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BackgroundNumerous studies have explored the concept of ‘professionalism’ in medicine, yet little attention has been paid to the concept in a mental health services context.AimsThis study sought to determine how the lived experience of patients, carers and healthcare professionals in mental health services align with medically defined, generic, professionalism standards.MethodInterviews and focus groups were conducted with patients, carers, nurses, occupational therapists, psychiatrists and psychologists. A framework analysis approach was used to analyse the data, based on the ‘Improving Selection to the Foundation Programmes’ Professional Attributes Framework.ResultsFifty-six individuals participated. Data aligned to all nine attributes of the Professional Attributes Framework, however the expectations within each attribute varied from that originally cited. A tenth attribute was devised during the process of analysis; Working with Carers. This attribute acknowledges the need to liaise with, and support carers in mental health services. Situational examples included both online and offline behaviours and the topic of ‘black humour’ emerged.ConclusionsCompared to a conventional medical definition of professionalism, additional themes and differing emphases were observed for mental health and learning disability services. These findings should be used to inform the teaching and evaluation of professionalism, especially for staff pursuing mental health service careers.

There is a need to gain insight into the ways technology positively impacts the literacy development of young children learning English as a new language given public scrutiny about the use of tech...

Developing biosolids-based composts or soil blends suitable for use in urban areas is increasingly common. End uses for compost vary and can include use as a soil conditioner for existing t...

This article documents an extended Mexican family’s social practices surrounding literacy as they engage with bilingual children’s literature in a unique context that draws from both home and school without the pressures of curriculum mandates. The research is situated within the southeastern United States where English-dominant practices permeate the school and community. Sociocultural and third space theories provide a framework for understanding the complexities surrounding language use and literacy development. Findings indicate the new space, Story Nights, provides for the development of connections to Mexican culture and a notion of community-based literacy learning. The author makes recommendations for classroom teachers, teacher education programs, and educational policy to be more inclusive of Latino/Latina English learners.

In former times, personal tutoring could be a hit-and-miss affair: the quality of support a student received depended significantly on whether the allocated personal tutor regarded the task as a dr...

This year-long qualitative study draws from multimodal theory and New Literacies Studies to document the digital literacy experiences of a diverse group of 2nd-graders using e-readers. Twenty-first century classrooms must expand traditional notions of literacy to prepare students for the ever-changing, media-rich world. Students participated in small-group digital reading workshops, where they read interactive picture books. The data mainly drew from transcripts of student interactions and open-ended interviews and were analyzed through a combination of comparative and discourse analyses. The author argues that multimodal texts offer opportunities for rehearsal of literacy practices, engagement, talk as a choice of reader response, and student agency. Even though personal digital devices offer opportunities for independent reading, young readers still need social interactions around books to co-construct meaning. The study found the students spent additional time reading and successfully mediated ...

This article reports on an exploratory two-stage sequential mixed methods research study that investigated the views of university educators on the introduction of assessment methods other than essays, exams and dissertations within taught Masters programmes. In the first stage, interviews were conducted internationally with 45 participants and the data analysed using an activity theoretical framework. The article illustrates how interviewees questioned their existing practice and reworked aspects of it, using new assessment methods as tools to transform their teaching and learning processes. The issues emerging from this analysis informed the design of a second study that used Q methodology to interpret five shared viewpoints on assessment methods among a group of UK-based educators. These viewpoints all saw alternative assessment methods as having advantages over traditional methods in, for example, encouraging student motivation and improving equality of opportunity, although training for academic staf...

Diverting organics from landfills to compost piles is generally recognized as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This article provides a detailed review of the Climate Action Reserve (CAR) and the U.S. EPA Waste Reduction Model (WARM) protocols on landfill diversion and composting for food scraps and yard waste. The primary benefits associated with diversion are methane avoidance. The equations used to quantify methane avoidance include first-order decay rate constants for different feedstocks to predict how quickly organics will decay. The total methane generation potential of the different feedstocks is also included. The equations include estimates of gas collection efficiencies in landfills. The decay rate constants have been determined from laboratory incubations and may not be representative of decomposition within a landfill. Estimates of gas capture efficiency have been improved and more closely reflect actual landfill conditions. Gas capture efficiency will vary based on landfill...

First year undergraduate courses in higher education tend to be designed based on assumptions of students’ prior knowledge. Almost 600 undergraduates at five UK universities, studying biological sciences, were given an MCQ test in their first week at university, based on biology A-level (pre-university examination) core criteria. Results demonstrated low-level retention of basic concepts. There was variation between subject area and examination board and an inverse correlation between MCQ score and time since taking A-levels. By discovering what students remember from their pre-university learning, undergraduate courses can be designed to be more student-focused and so develop a deeper-learning teaching strategy. The results also suggest that, if A-levels are to be redesigned to enhance their impact for students entering higher education, creating programmes which encourage retention of key concepts should be a key factor to consider.

In this article we examine the identification of young people deemed to be at an elevated risk of developing psychosis (often referred to as an At-Risk Mental State for psychosis). Although this is not a new concept within psychiatry, there has been a growing interest in this topic because of the proposed inclusion of an official ‘Psychosis Risk Syndrome’ in the 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Although we discuss the risks and benefits associated with the categorisation of individuals based on the concept of risk itself, we also draw upon observations from one of our own research studies. We interviewed six adolescents with an identified At-Risk Mental State analysing the data using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis framework. We identified three key themes: ‘It is better to say it’, ‘How others would take me’ and ‘Just to have somebody to talk to’. Within these themes, participants endorsed risk identification as a means of personally justifying and explaining their current symptoms, as well as providing a sense of optimism that their condition was not yet fully formed. Concerns regarding stigmatisation were identified although rarely experienced. These findings indicate that there are indeed personal benefits for screening for psychosis risk in young people, despite the ‘undesirability’ of identification reported in other areas of health. The benefits observed may reflect genuine differences in adolescent mental health or the methodological constraints of this exploratory study. Nevertheless, the results contribute to the understanding and ongoing debate of screening for illness in potential ‘at-risk’ populations.

The Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) was formed in 1993 combining a number of predecessor organisations, including the Standing Conference for Educational Development and the Staff Development Group of the Society for Research in Higher Education. It was later joined by the membership of the Association of Educational Training Technology, SEDA Scotland and Flexible Learning in Higher Education. SEDA was set up to support members of the emergent profession of educational development, originally in the UK and subsequently internationally. In this article, the case is made that SEDA became a highly successful community of practice of individuals working in higher education institutions. It is proposed that features of communities of practice as proposed within the literature in the field can be evidenced in SEDA’s activities and in comments collected from SEDA members whose views were sought for this article.

Over 20 years, 25 books have been published to date in the SEDA series, and this review article aims to analyse the ways in which books within the series have contributed to thinking in higher education pedagogy over this time. We have approached the texts through three lenses, analysing them chronologically, thematically and by the orientation of the authors towards educational development. We demonstrate that the coverage of topics and the syntheses of ideas that the texts represent have holistically provided invaluable coverage of the key thinking in the field. Not only have the texts contributed to knowledge but also they have asserted the importance of the underpinning SEDA values which they represent in practice, helping to build the community of practice that is educational development.

In the two decades, since Staff and Educational Development Association was formed, educational development has become a mature and internationally recognised discipline, informed strongly by the scholarship of teaching. Writing about teaching, learning and assessment has helped to describe, distil, analyse and affect practice, and to change the way in which educational development as a profession has become regarded. Books have been of great importance in this transition, with educational developers in many parts of the world building a learning community through discussing the books on their shelves. This article provides a personal selection of 20 key books that have been highly influential, with the aim of promoting debate both on the choice of texts and the future of educational development books in the next 20 years.

Assessment at Masters Level is the subject of a three-year UK National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) project, ‘Assimilate’, which seeks to explore innovatory approaches in this field. More than 40 interviews were undertaken for the project with teachers at Masters level in the UK and internationally. Although national and institutional systems differentiate clearly in their documentation how assessment at M-level should differ from that at undergraduate level, in practice there is not necessarily such clarity. This article draws on how teachers and programme leaders on Masters level courses who were interviewed for the project described the differences in practice. It concludes that there is considerable confusion and ambivalence about what distinguishes one level from another and scope for further clarification.

In this article the author shares examples of reading conferences with 10 English learners over the course of a semester. The reading conferences are conducted by four monolingual, European-American teachers at a primary school in the Southeastern United States. Sociocultural and identity theories are used as a theoretical frame for the research study. Observations of the reading conferences reveal several themes inhibiting the literacy learning of English learners: lack of self-correction opportunities, unbalanced instruction, metalanguage, text difficulty, and book levels. In addition, the conferences with English learners are compared to native-speaking students in a cross-case analysis. Transcripts illustrate the complex factors affecting the learning and identity formation process for English learners. The author offers suggestions for reframing reading conferences with English learners.

A study was conducted to evaluate the effect of two biosolids based soil products on soil physical properties in urban community gardens in Tacoma, Washington. The Tagro soil product is made from Class A biosolids cake mixed with sand and sawdust. The GroCo biosolids compost is produced from biosolids cake and sawdust. Both products meet regulatory requirements for unrestricted use and are locally available to gardeners. Plots were established in 3 community gardens and maintained for 2 growing seasons. Amendments were applied at 200 Mg ha−1 dry weight in the first year of the study. Plots were split for the 2nd year with half of the amendment plots receiving an additional 200 Mg ha−1 of amendments. Although lower in most metals than the soils they were added to, biosolids did not have a significant effect on total soil metal concentrations. Biosolids addition increased the water infiltration rate from 10.1 ± 0.95 ml min−1 in control soils to between 51 ± 6.1 and 212 ± 34 ml min−1, depending on the produc...

Implementing change in higher education is complex and challenging and its results are difficult to measure. This article will argue that university senior management can make change happen but it is rarely straightforward and never easy. It reviews the ways in which leaders aiming to enhance practice can implement enhancement activities, providing examples from the point of view of a senior manager working in a large United Kingdom metropolitan university that was experiencing a number of challenges requiring immediate action.

A field survey was conducted to quantify the benefits of applying compost to agricultural soils in California. Soil samples were collected from farm sites with a history of compost use. Soils were analyzed for total organic carbon and nitrogen, Mehlich III extractable nutrients, bulk density, microbial activity (measured as CO2 evolution), water infiltration rate and gravimetric water at 1 bar tension. Across all sites, compost application increased soil organic carbon by 3× in comparison to control soils. Significant changes were also observed in soil microbial activity (2.23 × control), gravimetric water (1.57 × control), and bulk density (0.87 × control). Nutrient availability in compost amended soils was similar to availability in conventionally managed soils. Infiltration times were significantly reduced in compost amended soils in comparison to control soils. High rates of compost application showed more significant benefits in comparison to low rates of compost application and control soils. At low...

In this article, three educators share case studies describing racial biases and segregationist practices in early schooling. The authors draw upon critical race theory as a lens and employ critical discourse analysis to uncover classed and raced biases within and across three early childhood contexts. While the cases are situated in specific public school settings – a parent teacher association (PTA) fundraiser, a mandated literacy program, and a read‐aloud – they shed light onto a variety of contexts as these are all common phenomena in many American elementary schools. Together, the cases illustrate how racism has been normalized through familiar practices in early childhood settings. Through description and reflection, the authors suggest ways to start seeing the strange in the familiar, unpacking racialized practices across three settings, and advocating new ways of thinking about these common practices leading to change and transformation.

Problems continue to pervade the educational experiences of many minority students, especially Latinos. Through a sociocultural framework, this ethnographic study closely examines the experiences of a Puerto Rican family at home and in an English‐dominant school. The study focuses on the school experiences of the family’s kindergarten son. The analysis reveals ways this family can broaden Eurocentric world views. Early educators will realise the extent to which they alter a child’s cultural identity, thus empowering or disempowering them as an individual. Implications for early childhood education include valuing funds of knowledge, code‐switching, and challenging assumptions.

Throughout the United States, deficit perspectives contribute to Latino students' failure in terms of school success. This happens because many educators still regard bilingualism as a deficit. We examined the discourse of one family to better understand how deficit, assimilationist discourse affected them and their two children. We came to understand that, influenced by deficit messages, parents celebrated accelerated English acquisition. Implications for teachers include the recognition and support of linguistic and cultural diversity in the classroom. We suggest a sociocultural perspective that embraces the culture and humanity of every student and helps support the maintenance of multiple cultures.

With the growing trend of volunteer vacations, research has been warranted in regard to understanding the motivational factors of individuals who participate in such endeavors. With this understanding, the goal is to increase these travel offerings in the industry, which will bring better understanding between cultures. This study examines different travel motivation factors for someone who chooses to use part of their vacation participating in volunteer or humanitarian activities. Considering that ‘mission’ often has connotations of a religious purpose, the phrase ‘travelling with a purpose’ brings on even more significance as this concept expands. To understand travel motivation in general, a variety of scales and theories have been researched. Maslow, Dann, Iso-Ahola, Plog and Pearce are some included in the Literature Review. A qualitative focus group and semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted. The analysis of the data revealed that four main themes for why people traveled with a purpose ...

There is evidence of progress over the last decade in the quest for research to inform ideas of good practice in teaching. This function of research had achieved increased status and funding, and attention has focused on issues such as how teachers learn and evidence‐based practice. This has been supported by several ‘official’ initiatives, three of which are given special attention in this paper. Teacher/researcher networking has contributed to greater involvement of teachers in research and discredited simple‐minded ideas of ‘delivery’ models of evidence to be embedded in practice. However, placing research entirely in teachers' hands has revealed concerns about research quality. Different forms of collaborative relationships between researchers and teachers, and among projects within a programme, have increased understanding of the conditions under which research can impact on practice. What and how to disseminate evidence to wider audiences remains a challenge.

This paper explores, contrasts, and considers some of the implications of the different ways in which the culture of practice in pre‐school provision is construed by various actors (‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’) in the enterprise. ‘Outsiders’ means those with responsibility for the formulation of the curriculum, the inspection of provision and the training of pre‐school staff (typically managers and assessors). The perspectives of two types of insiders, that is, pre‐school practitioners and children, are considered. Differences are mapped out in the perspectives of outsiders and of insider practitioners and insider children, drawing on findings from a series of research projects carried out (between 1996 and 2001) investigating aspects of pre‐school provision in Scotland. The evidence suggests that outsiders adopt an espoused culture that envisages practitioners fulfilling prescribed roles to deliver a curriculum that will allow children to achieve planned outcomes and which is largely independent of contex...

SUMMARY This article emphasises the importance of research that helps us to understand how things are in early childhood education and care, why they are the way they are, what are the alternative decisions or actions we might take in order to change things and what are the implications of choosing among those alternatives. As an illustration of this, it focuses on the different ways in which outsiders and insiders make sense of practice in Scottish pre-school provision, and on the need to take account of such differences if changes are to be introduced to improve that practice. There is a common tendency to assume that the insiders, teachers and nursery nurses, share the same conceptual frameworks as the outsiders who wish to introduce change. The research reported here suggests that this is not a valid assumption. Some outsiders have been unhappy with this finding and its implication that they have not been ready to take account of the perspectives of others. Insiders, however, have been obliged to take...

There has been a considerable growth in the volunteer vacation concept in the U.S. since around the mid—1980s. The increased demand has been attributed to an increased sense of global awareness among the Baby Boom generation, along with a growing willingness to make a contribution to other societies while on vacation. This study consisted of two parts, the first of which was an identification and description of some of the major organizations in the U.S. providing volunteer vacation opportunities. Next the concept of the mini-mission or ‘mission lite’ was described as a potential means for tour operators to build volunteering into itineraries. An exploratory study was conducted to determine the potential demand for the mission lite concept, which could be instrumental in significantly expanding participation in volunteer vacations in the future. A survey was conducted among a sample of members of the Ambassadair Travel Club, the largest organization of its type in the U.S. The study's results indicated co...

Extant literature on professions suggests that there is a readily recognisable set of characteristics of a profession, but this is a contested issue, particularly in the area of recognising the professionalism of those who teach and support learning in higher education. In the UK, the Institute for Learning and Teaching was set up as a result of the Dearing report to recognise the experience and expertise of those working in these areas. The ILT offers a model for professionalising teaching, to which continuous professional development (CPD) is key. Geographers and those who teach related subjects are already in the vanguard of this activity.

This paper reports on research designed to explore alternative perspectives on playroom practice. Two perspectives on the role of practitioners were articulated. One was an outside, context-free perspective constructed in consultation with a group of experienced assessors of pre-school provision and presented as a Framework for Good Practice. Observations of acknowledged good practice (using the Framework as the observation tool) and interviews with practitioners supported its ready applicability to the range of pre-school settings typical in Scotland. The second perspective was an 'insider' view encapsulating the way in which practitioners think about their work in the playroom, their professional craft knowledge. The characteristics of each perspective and the insights that can be derived from each are discussed, along with the value of considering first the 'insider' perspective when staff are engaged in continuing professional development. Cet article fait etat de recherches concues dans le but d'expl...

The debates about the inclusion of children with special needs have usually focused on mainstream schools. Special schools have often been ignored or denigrated, but there is little understanding of what they do in practice. This paper examines the culture and practices of special schools from the perspective of head teachers and pupils. The head teachers report on the recent reforms within their schools, partly in response to policy initiatives, such as the national curriculum and devolved school management, and partly in an effort to secure their own future. The pupils describe their experiences of curriculum and teaching approaches, progress and their ambitions for the future. The paper seeks neither to praise nor bury special schools, but to encourage greater understanding of their current role and to argue that the debates on inclusion must take account of the contributions special schools claim to be making.

The authors have been involved in two substantial Australian teacher professional development projects, with the Mathematical Association of Victoria and with the Science Teachers’ Association of Victoria, which focused, respectively, on a whole‐school professional development and an extended workshop programme. The research described in this paper explores the experiences of participants in these two programmes, in order to identify the advantages and limitations of each type of professional development model in supporting teacher development, and the different needs of teachers in relation to mathematics and science. The findings from a questionnaire, supported by participant interviews, show a range of differences in experience and outcomes due to programme style and subject area. These are used to suggest a developmental framework for conceptualizing teacher professional development needs.

Fathers’ and mothers’ reports of their participation in early caregiving tasks and the amount of social support they received regarding their involvement with their infants were examined for 28 two‐parent Navajo Indian families. Mothers were significantly more involved in basic caregiving activities than fathers. Fathers invested about sixty percent as much time as mothers did in direct caregiving tasks. Mothers and fathers did not differ on the degree to which they reported receiving social supports for childcare tasks. Navajo parents received significantly more extrafamilial and/or institutional sources of support than family support for early caregiving activities. Navajo fathers were highly involved with their young children. The results are discussed in relation to role differences in early caregiving within Navajo families.

This paper looks at the impact of government intervention, the introduction of a voucher system, intended to expand pre‐school provision. Drawing on research designed to examine the impact of the Pre‐school Education Initiative during the pilot year in Scotland the authors argue that there have been significant changes in provision for under 5s and for the culture in which that provision is embedded. The paper identifies four kinds of changes. The first relates to what appears to be a substantial shift in what goes on in the playroom, in terms of prescriptions for practice and the curriculum. The second kind of change relates to the expectations which providers, parents and policy makers have for the purposes or outcomes of the provision. Thirdly there was a change in the parental role in pre‐school education and finally there were changes in the requirements for quality assurance and accountability.

Many educational researchers across the world have shared the good fortune of having had Donald McIntyre as a supervisor, co‐researcher and friend. His sudden death in October 2007 prompted message...

The implementation of any curriculum initiative at classroom level depends largely on teachers’ existing ideas about their day‐to‐day teaching and the extent to which they regard the new policy as desirable and practical. Past records for curriculum initiatives show extraordinarily modest levels of pedagogical implementation, in part because curriculum innovators have failed to ‘start where the teachers are’. The extent to which curriculum initiatives have an impact on teachers’ thinking at classroom level is profoundly important given a world‐wide trend towards the introduction of national curricula. In the context of research which has focused on teachers’ classroom thinking against the background of Scotland's National Curriculum, the 5‐14 curriculum development programme, this paper explores two broad issues, one methodological and the other substantive. The methodological concern is with difficulties in gaining access to teachers’ classroom thinking. The paper argues that familiar interview ...

SUMMARY Higher education institutions (HEIs) are responding to the movement towards credit accumulation and transfer with varying degrees of enthusiasm and energy, and linked to this is a parallel series of developments towards modularization and semesterization. Some HEIs have highly developed and well advanced programmes of credit‐based modularity (PCFC, 1992), whereas others are just beginning to implement what we believe to be one of the most important and radical changes to affect higher education in recent years. This article is grounded in the experience of two universities which are currently moving towards modular schemes: the University of Northumbria at Newcastle and the University of Glamorgan. It uses a range of case studies based on actual experiences of colleagues in our own universities and those we have encountered in our workshops nationally. At the University of Northumbria, the term unitization is used to indicate that named routes are retained, whereas the term modularization is prefe...

This paper looks at the contribution of school effectiveness research to the evaluation of schools. It examines the judgemental role in which findings from the research are used to publicise the relative effectiveness of different schools, and the role which such findings might potentially play in school improvement. The distinctive differences in the paradigms for the traditions of school effectiveness and school improvement studies, the paucity of theory and of sophisticated notions of how the two might be linked, the need for intermediate research of a third kind to help understand what goes on inside schools and rather dismal comparisons with the history of pupil assessment, lead to some pessimism about the likelihood of effectiveness findings having a substantial impact on improvement. The chances are that the political ‘summative’ function will outstrip the educational ‘formative’ function despite the best intentions of school effectiveness researchers.

L'A. presente une analyse institutionnelle de l'evaluation de l'enseignement primaire et de l'enseignement secondaire en Ecosse, en considerant les projets de reforme en cours

[1] An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Annual Members' Conference of the National Foundation for Educational Research, London. December 1989.

Whenever reviewing a book on assessment in higher education, one is likely to ask how much such a volume is likely to be needed in a field where much has already been published: from how-to guides ...

(1975). Cognitive Preferences in Science: Their Nature and Analysis. Studies in Science Education: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 43-65.

A cursory reading of Common's response to our paper (Common, 1983, this issue) led us to ask why she had used our work as a basis for introducing her own ideas on settings for innovations and on power as a condition for the implementation of innovations. At most, we would have expected that she would have referred to our contribution to the study of innovation as something concerned with issues different from those of her paper. A more careful reading, however, suggests that she was misled about our intentions. We are pleased to have the opportunity to point out where she has misunderstood our argument and thereby to clarify our position. We will also explore the extent to which Common's case for the importance of setting and power impinges on and is helpful to our own thinking. We start from the premise that an adequate understanding of educational events and systems will involve contributions from a variety of disciplines if that understanding is to serve as a basis for action. In our studies of innovation, therefore, we believe that it is crucial that account be taken of such things as power relationships, educational settings, and the sociology of knowledge. We also believe it is crucial to explore how individuals make sense of and construe the situations in which they find themselves and the options which are open to them. This implies that psychological theory and empirical study have a part to play in explaining the adoption and implementation of innovations. We are aware that in some countries there has been a sharp distinction drawn between sociological and psychological approaches to educational research, but in Scotland we have taken an eclectic view that chooses to invoke a variety of perspectives as necessary to the study of educational phenomena in general and the implementation of innovations in particular.' In the paper under consideration (Brown and McIntyre, 1982) we examine one among many factors influencing implementation in an at