Professional Practice Teaching Research Articles

Competency-Based Approaches: Linking theory and practice in professional education with particular reference to health education

Paul Hager and I worked on a large number of research projects and publications throughout the 1990s. The focus of this work was on developing a competency-based approach to professional education and assessment. I review this work and its impact over the years. Notwithstanding the fact that most professional associations today have a competency framework and that most university courses use them in their courses for initial professional education, they still have a relatively naïve view of the relationship between theory and practice. The second part of the article outlines how this might be theorized in health education.

‘I don’t think I could, you know, just teach without any emotion’: exploring the nature and origin of university teachers’ emotions

This article addresses the issue of university teachers’ emotions generated through teaching and interacting with students. While research on school teachers’ emotions is on the increase, interest in the significance of university teachers’ emotions is still limited. In light of the growing attention given to the quality of university teaching around the world, and evidence of the impact of emotions on school teachers’ well-being and teaching practice, a better understanding of the origin and nature of emotions experienced by university teachers is needed. This article presents the findings of a small longitudinal study with 15 university teachers from two public Australian universities. Two in-depth interviews with each teacher generated rich accounts, examples and reflections on their emotional experiences during teaching. The qualitative analysis revealed the range of positive and negative emotions triggered in specific teaching–learning situations. Three major themes related to the emergence of emotions were identified: first, the importance of the intrinsic value and social nature of the professional practice of teaching; second, the criticality of the degree to which expectations of students’ engagement were fulfilled or not; and third, the realisation that the professional practice of teaching was only partly controllable. The findings are discussed with reference to previous research, limitations are addressed, and directions for future research are proposed.

Salas de Recursos Multifuncionais Um recurso para as escolas (mais) inclusivas no Brasil

In the 90s, the Brazilian Secretariat of the Special Education Department has expanded the democratization of education and pupils’ access to schooling, by redefining the operation of special education services. With this inclusion policy, the education system has been restructured. An important action, conducted during the period de 2005 to 2010, was to propose, deploy and implement Multifunctional Resources Rooms (Sala de recursos multifuncionais, or SRM), from two different types (type I and II). The challenge was to promote educational inclusion, in a program entitled Inclusive Education: the right to diversity. In a seek for new identity of teacher training and professional practice in special education, the great educational innovation is to better articulate the work of “ordinary“ and specialized teachers, via the SRM, and to develop collective and participatory actions between common spaces and support spaces. In this context, the school and the family represent an important source of partnership.

机械专业实践课程教学模式的探索与实践<br> The Exploration and Practice Based on the Teaching Mode of Mechanical Professional Practice

机械专业是一个传统的工科专业，我国从“制造大国”向“制造强国”的转变，对机械人才的培养提出了新的挑战，必须对传统的机械专业在课程教学体系、人才培养模式等进行调整与改革。本文根据独立学院的现状，提出了独立学院机械设计制造及其自动化专业本科应用型人才校企合作培养的思路和措施，结合浙江师范大学行知学院机械设计制造及其自动化专业建设情况，提出了贯穿本科四年教学的层次化、模块化实践教学框架，简单介绍了机械设计制造及其自动化专业实践课程教学的模式以及本科应用型人才培养实施的思路和方案。 The machinery is a traditional specialty which should reform and adjustment in some respects, such as the course teaching system and personnel training, to adapt to the new challenge on talent cultivation face the changing from “manufacturing” to “manufacturing power” in our country. Based on the status of the Independent Institute, the ideas and measures proposed in this paper are to training application personnel of mechanical by school-enterprise cooperation. The hierarchical and modular framework of practice teaching is also put forward which throughout four-year undergraduate teaching combined with the machinery con- struction of the XingZhi College. Finally the mechanical professional practice teaching modes and the implementation ideas of undergraduate application talents training are simple introduced.

Changing times in England: the influence on geography teachers’ professional practice

School geography in England has been characterised as a pendulum swinging between policies that emphasise curriculum and pedagogy alternately. In this paper, I illustrate the influence of these shifts on geography teacher's professional practice, by drawing on three “moments” from my experience as a student, teacher and teacher educator. Barnett's description of teacher professionalism as a continuous project of “being” illuminates how geography teachers can adapt to competing influences. It reflects teacher professionalism as an unfinished project, which is responsive, but not beholden, to shifting trends, and is informed by how teachers frame and enact policies. I argue that recognising these contextual factors is key to supporting geography teachers in “being” geography education professionals. As education becomes increasingly competitive on a global scale, individual governments are looking internationally for “solutions” to improve educational rankings. In this climate, the future of geography education will rest on how teachers react locally to international trends. Geography teacher educators can support this process by continuing to inform the field through meaningful geography education research, in particular in making the contextual factors of their research explicit. This can be supported through continued successful international collaboration in geography education research.

Positioning adult educators in discourses of professional development

This article explores the discursive work done by different notions of professional development in adult education. In particular we outline the ways in which the discourses of technical expertise, competence and reflective practice are deployed to mobilise professional practices and identities in particular ways and position certain practices and dispositions as specifically professional. We suggest that these discourses help to shape the negotiations between economies of performance and ecologies of practice within which professionals operate. We argue that much of this work is implicit in the pedagogies and curriculum of programmes for adult educators and that there is a need for detailed empirical research on the pedagogies of professional development and practice in adult education. With moves in Europe to develop professional standards for adult educators we suggest that studying the rhetoric of professional development provides an opportunity to open some existing diverse practices to new forms of scrutiny.

Strengthen Practice Reform of Professional Teaching and Cultivate Students' Project Practice Ability

This paper gives a detailed discuss in the construction of teaching system, discusses the characteristics of professional teaching practice reform, and lays stress on the approaches and methods of the college students' engineering practical ability training. The reform consist of three fields, the first is designing of the professional teaching program based on the characteristics of engineering practice, which is composed of theory teaching and practice teaching system and Increase the proportion of professional teaching practice, give prominence to project practice. The second is strengthening the construction of inside workplace environment, cultivate of the students' engineering consciousness”. The last is strengthening the humanism quality, innovative quality and engineering quality. In short, College students' comprehensive quality training is a systems engineering, No matter from teaching planned arrangements and implementation, or the actual environment construction, tremendous efforts are needed.

Conceptualising teacher education and research as ‘critical praxis’

A particular approach to epistemological action as ‘critical praxis’ is proposed where we bring together the ideas of ideology critique, self-reflective consciousness and emancipatory action. Critical praxis for educators seeks to move beyond the constraints of formal teaching, knowledge and curriculum and instead encourages communities, teachers and students to work together in producing new understandings and practices for the public good. As teacher educators, we are attempting to design a research methodology that will enable our field of practice to be theorised and to encourage a movement towards new critical understandings of teaching and learning for our students and for ourselves. This is a process of reflexive practice that endeavours to constantly and systematically interrogate our own views and to move beyond the status quo of conservative educational systems, procedures and rigidities so that knowledge is a legitimate investigation of possibility and transformation. In this article, we report a Critical Praxis Protocol to guide further development of teacher education and research. We trace our trajectory from a progressive emphasis on improving learning and professional educational practice to an emerging notion of criticality that seeks explanation with the theorising of Bourdieu. A draft habitus–field analysis is provided to indicate our current understanding of generative themes that suggest the emancipatory potential of teaching and schooling.

Researching Professional Educational Practice: The Case for “Dirty Theory”

In this essay, Ian Hardy argues that a research process involving generalizing from professional educational practice can and should inform the work of educators, including academic researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, but that these generalizations need to be derived from, and in dialogue with, the complexity and specificity of actual practice, the myriad ways such practice might be understood, and a conception of practice as historically informed. In making this case, Hardy draws upon social theorist Raewyn Connell's concept of “dirty theory,” and he uses an example of teacher professional learning in a rural community in southeast Queensland, Australia, to show how Connell's notion of dirty theory might be applied to research professional educational practice. Hardy maintains that such an approach has the benefit of making historically informed, context‐aware, and epistemologically sensitive generalizations available as resources for informing the work of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. He concludes by providing examples of such generalizations as evidence of the potential of Connell's theory.

Doing it differently? A review of literature on teaching reflective practice across health and social care professions

Reflective approaches have been increasingly adopted in health and social care education. However, how reflective practice is taught in and between professional courses differs extensively. This review of literature identified and categorised literature available on teaching reflective practice in health and social care and compared this with what was available interprofessionally and multiprofessionally. Limited examples comparing how reflective practice is taught in different professions were found. This lack of empirical data has implications for both the teaching and researching of professional practice.

Reforma educacional como barbárie social: economismo e o fim da autenticidade.

This paper develops previous work on the role of performativity in changing professional practice and practitioner subjectivities in education. It is argued that the technologies of comparison, measurement and accountability, that are currently proliferating in education systems around the world, are not simply new ways of monitoring outcomes but are actively changing what they purport to describe. They change the meaning of teaching and what it means to teach. These technologies of reform are changing the ways that teachers think about what they do, relate to colleagues and to their students. Sociability and collectivity are being destroyed and are being replaced by suspicion, competition, guilt and envy, a new highly charged repertoire of emotions and deformed social relations. Keywords: Performance. Subjectivity. Professionalism.

McGee, C., & Fraser, D. (Eds.) (2012). The Professional Practice of Teaching (4th Edition). South Melbourne, Australia: Cengage Learning.

McGee, C., & Fraser, D. (Eds.) (2012). The Professional Practice of Teaching (4th Edition). South Melbourne, Australia: Cengage Learning.

Online learning community: a case study of teacher professional development in Indonesia

This paper investigates the concept of online learning community (OLC) to address the issues of teacher professional development practice in twenty-first-century Indonesia. Teachers in Indonesia are trained in a ‘conventional way’, hence, not ready to prepare the younger generations for entrance into the twenty-first-century complex life and work environment. The pedagogical transformation of a teacher can be facilitated through teacher professional development. Recent studies show that OLC holds great promise in improving teachers’ professional practice. This paper presents key results of the introduction and trialling of OLC with Indonesian teachers and teacher educators between 2009 and 2010 and aims to explore the feasibility of this model to support professional development of teachers in this era. The social learning interactions among community members were examined using Scardamalia’s Twelve Socio-Cognitive Determinants of Knowledge Building and Hoftsede’s Cultural Dimension Review for Indonesia. Karya ilmiah ini mengangkat topik mengenai penggunaan penggunaan komunitas pembelajaran online untuk meningkatkan kemampuan professionalisme pendidik Indonesia di abad 21. Seorang pendidik di abad ini tidak hanya diharapkan bisa mengajar mata pelajaran tertentu saja, tetapi juga harus bisa memberikan bekal kepada generasi muda untuk memasuki era kehidupan yang lebih kompleks. Sayangnya, banyak pendidik yang tidak siap untuk menyesuaikan diri dengan tantangan jaman ini karena mereka sudah terbiasa dengan pola pikir yang lama yang dibentuk dari system pendidikan yang tradisional. Perubahan pola mengajar guru sebenarnya bisa dilakukan melalui pendidikan profesional guru, tetapi pada prakteknya pendidikan guru yang ada saat inipun masih mengikuti sistem yang tradisional. Beberapa riset yang yang terakhir menunjukkan bahwa konsep komunitas pembelajaran online (OLC) cukup menjanjikan sebagai sarana untuk mendukung proses pengembangan profesional guru masa sekarang. Dalam riset yang dilakukan oleh peneliti, konsep ini diujicobakan dengan para pendidik di Indonesia sejak tahun 2009. Dalam kajian ini, peneliti menggunakan teori Knowledge Building yang dikembangkan oleh Scardamalia dan Cultural Dimension dari Hofstede untuk meneliti proses pembelajaran bersama dan interaksi sosial yang terjadi di dalam komunitas pembelajaran online ini.

Thinking of Personnel Training Mode to Enhance the Employment Competence of Civil Engineering

In this article, with the goal of improving civil engineering students’ employability and establishing the five-in-one application-oriented talents cultivation mode of civil engineering specialty, We do the research primarily from professional practice in education, career planning, job skills training, alumni resources construction and enterprise feedback, in research at home and abroad on the basis of successful experience and practice, combined with the current civil engineering students in our actual situation, existing advantages into full play and accumulate, and put forward the five-in-one new training mode.

An evaluation of Technology teacher training in South Africa: shortcomings and recommendations

Compared to other subjects Technology Education (TE) is regarded as a new subject both nationally and internationally. In the absence of an established subject philosophy Technology educators had little alternative than to base their professional teaching and learning practices on approaches from other fields of knowledge and to adapt these. TE is one of the compulsory subjects for learners in South Africa from grade 4–9 since 1998. One of the challenges was the fact that no previous teacher training programmes existed for Technology thus new ones had to be developed. This research described what the necessary knowledge, skills and values are that a qualified Technology teacher should possess and determined if teacher training institutions in South Africa provide opportunities to develop this qualities. Qualitative research was used to provide insight into the nature of pre-service Technology training programmes in South Africa, in order to identify shortcomings in the pre-service training of Technology teachers. The population consisted of senior faculty who have experience in the developing of pre-service training programmes and the training of Technology teachers. Findings of the study suggest a greater focus on the training of Technology teachers as subject specialists by establishing standards that is appropriate for tertiary training in order to enhance the development of subject knowledge; subject specific pedagogical content knowledge by implementing micro lessons; revision of time, planning and facilities for the practising of subject skills; and sufficient opportunities to practise, analyse and reflect on teaching processes to develop appropriate teaching strategies.

Preparing Teachers to Lead Mathematics Discussions

Background/Context Discussion is central to mathematics teaching and learning, as well as to mathematics as an academic discipline. Studies have shown that facilitating discussions is complex work that is not easily done or learned. To make such complex aspects of the work of teaching learnable by beginners, recent research has focused on approaches to teacher education that decompose practice into smaller tasks or routines that can be articulated, unpacked, studied, and rehearsed. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Drawing on the elements of Grossman et al.'s (2009) framework for pedagogies of practice in professional education, this article describes an approach to analyzing teaching practice that supports the design of teacher education in which novices to learn how to engage in high-leverage teaching practices and simultaneously develop a sense of why the work is done. Setting The context for the study is a mathematics methods course for prospective elementary teachers. Research Design The study involved qualitative analysis of both the design of the course and its implementation. Conclusions/Recommendations Results from this study suggest that: (1) Decomposing teaching into nested practices of varying grain sizes that maintain the connection between techniques and domains can support beginning teachers in attending simultaneously to the how and the why of practice, as well as provide a map of teaching that teacher educators can use to support the learning of teaching. (2) Nesting early approximations of practice inside subsequent ones is a way to support beginning teachers in building toward recom-posed teaching practice. As practices are nested, teacher educators can increase the complexity of the approximations by adjusting the content and authenticity of the context of practice as well as by decreasing the amount scaffolding provided. (3) Assessment is vital to pedagogies of practice. Decompositions, approximations, and representations of practice need to be developed in ways that support assessment for the array of teacher education purposes. (4) Because subject matter is at the heart of teaching, it is crucial to attend to the ways in which the content interacts with pedagogies of practice.

Analyzing the Teaching of Professional Practice

Background/Context Based on their case studies of preparation for professional practice in the clergy, teaching, and clinical psychology, Grossman and colleagues (2009) identified three key concepts for analyzing and comparing practice in professional education—representations, decomposition, and approximations—to support professional educators in learning from each other's practice. In this special issue, two teams of teacher educators (Kucan & Palincsar, and Boerst, Sleep, Ball, & Bass) put these concepts to work in representing their practice of preparing novice teachers to lead discussions with their students. Purpose/Objective/Research Questions/Focus of Study This analytic essay presents an argument for the importance of (a) adding a fourth key concept to the Grossman et al. framework—conceptions of quality—and (b) using these four concepts to trace novices’ learning opportunities as they unfold over time in order to serve the goal of facilitating instructive comparisons in professional education. Research Design In this analytic essay, I analyze the three articles to examine how conceptions of quality are already entailed in the characterizations of practice. My analysis focuses on the kinds of criteria or “qualities” that are foregrounded; the grain size of practice to which the conception of quality is applied; and the ways in which variations in criteria— what counts as more or less advanced—are represented. I then contrast the sequence of learning opportunities and assessments described in the articles on discussion leading in terms of these four concepts. Conclusions/Recommendations Even instructional practices that appeared quite similar when described through the lenses of approximations, decomposition, and representations looked quite different when conceptions of quality and learning opportunities and assessments were traced over time. Representing these “learning trajectories”—which entail an understanding of the evolving dialectical relationships between learning opportunities and (at least intended) learning outcomes—seems essential to understanding and learning from the teaching practice.

A practice turn for teacher education?

Within the Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE) at Charles Sturt University, teacher education researchers have been quick to respond to the opportunities created by what is known as ‘the practice turn’ that characterises contemporary theory around the globe and across disciplines. We are working, together and in parallel, to explore ways in which we can take up the affordances of renewed attention to theories of practice in professional (teacher) education. Our aim is to build new theories of teacher education practice that can sustain us as we interact within and around contemporary higher education and school education policy and regulatory frameworks. While these may work to constrain and delineate teacher education curriculum decisions, they also delineate the social and interpersonal parameters of the field on which we practise as teacher educators in universities today. In this paper I explore and examine the idea of practice in pre-service teacher education to ask if there are ways to reconceptualise professional practice and professional experience outside of the now dominant ‘days in schools’ model that has become the major way in which we provide pre-service (student) teachers with the opportunity to actually study the act of teaching and the actions that are involved in the practice of their profession. Drawing on the work of Grossman, teaching is an idea that has devolved over time. What was once a core teacher education practice of the ‘demonstration lesson’ followed by student practice of key skills has disappeared from initial teacher education curricula. Similarly, other forms of studying teaching such as the ‘micro-teaching’ approach of the 1970s and 80s have also diminished over time. With new developments in practice theory and attention to professional practice as a research area within Charles Sturt University and elsewhere, a focus on the study of teaching as a practice is timely.

Children with Behavioral/Mental Health Disorders and School Mental Health Nurses in Australia

This review of the literature addresses Australian school mental health nursing is an emergent field of practice. Children with behavioral/mental health disorders present challenges to schools, teachers, and their families. They can be disruptive in class, inappropriate with their peers, and perform poorly academically. Often this group of children do not respond to the school's usual strategies to support appropriate behavior. When children with behavioral/mental health disorders do not receive specialized support based on their problems and needs, their problems can escalate over time and in adolescence their behavior may become more challenging, with increased aggression, substance use, contact with the criminal justice system, and school failure with or without dropout. Mental health nurses, working as case managers, could be effective in the support of children with behavioral/mental health disorders in schools. Mental health nurses, because of their professional education and clinical practice, work not only with the individual child but also with family members. They are well prepared to case manage in schools and support individual teachers and health and welfare services in their management of their clients with behavioral/mental health disorders.

Management of Low Back Pain by Physical Therapists in Quebec: How Are We Doing?

In this study, we characterized physiotherapists' attitudes and beliefs about the bio-psychosocial problem of low back pain (LBP), their use of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), and the extent to which their advice and treatment is in line with best-evidence CPGs. One hundred eight physiotherapists completed an online survey that included questionnaires exploring the strength of physiotherapists' biomedical and bio-psychosocial orientations toward the management of LBP: the Pain Attitudes and Beliefs Scale for Physiotherapists and the Attitudes to Back Pain Scale for musculoskeletal practitioners. In addition, participants responded to questions about treatment recommendations for patients in two vignettes. Only 12% of respondents were aware of CPGs. Physiotherapists with a stronger biomedical orientation scored the severity of spinal pathology higher in the patient vignettes. A stronger biomedical orientation was also associated with disagreement with recommendations to return to usual activity or work. The results suggest limited awareness by physiotherapists of best-evidence CPGs and contemporary understandings of LBP that support early activation and self-management. Research to better understand and facilitate the implementation of best-evidence professional education and clinical practice is an urgent priority.