• An evaluation of the perceived value and effectiveness of the Continuous Professional Development Journal for postgraduate Human Resource Management Diploma students and their employers

      Maiden, Barbara (University of Wolverhampton, 2005)
      Research undertaken with groups of first and second year Postgraduate Human Resource Management Diploma students at the University of Wolverhampton Business School. As part of their assessment in the first year students are required to undertake a work based project and accompanying reflective journal in order to develop a holistic approach to using their theoretical learning in practice. In the second year they are required to continue the process of maintaining a development journal to meet professional requirements and to build on their reflective practice. A pilot study of 19 postgraduate students indicated that there was little enthusiasm or genuine engagement with the process of maintaining a learning journal and it appeared that students were missing a valuable learning opportunity.
    • CPD for Teachers in Post-compulsory Education.

      Hafiz, Rania; Jones, liff; Kendall, Alex; Lea, John; Rogers, James (London: UCET (Universities Council for the Education of Teachers), 2008)
      The last few years have seen an unprecedented level of activity in regards the education, training and development of teachers in the post-compulsory sector. These stem, to an extent, from the Government's reform programme outlined in the 2004 "Equipping our Teachers for the Future" white paper. But it also comes from the professionalism that exists within the teaching force, its professional associations and in the organisations and institutions that oversee and deliver training programmes for prospective and serving teachers. The purpose of this position paper is fourfold: Firstly, it seeks to provide a summary and critical analysis of the complex and inter-related changes that have taken place in recent years. Secondly, it identifies some examples of good practice in regards CPD and how the "impact" of such practice might be assessed. Thirdly, it proposes the adoption of an entitlement statement that sets out the support teachers in the sector should expect to receive in respect of their continuing professional development. And, finally, it lists some firm recommendations that we would like government agencies, professional associations, universities and others to take on board.
    • Learning through networks: trust, partnerships and the power of action research

      Hadfield, Mark; Day, Christopher (Routledge, 2004)
      In England school teachers and head teachers are faced with a myriad of challenges in coping with the pressures of managing the dynamic and diverse institution which is their school within an imposed, centralized, standards-driven change agenda. It could be argued that many of the national policies and initiatives over the last 15 years have directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously undermined the traditional autonomy of teachers. As a consequence, many feel little ownership of a curriculum that is regularly policed through national pupil assessment at ages 7, 11, 14, 16, 17 and 18, school inspections and competency frameworks related to role specification, and are consequently insecure in making decisions about pedagogy. As part of governments' drive to ensure the effective and efficient implementation, they have been inundated also with demands to attend professional development courses dealing with imposed initiatives, but have little time or energy for reflection on their practice and reflection on the impact that imposed change is making on pupils, motivation, learning and achievement. It was in this context that the Primary Schools Learning Network was formed through negotiated partnerships between a group of self-selecting schools, the local education authority (district), and the Centre for Research on Teacher and School Development at the University of Nottingham. Its aim was to give ownership for development back to teachers through collaborative action research with a view to improving schools and raising pupil attainment.
    • Linking reflective practice to evidence of competence: a workshop for allied health professionals

      Cross, Vinette; Liles, Clive; Conduit, Jacky; Price, Janet (Taylor & Francis, 2004)
      Under new regulation requirements for Allied Health Professionals in the UK, maintenance of professional registration is linked to evidence of competence through continuing professional development. This paper reports on the outcomes of a multi-professional workshop for Allied Health Professionals working in one National Health Service Trust. The aim of the workshop was to help practitioners from different health professions understand and implement the process of reflective practice and link their learning to evidence of competence using a common framework. The workshop demonstrated that collectively, Allied Health Professionals in the Trust are taking advantage of a range of opportunities for informal practice-based learning, and was helpful in enabling practitioners move from a factual to a more critical level of reflective thinking. The outcomes suggest that a common framework within which Allied Health Professionals can reflect on their practice and facilitate their own CPD, as well as demonstrate continuing competence to a variety of stakeholders, is realistic and workable.
    • Mentoring the mentors: a critical reflection of the process of designing and supporting mentor training for post-compulsory sector teaching mentors

      Hughes, Julie; Stokes, Michael (University of Wolverhampton, 2004)
      Each pre or in-service student registered on the University of Wolverhampton's PGCE course is allocated an observer who assesses his or her teaching practice. Prior to September 2002 the observer's title was that of work-based assessor. However, the PGCE team felt that the role undertaken and the responsibilities inherent in the support and observation of the development of teaching practice were dimished somewhat by the use of this rather technical label. The title "Teaching Mentor" was adopted in September 2002. This research reflects the PCE (post-compulsory education) team's attempts to ensure that the shift was not simply semantic, but instead may be seen to be ahead of sectoral developments in its focus upon the individuals who mentor new or unqualified teachers and upon their education and training needs.
    • Patchwork E-Dialogues in the professional development of new teachers

      Hughes, Julie; Hulme, Moira (Ideal Group Publishing, 2006)
      In this chapter the authors contend that the encouragement of reflective writing within professional learning programmes is not new. They suggest that electronic technologies, however, afford exciting opportunities to develop this practice to support participative and collaborative learning beyond barriers of time and place. This chapter explores the value of asynchronous dialogue in creating and sustaining communities of practice, with particular emphasis on the role of the e-mentor.
    • Possibilities for patchwork eportfolios? Critical dialogues and reflexivity as strategic acts of interruption

      Bartlett, Steve; Hughes, Julie (University of Wolverhampton, 2007)
      As a stratified social space Higher Education’s linguistic ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1991) or ‘everyday use’ of literacy valorises and legitimates essayist literacy and its monologic addressivity, a discursive arena where, “it is the tutor’s voice that predominates, determining what the task is and how it should be done” (Lillis 2001, p.75) with an emphasis upon evaluation of text as finished product. Writing within dialogic practices of addressivity, where tutor and student writers, “engage in the construction of text as meaning making in progress” (Lillis 2001, p.44) illustrates the fabrication of literacies and of reflective stories where teacher identity may be seen “as a gradual ‘coming to know’” (Winter 2003, p.120) dependent in part upon social assembly and conversations.Such infidelity to monologicism demands a dynamic dialogic forum such as that supported by an electronic portfolio as a strategic act of interruption of essayist norms. The eportfolio system, pebblePAD, was piloted with a group of 15 PGCE (PCE) students in 2004-5. The system was used for teaching, learning and assessment and as a data collection tool. The data was generated from individual and shared artefacts: audits, journals, critical incident sharing, online questionnaires and from summative reflective assignments. The reflective writing within the emergent community of practice provide evidence of Lave and Wenger’s (1991, p.53) model which urges us to remember that, “learning involves the construction of identities” and that the conceptual bridge that peripheral participation in a community offers has the potential to allow us to take “a decentred view of master-apprenticeship relations.” The nurturing and enabling of such a community of practice within a professional course such as the PGCE has the potential to create politicised and engaged reflective writers and practitioners who view risk and uncertainty as positive factors who “take a decentred view of the master-apprentice…(leading) to an understanding that mastery resides not in the master but in the organization of the community of practice of which the master is part” (Lave & Wenger 1991, p.94)
    • Space, Resistance and Identities: University-based Teacher Educators Developing a Community of Practice.

      Herrington, Margaret; Kendall, Alex; Hughes, Julie; Lacey, Cathie; Smith, Rob; Dye, Vanessa; Baig, Rachel; O’Leary, Matt (Charlotte, VA: Information Age Publishing, 2008)
      This series: The aim of this set of books is to combine the best of current academic research into the use of Communities of Practice in education with "hands on" practitioner experience in order to provide teachers and academics with a convenient source of guidance and an incentive to work with and develop in their own Communities of Practice. Volume 1 deals principally with the issues found in co-located Communities of Practice, while Volume 2 deal principally with distributed Communities of Practice.
    • Trust, shared goals and participation in partnerships: reflections of post-16 education and training providers in England

      Dhillon, Jaswinder (Routledge (Taylor & Francis), 2007)
      This paper discusses the role of trust and shared goals in relation to participation in inter-organisational and multi-agency partnerships. It draws on a study of partnership working in England and focuses in particular on the perspectives of senior managers of post-16 education and training providers with substantial experience of working in local and regional partnerships. The research explored the concept and practice of partnership through a qualitative case study of a sub-regional partnership and the main methods used for data collection were observations of partnership meetings, documentary evidence of partnership working and semi-structured interviews with members of the partnership. The findings presented in this paper emanate principally from the interview data and reveal the importance and differentiated nature of trust in partnership working and the place of both trust and shared goals in effective and sustained partnerships.