Reflections of professional practice: using electronic discourse analysis networks (EDANs) to examine embedded business emails

Emails have become a central genre in business communication, reflecting both how people communicate and how they go about their professional practices. This chapter examines embedded business emails as reflections of the professional practices of the regulatory and policy department of a multinational based in London, UK. It argues that the nature of online communication in international organisations, with its high levels of intertextuality and interdiscursivity, requires multidimensional analytical approaches that are capable of capturing its complexity and dynamics. To this end, the chapter introduces electronic discourse analysis networks (EDANs) as one example of such approaches. It begins with a brief review of the literature that has informed the study reported on here before it discusses EDANs as its analytical framework. Using a group of embedded emails and a number of networked data sets, the chapter shows how EDANs can be used to further our understanding of professional online communication.

Ulster PD Scheme: Using e-portfolios and professional conversations to evidence recognition claims

Vicky Davies and Sarah Maguire are Professional Development Managers at the University of Ulster. They have many years of experience in delivering and assessing Higher Education Academy claims for recognition via accredited provision for new teaching staff and post-graduate students. More recently they led the development of the University of Ulster’s Professional Development Scheme http://www.ulster.ac.uk/centrehep/pds/ . The core elements of the PD Scheme are the production of an e-portfolio and an assessed professional conversation. This workshop will explore the learning they have acquired through developing this process and piloting it with applicants. You will have the opportunity to discuss this and to identify any transferability to your own practice.

Developing a Technoself System to Improve Lifelong Learning Engagement

Lifelong learning exists today in the context of a cultural and societal shift to a knowledge-based, technology-enhanced, and rapidly-changing economy. It has a significant impact on people’s lives and has become of vital importance with the emergence of new technologies that change how people communicate, collect information, and collaborate with others. The emerging technologies, such as social networking, interactive media and game technology, have expanded a new dimension of self – ‘technoself’ driven by socio-technical innovations and taken an important step forward in lifelong learning through the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). The TEL encourages learners as producers to embed personalized knowledge and collective experience on individualized learning within professional practice. It becomes more personal and social than traditional lifelong learning, especially about the ‘learning as socially grounded’ aspects. This paper studies the development of technoself system during lifelong learning and introduces technoself enhanced learning as a novel sociological framework of lifelong learning to couple the educational dimension with social dimension in order to enhance learner engagement by shaping personal learning focus and setting. We examine how people construct their own inquiry and learn from others, how people shift and adapt in these technoself-enhanced learning environments, and how learner engagement is improving as the involvement of learners as producers in lifelong learning. We further discuss the barriers and the positive and negative unintended consequences of using technology for lifelong learning.

The New Instantaneity: How Social Media are Helping us Privilege the (Politically) Correct over the True

The recent sacking of the eminent scientist Tim Hunt from one of the UK’s leading research institutions is only the latest in a series of cases where public individuals have been derided for comments made in jest on social media, with serious consequences for their professional and personal lives. This article discusses the case of Tim Hunt as an example of the extent to which the privileging of the correct over the true which has long pervaded media discourse is taken to the extreme by the instant-response culture of social media. It points to the emergence of a new form of instantaneity enabled by these networked forms of communication that serves to reinforce systemic inaction rather than the change widely associated with these technologies. It draws on philosophy and Critical Theory as useful conceptual frameworks for highlighting the ways in which Twitter & co. increasingly call us to action but crowd out thought, thereby passing over opportunities for real social change.

Teacher educators: proposing new professional development models within an English further education context

At a time of increasing public and government focus on the quality of teacher education, little is known about the professional development needs of those who teach teachers in further education (FE). Yet they are crucial players. Efforts are intensifying across a significant number of countries to promote the professional development of teacher educators, but there is little support for new or experienced practitioners and no substantive professional standards regarding this role in English FE. This has an impact on the professional practice and career trajectories of teacher educators themselves. Based on a series of semi-structured interviews, an online survey and focus groups, this mixed-methods study uses a sequential exploratory design. The study captures the voices of English FE teacher educators who identified mentoring, induction and a choice of continuous professional development sessions as important strategies to improve the effectiveness of their role over time. This article will propose flexible models of professional development, following an analysis of new and experienced teacher educators’ needs in FE in England. The article recommends that new professional standards for teacher educators could be written collaboratively by practitioners, within a policy and institutional framework which supports the scholarship and research requirements of teacher educators.