1,720,973 research outputs found
Contributions of training and situated learning to Cabin crew competence
No full textThis study explores how formal training and situated learning combine to shape the competence of airlines’ cabin crew. The purpose of this study is to broaden the understanding of cabin crew learning by incorporating a ‘social practice’ approach. Cabin crew learning, still little explored in the literature, provides insights into a complex social practice context. Traditionally, cabin crew learning has been conceptualised in terms of initial training; they are trained and evaluated from a predominantly behavioural competency-based perspective, away from actual work contexts. At work, cabin crew engage in complex interactions with various people (colleagues, passengers, pilots), undertake different duties (e.g., customer service, safety-related tasks), in diverse situations (i.e. from routine flying to abnormal situations and emergencies). At the same time, they are committed to high standards of safety and passenger service enforced by airlines and flight safety authorities. The learning from these experiences has not been part of the thinking of airline training departments and therefore the question arises of how it relates to or combines with the outcomes of formal training regimes.
Building on contemporary perspectives of learning, particularly those informed by situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991), it is argued that cabin crew members develop knowledgeable skills for participation in a social practice constituted by the confined, intimate environment of the cabin. However, competence as such is seen to arise in a negotiation between this practice and the knowledge and values fostered in training. The concept of ‘social practice’ as a complex interaction of knowledge, skills, context, social relationships, and identity in a historically unfolding setting suggests that potentially, in the case of cabin crew, both the workplace and formal training experiences constitute two social practices – each with its own perspectives on the work of cabin crew – and that cabin crew member learning in fact spans the different sources of learning and identity.
The argument developed through the thesis is based on modified ethnographic research into the training and work environment of the cabin crew of one airline operating regional flights. The findings of the project contribute to the situated learning literature by suggesting not only that significantly different ‘situations’ shape cabin crew learning, but that formal training programs can themselves be regarded as a social practice rather than something to be written off as an inauthentic precursor to real learning. The study thus aligns with findings of situated learning researchers like Østerlund (1996) who argue that contemporary workplace learning can be seen as a process of crossing between differed situations or practices, and is critical of the tendency of researchers, such as Lave and Wenger (1991), who have not recognised formal training contexts as a social practice. These findings advance our knowledge of cabin crews’ work practices and their learning processes, potentially contributing to the improvement of the current training regimes. Further, this study emphasises the importance of qualitative exploration of situated learning in cabin crew contexts, which may inform possible solutions to contemporary concerns about training effectiveness in aviation. It might also contribute to better understand learning in other areas that combine intense formal training with a highly social work context, such as hospitality or healthcare.Thesis (Masters)Master of Education and Professional Studies Research (MEdProfStRes)School of Education and Professional StudiesArts, Education and LawFull Tex
Understanding the lived experiences of school leaders within a culture of heightened consumerism
No full textAs schools face growing scrutiny, school leaders are under increasing pressure to perform. Currently there is a small but developing body of research seeking to understand the role parent stakeholders play in contributing to the pressure school leaders are facing. This thesis aims to develop a better understanding of the lived experience of school leaders in their attempts to engage with parents, as partners, in a culture of heightened consumerism.
This exploratory, small scale phenomenological research, conducted interviews with two school leaders in an educational context of heightened consumerism. The purpose was to understand the impact of parent dispositions, expectations and engagement on school leaders. The study identified that parent engagement has a perceived impact on school leaders, ranging from low to high impact. The thesis discusses these findings in relation to possible changes to school leader development training and a review of parent engagement initiatives.Thesis (Masters)Master of Education and Professional Studies Research (MEdProfStRes)School Educ & Professional StArts, Education and LawFull Tex
How Can Occupational Therapy Improve the Effectiveness of Airline Pilot Training?
No full textWorldwide commercial aviation has been expanding rapidly. This expansion is set to continue with major aircraft manufactures like Boeing in 2018 forecasting an additional 790,000 new pilots will be required worldwide by 2036. This expansion is changing the dynamics of pilot training and the flow on effect of less experienced pilots entering airlines. This changing dynamic led to an Australian Senate enquiry into pilot standards in 2010. In 2018 the Australian Minister for Transport commissioned an expert panel of pilot training organisations and senior airline managers to investigate aviation. The panel stated the current expansion played a significant threat to the commercial aviation industry. Threats included the prohibitive costs for new students to become pilots, airlines poaching flight instructors and a reducing number of flight examiners (FE).
The flight examiner is responsible for the assessment of pilots at all stages of their career. In early pilot training there is a significant focus on aviation knowledge (e.g. rules of the air and aerodynamics) and flying skills (e.g. landing, turning, navigation) referred to as technical skills. Accidents over the last thirty to forty years in commercial aviation demonstrated that large aircraft in multi-crew flights were also attributed to human factors such as communication, teamwork and decision making, referred to as non-technical skills (NTS).
The assessment of technical skills has remained somewhat unchanged. However, non-technical skills are still evolving with research showing there remains issues centred on the separation of technical and non-technical skills, the constructs used, and the low inter-rater reliability in non-technical skills assessment. Nevertheless, experience by the researcher over the last five years as an Occupational Therapist (OT) working with airlines showed pilots with reoccurring performance issues, while initially signalled by a flight examiner as a technical and/or non-technical skills issue, could be better explained and remediated when categorised as issues associated with the postural, sensory, visual and/or cognitive systems.
This master’s thesis explores airline pilot performance using fundamental tools and perspectives used by Occupational Therapists. This exploration is not for the purpose of pilot selection, but rather, an opportunity to provide airlines with greater layers of intervention when performance issues arise with pilots. Accordingly, the study aimed to:
1. Identify a small number (four) of airline pilots previously assessed by a flight examiner demonstrating performances ranging from low to high.
2. Conduct further standardised and non-standardised occupational therapy assessments.
3. Determine if certain variables could impact on pilot performance.
The study showed the poor performing pilot had issues across all four systems - postural, sensory, visual and cognitive systems. The average performing pilots had issues across three of the systems - sensory, visual and cognitive systems. The highest performing pilot had no major difficulties across any of the systems. Interestingly some tests showed a reversal of results, with the poor performing pilot testing higher on some sub-tests, while the highest performing pilot tested poorly. The study discusses the findings in relation to pilot assessment and remedial training.Thesis (Masters)Master of Education and Professional Studies Research (MEdProfStRes)School Educ & Professional StArts, Education and LawFull Tex
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
The application of professional pilot training competencies in virtual reality
No full textVirtual reality (VR) is becoming the norm in the gaming industry and is being increasingly used for training in industries such as healthcare, tourism, and education. For decades aviation has used various levels of simulation to enable pilots to acquire and maintain skills, yet the process is costly, time consuming and inflexible. These factors, and that of providing a standardised pilot training syllabus, has led to predictable simulator scenarios which trainees rehearse, promoting rote learning. This leads to an inability to recognise and react appropriately to variations encountered in real life, thus compromising safety. Additionally, due to recent pilot shortages and lack of simulator availability, pilots are being trained with the minimum number of regulated hours, and yet the validity of equalling flight hours to sufficient experience is questionable. Recent advances in immersive technologies have piqued interest in VR for pilot training since it may offer a more effective solution than traditional full flight simulators (FFSs). However, the aviation industry is yet to embrace immersive technologies since there is very little empirical evidence of their suitability and a lack of human factors design. Subsequently, the overarching aim of this research program was to explore the application of professional pilot training competencies in VR and provide empirical evidence to support their efficacy. [...]Thesis (PhD Doctorate)Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)School of Eng & Built EnvScience, Environment, Engineering and TechnologyFull Tex
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
- …
