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The use of peer assessment at a time of massification: Lecturers’ perceptions in a teacher education institution
Get PDFThe massification of higher education in South Africa comes with a demand for innovative ways of assessing students. Peer assessment is one of the approaches that is too rarely used in higher education. The paper explores lecturers’ use of peer assessment at a teacher education institution. In-depth semi-structured interview conversations were used to generate data and we adopted scaffolding as a theoretical lens. The sample comprised of nine lecturers employed in a teacher education institution. We found that the majority of the participants use peer assessment although it varies across disciplines and the students’ level of study. Also, the findings indicated limited use of e-learning-assessment tools. Participants perceived peer assessment as significant towards improving students’ content knowledge while they acquire assessment skills and ethics as future teachers. This work is emerging in the context of South Africa and more research is required to broaden the phenomenon in teacher education
“Show, don’t tell”: Using visual mapping to chart emergent thinking in self-reflexive research
Get PDFThis paper uses examples from my doctoral work to show the ways in which visual mapping can be used both to develop and clarify our thinking, and to provide a form of visual validation of the insights gained, in self-reflexive research. Visual mapping can operate as a meaning-making process, helping the researcher to make sense of their thinking through visual means, while also helping the reader to understand the researcher’s thinking processes better, through a series of diagrams that trace the development of thoughts and ideas. Visual mapping is one method self-study researchers can use to demonstrate what Mishler calls “the visibility of the work” (1990, p. 429), and to make plain the ways in which our thinking developed, and the connections we make between theory, data, and analysis. By making our thinking process visible, we allow our reader to “see the study and the links and leaps made” (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2010, p. 150)
A capability analysis on the implementation of the school progression policy and its impact on learner performance
Get PDFThis paper focuses on the extent and consequences of learner progression in the form of ‘automaticpromotion’ or grade promotion for reasons other than academic achievement, as propagated by theexisting School Progression Policy (SPP) and how its implementation affects learner performance.The paper argues that, although the advantages and disadvantages of grade retention and automaticpromotion, or the promotion of learners that do not possess the required content knowledge, arehighly contentious, the SPP produces numerous complexities and unfreedoms on learners whenexamined through the lens of the Capabilities Approach (CA). Based on a study of three Quintile-1(Q-1) primary schools in Cape Town, the paper argues that, although the SPP is ambitious and wellintentioned, critical implementation and monitoring challenges negatively reconfigures theeducational aspirations of primary school learners. The paper also reveals that the implementationof the SPP imposes many unfreedoms for both learners and teachers in high poverty level areas.The study revealed that the CA, despite its limitations in terms of conceptualisation, does provide aunique framework to investigate real freedoms and unfreedoms of the SPP
Different rules for different teachers: teachers’ views of professionalism and accountability in a bifurcated education system1
Get PDFAbstractThis paper reports the initial results from a representative survey of teachers in the WesternCape regarding their views of professionalism and accountability. This is the first survey ofits kind in South Africa. Preliminary analysis of the data from 115 public schools suggeststhat teachers at no-fee schools, who are predominantly black women, report facing thegreatest institutional burdens and the greatest need for institutional support, particularlyfrom the state. Related to this, they tend to stress pastoral care-work as central to being aprofessional, while those at fee-paying schools stress their claims to pedagogical knowledgeand job prestige. This indicates that teachers at different schools are subject to different andunequal institutions (or rules), where the kind of school that teachers work at often reflectstheir race and gender positioning. It also implies that the concept of a bifurcated educationsystem, characterised by different production functions and outcomes for learners, shouldbe expanded to include teachers and deepened to include institutions.
Productive pedagogies in expressive arts lessons in Malawi
Get PDFAbstractThe national government in Malawi implemented a new Curriculum: the PrimaryCurriculum and Assessment Reform in 2007. The purpose of this study was to investigatethe enactment of one of the Learning areas, Expressive Arts in three urban and three ruralschools in Zomba district where teachers were first trained to teach Expressive Arts. Thestudy is framed by the Productive Pedagogies framework (Lingard, Hayes, Ladwig, Mills,Bahr et al., 2001). Following a qualitative research design, data were collected throughobservation and post-observation interviews. Data analysis showed limited productivepedagogies in most lessons. The majority of lessons were predominantly characterised bylower intellectual quality, a focus on instrumental knowledge, integration at a superficiallevel, dominance of communalising and gendered practices rather than ‘engagement withdifference’, prevalence of localising discourses ‘rather than connectedness to the world’ anda pedagogy aimed at national examinations. It appears that dominant pedagogic practices inthe Expressive Arts classroom serve to position learners in parochial orientations andissues. There was an obvious disjuncture between the intended curriculum and enactedcurriculum.The overall findings is that the enacted curriculum gave students limited opportunities forthe acquisition of knowledge and development of skills, values and attitudes required forthem to actively participate in the changing Malawian context and to be able to competesuccessfully in other contexts
Naked teaching: uncovering selves in the reflexive classroom
Get PDFAbstractThis autoethnography explores our experiences teaching an undergraduate autoethnographycourse entitled, ‘Writing Lives’. We, Keith and Nathan, Professor and Doctoral candidate,convey narrative scenes and reflections of sharing and analysing our published stories withstudents, working with students through the process of writing their personal stories, andtransformative moments during the course. We emphasise a vulnerable, reflexive, andempathetic approach to teaching and learning that allows students and teachers to uncoveraspects of who they are and hope to be in the classroom. This work advocates a number ofunique benefits to autoethnographic practices that foster open and intimate bond
Knowledge and judgement for assessing student teaching: a cross-institutional analysis of teaching practicum assessment instruments
Get PDFAbstractTeaching practicum (TP) assessment instruments provide insight into the nature of theknowledge that the university expects university-appointed tutors and school-basedsupervising teachers to have in order to make fair judgements about a student’s teachingcompetence. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the TP assessment instrumentsused during 2012 by five South African universities offering initial teacher education. Itdescribes the grounds upon which the comparative analysis was done, and offers aqualitative analysis of the knowledge base that the assessors of student teaching areassumed to have. We find that the structure and criteria of some TP assessment instrumentstend to construct the assessment of student teaching as straight-forward exercise inverifying that certain technical requirements are met. In contrast, we show how others usestructure and criteria potentially to enable a more professionally based judgement of thecompetence of student teachin
The Impact of Telepharmacy Services on the Identification of Medication Discrepancies, High-Alert Medications, and Cost Avoidance at Rural Healthcare Institutions
No full textTelepharmacy, remote reviewing and profiling of medication orders by an offsite pharmacist, has been shown to be an effective method for reducing medication order inaccuracy rates, but there is a lack in studies examining harm reduction and potential cost avoidance by such services. Methods: Retrospective data, collected over a one-year period, were examined for medication order deficiencies; a deficiency was defined as the telepharmacist being required to advocate for clinical action. Based on published rates of adverse drug reactions and expenses related to their treatment, a potential cost avoidance was calculated. Results: Over the course of the one-year study period over 218,000 orders were reviewed by a telepharmacist with 2,292 orders flagged as deficient which included 16,224 individual medication deficiencies. The most common deficiencies included patient allergy to medication, or class of medications, (31.2% of deficiencies) and medication dose adjustment via renal and/or hepatic guidelines (24.1% of deficiencies). There were also a number of deficiencies for specific medications found on the Institute for Safe Medication Practices’ high-alert medication list for ambulatory/community healthcare settings such as insulins and heparinoids. Based on adverse drug reaction incidence rates and treatment expenses, potential cost avoidance was calculated to be as high as over $1.4 million US dollars. Telepharmacists aided in enhancement of pharmacy services by continuing to review medication orders and provide clinical interventions even when an onsite pharmacist was unavailable. Conclusions: Use of the telepharmacist service provided a large cost avoidance by the prevention of potential adverse drug reactions
Alone on stage: How one LGBTIQ+ educator uses poetic performative autoethnography for social change
Get PDFThis article analyzes one open-educator’s self-reflexive examination of his poetry performance calling for the need of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer (LGBTIQ+) educators to serve as role models in the secondary classroom setting as a mechanism to promote social change. The author, who presented an original poetry collection in front of 400+ high school students and educators advocating for the need for out-educators, reflects upon this act as both Poetic Inquiry and Performance Autoethnography, providing a hybrid methodology – Poetic Performative Autoethnography (PPA), while framing the experience and its meaning to both the participant-researcher and the audience. The article includes discussion regarding the importance of/and political nature of representation, the need for space and dialogue, as well as obstacles facing LGBTIQ+ educators in the classroom.