1,721,139 research outputs found
Professionalisation processes among adult educators: a comparative investigation of three Nordic-Baltic countries
No full textIn light of the increased interest in adult education and training (AET) in the EU as well as in national policy, the article looks into policy and practice when it comes to the professionalisation of those responsible for providing the AET – the adult educators. The article takes its theoretical point of departure in implementation theory as well as in theory on professionalism and professionalisation processes.
The analysis is based on a comparative study involving Denmark, Estonia and Sweden. The methodological approach to the study was document analysis of mainly policy papers and strategies as well as legal regulations from year 2000 and until today. Based on the analysis, the article concludes that in spite of differences in history and AET traditions between especially Denmark/Sweden on the one hand and Estonia on the other, a number of similarities in recent policy can be found. The first is an increase in the provision of AET. A second is a tendency for official requirements for teaching adults to be higher in general and vocational AET than in liberal AE. Also, in spite of the huge interest in AET, qualification of adult educators seems to be a non-issue in the analysed policy papers and strategies, especially in Denmark and Sweden. The fi nal common trend is a tendency that most courses and programmes for adult educators are targeted people already working within the field or people interested in a career shift. Very few options exist in the three countries for initial qualifi cation prior to entering the field as adult educator. Based on the analysis, it is questioned whether adult educator is today a full profession in any of the three countries studied or if it should rather be considered a “semi-profession
Professionalization of Adult Educators in Denmark
No full textIncreasing interest in lifelong learning has led to increasing interest in adult education and training and, at European level, increasing interest in the qualification of those who are going to teach the growing number of adults expected to take part in adult education and training. The article, which is based on the Danish results of a European project on the qualification of (prospective) adult educators, shows that in spite of a long tradition of adult education, this increased interest in the qualification of adult educators is only vaguely mirrored in Danish plans and strategies for adult education, where quality is mainly defined in terms of usefulness for the labour market. The study is carried out as a combination of document analysis of relevant policy papers and narrative interviews with participants in qualification programmes for adult educators
Qualification paths of adult educators in Sweden and Denmark
Full text linkThe qualification of adult educators is a central aspect of the quality of adult education. However, within current policy discourses and adult education research on the professional development of prospective adult educators, little attention is paid to teacher qualification when compared to other fields of education and training. In this study, we analyse the qualification paths, or learning trajectories, of prospective adult educators in Sweden and Denmark. The analysis is based on narrative interviews with 29 students in training to become adult educators. The career paths of adult educators are often long and winding roads. Becoming an adult educator could be their primary desire, but it could also be their ‘Plan B’, a second choice. Individual motives and external demands interact in the professionalisation process. A shift in focus from teaching subject and methods to teaching context and the relation to the learners is part of the professional development. Finally, we argue that both academic studies and hands-on work in the adult education community are crucial parts of the adult educator’s qualification path
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
How public media and governments co-construct the adult skills agenda.:The OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies in Italian and Danish newspapers
Full text linkThe ‘Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies’ (PIAAC), developed and managed by the OECD, is an important source of knowledge about adult skills as well as an intervention in the field of education policy. One level of the intervention is the presence of PIAAC results in public media and debate. This article presents a comparative analysis of the way major newspapers in Italy and Denmark presented and used PIAAC over the period 2013–2019. The press contributes to constructing knowledge and setting agendas for education by presenting information structured from criteria of news value and from ideological stances. The analysis, done as part of the ENLIVEN research project (Milana et al., 2020), traces how PIAAC results were covered in Italian and Danish newspapers and used in the construction of themes, angles and ‘truths’ on skills and adult learning
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