University of Cumbria Open Access Journals
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Harmonious passion as an enabler of motivation for the teaching profession: Insights from a small-scale qualitative study
Full text linkCurrent statistics in the UK and internationally continue to indicate concern with teacher retention. This small-scale qualitative study explores how harmonious passion can contribute to continued teacher motivation, adopting the duality of passion model. Two teachers participated in a semi-structured interview, within a primary school in South-East England. Harmonious passion enabled teachers to maintain motivation due to the increase in job satisfaction and wellbeing. Results suggested that a lack of teacher autonomy and pressures placed upon teachers by government and school policies resulted in a declination of harmonious passion and subsequently lowered teacher motivation
The tangle in the feedback loop: Learner agency through a feedback loop activity across four university language programs
Full text linkThis study investigated a semester-long feedback loop activity carried out by six colleagues in four different language programs at the same university. 38 students participated from six different classes with varied proficiency levels in Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish. The goal of this activity was to provide tailored feedback with a view to enhancing the feedback process and improving learning.
While the success of the activity varied across the six classes, there was evidence of increased student engagement with feedback and improved understanding of their role in the feedback process. Unexpected differences emerged in the way the feedback loop activity was implemented in the respective classrooms. The reasons for these differences as well as for differences in levels of learner engagement were explored using Bronfenbrenner’s (1977, 1993) ecological framework, demonstrating its usefulness as a model for understanding feedback practices in university language programs
Hybrid tutorials and targeted follow-up as key elements of a student advice system that is realistic about faculty workload
Full text linkProviding quality student advice is a considerable challenge, especially with large student cohorts and workload pressures. In this paper we evaluate our student advice system which included asynchronous content in a learning management system, hybrid group tutorials, and targeted individual follow-up support. The academic advice system was developed with two goals. (1) Deliver accessible and high-quality academic support for students at various stages in their academic careers and (2) provide sustainable practices for faculty with various levels of academic tutoring experience. Efficacy of the academic advice system was evaluated through content analysis of student survey responses and satisfaction ratings. Results included 91% positive statements and high mean satisfaction ratings. Additionally, faculty exhibited unanimous commitment to the process. The process may serve as an efficacious example of an academic advice system that suits workload, increases satisfaction, and improves access, all of which may contribute to retention of students and faculty
‘Infused with multicultural education’: Teaching preparedness for the contemporary secondary school classroom
Full text linkThere is a growing need to rethink ways to teach both Black and White pupils in multicultural and diverse societies. This paper reports on a study that examined the impact that preparing multicultural resources had on student teachers’ perceived preparedness to represent the diversity of UK secondary school pupils. It explores the creation of teaching materials reflecting the contributions of the African diaspora undertaken by student secondary school teachers at a university in the East Midlands, UK. Consideration of the effect of this on the students’ attitudes was collected via an online survey (n=30) and the findings from this analysed thematically. Findings reflect that, given ‘permission’ and through developing an understanding of their own agency, the students – all of whom identified as ‘White’ – were enthusiastic about developing resources that challenge the marginalisation of Black people in their subjects. The findings implied a need for organisations to support students to find creative ways of teaching in diverse communities and the paper explores how understandings and respectful representations of race need to infuse every aspect of contemporary curricula
Learning from Wikipedia: Using digital social production as an assessment tool in higher education
Full text linkWikipedia has been viewed as a dubious resource within higher education, and students are often encouraged to avoid its use due to the questionable rigour of its entries. In this study the tables were turned when Wikipedia became the central element in an assessment task. The task experimented with a new approach to summative assessment within a university-taught pre-service teacher education programme. This paper describes an authentic task that allowed students to demonstrate their learning by editing Wikipedia entries and providing justifications for their edits. Findings showed that this assessment task was enjoyed and valued by the students as they saw they could make a positive contribution to the socially produced Wikipedia resource. Additionally, they described the development of their own digital literacy skills gained through engaging with the task
Reliability and validity of methods to assess undergraduate healthcare student performance in pharmacology: comparison of open book versus time-limited closed book examinations
Full text linkWe compared the influence of open-book extended duration versus closed book time-limited format on reliability and validity of written assessments of pharmacology learning outcomes within our medical and dental courses. Our dental cohort undertake a mid-year test (30xfree-response short answer to a question, SAQ) and end-of-year paper (4xSAQ, 1xessay, 1xcase) in pharmacology. For our first year medical cohort, pharmacology is integrated within a larger course, contributing 20xclinical vignette questions (to select the single best answer (SBA) to each question from a choice of 5 plausible answers) to a mid-year test and 3-5xSAQ to an end-of-year paper. Our experience indicates that SAQ are as reliable as SBA for closed-book time-limited assessments; reliability correlates with number of questions employed. We have found good correlation between mid-year and end-of-year performance (predictive validity), between questions (factorial validity) and between pharmacology and other subjects within the assessment (concurrent validity). Adoption of open-book extended duration assessments resulted in only modest reduction in reliability and validity
Decolonising Initial Teacher Education and anti-racist education in ‘white spaces’: feelings of uncertainty and optimism: Listening to student teachers’ and university tutors’ voices to critically evaluate a project to decolonise their PGCE
No full textThis research, conducted jointly by history and modern language teacher educators working in a higher education institution, evaluates the impact of a project to ‘Decolonise Postgraduate Teacher Education’, started in summer 2020. This project involved the creation of an action planner aimed to cultivate tutors’ and student teachers’ racial literacy and empower them to tackle racism in school. The research explores the impact and challenges of the project from the perspectives of the student teachers and tutors involved and establishes the next steps to decolonise the programme. A self-study approach was adopted, as the tutors’ and student teachers’ perceptions were recorded in diaries. One finding from the research is that the project had a positive impact on the participants’ racial literacy and allowed them to look critically at resources and curriculum. The research also identified many challenges in decolonising subjects in secondary schools; for instance the considerable variation in approaches taken by different departments and the underrepresentation of individuals from ethnically diverse communities on the course, but also in the wider teaching and teacher educator workforce. Finally, the research revealed areas where more progress was needed, for example supporting student teachers further in recognising microaggressions and dealing with racist incidents
Motivational antecedents of Faroese student teachers’ time-on-task
No full textThe Faroe Islands are a distinctive nation with its own language, which is consequently the most important language in schools. In this context, the Faroe Islands must train its own teachers and cannot rely to a meaningful degree on teachers trained in other countries. Faroese schools received a PISA shock after the millennium. As one of several measures, the teacher education institute was incorporated into the country’s sole university. Studies have indicated that the learning results are closely related to how much effort a student puts into the course and how effectively the student works with the learning material. Time-on-task in a teacher education program can be considered a coarse-grained measure of study intensity. The purpose of the present study is to explore factors that could explain Faroese student teachers’ time-on-task. The results show that it is their perceptions of the study requirements in teacher education that is most strongly related to time-on-task. Further, there is a tendency towards a weaker relation between self-discipline and time-on-task. A comparison with time-on-task in the other Nordic nations shows that time-on-task is somewhat low. If this is a problem, it might be important to increase the study requirements in Faroese teacher education