Professional Conversations Research Articles

Mycket mer än en metod. Lärare samtalar om arbetet med kontroversiella frågor i geografiundervisningen.

Much more than a single method: Professional conversations concerning controversial issues in the field of geography instruction. Research on controversial issues in education is extensive. Generally, the teacher has been examined, or advised, based on preconceived ideas of how the teaching should preferably be designed. Although those recommendations have varied, they have usually been characterized by instruction and method. However, this article does not address such predetermined models of action. As an alternative, the starting point is based on the perspective of the teaching professional and on data generated from teacher interviews. The aim of the article is to examine how the overall function of education emerges when teachers speak of their own experiences of teaching about controversial issues in geography in secondary school. The findings illustrate how the teachers, based on a number of circumstances, make use of four different approaches: deflecting, enlightening, challenging, and correcting. Hence, from the perspective of the teaching profession, work on controversial issues seems less understandable in terms of a single approach. Instead, each situation seems to require its own situated and subject-related considerations and professional reflections.

Integrated Academic, Research, and Professional Experiences for 2-Year College Students Lowered Barriers in STEM Engagement: A Case Study in Geosciences

Two-year community college (CC) students face many barriers for recruitment and retention into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields and vertical transfer to 4-year universities (4YUs). Experiential learning, mentoring, and cohort building are effective mechanisms for increasing STEM recruitment and retention, and close collaborations between CCs and 4YUs leverage complementary opportunities, supporting vertical transfer. We present a case study incorporating these concepts for a year-long Geoscience Education and Outreach Program (GEOP), a collaboration among a CC, a 4YU, and a non-profit science center, where 20 CC students participated in integrated academic, research, and internship components over three years. We present program design, implementation, revision, and outcomes for both students and institutions. Cohort-building activities encouraged professional conversations and built peer connections that addressed imposter syndrome, cultural divides, and other personal barriers to vertical transfer. The academic component had the highest completion rate, and a majority of respondents in exit interviews reported the internship as the most valuable experience, with half naming research or aspects thereof as most valuable. The vertical transfer exceeded typical CC rates, with 70% of GEOP students transferring to a 4YU, all in STEM disciplines. Successful implementation of GEOP required multi-institutional coordination, effective mentor-mentor and mentor-student communication, and continued program flexibility. Based upon our experiences, we provide several recommendations for implementations of similar programs.

Supporting Teachers’ Engagement in Pedagogies of Social Justice (STEPS): A Collaborative Project Between Five Universities in Turkey and the USA

            This paper reports the findings of a research project titled Supporting Teachers’ Engagement in Pedagogies of Social Justice (STEPS), in which pre-service teachers from five universities and in-service teachers from Turkey and the US participated in a six-week-long virtual exchange project. The main objective of the study was to promote social justice-informed pedagogies in K-12 schools through professional development and conversations between pre-service and in-service teachers from two countries. The study addressed the following research question: How does a six-week virtual exchange project influence in-service and pre-service teachers’ social justice orientation? For this purpose, we collected quantitative data through a questionnaire based on social justice standards developed by a group of researchers called “Learning for Justice”. Participants completed this questionnaire before and after their participation in the project. Additionally, we asked the participants to write a reflection post at the end of the project regarding its impact, and we treated their posts as qualitative data. At the end of the analysis, we found that the mean scores of the post-test results were significantly higher than those of the pre-test results, which indicated that the project changed the perspectives of the participants in a positive way. Furthermore, analyzing the qualitative data, we found four recurring themes: a) learning through sharing and working in collaboration, b) noticing common concerns with other educators, c) self-awareness and self-evaluation, and d) promise for taking action.

Teachers' Perceptions of Applying Contemporary Skill Acquisition Approaches in High School Physical Education.

Using contemporary skill acquisition approaches to skill learning appears to be a worthwhile pedagogical option for teachers and coaches in sports and Physical Education (PE). However, PE at the High School level in New Zealand has assessment components that are still underpinned by traditional and outdated skill learning theories. In response to this challenge, two motivated Heads of Department in PE undertook a department-wide professional development initiative to teach the national standard assessment via the use of a contemporary skill acquisition approach, which is student-centred, with an emphasis on enhancing exploratory learning and encouraging autonomy. Each department worked together over a 10-week period with a Higher Education specialist in skill acquisition to design and teach using contemporary skill acquisition approaches. Qualitative data was collected via semi-structured focus group interviews. Insightful data on the influence of teaching using contemporary skill acquisition approaches was acquired from the teachers in the two PE departments. It was found that substantial pedagogical practice changes were achieved by the teachers (e.g., less focus on ideal technique and more on varying the context). They also enjoyed the learning experience that the contemporary skill acquisition approach offered as compared to their previous experience of more traditional teaching approaches, which have a focus on knowledge acquirement with little opportunities for exploratory learning. In addition, from a practical perspective, teachers were observed to demonstrate greater engagement in professional conversations around learning and could see greater relevance in the transfer of learning in the use of contemporary skill acquisition approaches to other teaching contexts.

Ethical Issues in Using Behavior Contracts to Manage the “Difficult” Patient and Family

Long used as a tool for medical compliance and adhering to treatment plans, behavior contracts have made their way into the in-patient healthcare setting as a way to manage the “difficult” patient and family. The use of this tool is even being adopted by healthcare ethics consultants (HECs) in US hospitals as part of their work in navigating conflict at the bedside. Anecdotal evidence of their increasing popularity among clinical ethicists, for example, can be found at professional bioethics meetings and conversations and idea-sharing among practitioners on HEC social media. While there are a handful of papers gesturing toward a bioethical critique of behavior contracts of various types, the use of behavior contracts in the context of interpersonal conflict has not been vetted by bioethicists to determine their ethical legitimacy or efficacy. In this paper, we highlight a set of ethical concerns that we believe must be addressed before continuing or widespread implementation of behavior contracts to manage the “difficult” patient or family.

Achieving Transformational Change in the School Library Program

Much of our professional conversations revolve around the concept of change—changing the way books are organized in a library or changing policy on checkouts and fines. These changes are exciting and oftentimes come with quick recognition and praise. But when we discuss changes in the way we collaborate with teachers or the way the school library program situates itself in the daily life of a school, frustrations mount, and our desire for silver-bullet solutions becomes evident. Differentiating the types of change we seek may help us understand how to frame our expectations and set our professional goals.

Teacher professional dialogues during a school intervention: From stabilization to possibility discourse through reflexive noticing

ABSTRACT Background: Teachers’ limiting conceptualizations of students influence students’ learning opportunities. We analyze teachers’ professional conversations to understand how dialogues can expand teachers’ conceptualizations. Methods: We examine professional dialogues from nine whole-school intervention meetings. Drawing on discursive psychology and activity theoretical notions of learning the study conceptualizes teachers’ collective assumptions as a lived ideology actively sustained by stabilization discourses. We analyze the discursive devices through which the teachers’ talk about their students limits/expands their sense of what is possible in their teaching and their dialogic effects. Findings: Our analysis finds a range of discursive strategies that sustain or re-stabilize the lived ideology. Even when challenged by contrary evidence (e.g., surprises), dilemmatic tensions and reframing repair actions are found to close potential dialogic openings. Importantly, we identify a form of discourse that avoids immediate closure, characterized by sustained reflection on the students’ challenges developing a need to change. We term this reflexive noticing: it is enabled through sustained puzzle, constructing dilemmas as origin of change and discursive consciousness of stabilization. Contribution: We illustrate why contrary evidence often fails to shift limiting conceptualizations about students and show the discursive mechanisms generating possibility knowledge. Implications for teacher learning are discussed.

The Weight of Our Words: Language and Teacher Agency from the Perspective of Gee’s ‘Cultural Models’

In this article, I suggest that one way to enhance teacher agency is to practise greater linguistic awareness in our professional conversations. Based on a conceptual framework utilising the idea of ‘cultural models’ (everyday theories expressed in language) I analyse primary data of Malaysian English-language teachers’ meetings to show two ways in which they have an impact on practice and agency. Based on the evidence, I claim that cultural models [1] function as problem-framing devices and [2] can support transformations in practice. The data in this paper comes from audiovisual recordings of teacher meetings, generated as part of a larger study on teacher collaborative discourse in professional learning communities (PLC), with English-language teachers at Malaysian national secondary schools. Based on these findings, I argue that teacher agency defined as the capacity to make a difference in the context of teachers’ work—is partly a function of how teachers speak about the relevant domains of their practice, be they students, subject or pedagogy. This offers practitioners who wish to be more agentic in their practice some relevant points for reflection.

Exploring the role of peer observation of teaching in facilitating cross-institutional professional conversations about teaching and learning

ABSTRACT This paper explores how cross-institutional Peer Observation of Teaching (PoT) provided a stru ctured opportunity for professional conversations by which observers and observees shared and developed their perspectives on teaching experience and skills. Such professional conversations offer opportunities for both parties to gain a perspective on practices that may have been taken for granted. Participants from three Higher Education institutions engaged in cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional PoT, followed by facilitated reflective conversations. This paper captures the factors for success that enabled continuing conversations on teaching and learning and highlights the value of supporting such conversations outside formal, uni-institutional peer observation programmes.

Learning and developing during lesson study through professional conversations

ABSTRACT Lesson study is a collaborative practice recognised as a useful approach for teachers’ learning; however, we barely find studies analysing this practice among higher education faculty members. This research studies the content of their conversations to reveal the learning opportunities that lesson study opens. Content analysis shows that the participants learnt through descriptive and interpretative learning, making explicit their ideas about the lesson, and emphasising these rather than what they thought about the students. Results also indicate that the participants have room to increase their attention to the students and their ‘disputational’ talk, with the help of a knowledgeable other.

Embodied Ethics: Phenomenology of the NICU Nurse's Touch.

This study was a phenomenological exploration of the ethics of the nurse’s touch in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). I explore several examples of touching encounters as gathered from NICU nurses through interview and observation, and organize the lived meanings around several thematic statements. These include the learning touch: finding a way to hold the baby, the marking touch: when touch lingers long after physical contact, the missing touch: touching without physical contact, the gnostic touch: the possibility of knowing an other and ourselves, and the call of touch: drawn to hold. Exploring the touching gestures of NICU nurses discloses the relational ethics inherent to caring practices. By attempting to articulate these practices, the hope is that the significance and contribution of the nurse’s touch might be recognized and brought forward to our individual and professional consciousness, conversations, and curricula.

Responding to educational inequality in Ireland; Harnessing teachers’ perspectives to develop a framework for professional conversations

ABSTRACT Aspirations to combat educational inequality and disadvantage in Ireland feature strongly in policy documents of recent decades. Teachers and their concerns are not always to the forefront in such publications or, indeed, in associated research. For this study, 20 teachers and school principals who work in schools located in communities with limited levels of economic, cultural and social capital were interviewed. The interviews were open-ended, allowing participants to articulate freely their thoughts and feelings about their work. Transcript analysis led to the identification of eight key themes: context; tensions and contradictions; attendance; the ugliness of poverty; lack of continuity; parents’ expectations; teachers’ expectations; school leadership. Furthermore, we propose that “relationships” is a crucially persistent thread linking the eight themes. We conclude that these themes offer a promising framework for schools to evaluate their practices and to structure a programme of staff development and to their understandings of educational disadvantage.

Disciplined into good conduct: Gender constructions of users in a municipal psychiatric context in Sweden.

To examine how gendered discursive norms and notions of masculinity and femininity were (re)produced in professional conversations about users of long-term municipality psychiatric care. Focus is on the staff's use of language in relation to gender constructions. Psychiatric care in Sweden has undergone tremendous changes in recent decades from custodian care in large hospitals to a care mainly located in a municipal context. People who need psychiatric care services often live in supporting houses. In municipal psychiatric care, staff conduct weekly professional meetings to discuss daily matters and the users' needs. Official reports of the Swedish government have shown that staff in municipal care services treat disabled women and men differently. Studies exploring gender in relation to users of long-term psychiatric care in municipalities have problematised the care and how staff, through language, construct users' gender. Therefore, language used by staff is a central tool for ascribing different gender identities of users. The content of speech derived from audio recordings was analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. The COREQ checklist was used in this article. The results indicate that by relying on gender discourses, staff create a conditional care related to how the users should demonstrate good conduct. In line with that, an overall discourse was created: Disciplined into good conduct. It was underpinned by three discourses inherent therein: The unreliable drinker and the confession, Threatened dignity, and Doing different femininities. The community psychiatric context generates a discourse of conduct in which staff via spoken language (re)produces gendered patterns and power imbalances as a means to manage daily work routines. Such practices of care, in which constant, nearly panoptic, control despite the intention to promote autonomy, urgently require problematising current definitions of good conduct and normality.

Using Professional Conversations as a Participatory Research Method Within the Discipline of Sport Pedagogy-Related Teacher and Coach Education

This article documents the use of professional conversation as a method of participatory research to question, inform and innovate assessment practices used in tertiary settings. Utilising a professional conversations model, four tertiary educators engaged in a 6-month long email conversation designed to explore our individual and collective sense-making around use of a specific mode of assessment relating to sport pedagogy-related teacher and coach education courses. Justification for use of a professional conversations model is presented, along with participants’ experiences of engaging in this participatory method of data capture. A brief summary of participants’ post-conversation views on PASS is included, as well as recommendations relating to the utility of using a professional conversations model as a participatory research method.

Noticing and Wondering to Guide Professional Conversations

This article explores how teachers can use the sentence stems “I notice” and “I wonder” to deepen professional conversations with colleagues, both in person and in online spaces.

Facilitation Literacy: Circulating Power in Professional Learning Conversations With Teacher Colleagues

AbstractThe author describes how and why a team of literacy leaders fruitfully studied their own efforts to address the challenges they faced in supporting teacher colleagues’ learning and teaching. Actively resisting facilitation models that privilege facilitators’ power to fix colleagues’ dilemmas and consistent with their belief that professional learning is socially constructed, the facilitators adopted a view of power as a resource that, when circulated, offers people opportunities to be who they wish, and be seen as knowledgeable without challenge. To explore ways of circulating power, the facilitators studied transcripts of their interactions with colleagues. Through co‐analysis of their transcripts, the team identified five discursive strategies supporting circulation of power: identifying sticking points, listening, posing clarifying questions, reframing the challenge, and soliciting feedback. The facilitators’ efforts to circulate power cultivated generative social and discursive spaces, which afforded their colleagues opportunities to negotiate self‐identified dilemmas to advocate for themselves and their students’ literacy learning.

Reflecting on COVID‐19 and the Future of Assessment

Reflecting on COVID‐19 and the Future of Assessment

CN19 Healthcare professionals' perception about end-of-life conversations: An observational cross-sectional study

End-of-life (EOL) conversations are one of the most challenging aspects for Healthcare Professionals (HPs). It is crucial to collect patients' wishes about life-sustaining treatments, advanced care planning, preferences about interventions' timeframe, and how to live the last phase of their life. Furthermore, the same concerns are present in the personal life of HPs. They reported feeling insufficiently skilled for EOL conversations. Also, although professional education programs on communication skills in clinical settings are mostly available; it is less common to stimulate HPs in reflecting on their values and preferences if they were near the end of life. This study aimed to describe HPs' wishes regarding interventions and treatments they would like if they were in the hypothetical condition of EOL. A descriptive correlation research design was used to determine whether there were any associations between personal and professional characteristics and EOL conversations' wishes of HPs in the north of Italy. Inclusion criteria were being nurses, physicians, nursing assistants, informed consent. Those who had already completed the questionnaire were excluded. The Conversation Starter Kit was adapted to a self-administered, web-based questionnaire format. A total of 737 HPs accepted to participate, and 467 questionnaires were returned. Most of them were completed by nurses (60%) and females (68%). The mean age was 45 (±11) years. If HPs had a terminal illness, hospice and rehabilitation inpatient unit’s HPs would prefer to know their prognosis when compared to surgical units' HPs OR=8.635 (95%CI 1.548 – 48.162) p=0.014 and OR=2.78 (95%CI 1.083-7.138) p=0.034, respectively. When compared to physicians, nursing assistants and nurses were over two times more likely to prefer receiving medical care even if treatments had severe side effects OR=2.755 (95%CI 1.218 – 6.23), p=0.015; and OR=2.551 (95%CI 1.206 – 4.982), p =0.006, respectively. This preference was 35% less likely to occur when HPs attended palliative care courses OR=0.655 (95%CI 0.431 – 0.997), p=0.048. This study may support HPs feel better equipped to address EOL conversations with patients and their families.

Subordinated masculinities: A critical inquiry into reproduction of gender norms in handovers and rounds in a forensic psychiatric care.

To examine how gendered discursive norms and notions of masculinity are (re)produced in professional conversations about men cared for as patients in forensic psychiatric care, with a particular focus on the centrality of language and gender. During verbal handovers and ward rounds, care staff converse to share information about patients and make decisions about their mental status. Spoken language is thus a pivotal tool in verbal handovers and ward rounds, one able to reproduce discourses and gender norms. Qualitative. Data collected from audio recordings of verbal handovers and ward rounds in a forensic psychiatric clinic were subjected to discourse analysis. The COREQ checklist was used. While discussing patients, staff subordinated them by reproducing a discourse typical of heteronormative, family-oriented care. The overarching discourse, which we labelled subordinated masculinities, was supported by three other discourses: being unable to take responsibility, being drug-addicted and performing masculinity. Such discourse was identified as a disciplining practice that subordinate's patients as a means to maintain order, rules and gender norms. The study reveals a caring practice that position male patients as children or disabled individuals and, in that way, as subordinated other men within a context were staff reproduces a heteronormative family structured care. The process also reveals a practice were downplaying aggressive and deviant behaviour could disempower and reduce patients´ responsibility for personal actions and their possibilities to participate in their care. That finding especially seems to contradict previous findings that patients want to be able to act responsibly and, to that end, want care staff to help them. Nurses need to deepen their understanding of how language (re)produces discursive norms of gender and masculinity in forensic care and that process's consequences for such care.

The influence of chronotopes on pre-service teachers’ professional becoming in a school–university partnership

ABSTRACT This article explores the influence of chronotopes on pre-service teachers’ professional becoming in a school–university partnership model. It draws upon dialogue from professional conversations which included multiple stakeholders in the partnership. The results illustrate the complex process of becoming for pre-service teachers as they navigate voices across time and space. They provide an illustration of chronotopes interacting productively, providing support for pre-service growth, and chronotopes in tension, leading to the silencing of pre-service teacher voice. It is hoped this article encourages educators to reflect on the impact chronotopes can have on pre-service teachers’ professional growth, the kinds of conditions that support growth and increased agency, and the ways chronoptic interactions can impact the development of transformative hybrid models of Initial Teacher Education.