Enhancing teaching quality has become a priority for many universities. The need for high-quality professional development for university teachers is therefore crucial. Earlier research has indicated that isolated workshops often fail to result in significant changes in teaching practice. It has been suggested that the desired transformation requires changes in perceptions of educators, not merely learning new techniques. Reflective, collaborative long-term professional development that is integrated in the everyday activities of the educators has proven to be a promising approach; however, research that addresses how this can be implemented in online learning is scarce. This study investigates the learning experiences of seven educators who participated in a collaborative, authentic e-learning-based online professional development programme. Narrative analysis is used for examining the experience of the participants during the programme and the perceived impact on their professional growth. The results s...

Collaborative online professional development for teachers in higher education

Unearthing the Tubers and Shoots of Thought, Talk, and Praxis: A Historiography of Classroom Discourse in Theory and Practice Christian George Gregory This dissertation submits as its project a history of dialogue in the classroom, from early recitation practices to the era of the teacher as a “sage on the stage,” the subsequent role of a participating observer or “guide on the side,” and more refined teacher roles as well as sharper definitions of discussion and dialogical practices (King, 1993, p. 30). For this research, I adopted a conceptual methodology, using Foucault’s critique and Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblages and rhizomic structures, to inform the mapping and dynamic of the historiography. In terms of practical methodology, I collected over 650 theoretical, empirical, and instructional works related to forms of classroom discourse. By mapping the territory of research on discourse in the English classroom, this work noted trends in the method, manner, and focus of research. Several critical shifts might be suggested regarding theory, research, and practice in relation to dialogue: in practice, first, a shift from quantitative, monological positions to more dialogical, polyphonic stances; and second, from research examining teacher questioning and evaluation to that focused on student responsiveness. In theory and research, this review suggested several noticeable trends in research methods: first, that classroom practice lags behind the theoretical imagining of the dialogical; second, that scholars have increasingly relied on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories in the pedagogical frames of their research on discourse in the classroom; and third, that scholarship has shown a greater interest in international sites of study. Overall, although scholars have made strides in conceptualizing the dialogical classroom, greater interventionist studies and instructional works are needed to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Unearthing the Tubers and Shoots of Thought, Talk, and Praxis: A Historiography of Classroom Discourse in Theory and Practice

This thesis presents perspectives upon how inclusion is experienced from the point of view of the individual. It seeks to compliment contemporary discourse by interpreting the concept as a fundamental human activity. In this way acting as a counterpoint to narrower interpretations which are often characterised by a deficit discourse or exclusionary sentiment. The research is therefore underpinned by an emancipatory drive aligned to elements of critical pedagogy. The implication of this for practice is the acknowledgement that inclusion does not just apply to those children who stand out, who are labelled in some way, not an obvious minority or indeed marginalised, but to all children in the institutional space. In this study the concept of the Outsider is used as a motif for what is both universal and subjective. Such a literary device recognises the important subjective factors that underpin the existential nature of inclusion. The study views narrative and the stories people tell of their lives as a rich source of data. Ten individuals who are new to the teaching profession participated in the study and it is their stories that form the basis of the subsequent interpretation and analysis. The research was aligned to an interpretative paradigm seeking ideographic insight. The data generated was analysed both textually and aurally through a careful iterative and inductive process of analysis. The themes of the findings suggested the nature of inclusion to be underpinned by subjective and dynamic processes. Such processes linked to the notions of familiarity, application and adaptation that are used by the individual to facilitate aspects of their inclusion in dynamic and creative ways.

The Outsider's Story

Historically, women in leadership positions at top Wall Street firms had to overcome much adversity to advance within a predominantly male-dominated culture. Wall Street, also known as the old boy’s club, principally catered to White males. Women that tried to operate within this old boy’s network were particularly harassed and discriminated against. Beginning around the late 1970s and early 1980s, women who entered top Wall Street firms found positions as receptionists, secretaries, assistants, and low-level administrators. As women struggled to advance up the corporate ladder, they were confronted by much resistance from the hierarchical male-dominated culture. Some women quit and filed lawsuits, while the women who stayed were determined to overcome gender-bias to rise to leadership positions. Their perceptions and understanding of their organizational setting generated new ideas of women in leadership; they shared knowledge, told their stories, and inspired one another. This research study examined the experiences women in the financial industry encountered on their pathways to becoming leaders in a male-dominated culture. This dissertation presents a narrative study on a group of women in leadership positions within the financial industry conversing about their pathways into leadership, learning about their motivating factors, and discovering how they became change agents in leadership.

https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/files/neu:cj82r269q/fulltext.pdf

From the apron to the cape: examining the experiences of women who rise to leadership positions on Wall Street.

/pdf/the-wisdom-of-thunder-indigenous-knowledge-translation-of-2wfouygac7.pdf

The Wisdom of Thunder: Indigenous Knowledge Translation of Experiences and Responses to Depression Among Indigenous Peoples Living with HIV

ur initial article in this issue of Educational Researcher (Coulter & Smith, 2009) has a narrative of its own? one that stretches over more than 3 years and includes responses from scores of readers, editors, critics, and champions. Throughout this history, we clung tight to a singular purpose: to describe and illustrate with pieces of text some literary prac tices useful for crafting results into narratives. The readership we wanted to reach was education researchers in general, many of whom are unfamiliar with the rich literature on narrative research and literary practices. In this literature there is much about theory of narrative and little about the simple definition of narrative or its aspects. We wanted to locate the "narrative" in narrative research by drawing on narratology and the practices of writers.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25592176.pdf

Cathy A. Coulter

Papers

Finding the Narrative in Narrative Research