School Practitioners Research Articles

Using concept mapping to identify conditions that foster knowledge translation from the perspective of school practitioners

This article examines the efficacy of using concept mapping to identify the key dimensions that influence the use of research-based information by school practitioners, including teachers, educational counsellors, and school administrators. This mapping exercise was the first step in developing a competency framework for translation of research-based knowledge in education. Its aim was to provoke collective reflection of key stakeholders in the education sector who are already playing a role in knowledge transfer in their settings, to find out what should be done to make the scientific knowledge more useful to professional practices in schools. Altogether, the exercise identified eight domains that, according to respondents, influence the use of research in schools. These results were subsequently validated by three subgroups of participants and compared against the scientific literature on the topic to lay the foundation for identifying competencies that should be included in the framework. The map produced in the exercise described in this article presents a first picture of how things should be, in education, in order for teachers, educational counsellors, and school administrators to be informed by research-based information. The concept mapping methodology used in this study combined qualitative and quantitative approaches and was based on the active participation of key stakeholders. In the context of a project to develop a competency framework to foster knowledge translation, we consider this method to be appropriate and compares favourably with other group techniques.

Managing School Internal Mechanisms for Performance Improvement in Secondary Education

Recent apprehensions over the poor performance of secondary schools at ordinary level in Tanzania have given rise to concerns over the quality of education provided at this level. Addressing the issue of poor performance requires a gargantuan understanding of the environment under which these schools operate. This study explored how management of school internal mechanisms contributed toward enhancement of school performance for improved quality of secondary education in Tanzania. The article reports on the findings of a comparative case study conducted in six secondary schools in the Eastern Education zone of Tanzania. Findings revealed that, performance of schools was mainly attributed to the kind of management available in a particular school, which will ensure availability of workable and agreed on mechanisms of providing effective teaching and learning. The findings provide several important implications for education and school practitioners on how best to manage school internal mechanisms for improved performance.

School–University Action Research: Impacts on Teaching Practices and Pupil Learning

The aim of this article is to describe a design and implementation of a school–university action research project about teaching and learning biology and mathematics in primary school. Nine teachers in grades 1 to 6, in collaboration with two researchers, were using content representation (CoRe) in learning study (LS)-inspired cycle as pedagogical tools when planning, implementing, and reflecting on lessons and pupil learning. By using pre- and post-tests, the teachers acquired knowledge about pupil subject-specific knowledge and learning. Some examples are given on how the tools in the project influenced the teaching practices and pupil learning. This research design brought together university and school practitioners to work collaboratively in a professional learning community, which developed teaching and learning in biology and mathematics.

The nature of learning at forest school: practitioners' perspectives

This paper investigates forest school practitioners perceptions of learning at forest school to identify the topics covered, the learning styles, and the philosophies underpinning its delivery, based on interviews with experienced forest school practitioners. Practitioners identified the focus of learning at forest school as social development: teamwork, relationships with others, self-knowledge, and learning to take risks. Children also engaged with nature and developed an attachment to the woods where forest school took place. Learning styles were kinaesthetic, sensory, and experiential. Forest school leaders saw themselves as facilitators of learning rather than teachers.

Psychological and Educational Resilience in High vs. Low-Risk Romanian Adolescents

Psychological and educational resilience are two essential requirements for Romanian adolescents to succeed in today's society. Resilience is the ability to positively adapt despite significant adversity. The main aim of this study is to investigate the impact of risk factors on adolescents’ psychological and educational resilience. The participants were 251 urban Romanian adolescents, from ninth through twelfth grade, (mean age = 16.1 years, 64.5% females and 35.5% males), recruited from five high schools in Bucharest. Data were collected on Psychological resilience and its scales: Novelty seeking, Emotional regulation and Positive future orientation, Educational resilience, Number of school absences, Overall average grade and Risk factors. Results indicated that high-risk adolescents (n = 177) had a significantly lower Psychological resilience, Educational resilience and Overall average grade, along with a higher Number of school absences than their peers with low-risk factors (n = 74). These findings have implications for school practitioners interested in developing adolescents’ ability to overcome significant challenges and succeed academically, emotionally and socially.

Strategies for Data Collection in Social Skills Group Interventions

For many practitioners in schools and clinics, collecting data to show the effectiveness of an intervention is probably one of the most important yet challenging components of intervention implementation. This article provides practitioners with an example case study of how data can be organized and collected to determine the effectiveness of a social skills group intervention. Techniques to establish individual and group goals, determine a method to collect data, collect baseline data, and monitor progress are described. Challenges and practical strategies are discussed, and useful and specific suggestions are provided.

Becoming a craftsman in the process of school-based social studies curriculum development

Using an autoethnographic approach, this paper reviews and examines how I went through my professional development journey to develop as a curriculum planner and manager by engaging in critical reflective practices to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in the era of Curriculum Reform in Hong Kong. A series of carefully selected critical incidents relating to school-based curriculum development were examined to witness how I approached a brand new primary Social Studies area of study and developed it as a distinct multi-disciplinary school-based curriculum. The curriculum documents, learning and teaching materials, students’ work, personal reflective writings as well as personal communications with parents and students were collected for thematic analyses. By reflecting on the critical curriculum development and implementation incidents, a school-based curriculum development model evolved. This helps shed light on how school practitioners, irrespective of their positions or teaching experiences, to engage fruitfully and continually in the professional development process to develop as an effective curriculum developer and manager in schools. The experiences also inform teacher educators as well as school practitioners the salient characteristics and needs for a teacher to grow up as a reflective practitioner.

Reculturing schools in England: how ‘cult’ values in education policy discourse influence the construction of practitioner identities and work orientations

The imperative of continuous improvement has now become normative in education policy discourse, typically framed as setting ‘aspirational’ targets for pupil performance as a prerequisite for gaining competitive advantage in the global economy. In this context, teachers, leaders, teacher assistants and other practitioners working in schools across England have been under increasing pressure to raise standards. This article focuses on how values are deployed in reculturing and regulating practitioners to develop identities and work orientations which are congruent with the policymakers’ agendas. G.H. Mead’s concept of ‘cult’ values illuminates the process of fostering homogeneity with the dominant policy discourse through an inclusion/exclusion dynamic. Interview data collected in two primary schools revealed a significant convergence of practitioner discourse with policy objectives. Delivering improvement affects how practitioners talk about their work and see themselves as educators. The ‘cult’ of continuous improvement appears to inhibit a critical approach to the implementation of education policies by school practitioners in their everyday work.

Digital stories as a method for evidence-based practice and knowledge co-creation in technology-enhanced learning for children with autism

Storytelling is a powerful means of expression especially for voices that may be difficult to hear or represent in typical ways. This paper reports and reflects on our experiences of co-creating digital stories with school practitioners in a project focusing on embedding innovative technologies for children on the autism spectrum in classroom practice. The digital stories were short films or narrated sequences of slides and images that conveyed key views about experiences and practices with or around the technologies. The creation of the digital stories aimed to empower schools and individual teachers to construct and share their own authentic narratives and to build case examples of creative technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Through focusing on our experiences with one of the schools, we examine the use of digital stories as a method for enabling knowledge co-creation with practitioners and we discuss the evidential potential of digital stories. We argue that the co-creation of digital stories enabled teachers to find their voice in critiquing the usability, usefulness, efficacy and flexibility of the technologies. Furthermore, the stories, both the process of their creation and the final artefacts, provided a concrete grounding for knowledge co-creation about teaching practices and authentic technology-enhanced learning.

‘It's a real journey – a life changing experience.’ A comparison case study of Creative Partnership and other primary schools

Within the school curriculum, the emphasis placed on creativity and creative learning has shifted back and forth over the decades and this has influenced classroom practice. One of the more recent initiatives, that of Creative Partnerships (CPs), has sought to put creativity back at the centre of pupils’ learning. In this article, the impact of artists on primary teachers’ thinking and classroom practice is investigated. Differences between teachers who have taken part in sustained CP interventions and practitioners in schools where fewer opportunities are available for art's activities will be explored to suggest that extended interventions by artists in schools can have profound influence despite the backwash effects of the current culture of accountability and performativity.

Developing an App Evaluation Rubric for Practitioners in Special Education

In recent years, the use of iPads® and their applications (apps) in special education has increased with little empirical evidence to support their use by students with disabilities. Educators need a system to select appropriate apps for their students and to provide suggestions to parents who express interest in educational apps. This study sought to test the user friendliness of a prototype rubric designed for screening/evaluating iPad apps intended for educational use by students with disabilities. Eight school practitioners participated in a test to evaluate the usability of a prototype app rubric. A total of nine commercially available iPad apps designed for students with disabilities were evaluated. The usability test showed the rubric was a useful instrument in supporting app selection. Practitioner concerns and recommendations were taken into consideration for improving the functionality of the evaluation rubric for educational iPad apps.

Engaging Practitioners in State School Improvement Initiatives

For most of U.S. history, local communities were the primary arbiters of school quality. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, states began assuming more and more control over school standards and outcomes. The question we seek to answer is whether and the extent to which a particular kind of local voice—the voice of education practitioners—is represented in states' current, significant initiatives to improve low-performing schools. In the article, we focus on the role that practitioner knowledge played in the development of school improvement policies across three state education agencies. We draw on interviews, surveys, and document analyses collected for a larger exploratory study of knowledge utilization. Contrary to earlier research showing weak or uneven connections between state agencies and practitioners, we found that practitioner advice networks were generally stronger than states' research advice networks. We found ample illustration of staff using this advice to make sense of research for their own contexts, and for their own approaches to school improvement. Agencies formed ties to practitioners in districts and schools, in professional membership associations, within their own agencies, or in other agencies wrestling with similar problems. Who they turned to differed depending on earlier improvement policies and institutional histories.

Principals’ Decisions

The reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004 spurred sweeping changes for how special education students are identified in the United States. IDEA 2004 encourages schools to use Response to Intervention (RTI) as a new method for identifying special education students. As schools implement RTI, the principal becomes a key figure in determining the success of RTI. This study examines the policy ecology that influences principals’ views, beliefs, and considerations of RTI in determining the school plan for implementation. We find that implementation at the school level is distinguished by two types of implementation communities, what we term integrated or differentiated. Understanding the range of pressures and supports may inform district and school practitioners seeking to implement policy and policy makers as they consider the design of future policies.

Nursery moves into consultancy

One Reggio-inspired nursery has set up a consultancy on creative learning outdoors. Hannah Crown reports Like those working indoors, forest school practitioners must juggle play, learning and development, along with health and safety in an environment that can pose greater hazards. By Gabriella Jozwiak

A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing: Factors Influencing the Increased Identification of Special Educational Needs from the Perspective of Education Policy-makers and School Practitioners

This article considers the increased identification of special educational needs in Australia’s largest education system from the perspectives of senior public servants, regional directors, principals, school counsellors, classroom teachers, support class teachers, learning support teachers, and teaching assistants (n = 30). While their perceptions of an increase generally align with the story told by official statistics, participants’ narratives reveal that school-based identification of special educational needs is neither art nor science. This research finds that rather than an objective indication of the number and nature of children with special educational needs, official statistics may be more appropriately viewed as a product of funding eligibility and the assumptions of the adults who teach, refer, and assess children who experience difficulties in school and with learning.

School practitioners' perspectives on planning, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based practices

Although the evidence supporting the implementation of prevention and early intervention practices in schools is mounting, school personnel continue to encounter difficulties adopting and implementing evidence-based practices (EBPs). The current study sought to better understand school practitioners' experiences of planning, implementing and evaluating evidence-based social and emotional practices through an empowerment evaluation lens. Qualitative analyses of focus group transcripts yielded 16 themes across two general categories related to school districts' processes of planning, implementing, and evaluating EBPs, and general organizational capacities that either facilitated or impeded these processes. Results are discussed and implications for practice and future research are offered. Recommendations focus on next steps to advance school-based consultation within an empowerment evaluation framework.

Considerations for the Development of Expert Practice in School-Based Occupational Therapy

The unique body of knowledge required of school occupational therapy practitioners is dynamic and changes rapidly with local, state, and federal regulatory changes; the promulgation of scientific evidence; and the development of best practices. Yet, school practitioners often enter the practice specialty without a uniform method of preparation and competency maintenance and with limited understanding of the context, roles, and scope of practice. Drawing from a multidisciplinary literature addressing competency assessment and maintenance, the professional development needs of occupational therapy practitioners in school practice are explored. A collaborative professional development approach to meet the specific needs of school occupational therapy practitioners is discussed.

Pedagogy of Inclusion: A Quest for Inclusive Teaching and Learning

Since the advent of the philosophy of inclusion and the inception of inclusive education, following a number of international developments such as the signing of the Salamanca Statement in 1994, attempts worldwide to define the elusive concept of inclusive pedagogy have been largely unsuccessful. This qualitative study therefore seeks to highlight the state of current debates around the development of the notion of inclusive pedagogy, its definition, conception and operationalization. A detailed review of the current literature was conducted to synthesise a conceptual framework. Interviews were conducted with six purposefully selected inclusive practitioners in secondary schools in one education district of South Africa. An inductive analytical framework was used to analyse the data. The main findings of the study indicate that there is no universally accepted definition of inclusive pedagogy but that its meaning is contextually, philosophically and operationally determined. The study demonstrates that more research is required to redefine the notion of inclusive pedagogy. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p1259

Agency in Real Time? Situating Teachers’ Efforts toward Inclusion in the Context of Local and Enduring Struggles

BackgroundTeacher preparation for critical special education and inclusive education is premised on the ways in which dominant schooling discourses have unfairly positioned students with disabilities and their families. The hope of such teacher preparation programs is that through careful socialization into anti-oppressive discourses, teacher candidates will develop the capacity to go forth into troubled schooling systems and actively work against practices that perpetuate norms of dis/ability. Fundamental to such conceptualizations of teacher preparation is the presumption of teacher agency as a prerequisite for working toward equity in schools. Departing from conceptions of agency as a stable internal property that can be transported across contexts, I adopt a situated notion of agency to disclose teachers’ activities at the confluence of multiple schooling discourses. I deploy the framework of Holland and Lave to both unravel the local and enduring struggles that inform the discursive contexts in which efforts toward inclusion are made and disclose the cultural forms that emerge from the authoring of educators in the project of inclusion.Research QuestionsI reviewed the data generated at four different sites from 2006 to 2011 during the implementation of separate studies that I conducted to investigate inclusive practices. Those inquiries broadly examined how schooling/classroom conditions produce (in) equitable opportunities for students with disabilities. For this project, I re-examined the same data to ask the following questions: What are the particular conflicts and struggles that characterize the engagement of school practitioners seeking to implement inclusively oriented practices? Specifically, how do local discourses/conflicts within schools inform the production of specific forms of inclusive practice?Research DesignAll of the studies were ethnographically oriented and privileged a narrative exploration of participant experiences. Sources of data included participant observations and semistructured interviews. Additional data sources across sites included student work samples, school newsletters, electronic communication with participants, and informal exchanges with students and teachers in the classrooms. Each of the studies that were included in the cross-case analysis within this project was subject to separate and complete data analysis followed by a series of qualitatively written products reflecting the particular questions that guided each study. For this project, data were re-examined inductively with deliberate attention to the framework suggested by Holland and Lave.ConclusionsTeacher education discourses that privilege a politics of polarity (inclusion vs. exclusion) may be insufficient to meet the complicated demands of enabling inclusivity in practice. I draw on the inevitable entanglement of diverse commitments within educators’ practices to suggest that inclusion as an act of deferring may be a helpful complement to those efforts. A pedagogy of deferral privileges the pragmatic negotiation with local and widely circulating discourses while upholding long-term commitments such as the disruption of norms of ability.

Using participatory action research to address absenteeism

Many urban high schools serving low-income families have below-average attendance rates, which can indicate that fewer students are prepared to matriculate into college and career opportunities. Through the use of participatory action research (PAR), we – a group of four educators at Wilson High School – have changed school policies and procedures in order to address our school's most problematic behavior: students cutting class. Through the processes and outcomes that our group, the Class Cutting Task Force, has experienced, we have called upon action learning (AL) in our focus on practical and experienced problems, and we have learned an important lesson: without clear and consistent school-wide expectations, our students cannot meet their potentials. Additionally, we have become empowered to drive a school-wide improvement initiative from the ground up by using the four-stage PAR process. It is our experience with the PAR process as a method of engagement in AL for school practitioners that we aim to share in this account of practice.