Instructional designers as reflective practitioners: developing professional identity through reflection

As the design thinking approach becomes more established in the instructional design (ID) discourse, the field will have to reconsider the professional identity of instructional designers. Rather than passively following models or processes, a professional identity rooted in design thinking calls for instructional designers to be dynamic agents of change who use reflective thinking to navigate the design space and develop solutions to ill-structured problems. Graduate programs in ID will also need to prepare students to manage the complexities they will encounter in their professional practice, including the establishment of design precedents, reflective thinking skills, and the foundations of professional identity. This research explored the use of reflective writing assignments in an introductory ID graduate course, with results indicating that most students are able to engage in meaningful reflection in relation to prompts concerning design concepts, experiences, and identity attributes, although no clear patterns of improvement emerged over time. Future directions for research include the use of feedback and the structure of prompts (including frequency of writing assignments and wording of prompts) to support improved student performance.     

An examination of the decision-making process used by designers in multiple disciplines

Design-thinking is an inductive and participatory process in which designers are required to manage constraints, generate solutions, and follow project timelines in order to complete project goals. The researchers used this exploration study to look at how designers in various disciplinary fields approach design projects. Designers were asked to describe a project and a decision that they had to make previously. Decisions were analyzed to determine whether they were ready-made versus custom-made solutions. The process by which the designers arrived at the decisions was categorized as idea-imposition or discovery. Results indicated that designers work with multiple constraints while designing, and the majority used a custom-made solution following a discovery process.     

Reviews

This paper reports findings from an enthographic study of educational restructuring in an Institute of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) in Victoria Australia. Educational restructuring is analysed as a process of institutional redesign and theorized in relation to recent debates in institutional theory concerning the nature of institutional change. The review distinguishes between hyperrational approaches to institutional redesign based upon assumptions about rational actors and their motivations and behaviours, and social and cultural perspectives on institutional redesign that sees purposeful institutional change achieved through processes of ‘institutional gardening’. The paper documents the way Australian governments have adopted hyperrational strategies aimed at changing education and training by reworking institutional rules that frame the day-to-day practices within particular organizations. Reworking these practices of organizing serves to steer change by restructuring and rearticulating relationships, practices and centres of power within organizations. Data drawn from interviews with the TAFE Institute Director, and various managers and teachers are used to track the effects of government steering in the TAFE Institute. This analysis shows that government steering drives management steering in the TAFE Institute, creating new imperatives and work organization. These organizational changes are influenced by local conditions and management priorities. They also call forth counter-steering by teachers and managers as they attempt to deal with change. The paper suggests that hyperrational government steering drives towards probable educational futures but is also interrupted by counter-steering oriented to other values and priorities. While there are probable futures, there are also preferred futures to be willed for and worked for.     

Changing boundaries—Shifting identities: Strategic interventions to enhance the future of educational research in Australia

This paper reflects on the geography of Australian educational research in the context of the ERA 2010 and 2012 assessments results. These results reflect significant changes to the nature of educational research over the past decades, where this research is conducted and by whom. We recap the historical changes to the formation of educational institutions and their impact on research outputs to demonstrate that interdisciplinary work is growing in a context where there has been a shift in research outputs away from the traditional area of school education. The ERA results demonstrate a high level of research activity in the intersections between previously distinct discipline areas, particularly in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The future of ERA itself is addressed in order to propose interventions that might make a difference to an ecology that is anchored in traditions and tends towards inertia. Finally, we argue that efforts by universities to build research capacity are likely to continue to be competitive, to focus on the individual rather than on departments and schools, and to be subject to an increasingly pervasive culture of accountability. Against this discourse of accountability, and an accompanying loss in autonomy and creative ‘think-time’, we propose that academics in education actively engage in a community of research. We conclude with interventions designed to build a high-quality, analytical and theoretically intensive research culture to underscore educational research in Australia.     

Education research in Australia: where is it conducted?

Research assessment exercises aim to identify research quantity and quality and provide insights into research capacity building strategies for the future. Yet with limited knowledge of the ecology of Australian educational research, there is little chance of understanding what research audits might contribute towards a capacity building agenda for such a complex field. This paper draws on secondary data analysis of research outputs submitted by 13 Australian higher education institutions to the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) 2010 and 2012 national research assessment exercises, to show where Australian educational research is conducted. Findings offer a profile of education researchers by location in academic organisational units within universities. By analyzing data not accessible through reported ERA data we were also able to present information about appointment profiles, specifically levels and type of appointment within universities, as well as data on institutional and geographic region, and patterns associated with type of outputs (books, book chapters, journal articles, conference papers and other outputs) and field of research. Analysis of the data reveals definitive shifts in the nature of the published outputs and in employment profiles of researchers and their location across university and regional groupings. Research audits are administrative processes that reshape institutional and disciplinary governance structures, policies, individual outputs, work practices and careers, but they are not the sum total of the field per se.     

Minor Hassles in Community College Student Life

Over the past several decades, academic stress—the pressures, frustrations and hassles associated with all aspects of college life—has gained increased attention in the literature. In this grant-funded study, a group of 161 students at an urban Northeastern community college took a comprehensive survey. The survey included questions about their academic stressors, their reactions to the stressors, and their coping strategies. In this survey, minor hassles emerged as the most prominent stressor experienced by these students. This paper describes the minor hassles experienced by the students, relates the findings to current and past literature on stress, and presents implications for community college administrators.     

Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies (RAILS): An Integrated Approach to Early Reading

The goal of this project was to develop and test the efficacy of a research-based early reading program that provided integrated reading instruction in kindergarten through 2nd grade. The Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies (RAILS) program provided integrated instruction in word reading, vocabulary development, and comprehension to students in regular and self-contained special education classes in 2 schools serving low-income populations. Teachers provided explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle, phonemic analysis, word reading, vocabulary development, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension. Classes were organized so students received 2 periods of reading instruction daily, a longer morning period of instruction and a shorter afternoon review of instruction. The students in the RAILS program had significantly higher performance on standardized reading and language achievement tests, as well as on individually administered tests of phonemic awareness and reading fluency. The implications for research-based instructional practice that integrates instruction in word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension are discussed.     

‘Teaching could be a fantastic job but …’: three stories of student teacher withdrawal from initial teacher preparation programmes in England

Retention in initial teacher preparation (ITP) and the teaching profession, in England and elsewhere, has been the subject of numerous articles in academic and professional journals. Whilst a number of common findings are beginning to emerge from research on this subject, notably on the causes of student teacher withdrawal, studies have tended to neglect the difficulties experienced by the individuals who have lived through the process of embarking upon and withdrawing from ITP programmes. Having conducted in‐depth interviews, the authors attempt in this paper to understand the experiences, emotions and decisions of three people who committed themselves to ITP, invested much energy and time, but in the end withdrew. The reasons for their decision are numerous and complex. The impact on each individual was considerable. The experience was painful.     

Inconsistency of decision-making,the Achilles heel of referees

This study assessed whether decisions made by six qualified referees were consistent when watching the live 2016 televised Champions League Final. Referees were paired off into three separate rooms. Two referees watched the game with no supporters present. Two watched the game surrounded by Real Madrid supporters, and the remaining two watched the game surrounded by Athletic Madrid supporters. Referees were asked to decide whether each decision made by the on-field referee was either correct or incorrect. Results identified two types of refereeing inconsistency. The first type was a systematic tendency of the supporting crowds (both rooms) to influence the adjudicating referees to make fewer incorrect (disagree with the on-field referee) decisions (8 and 5) than referees in the “no supporters” room (19) (χ² = 11.22 [df = 2], P = 0.004). The second type of inconsistency was the home advantage “bias”, where the surrounding crowd influenced the adjudicating referees to favour their team, by disagreeing with the decision made by the on-field referee (χ² = 6.0 [df = 2], P = 0.0498). One explanation for these inconsistencies is that referees adopt a coping strategy of “avoidance”, i.e., when faced with difficult decisions, referees simply avoid making unpopular decisions by waving “play on”.