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1.
Abstract

Multipurpose community colleges have a special opportunity for distinction through one of their missions—community development. One southern community college has assessed the similarities and differences of the perceptions of selected community leaders and of the college professional staff concerning the role of the college in community development.

The opinions of both groups were very similar, but the community leaders showed more variation in perceptions. Both groups believed the college should be involved in community development activities, but that the college could meet the needs of individuals better than it could meet community-wide needs. The college professional staff was more opposed to granting academic credit for community development activities such as work experiences of students and continuing education courses than were the community leaders.

As a philosophical approach to community development, both groups preferred the college's approaching community improvement through the organization of a wide spectrum of people concerned with democratic processes, self-help, and educational objectives. This process approach requires professional staff members with organizational, research, survey, and teaching skills to assist the community in working to solve problems.  相似文献   

2.
Abstract

The role of the academic developer mirrors that of the current day academic. It is increasingly diverse and complex. Staff employed in academic development units are expected to respond to the needs of individual academics and are also expected to provide leadership in teaching and learning, conduct research into higher education, contribute to policy on a broad range of issues, and undertake community service. In addition they are expected to take responsibility for their own professional development. They are constantlyjuggling priorities of personal, professional and organizational commitments. To maintain competence in the face of multiple demands there must be significant overlap between work and learning. The learning opportunities inherent in working within a large multi‐dimensional organization must be acknowledged and embraced through the concept of a ‘learning organization’. It is important that the organizational culture of the Academic Development Unit (ADU) values learning, encourages reflection and fosters collaborative practice. This paper outlines an organizational model of academic development highlighting the opportunities for intervention at the level of organizational culture, staff development and student learning. It also suggests strategies for organizing and managing an ADU that provides a positive model of an effective working and learning environment.  相似文献   

3.
Background: Within Higher Education in the United Kingdom (UK), programme leaders are under increased pressure to be more productive and are expected to undertake a complex range of demanding activities. However, perceptions of the role through the lens of the programme leader have not been explored sufficiently. Clearly, a university’s ability to enhance and sustain improvement in programme delivery depends largely upon its ability to nurture and foster professional learning, most notably at a programme level. The need for a review of programme leader training and support was reinforced through the experience of facilitators at programme leader workshops at one Higher Education Institution in the UK. Critically, these workshops highlighted a need to review and enhance the preparation and on-going training and support available to programme leaders.

Aim: The overall aim of this study was to explore the role of the programme leader, in order to gain an in-depth understanding of what the role involves and a detailed appreciation of the knowledge and skills required to discharge the role effectively and efficiently. Such insight would inform the review of the provision of initial and on-going training and support workshops for new and experienced programme leaders. Indeed, the ultimate aim was to drive improvements in programme leader performance.

Method: A qualitative design was selected to allow the complexity of the programme leader role to be explored and captured. A purposeful sample (n = 25) was recruited from a range of newly appointed and experienced undergraduate and postgraduate programme leaders and associate deans with academic quality assurance and learning and teaching expertise across seven schools in one post-1992 university in England. In total, four semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted. A modified version of the data analysis method advocated by Chenitz and Swanson was employed to examine the data.

Findings: Four dynamic, interrelated conceptual categories form the basis of the emergent findings. These are Operational Diversity, which addresses the different duties carried out by participants, highlighting certain tensions in their ability to meet the demands placed upon them; Interaction with Others, which identifies the diverse range of stakeholders that shape and impact on the multifaceted programme leader role and highlights the importance of collaborative working; Mechanisms of Support, which describes the training and personal development experience of the participants and the extent to which it matches their needs; and Required Knowledge and Skills, which considers the need for initial and on-going training to enable programme leaders to meet the demands of this role.

Conclusion: Examination has revealed that within an ever-changing Higher Education sector in the UK, the role of a programme leader is not without challenge as most have to deal with complex academic, pastoral, moral, administrative and pragmatic decisions on a daily basis. Moving forward must involve bespoke preparation and on-going training and support. Specific emphasis should be placed on opportunities for self-reflection, debriefing and the sharing of experiences with peers. At the heart of on-going training and support should be the strategic engagement of students, professional staff and other key personnel from services offered across a university.  相似文献   

4.
This paper describes a study of how academic development units use on‐line technologies for academic staff development. Changes in technology and in the academic workplace are making it increasingly possible to use on‐line learning opportunities for professional development, and on‐line learning environments might thus be expected to provide opportunities for university teachers to reflect on their teaching practice and share these insights and experience with colleagues within and across disciplines. The study reported here reviewed 31 web sites in Australia and the UK to determine what range of aims of academic staff development where being met in their implementation of on‐line learning. The paper concludes that in most contexts the World Wide Web was considered useful for the administrative rather than the educational needs of academic staff.  相似文献   

5.
This paper explores how academic staff are supported in attempts to develop their use of educational technologies. It identifies the work undertaken by academic staff in the development of an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) application and relates this to the direct support (helping staff to teach using ICT) and professional development opportunities (helping staff to develop their skills) available to them. These broad areas of support are seen as a continuum, with varying proportions of direct support and professional development available in different circumstances. The paper concludes that increasing use and expectations of ICT to support student learning in traditional universities are leading to a greater need for team‐based approaches to support learners, and the issues that this change raises are explored.  相似文献   

6.
Academic leaders in Indonesian universities share a concern about the quality of teaching and learning in common with their colleagues in Western universities. Attention to the reform of teaching immediately raises questions of strategy.

Short courses in teaching skills and curriculum development have been conducted in the past but it is argued that the continuation of these alone will not have the desired impact on quality in Indonesian universities in the short‐term. A distinctive and profoundly unsatisfactory feature of universities around the world is that the majority of teaching staff have no training or qualifications in teaching. Means of addressing this issue, and the university culture that supports it, include the creation of educational development centres to provide a continuing focus for development and change, a reconsideration of what it means to be an Indonesian academic, and the careful linking of institutional needs, planning, and change with the professional development of all staff.  相似文献   


7.
ABSTRACT

Background: While the school leader’s role is undoubtedly instrumental in school effectiveness, the specific influence of formal leadership on pupil learning is indirect and can be difficult to determine. Research findings suggest that school leaders can influence school organisation and pupil learning by acting catalytically, thus unlocking their schools’ existing potential. In school-based development, school leaders and their staff undergo a workplace development process, using school resources to contribute to it.

Purpose: This article explores the concept of leadership in school-based development, focusing on leading teacher learning processes in relation to pupil learning. The research problem is formulated in the following question: How is the school leader’s role enacted and experienced when enhancing teachers’ learning in school-based development? The intent of the study was to further the understanding of leadership in school-based development.

Sources of information and method: A qualitative interview study was conducted with teachers and leaders from three lower secondary schools, roughly 2 years after the schools participated in a formal school-based development project which was initiated by the Norwegian education authority. To present the findings based on the collected data, narrative texts were constructed.

Findings: The findings draw attention to the importance of leaders’ participation in the teacher learning processes of school-based development. The study highlights the importance of leaders building trust in their schools: development processes must be collegium-rooted with common goals for the whole school. The interplay of culture, structure and content is found to be necessary for successful school-based development. Furthermore, school leaders need to balance internal and external accountability, moving school practices towards local goals, which are constructed within national overall aims.

Conclusions: The study suggests that leaders require an overview of developmental processes to manage to support and progress development; leadership needs to be distributed. Further research on leaders’ learning in relation to school-based development can generate knowledge that serves as a thinking tool, thereby informing leaders’ actions in support of school-based development.  相似文献   

8.
Abstract

Practices such as formal focused professional dialogue groups, coaching conversations, mentoring conversations and professional learning staff meetings have been taken up in schools and pre-schools as part of long-term action research and development activities to improve the learning and teaching practices. The development of relational trust has long been described in the literature as pivotal for the ongoing ‘success’ of such research and development in sites. In this article, we attempt to re-characterise relational trust as it is accounted for by participants in action research. We present data from a cross-nation study of middle leaders from Australian primary schools and Swedish pre-schools. Middle leaders are those teachers who ‘lead across’; they have both an acknowledged position of leadership or responsibility for the practice development of colleagues and a significant teaching role. The larger study examined the practices of middle leaders; and in this article we draw on interview data from one of the case-study sites that illustrate how colleagues in schools recognise the role middle leaders have for facilitating action research and teaching development. This article specifically presents excerpts from semi-structured interviews with 25 teachers, three principals, three executive teachers and three district consultants. Interviewees described how nourishing a culture of relational trust and mutual respect are critical features in the change endeavour. For them, the practices of the middle leader who facilitated the action research were instrumental in developing trust for teacher development. Analysis of participant accounts revealed five dimensions of trust: interpersonal trust, interactional trust, intersubjective trust, intellectual trust, and pragmatic trust.  相似文献   

9.
Abstract

High-stakes testing regimes, in which schools are judged on their capacity to attain high student results in national tests, are becoming common in both developed and developing nations, including the United States, Britain and Australia. However, while there has been substantial investigation around the impact of high-stakes testing on curriculum and pedagogy, there has been very little research looking at the impact on teachers’ professional opportunities. The current project used a case study approach to examine the impact a high-stakes national testing programme had on teachers’ access to professional learning and their teaching allocations in four Indonesian public schools. It found that better qualified teachers were allocated to classes that would be sitting for the national examinations, and that these teachers were given much more access to professional learning opportunities than those teaching non-examined year levels. This in turn impacted negatively on the staff morale of less qualified teaching staff and potentially on their career trajectories. Findings suggest that school leaders should be wary of targeting better qualified and/or more experienced staff to year levels sitting for high-stakes tests, as this may lead to staff stratification within schools, limiting opportunities for staff to learn from one another and reducing the morale of less qualified and less experienced staff. They also add support to a substantial body of research that suggests policy-makers should be wary of the flow-on effects of using performance in high-stakes tests as the key means of judging school effectiveness.  相似文献   

10.
There seems to be a relentless pressure to move towards more flexible approaches to learning and teaching in higher education, as described by Latchem and Hanna (2002) elsewhere in this issue. To achieve this, academic staff need to have access to professional development opportunities in flexible learning. This case study describes the experience of trying to 'practice what we preach' in terms of offering professional development for learning and teaching in a flexible way. However, it was found that academic staff were less prepared to be flexible learners than they thought, and that it was necessary to reduce flexibility for the professional development to achieve its intended outcomes.  相似文献   

11.
E‐learning is increasingly adopted in the workplace for supporting professional development and continuing education; however, in higher education, the use of e‐learning is predominantly used as a tool support teaching. As a relatively new priority for universities, this paper explores what influences its adoption. Challenges identified in the literature include organisational features of universities like faculty autonomy and dispersed academic perspectives. This study, carried out at the University of Warwick, adopted a phenomenological approach and explored participants' perceptions through a series of faculty‐based focus groups and individual interviews. Factors identified as influential to adoption of e‐learning included the institutional infrastructure, staff attitudes and skills, and perceived student expectations. Participants suggested the importance of an institutional strategy targeted at providing sufficient resources and guidance for effective implementation. This strategy needs to be supported by a varied programme of staff development and opportunities for sharing practice among colleagues. In further developing understanding in this area, it would be beneficial to replicate the study with other stakeholder groups (including the leadership team and students) to develop an institutional strategy responsive at all levels of implementation. It would also be valuable to investigate the extent to which these findings are replicated within other workplaces looking to adopt innovation.  相似文献   

12.
The association of research and teaching, and the roles and responsibilities of students and academic staff and the nature of their interrelationship are important issues in higher education. This article presents six undergraduate student researchers’ reports of their learning from collaborating with academic staff to design, undertake and evaluate enquiries into aspects of learning and teaching at a UK University. The students’ reflections suggest that they identified learning in relation to employability skills and graduate attributes and more importantly in relation to their perceptions of themselves as learners and their role in their own learning and that of others. This article draws attention to the potential of staff–student collaborative, collective settings for developing pedagogic practice and the opportunities they can provide for individual student's learning on their journey through higher education.  相似文献   

13.
Abstract

There is increasing interest in how academic development of various kinds influences university teaching and student learning. To date the focus has been on formal, expert-led opportunities to learn how to teach. Our institution has developed a less formal, participant-led forum for teaching staff that was initially established to share ideas on teaching techniques and skills. We report here on participant-led research that explores if and how this model of group learning works, and how it might relate to other models that have been applied to tertiary teaching development. Authors adopted a self-study research framework incorporating a collaborative autoethnography. The data emphasises how participants use this forum as a community of practice, as a means for deep engagement with learning about teaching, and as a means to rationally manage their learning against a backdrop of challenges associated with learning to teach in research-led higher education.  相似文献   

14.
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15.
The dramatic growth in the number of children learning English as a second language in our country has led to a corresponding increase in the need to understand how teachers and schools can effectively teach children who are learning English as a second language. Many teachers report not feeling prepared to meet the needs of these children (National Center for Education Statistics, Teacher preparation and professional development: 2000. , 2002). The current study used focus group interviews to examine how Head Start teachers in one program addressed the special learning needs of children learning English in their classrooms. Key challenges involved communicating with children and their families in their home language. Teachers used other staff, parents, and children in the classroom to interpret. Strategies involved visual aids, pictures, gestures, and a welcoming classroom environment. Resources used by teachers were professional development and language skills of other staff. However, available resources were often underutilized and limited for teachers to use in meeting the challenges the teachers faced in the classroom. Suggestions are presented for overcoming the challenges and limited resources encountered by teachers, such as changes in preservice and inservice training opportunities, and second language learning opportunities for teachers. Further implications for training and research are discussed.  相似文献   

16.
ABSTRACT In a climate of continual change and innovation, lifelong learning is a critical professional development objective which has a direct impact on organizations' effectiveness and ability to compete and innovate. To help learners continually upgrade their skills and knowledge so they can effectively address emerging organizational and professional needs and opportunities, educators must prepare learners for their professions using teaching methodologies that develop learners' capacity for and disposition toward lifelong learning. Problem‐based learning (PBL) is one such method. PBL uses professional problems of practice as a starting point, stimulus, and focus for student activity, and one of PBL's stated educational outcomes is students' use of lifelong learning skills. This study examined the changes in students' use of lifelong learning skills while participating in a PBL project. Twenty‐six undergraduate university computer science students completed a 15‐week C++ programming course. Using guided reflective journal responses as process data, students were observed to increase their application of lifelong learning skills during their PBL experience. Design and research recommendations are shared.  相似文献   

17.
对广东省内优秀体育教学团队师资结构的现状进行研究和分析,发现体育教学团队的建设较其他学科教学团队薄弱,且技术类体育教学团队的建设滞后,总体表现为高职称和高学历的成员少,团队带头人科研能力不强.国家级、省级和校级体育教学团队的带头人的年龄、教龄、教学能力、科研能力均存在差异.  相似文献   

18.
An investigation was undertaken into how a process involving peer review and observation of teaching can be used to enhance academics’ teaching practices and inform professional development activities at an organization level. We describe an innovative and highly structured approach to gathering evidence of pedagogic practice from academic peer observers, students, and reflections on practice. Collating multiple perspectives on multiple instances of observed teaching a focused analysis is undertaken to provide an insight into development opportunities for a teaching culture and context. The investigation was undertaken in response to organizational needs in an increasingly competitive higher education sector where strong quality statements around teaching and learning outcomes are a matter of importance for organizational success. This paper will be of interest to academic developers and leaders in quality enhancement in higher education.  相似文献   

19.
This article examines the personal and professional attributes of school leaders in relation to special educational needs and disability (SEND) and assesses the extent to which these might be sufficient to give such professionals the confidence necessary to be role models for their staff. Data were collected via a survey of a randomly selected set of Australian school leaders, in both special and mainstream schools. This included principals from all sectors of the Australian school system. The study was based on the premise that school principals place as much importance on the need to be instructional leaders as they do on being managers. The study was informed by an assumption that in order to be successful as a school leader in respect of SEND, a school principal requires a deep pedagogical knowledge and a clear understanding of children's developmental milestones. The study found that school leaders expressed a need to develop further understanding of how to differentiate the taught curriculum in order to identify and support school‐wide quality teaching and learning processes for students with SEND.  相似文献   

20.
It is commonly understood that teachers in secondary school should develop throughout their career in order to stay as an essential factor in student learning. Schools can offer opportunities to link teachers’ professional learning to their school practice with a positive impact on teachers’ motivation to learn and the effectiveness of their learning. In this field study, teachers, school leaders, policy-makers, educational consultants and educational scholars were asked for their perceptions of conditions for teacher learning in school and of interventions in school to enhance teacher professional learning. These conditions and interventions were understood as affordances in schools that enable and support teacher professional learning. The main affordance in school these stakeholders mentioned was an open, but critical way in which teachers share their practices, collaborate and reflect upon their teaching practice. Collaborative practices seem to stimulate many interventions of teacher professional learning in school. Two implications of this finding are discussed. First, we suggest that the maximum teaching time should be reduced, team teaching should be more implemented or classes should be scheduled in such a way that teachers can meet. Second, distributed leadership approaches match with our findings about the role of school leaders in teacher professional learning.  相似文献   

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