Heb. U. (Hebrew University) - Grad. (Graduation) '32 - High Commissioner

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Educators’ perspectives about how older hospital patients can engage in a falls prevention education programme: A qualitative process evaluation

- Objectives Falls are the most frequent adverse event reported in hospitals. Patient and staff education delivered by trained educators significantly reduced falls and injurious falls in an older rehabilitation population. The purpose of the study was to explore the educators’ perspectives of delivering the education and to conceptualise how the programme worked to prevent falls among older patients who received the education. - Design A qualitative exploratory study. - Methods Data were gathered from three sources: conducting a focus group and an interview (n=10 educators), written educator notes and reflective researcher field notes based on interactions with the educators during the primary study. The educators delivered the programme on eight rehabilitation wards for periods of between 10 and 40 weeks. They provided older patients with individualised education to engage in falls prevention and provided staff with education to support patient actions. Data were thematically analysed and presented using a conceptual framework. - Results Falls prevention education led to mutual understanding between staff and patients which assisted patients to engage in falls prevention behaviours. Mutual understanding was derived from the following observations: the educators perceived that they could facilitate an effective three-way interaction between staff actions, patient actions and the ward environment which led to behaviour change on the wards. This included engaging with staff and patients, and assisting them to reconcile differing perspectives about falls prevention behaviours. - Conclusions Individualised falls prevention education effectively provides patients who receive it with the capability and motivation to develop and undertake behavioural strategies that reduce their falls, if supported by staff and the ward environment.

The context of enterprise education: Insights into current practices

This paper presents the results of an investigation into contextual differences in the development and delivery of enterprise education in higher education globally. Using information gathered from an online survey distributed to enterprise educators, distinct differences in the provision of enterprise education are identified, as are differences of opinion among enterprise educators. The findings demonstrate that although enterprise education is highly diversified in terms of presentation, content and style, there are clear commonalities with regard to expected student outcomes. The respondents reported low levels of business start-up activity among students during enterprise education and/or within one year of graduation. Over 75% of the educators surveyed had personal start-up experience, and there was limited reliance on academic literature, with a preference for referencing broader stakeholder perspectives. With regard to the practical implications of this research, the international metric of enterprise education appears to be a broad set of enterprising skills that equip and enable students to recognize and exploit opportunities in order to navigate future unknowns. The commonly employed metric of business start-up appears less valid in light of this investigation.

Enhancing professional learning for rural educators by rethinking connectedness

Impending changes in Australian education brings forth the expected transformation of teachers working in schools. Three key points for transforming Australian schools has been identified by Gillard (2008a) including the improvement of quality teaching, ensuring every child benefits and mandating transparency and accountability. A number of initiatives were considered to assist with such reform including the implementation of a Digital Education Revolution, the move to the Australian Curriculum and the implementation of a National Framework for Professional Standards for Teaching. As these transformative initiatives are rolled out to teachers across Australia, the equitable access to PD to support all teachers, regardless of their geographical location, is in question. In line with the literature, the author proposes the concept of delivering PD and accessing PD from regional and remote areas be reconsidered. This research paper will outline the findings from the study including travel time being significant and impacting on teachers personal time; limited relief teachers impacting on access to PD; promotion and teacher registration being explicitly linked to PD; professional learning communities being valued but often limited by small staff numbers; professional learning conducted in the local context being preferred; professional learning established at the teacher and school level being desirable; teachers being confident in using technology and accessing PD online if required; and social cohesiveness being valued and often limited by isolation. Further this research has culminated in the development of a conceptual framework that would facilitate improving the amount and variety of professional learning available to regional and remote teachers.

See you in class: Promoting a quality program for pre-service educators in regional locations through a virtual classroom

The quality of an online university degree is paramount to the student, the reputation of the university and most importantly, the profession that will be entered. At the School of Education within Curtin University, we aim to ensure that students within rural and remote areas are provided with high quality degrees equal to their city counterparts who access face-to-face classes on campus.In 2010, the School of Education moved to flexible delivery of a fully online Bachelor of Education degree for their rural students. In previous years, the degree had been delivered in physical locations around the state. Although this served the purpose for the time, it restricted the degree to only those rural students who were able to access the physical campus. The new model in 2010 allows access for students in any rural area who have a computer and an internet connection, regardless of their geographical location. As a result enrolments have seen a positive increase in new students. Academic staff had previously used an asynchronous environment to deliver learning modules housed within a learning management system (LMS). To enhance the learning environment and to provide high quality learning experiences to students learning at a distance, the adoption of synchronous software was introduced. This software is a real-time virtual classroom environment that allows for communication through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and videoconferencing, along with a large number of collaboration tools to engage learners. This research paper reports on the professional development of academic staff to integrate a live e-learning solution into their current LMS environment. It involved professional development, including technical orientation for teaching staff and course participants simultaneously. Further, pedagogical innovations were offered to engage the students in a collaborative learning environment. Data were collected from academic staff through semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The findings discuss the perceived value of the technology, problems encountered and solutions sought.

The construction of a taxonomy of early childhood educators’ work

Despite considerable research on the impact of early childhood education (ECE), there is little empirical evidence about what the everyday work of educators entails. This paper reports on the development of a tool to capture generalisable data on the everyday work of educators so as to inform effective workforce policy. This tool—a taxonomy of early childhood educators’ work—was developed by drawing on the expertise of six early years’ experts from Australia and the United States of America (USA) and includes time-use diaries, focus groups and interviews with 21 early childhood educators working in long day care and preschool services. The taxonomy, which we present here, consists of 10 domains, each with a number of sub-classes. We propose that this taxonomy is a useful codification system for ascertaining the everyday work tasks, activities and actions of early childhood educators in diverse early years’ settings. It is anticipated that the taxonomy will prove a valuable tool for subsequent research investigating the early childhood workforce.

Retention and graduation of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in initial teacher education

This paper reports on an Australian national project to address retention, success and graduation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teacher education students. The project, led by the Australian Council of Deans of Education and managed by Queensland University of Technology, forms a sub-set of the More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative (MATSITI) directed by the David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research and funded by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. MATSITI will develop Action Plans within participating universities (n=33) to improve the retention/graduation rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers. The paper provides an overview of the teacher education component of the MATSITI project and presents preliminary research from 33 Australian universities.

Governing child care in neoliberal times: Discursive constructions of children as economic units and early childhood educators as investment brokers

At any given time in the field of early childhood, there are discourses at play, producing images of children, and these ways of seeing children might be competing, colliding and/or complementing each other. It is fairly widely accepted that in many countries there are versions of dominant discourses that shape and are shaped by current practices in the field of early childhood. These include (1) romantic notions of children running free and connecting with nature and (2) the ‘Bart Simpson’ version of the naughty, cute or savage child, untamed and in need of civilising. These are far from being the only two discursive constructions of children present in current policies and practices. If early childhood professionals are to be active in shaping and implementing policies that affect their work and workforce, it is important that they are aware of the forces at play. In this article, we point to another powerful discourse at play in the Australian context of early childhood education, the image of children as economic units: investments in the future. We show how a ‘moment of arising’ in contemporary policy contexts, dominated by neoliberal principles of reform and competition, has charged early childhood educators in Australia with the duties of a ‘broker’, ensuring that young children are worth the investment. In this article, we begin with (1) a key policy document in early childhood education in Australia and examine the discursive affordances which shape the document. Next, (2) we pinpoint the shifts in how the work of child care is perceived by interrogating this key policy document through a methodology of discursive analysis. We then turn attention (3) to the work of this policy document along with other discourses which directly affect images of children and the shaping role these have on the work of educators. We conclude with (4) a consideration of how the work of early childhood professionals has come to be shaped by this economic discourse, and how they are being required to both work within the policy imperatives and likely to resist this new demand of them.

Spatialised metaphors of practice: How teacher educators engage with professional standards for teachers

Preservice teacher educators, both nationally and internationally, must negotiate a plethora of expectations including using Professional Standards to enhance teacher quality. In Australia, the recent Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) report highlighted weak application of Standards in Initial Teacher Education (ITE). However, recent findings suggest that education stakeholders feel positive about the implementation of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APSTs). This study responds to these differing viewpoints by exploring how teacher educators in a large metropolitan university in Australia account for the use of Standards in their work. Discourse analytic techniques in conjunction with socio-spatial theory make visible particular metaphors of practice as teacher educators negotiate the real-and-imagined spaces of regulated teacher education programs. The findings highlight the importance of investigating the utility of Standards in the lived experiences of teacher educators, as they are responsible for preparing quality, classroom ready graduates.

Moral Professionalism in Interaction : Educators' Relational Moral Voices in Urban Schools

The aim of this study was to investigate educators relational moral voices in urban schools and to listen to what they told about moral professionalism and moral practices in challenging urban schools. Their relational moral voices were investigated through the following three questions: 1. What are the educators moral voices in relation to themselves and other people? 2. What are the educators moral voices in relation to their work and society? 3. What kind of interaction process lies between the educators moral voices and the urban school context? The research data of this study were gathered in four urban schools in Jyväskylä and Helsinki. The research schools were chosen for this study according to the criteria of the international Socrates Comenius project called Leading Schools Successfully in Challenging Urban Context: Strategies for Improvement. This study formed part of this project, which investigated successful urban schools as challenging learning environments in nine European countries and explored the principals success in leadership in particular. The data, which included 37 narratively constructed interviews with four principals and key informants selected by the principals, were gathered in interviews conducted in 2006. In other words, the data comprised three interviews with each of four principals, and interviews with two teachers, two parents, and two pupils from each school. In addition, the school deacon from one school was also interviewed. Furthermore, part of the data from one of the research schools included a medium report of the school deacon s work. This study combined the case study method, the narrative approach and the critical incident technique as the methodological framework. In addition, all of these methods served as practical tools for both analyzing and reporting the data. The educators' narrations and the results of the study appear in the original articles (Hanhimäki & Tirri 2008; Hanhimäki 2008b; Hanhimäki & Tirri 2009; Hanhimäki 2008a). The educators moral voices in relation to themselves and other people emerged through the main themes of moral leadership, the development and evaluation process, moral sensitivity, gender, values, and student well-being. The educators moral voices in relation to their work and society emerged through the main themes of multiprofessional cooperation, families and parental involvement, and moral school culture. The idea of moral interaction connected moral professionalism and the methodological combination of this study, which together emphasized social interaction and the creation of understanding and meaning in this interaction. The main point of this study was to state that the educators moral voices emerged in the interaction between the educators themselves and the urban school context. In this interaction, the educators moral professionalism was constructed and shaped in relation to themselves, other people, their work and society. The loudest relational moral voices heard through the main themes were those of caring, cooperation, respect, commitment, and professionalism. When the results were compared to the codes of ethics which guided these educators moral professional work, the ethical principles and values of the codes were clearly visible in their moral practices. The loudest message from the educators narration could be summarized in the words caring, respect and cooperation: at its best, there is just a human being and a human being with caring, respect and cooperation between them. The results of this study emphasize the need for practical approaches such as case studies and the narrative approach in teacher education to encourage educators to become moral professionals capable of meeting the needs of people of varied backgrounds. In addition, opportunities for moral, religious and spiritual education should be noticed and utilized in the plural interaction of urban schools when nurturing pupils and creating a moral school culture. Furthermore, multiprofessional cooperation and parents as the school s primary cooperation partner are needed to carry out the shared duty of moral education in urban schools. Keywords: moral professionalism, educator, relational moral voice, interaction, urban school

Entre a utopia e o labirinto: democracia e autoritarismo no pensamento educacional brasileiro dos anos de 1980

A formação do pensamento social e educacional brasileiro a partir dos estudos sobre as matrizes do ideário autoritário concebido no transcorrer da República Brasileira. O Histórico da Universidade no Brasil e a identificação de uma linhagem de intelectuais, suas filiações político-doutrinárias e que formularam o pensamento social brasileiro, suas visões de mundo diante de um projeto nacional de desenvolvimento. A modernização realizada pelo alto, expressão que resumiu a presença das elites políticas quando pensaram o país, reflexão permanente como princípio e ação política no transcorrer da República Brasileira. O regime civil-militar e a imposição de uma ordem e mentalidade que conduziram o país a mais uma etapa de autoritarismo, seus desdobramentos na legislação educacional que definiram a política de pós-graduação ao final dos anos de 1960. Os anos de 1980, o cenário de transição negociada entre o regime civil-militar e o poder civil num ambiente de forte presença de uma sociedade civil em ascensão pela defesa da democracia. A educação brasileira vista numa perspectiva de um elenco de intelectuais educadores que constituíram um consenso teórico-metodológico pautado num marxismo eclético e determinando um olhar interpretativo diante da escola e dos conceitos de democracia e participação

Produção discursiva sobre questões ambientais no currículo de Licenciatura em Geografia

Nas últimas décadas a preocupação com as questões ambientais tem se tornado mais presentes em diversos contextos sociais. As transformações de origem antrópica operadas no ambiente se intensificaram com os adventos tecnológicos característicos da modernidade que, em função da conjuntura política, econômica e social do capitalismo, consolidou uma lógica de dominação que, ao contrário do que enunciava, aprofundou e tornou mais complexo formas excludentes, discriminatórias e destrutivas de se relacionar com o outro e com o externo. Frente a isso, como movimento para diminuir ou sanar tais questões referentes a relação violenta do homem com o ambiente, a educação ambiental emerge apoiada em diferentes campos do conhecimento, manifestando-se de diversas formas. O presente estudo visa abordar essa temática analisando aspectos curriculares do curso de Licenciatura em Geografia com Ênfase em Meio Ambiente da Faculdade de Educação da Baixada Fluminense que se constitui propondo-se a formar de docentes de geografia que sejam também educadores ambientais. O ementário do curso foi analisado de modo a observar de que maneira as questões ambientais manifestam-se nos textos. Para isso, nos pautamos, sobretudo, na teoria do discurso, de Ernesto Laclau, e nas discussões e concepções sobre políticas curriculares construídas por Stephen Ball, Elizabeth Macedo e Alice Lopes. Buscamos compreender de que forma as significações ou associações presentes nas ementas contribuem para a formação de educadores ambientais, e sob qual perspectiva de educação ambiental isso ocorre. Analisamos o documento indicado cumprindo uma exigência de delimitação, uma vez que estamos cientes (e esse é um princípio importante da nossa abordagem) que a construção discursiva não se limita ao que é dito/escrito, mas se dá na interação social, arrolada pelas/nas disputas hegemônicas por significação e enunciação.

Educação nas redes: professores em cotidianos de produções televisivas

O que fazem profissionais de educação numa produção televisiva? Nesta pesquisa, por meio de 'conversas' com praticantespensantes que atuam em produção de TV, e no uso de outros documentos (programas editados, argumentos, textos e roteiros), busco responder a essa pergunta e compreender as redes de conhecimentos e significações relativas aos espaçostempos de ação desses profissionais, entendidos como entre-lugares de educação e comunicação. A pesquisa, na perspectiva dos estudos com os cotidianos, se articula ao GRPESQ Currículo, redes educativas e imagens, do Laboratório Educação e Imagem/ProPEd/UERJ, e busca apoio em conversas/narrativas com/de professores que trabalharam/trabalham em televisão em especial, no programa Salto para o Futuro integrando a equipe de educação da TV Escola (MEC), ou atuando como consultores de séries temáticas. Sobre o assunto, também foram ouvidos responsáveis pela assessoria pedagógica dos canais Encuentro e Pakapaka, na Argentina, em doutorado-sanduíche, com o apoio da Capes. Como fundamentação teórica, além de pesquisas com os cotidianos, a partir de textos de Michel de Certeau, de Nilda Alves e de Inês Barbosa de Oliveira, dos quais emergem algumas das noções que permeiam essa investigação, ressalto a contribuição de autores da sociologia, como Pierre Bourdieu e Boaventura de Sousa Santos e, ainda, de represe ntantes dos chamados estudos culturais, entre eles Jesús Martín-Barbero, Nestor Canclini, Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha entre outros. A questão do outro, da alteridade, que permeia a tese, em sua tessitura com narrativas e imagens, busca inspiração também nos escritos e em conversas com Carlos Skliar e nos textos de Jorge Larrosa. As conclusões possíveis destacam a importância das ações desses profissionais (professores) nesses espaçostempos televisivos.