how youth took up learning invitations across two separate inquiry communities and one‐on‐one conversations with the teacher‐researcher, it foregrounds their civic place literacies: that is, their meaning‐making practices which reflected how their intersectional identities in their democratic communities shaped, too, their socio‐spatial navigations of those contexts. Tracing two themes related to girls' civic place literacies across India and the United States, the article concludes with implications for how future research and praxis can center urban migrant girls' civic place literacies, agency, and resistance across borders. (WC = 203).

Technology Trends Revolutionizing the World of Work- Auto Industry Perspective based on the SDG

Aim/Purpose: Disruptive technologies impact business cycles and work practices, paving the way for new-generation manufacturing trends. Organizations are constantly working to introduce products with a higher degree of innovation, catering to customer demands in the market. Background: The automobile industry plays a significant role in applying disruptive technologies while proving value to all stakeholders. The technological disruptions in the auto sector can potentially change the relationship between consumers and the automobile while impacting business trends and work practices. Methodology: Various scholarly research material was reviewed to understand the impact of technology disruptions on manufacturing methods, work practices, employee engagement, and skill development. Secondary data analysis was conducted for this qualitative and descriptive study. Contribution: This paper helps to understand the impact created by various technologies in the auto sector on employee retention—the role of man- Machine collaboration in creating job satisfaction among employees. Findings: Besides automation and digitalization, AI, Robotics, and Mechatronics play a crucial role in the sector's evolution. The study findings help us understand the impact of technology on manufacturing and business practices. Recommendation for Practitioners: Investment in training the workforce and embracing collaboration helps employees to benefit from the real world of work. Recommendation for Researcher: To ensure the relevance of research studies, practitioners and researchers should maintain a collaborative approach, using research insights to inform business strategies. Impact on Society: Analyze how technologies like collaborative robots (cobots) are integrated into manufacturing processes and their impact on job roles and efficiency. Technology continues to evolve, so societies shall proactively address challenges and leverage opportunities to take advantage of these innovations. It is the role of government policymakers, industry stakeholders, and educators to shape the auto industry's future in a way that maximizes the benefits to society from technological innovation. Future Research: The study's scope is to be done quantitatively by covering OEMs all over India. It discussed disruptive technology in general. Specific technological advancements can be analysed to dive deep into the phenomenon. A similar study could be undertaken in another industry besides the automobile.

Context‐driven implementation strategies: Exploring three approaches to implement a lean capability framework within a global production company

AbstractThis paper explores global implementation of capability building projects as part of an corporate lean programme. The aim is to identify the core parameters in global implementation of complex knowledge in various contexts within the corporation. The empirical research investigates the global implementation of a lean capability project in three regional clusters within a large pharmaceutical multinational production company. The findings indicate that contextual situations in regional clusters, for example, maturity levels, national culture, and previous experiences, influence the design of the implementation approaches embedding knowledge management principles in various ways. Three types of implementation approaches (horizontal, parallel, and delegated) are identified, which highlights the strategically different pathways to realise new frameworks for knowledge management. This study shows how adjustments to contextual situations influence the implementation process and identifies various hallenges with various approaches that may hinder the execution of lean strategy. This paper puts forward five identified implementation parameters that could guide future research and knowledge management practitioners in opex, HR, and learning and development functions.

Tootling: current research and future considerations for school practitioners

Tootling is an interdependent group contingency designed as an intervention to be implemented in classrooms in order to meet students’ vast behavioral and academic needs by increasing academically engaged behavior, decreasing disruptive behavior, and subsequently leading to increases in student academic achievement. Tootling supports a positive classroom climate by providing teachers with an opportunity to use classroom management strategies to address inappropriate student behavior. This article reviewed the available literature on tootling studies in order to determine gaps for future research. Next steps for school psychologists involving tootling research is discussed including future lines of tootling research and the importance of tootling for school-based practitioners. More research is necessitated to understand more about tootling and its implications for school psychologists.

Exploring teacher candidates’ discursive shifts in translanguaging pedagogies during literacy instruction

Although existing research describes how teacher candidates (TCs) have incorporated translanguaging pedagogies through practice-based assignments, little research closely examines how TCs engage in discursive shifts, or moment-to-moment linguistic decisions, in translanguaging pedagogies during literacy instruction in their field placement internships. Drawing on a larger study that utilized practitioner inquiry with an ethnographic approach, we analyzed TCs’ literacy instruction for their discursive shifts in which TCs and elementary students 1) engaged in translanguaging 2) spoke about named languages 3) attempted to draw upon multilingual students’ cultural and linguistic knowledges. Our analyses of TCs’ discursive shifts during translanguaging read-alouds showed that TCs employed more or less effective and affirming discursive shifts to position multilingual students as linguistic experts. TCs also employed certain discursive shifts that gave multilingual students more opportunities to share cultural and linguistic knowledge unknown to the TCs and peers than others. Lastly, TCs engaged in discursive shifts that provided multilingual students space to advocate for their linguistic, cultural and textual rights. We conclude by discussing the findings and sharing implications on developing effective and affirming uses of translanguaging pedagogies in literacy instruction.

Developing a shared language: a proposed guide to frame early implementation science collaboration discussions.

Miscommunication between health care practitioners and implementation researchers can lead to a mismatch of expectations and understandings, resulting in wasted research and frustration. Conversely, combining the expertise and knowledge of those working in health care practice and implementation research can deliver context informed research questions and appropriate study designs. Achieving this ambition requires a shared language. We sought to develop a guide to identify a common language to constructively explore nascent implementation research concepts. We set up a working group, comprising of implementation researchers, health care practitioners and operational managers, to work through ideas generation, debate and a consensus process to generate and refine a discussion guide. The resultant guide steps health care practitioners and implementation researchers through a three-phase enquiry - Question 1: What is the implementation question? Question 2: What is the proposed implementation solution? And Question 3: How can the investigation of this idea be resourced? At each step, the health care practitioner and implementation researcher collaborate to include theory and practice and rigorously work through the question to build implementation on evidence and to promote diverse stakeholder engagement. The next steps for this study will be operationalising the discussion guide, as an interactive tool. Future evaluation, to test effectiveness, acceptability and feasibility will be designed with health care practitioners and implementation researchers.

Bibliometric analysis of publications that cited the CIOMS 2016 “International ethical guidelines for health-related research involving humans”

The CIOMS book “International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans”, published in 2016 (IEG2016), provides information to assist research ethics committee members and research practitioners with pragmatically implementing ethical considerations while planning and conducting their research. To identify which aspects of research IEG2016 has had the greatest impact since its publication, we analyzed metadata from 942 papers that cited IEG2016 (English language title only) from Web of Science (WoS, Clarivate). Using VOSviewer, we mapped the co-occurrence of keywords to derive the network of all keywords that co-occurred at least five times in the set of citing papers. We found that the keywords ethics, research ethics, informed consent, and clinical trials had high co-occurrence scores in this set of publications. Strong links were also observed between ethics, research ethics, and informed consent. We identified fifteen human-related (HR) keyword nodes in this keyword network. Analysis of the subset of 273 IEG2016-citing articles containing these fifteen HR keywords showed later-date publications were focused on the youngest humans (children, adolescents, young people, minors) and the humans typically responsible for those youngest humans, namely women and parents. Seventy-nine of the 110 networked countries/regions associated with IEG2016-citing articles were home to HR keyword articles. We conclude that IEG2016 has had significant impact in health and medical science literature and has served as a foundation for health-related research around the world in the areas of ethics, informed consent, and research ethics and the linkage of these topics to under-represented populations in such research.

Humour and children’s learning: opportunities for tourism

ABSTRACT Educating children as future agents appears crucial to achieving sustainability goals, and tourism settings are considered high-potential places for learning and education. This research note explores the importance of humour in children's learning by reviewing the educational literature and identifying a research gap in tourism. Findings highlight humour as a pedagogical tool, categorising different learning contexts and their features to determine how humour can be successfully utilised in various tourism environments for young tourists. The research note showcases instances of humour application within the tourism industry to engage and educate children. Having identified the gap, the authors propose fresh directions for future tourism research and potential strategies for industry practitioners.

Library as a Participant in the Utilization of Research Results

One of the problems existing in science is the use of scientific research results in practice. The aims of the article are to show, through a review of foreign literature and the results of a survey of domestic experts in the field of library science and librarianship, the reasons for the disconnection between science and practice, as well as to identify the steps necessary for practice to benefit from research. The problem is posed from the perspective of post-non-classical science as applied to library science and librarianship. The reasons for the lack of transfer of scientific results into practice, identified by foreign authors, are given. The rating of the reasons noted by domestic experts, who put the technical backwardness of libraries and the lack of motivation of specialists to implement the results of scientific work in practice in the first place, is presented. Various options for solving the problem of non-use of scientific results in practice are analyzed and evaluated. Ways to eliminate the problem: using different ways to attract and expand the participation of practitioners in theoretical research, increasing their research activity; dissemination of research results, including overcoming the deficit of publications and increasing their number written by practitioners; continuing professional education. It is concluded that if we proceed from post-nonclassical science, it becomes clear why the results of scientific research conducted on the basis of one library cannot be applied to another: the peculiarities of one library are not absolute, they depend on existing situational relationships. The non-use of modern scientific results in librarianship is also related to the dependence of science on the socio-cultural environment and the inclusion of value attitudes. Among the ways to bridge this gap are the following: creating special publications for practitioners, webinars, face-to-face meetings and conversations between researchers and practitioners. One method of improving the link between research and practice is to include research reports (research reviews) in newsletters, various periodicals often read by practitioners.

Implementing workplace health promotion in nursing – A process evaluation in different care settings

ObjectiveWorkplace health promotion (WHP) in Germany is receiving increasing support from health insurance funds. Nevertheless, there is hardly any knowledge on the process of how health outcomes are achieved, especially in nursing. The aim of the study was to find out how and what can be implemented in different care settings and to examine the reactions and interactions of the participants under routine conditions.MethodsGuided by a logic model, a holistic WHP approach was implemented in four acute care hospitals, seven inpatient care facilities and four outpatient care services from April 2021 to October 2022. Data on realized WHP interventions, participant assessment and topics of work design was collected and analyzed descriptively.ResultsThe realized WHP interventions were adapted depending on the content and context. Mainly short relaxation interventions were delivered or those with an event character were received by participants. The highest participation rate of planned participants was achieved in team building training. Participants predominantly assessed WHP interventions as useful, the quality as (very) good and were generally (very) satisfied with the intervention components. For work design topics, intentions for the design of work organization were mainly documented in action plans.ConclusionCooperation with practitioners in research should be continued as a contribution to quality development. This could provide suggestions as to which content adjustments lead to greater acceptance by the target group in a specific context.Trial registrationThe project was registered in the German Clinical Trial Register (DRKS00024961, 2021/04/09).

Developing a Virtual Oral Inquiry Community for Teacher Educator Professional Learning: A Case Analysis

ABSTRACT Amid an international turn toward clinically based initial teacher preparation, the field of teacher education needs promising mechanisms to drive the professional learning of the teacher educators enacting the turn. This article introduces an example of one such mechanism by presenting and analyzing the case of a virtual oral inquiry community that supported the professional learning of three clinically based teacher educators affiliated with separate teacher preparation programs. Informed by the principles of andragogy, the inquiry community reformulated practitioner inquiry (the systematic, intentional study by educators of their own professional practices) into a new cycle of oral inquiry that teacher educators used to learn together across contexts. Practices associated with the teacher educators’ inquiry cycle (selecting common texts, returning to local practice, reconnecting, sharing problems of practice, and analyzing common texts in relation to local problems) generated both personal and collective impacts significant to their learning. The teacher educators developed a strong sense of interpersonal trust that made it possible for them to become vulnerable about their practices. Together, they developed shared understandings of problems of practice affecting clinically based teacher educators, which addressed a shared problem of professional isolation and enhanced their ability to sustain their professional learning over time.

Interactions with new-to-teacher language resources: Supporting translingual composing in a multilingual elementary classroom

Educators should support multilingual students’ translingual writing. However, it can be challenging for teachers to support students’ composing in languages that teachers do not speak. Drawing on a community translanguaging lens, this paper explores this issue by asking: How did teachers talk about and interact with language resources that were new to them while supporting translingual writing in an English-medium classroom? Data were collected using ethnographic and practitioner research methods across 1 year in one second-grade writing workshop in the U.S. Students spoke Spanish, Korean, French, Tagalog, or English, and classroom teachers spoke English and Spanish. Data analysis first involved descriptive coding of videorecorded composing interactions to identify every teacher interaction involving a new-to-them named language. These events were then re-examined using constant comparative coding to identify interactional patterns. This yielded three main findings; teachers: (1) positioned students as language experts and themselves as language learners, (2) drew on shared language resources to support student writing in new-to-teacher languages, and (3) expanded audiences to support student writing in new-to-teacher languages. Implications include pedagogical steps teachers can take to support students’ use of new-to-teacher languages while writing, and ideological and social implications of teacher talk about those languages.

Harnessing the power of machine learning for crop improvement and sustainable production.

Crop improvement and production domains encounter large amounts of expanding data with multi-layer complexity that forces researchers to use machine-learning approaches to establish predictive and informative models to understand the sophisticated mechanisms underlying these processes. All machine-learning approaches aim to fit models to target data; nevertheless, it should be noted that a wide range of specialized methods might initially appear confusing. The principal objective of this study is to offer researchers an explicit introduction to some of the essential machine-learning approaches and their applications, comprising the most modern and utilized methods that have gained widespread adoption in crop improvement or similar domains. This article explicitly explains how different machine-learning methods could be applied for given agricultural data, highlights newly emerging techniques for machine-learning users, and lays out technical strategies for agri/crop research practitioners and researchers.

Using Response Prompting, Frames, and Technology to Teach Rural Students With Extensive Support Needs to Write About Stories

We used a single case concurrent multiple probe across participants design to evaluate the effects of a multi-component intervention package on the number of correct sentences used when writing about a story for three rural elementary students with intellectual or developmental disabilities and extensive support needs. The package was comprised of response prompting, sentence frames, and selection-based writing software and produced improved performance across all three participants. Overall, data indicate students improved their writing performance following the introduction of the package. We discuss our findings in relation to future research and implications for practitioners.

“But Marley Can’t Play Up Here!” Children Designing Inclusive and Sustainable Playspaces through Practitioner Research

“But Marley Can’t Play Up Here!” Children Designing Inclusive and Sustainable Playspaces through Practitioner Research

Enhancing nurse practitioner research through reflexivity.

This article highlights the essential role of reflexivity in research, using a qualitative project involving interviews with nurse practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic as an example. It discusses the potential biases inherent in research, particularly when the researcher's experiences closely align with those of the participants. Drawing on the perspective of a nurse practitioner engaged in both research and health care provision, this article explores the importance of reflexivity in addressing these biases. Examining the lead author's experiences conducting interviews with fellow nurse practitioners, the article illustrates how reflexivity was used, particularly in data collection and analysis, to enhance transparency and minimize subjectivity. By advocating for the integration of reflexivity in qualitative research, this article emphasizes the significance of shared experiences between nurse practitioner researchers and participants in reducing biases and improving research outcomes. It demonstrates how reflexivity contributes to a more authentic and comprehensive methodology, especially when researchers share similar experiences with participants. Furthermore, this article offers practical suggestions to assist nurse practitioners in enhancing reflexivity throughout the research process, thereby contributing to ongoing discussion and strategy development in the field.