Incongruence between nurses' and patients' understandings and expectations of rehabilitation

Aims and objectives. To explore nurses' understandings and expectations of rehabilitation and nurses' perceptions of patients' understandings and expectations of rehabilitation.
Background. Within the context of a broadening appreciation of the benefits of rehabilitation, interest in the nature of rehabilitation is growing. Some believe that rehabilitation services do not adequately meet the needs of patients. Others are interested in the readiness of patients to participate in rehabilitation.
Design. Qualitative.
Method. Grounded theory using data collected during interviews with nurses in five inpatient rehabilitation units and during observation of the nurses' everyday practice.
Findings. According to nurses working in inpatient rehabilitation units, there is a marked incongruence between nurses' understandings and expectations of rehabilitation and what they perceive patients to understand and expect.
Conclusion. Given these different understandings, an important nursing role is the education of patients about the nature of rehabilitation and how to optimise their rehabilitation.

Relevance to clinical practice. Before patients are transferred to rehabilitation, the purpose and nature of rehabilitation, in particular the roles of patients and nurses, needs to be explained to them. The understandings of rehabilitation that nurses in this study possessed provide a framework for the design of education materials and orientation programmes that inform patients (and their families) about rehabilitation. In addition, reinforcement of the differences between acute care and rehabilitation will assist patients new to rehabilitation to understand the central role that they themselves can play in their recovery.

Calculators, mathematics and young children : a study of six children using calculators as part of the mathematics curriculum during their first two years of school

The thesis investigates the role a calculator can play in the developing number knowledge of three girls and three boys as part of their mathematics program, during their first two years at primary school. Random sampling was used initially to select six girls and six boys from the twenty-four children entering a 1993 prep class. These twelve children were interviewed on entrance to school and based on the performance of the twelve children on the initial interview, a girl and a boy were chosen from the higher, middle and lower achievers to take part in the full study. The class teachers involved were previously participants in the ‘Calculators in Primary Mathematics’ research program and were committed to the use of calculators in their mathematics program. A case study approach using qualitative methods within the activity theory framework is used to collect relevant data and information, an analysis of five interviews with each child and observations of the children in forty-one classroom lessons provides comprehensive data on the children's developing number knowledge during the two years. The analysis questionnaires establishes each teacher's perceptions of the children's number learning at the beginning and end of each year, compares teacher expectations with children's actual performance for the year and compares curriculum expectations with children's actual performance. A teacher interview established reasons for changes in teaching style; teacher expectations; children's number learning; and was used to confirm my research findings. An activity theory framework provides an appropriate means of co-coordinating perspectives within this research to enable a description of the child's number learning within a social environment. This framework allows for highlighting the mediation offered by the calculator supporting the children's number learning in the classroom. Levels of children's developing number knowledge reached when working with a calculator and as a result of calculator use are mapped against the levels recommended in ‘Mathematics in the National Curriculum’ (National Curriculum Council, December 1988), and the Curriculum and Standards Framework: Mathematics (Board of Studies 2000). Findings from this comparison illustrate that the six children's performance in number was enhanced when using a calculator and indicate that on-going development and understanding of number concepts occurred at levels of performance at least two years in advance of curriculum recommendations for the first two years of school.

Intertextual turns in curriculum inquiry : fictions, diffractions and deconstructions

This thesis is based primarily on work published in academic refereed journals between 1994 and 2003. Taken as a whole, the thesis explores and enacts an evolving methodology for curriculum inquiry which foregrounds the generativity of fiction in reading, writing and representing curriculum problems and issues. This methodology is informed by the narrative and textual 'turns' in the humanities and social sciences - especially poststructuralist and deconstructive approaches to literary and cultural criticism - and is performed as a series of narrative experiments and 'intertextual turns'. Narrative theory suggests that we can think of all discourse as taking the form of a story, and poststructuralist theorising invites us to think of all discourse as taking the form of a text; this thesis argues that intertextual and deconstructive readings of the stories and texts that constitute curriculum work can produce new meanings and understandings. The thesis places particular emphasis on the uses of fiction and fictional modes of representation in curriculum inquiry and suggests that our purposes might sometimes be better served by (re)presenting the texts we produce as deliberate fictions rather than as 'factual' stories. The thesis also demonstrates that some modes and genres of fiction can help us to move our research efforts beyond 'reflection' (an optical metaphor for displacing an image) by producing texts that 'diffract' the normative storylines of curriculum inquiry (diffraction is an optical metaphor for transformation). The thesis begins with an introduction that situates (autobiographically and historically) the narrative experiments and intertextual turns performed in the thesis as both advancements in, and transgressions of, deliberative and critical reconceptualist curriculum theorising. Several of the chapters that follow examine textual continuities and discontinuities between the various objects and methods of curriculum inquiry and particular fictional genres (such as crime stories and science fiction) and/or particular fictional works (including Bram Stoker's Dracula, J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, and Ursula Le Guin's The Telling). Other chapters demonstrate how intertextual and deconstructive reading strategies can inform inquiries focused on specific subject matters (with particular reference to environmental education) and illuminate contemporary issues and debates in curriculum (especially the internationalisation and globalisation of curriculum work). The thesis concludes with suggestions for further refinement of methodologies that privilege narrative and fiction in curriculum inquiry.

Doing justice' : stories of everyday life in disadvantaged schools and neighbourhoods

I worked as a school administrator in 'disadvantaged schools' for many years. In this study I asked colleagues from sixteen schools in the northern and western suburbs of Adelaide to co - theorise about changes in their neighbourhood, school populations and programs, now that their schools are no longer recognised by policy as 'disadvantaged1. I explore the use of narrative method and arts based approaches by constructing a 'literary' research text that uses conventional sociological forms together with images, poetry and personal stories. I use anthropological and geographical theoretical constructs to look at the changing material, economic, cultural and social landscapes and the mosaic of inequalities in the city of Adelaide. I suggest that this is not a simple binary polarisation, although large numbers of people are similarly positioned by de-industrialisation and the diminishing social wage. After examining the literature on poverty in Australia, I am eventually prepared to call this space class, understanding that this is a sociological metaphor. Through a theorisation of each school as a 'place' within a specific neighbourhood, I look at the similarities and differences across sites. I suggest that 'disadvantaged schools' are similarly positioned as sites for the mediation of social inequalities, and that this can be readily seen in the time consuming 'housework' of discipline and welfare. I indicate how each school is differently able to 'do more with less', because of their unique neighbourhood and its narratives, knowledges, histories, teleologies and people. I show that the common coercive regimes of market devolution, new public management and the 'distributive curriculum' frame the work of teachers, students and administrators in ways that are not conducive to 'doing justice', despite the policy rhetoric of equity and community. I provide evidence that the neoliberal imaginary of context free schooling enshrined in effective schools literatures is Utopian and irrational. I argue that the capacity of the school to 'generate context' is always paradoxically dependent on 'context derived'. I discuss the notion of 'doing justice' and the benefits of 'disadvantaged schools' having a local set of principles that guide their decisions and actions and provide evidence that the school administrator's understandings of 'doing justice' are important. I also suggest that, despite being increasingly isolated and hindered by policy directions, the majority of the sixteen schools continue to work for and with principles of justice and equity, drawing on a range of emotional and intellectual resources and deep, longstanding commitments. I conclude by speculating on the kinds of policy and research agendas that might take account of both the commonalities and differences amongst 'disadvantaged schools', and what might be included in a comprehensive and systematic approach to 'doing justice'.

Editorial : the construction of academic literacy and difference

In recent years, academic literacy has been a subject of heated scholarly and political debates. How academic literacy is defined, whom it serves, and what its purposes are shape both educational policies and the pedagogical practices adopted in classrooms. Any definition of academic literacy, its purposes and its learners also constructs powerful notions of difference. For instance, many traditional definitions of academic literacy posit “out of school” literacy (or literacies) as its opposite; current literacy standards and performance measures create categories of students as able or struggling; and so on. At a time when English classrooms around the world are becoming more multicultural, multilingual and international, how might understandings of academic literacy respond to cultural, linguistic, gender, economic, (dis)ability and other differences? How can literacy be taught to difference without reducing it to sameness? Framing the curriculum around dominant cultural literacy and establishing communal homogeneity, whilst de-legitimizing the Other and announcing ever-new strangers, is not feasible in a new multilingual, multiculural order. There is an increasing need to resist conservative tendencies and to continue a socially critical model of literacy education that is more response-able to the lives of strangers and other forms of difference in a late-modern, globalized society at the same time that it provides opportunities for all students to expand their communicative repertoires and to gain agency in the “design of their social futures” (New London Group, 2000). Articles in this issue respond in different ways to this agenda.

The methodology of students-as-researchers : valuing and using experience and expertise to develop methods

Students in England are increasingly involved in consultation and governance of schools. Some are also involved in researching their own learning, how they are taught, the kinds of curriculum on offer, and school policies and practices. In this article, we suggest that this could be seen as a form of “standpoint research”. We suggest that one way standpoint can be exercised is via the construction of experience-based research tools. We exemplify this through a student research project in which photo-elicitation and verbal scenarios based in students' understandings of their school did not produce an “authentic” and homogenised voice, but rather multiple perspectives of the classroom and wider school.

Study of small rural schools in a climate of rapid change

An investigation of interactive factors affecting educational outcomes in small rural primary schools in a climate of rapid change. Demonstrates that the school-community relationship in small rural communities is a complex symbiosis. Teachers' understandings of how the small rural community context, the curriculum and pre-service experiences interact and work in these settings are crucial to maximising educational outcomes.

From profiles to rich tasks : the situated nature of 'authenticity' in the context of reforming curriculum and assessment practices

Outcome based education that has dominated Australian education in the 1990s is under review in the early years of the twenty first century. The available historical 'texts' produced during the first half of the 1990s, which include the national Statements and Profiles, and the state Curriculum and Standards Frameworks, provide us with documents that we can engage with not simply for 'history's sake', but with an opportunity to, in the words of the feminist author Dorothy Smith, 'displace[s] the analysis from the text as originating in writer or thinker, to the discourse itself as an ongoing intertextual process' bringing into view the social relations in which texts are embedded and which they organise' (1990, p. 161-2). Most Australian states and territories have now commenced significant situated, local curriculum renewal and reform. This renewed interest in curriculum offers insights into the character of recent assessment practices in Australia, recognising the tensions inherent in assessment practices and authentic assessment models. This paper explores, by way of an overview of the broad curriculum and assessment practices adopted in Australia over the past twenty-five years, the situated nature of 'authenticity' in the context of curriculum and assessment practices and how as teacher educators we are responding through our everyday work.

The future of diversity and difference : can the national curriculum for English be hospitable?

This chapter explores the context of constructing the Australian Curriculum: English and how it represents and responds to the diversity of students. It starts with the brief genealogy of neoliberal standards-based reforms as a way of managing differences. In doing so, the chapter situates the national agenda of curriculum reforms in the semiotic order of ‘risk societies’ (Beck, 1992) through which various risks are both manufactured and managed. The semiotic order of managing educational risks through reforms is presented as a discursive force-field that both creates ‘moral panics’ and provides solutions, thereby appealing to the broader public and securing its consent. This discussion prepares the ground for the reading of texts produced in the lead-up to the actual release of the national curriculum for English and statements about diversity in these documents as well as in the curriculum itself. The chapter then goes on to explore what might be possible in the process of the curriculum implementation, by drawing on ideas of hospitality, responsibility and dialogism. In conclusion, this essay argues that no national curriculum can be successfully implemented unless it is sensitive to the textual and cultural practices of other groups and unless it wins their political consent. Equally, no national curriculum can be ethically implemented unless it recognises and responds to difference and unless it creates a possibility of transcending the logic of the Same.

Learning between schools and hospitals – young people and a curriculum of (dis)connection

As noted in other papers in this volume, a group of health and education researchers and practitioners came together to further develop their understanding of the situation of young people, who were clients of The Royal Children's Hospital Education Institute in 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. The resultant research project, funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, aimed to understand young people's perspectives on who they are and what matters to them in relation to education connectedness, identity, social relationships, and experiences with professionals. The project team was aware of the persisting patterns of relationships between the hospital, schools, young people, and their families. They were also cognizant of the heavy emphasis in the research and professional literature on evidence from relevant family adults and from health and education professionals. The intention of this project was to put the young people at the centre a study with the stories they told through word and image. Identity issues and school connections framed the analytical work. Thirty-one adolescents dealing with chronic illness participated in this longitudinal qualitative study for a 3-year period of their lives. Given the apparently active role of teachers and health professionals in the lives of these young people, the researchers wanted to include the various relevant adults to see what coherence or lack of coherence existed in the categories, emphases, and values they expressed compared with those of the young people. The researchers have had to determinedly keep their focus on the data from the young people and not be seduced by the familiar and readily accessible data from these professionals. Nonetheless, this data set does provide a ‘curriculum conversation’, which is profitably read behind the stories of the young people and in the foreground of new pathways of curriculum construction. It is this data which informs the work reported in this paper and which has led the researchers to resist the rhetoric of currently held story lines in this field, to see beyond the present hierarchies of power over relevant ‘knowledges’, to maintain a dual focus with the young people at centre stage and the professionals as ‘walk ons /extras’ and to argue for a ‘curriculum of connection’ between young people and the relevant education and health professionals. These issues are readily engaged in arguments for change through the interweaving of larger discourses of inclusivity, curriculum, and policy. This paper works those intersections in the everyday positionings of professionals and young people.

Significance of a multimedia resource in the professional learning of preservice teachers

This phenomenological inquiry seeks to understand the complexity of teacher professional learning through analysis of the use of a multimedia curriculum resource in initial teacher education programs. The study follows seven preservice teachers at three points over the course of an eighteen month period to gain understandings of how they are making meaning of their becoming teacher journeys. For the purposes of this paper only one aspect of the doctoral study is reported on due to the limitations of space. Consequently, this paper focuses on the findings of the significance of using a multimedia curriculum resource, known as QuILT, for professional learning. The qualitative study used questionnaires that included open-ended questions and semi-structured interviews with each of the seven preservice teachers at three points over an eighteen month period; as well as artefacts such as their QuILT related assessment. The paper reports on the findings that the multimedia resource and its pedagogical use provide a rich professional learning environment for preservice teachers.

Cross-curriculum design: enacting inclusive pedagogy and curriculum

The chapter is a practise led example of how the inclusive pedagogical approach in action (IPAA) framework lives as evidence of inclusive pedagogy. In particular it draws on understandings of cross-curriculum design as an approach that supports teaching practises for all children. Some readers may be familiar with the language of curriculum differentiation. Commonalties may be seen in the approaches that advocate for curriculum differentiation and cross-curriculum design, however not a lot is gained by adding another language game or rule of curriculum talk which asserts the power of difference by applying the language of differentiation as the focus for inclusive pedagogical action. As the IPAA framework stresses, teachers must believe that they are qualified and capable of teaching all children. Teachers who are engaged in the IPAA in action continually develop creative new ways of working and their professional stance is one where they are willing to work with others (including all of their students) to continually enhance their professional learning through practise orientations. Hence, in this chapter, both the theoretical underpinnings of effective teaching associated with the cross-curriculum design are assumed to have a potential link to any one of the other curricular areas specified in this book. Cross-curriculum design inherently foregrounds inclusive pedagogical possibilities and a concern for knowing more about curriculum theorising and reimaging classroom practice for all students, that is engaging in generative and productive pedagogical work.

Curriculum as colour and curves: a synthesis of Black theory, design and creativity realised as critical curriculum writing

This article looks to three inspirational Black women, bell hooks, Stacey McBride-Irby and Patricia Williams, in the pursuit of radical curriculum. While today curriculum is critiqued as racialised, gendered, sexualised and classed, the formats of curriculum documents such as text books, units of work and lesson plans have changed little. These documents are often conceived as linear sequences of steps leading to outcomes, and their voices are distanced and ‘neutral’. Drawing on a doctoral study of curriculum design in Australia, this article embraces a different approach by opening up a unit of work on girls’ popular culture to hooks’ invocations to teach to transgress, so that curriculum might be experienced as colour and curves, rather than a monochrome route to a pre-determined end point. Through this, along with hooks, I invite teachers to live pedagogy, rather than to deliver it.

Curriculum as colour and curves: a synthesis of black theory, design and creativity realised as critical curriculum writing

This article looks to three inspirational Black women, bell hooks, Stacey McBride-Irby and Patricia Williams, in the pursuit of radical curriculum. While today curriculum is critiqued as racialized, gendered, sexualised and classed, the formats of curriculum documents such as text books, units of work and lesson plans have changed little. These documents are often conceived as linear sequences of steps leading to outcomes, and their voices are distanced and “neutral”. Drawing on a doctoral study of curriculum design in Australia, this article embraces a different approach by opening up a unit of work on girls’ popular culture to hooks’ invocations to teach to transgress, so that curriculum might be experienced as colour and curves, rather than a monochrome route to a pre-determined end point. Through this, along with hooks, I invite teachers to live pedagogy, rather than to deliver it.

Supporting children’s resilience: early childhood educator understandings

THIS PAPER HAS TWO AIMS. First, it examines how children's resilience is being defined and discussed in literature, and second, it presents findings from a small-scale study that investigated ·early childhood educator understandings of children's resilience across the curriculum. Considering resilience as a multifaceted construct, the authors question why children's resilience should be a focus for educator practice and how research literature is portraying the role of educators in supporting children to become resilient. The findings illustrate that educators in the study had varied understandings of the notion of resilience and how to support children's resilience. Spontaneous and unplanned teaching strategies were revealed as the educators' main approach of supporting children's resilience. There was also some uncertainty about how to identify resilience according to educators in the study. The study's findings raise critical implications and questions for the early childhood sector, one of these being: Is the fostering and supporting of children's resilience too important an educational issue to be left to the fate of spontaneous incidents to arise in practice?