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From ‘Heifer so Lonely’ to ‘Flightless Bats in New Zealand’: A Perspective on Collaborative Research Approaches at a Land-based College..
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Statistics anxiety is proposed to be a multidimensional construct that includes factors such as interpretation anxiety, statistics test and class anxiety, computational anxiety, anxiety related to asking for help, and anxiety related to statistics instructors. Several factors have been found to affect statistics anxiety such as statistics-course or instructor related factors, personality-related factors, and factors related to students' gender, age, study major, ethnicity, and college status. Two groups of instruments are used to measure statistics anxiety. In the first group are instruments that were developed from mathematics anxiety measures. The second group includes instruments that were originally developed to measure statistics anxiety. Statistics anxiety has been found to have physiological, behavioral, and emotional effects. To reduce these negative effects, several treatment strategies are offered.
Reference to security and intelligence in education today will undoubtedly elicit concerns over terrorism, radicalisation and, in the UK, counter-terrorism measures such as Channel and Prevent (UK Gov, 2015a), pan-European counterterrorism initiatives (Argomaniz, 2009; Argomaniz et al., 2015; Bakker, 2015; Bellaby, 2012), and in the United States the emergence of the Department for Homeland Security (DHS, 2015), as well as multi-national, especially trans-Atlantic cooperation (Scott and Hughes, 2008). However, the intersections of education, security and intelligence gathering are far wider. Increasingly, operational concerns of education, security and intelligence meet academically at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies. Operationally and academically, the interface of education, security and intelligence is and has long been concerned with an expanding notion of threat, beyond, that is, military associations of defence and warfare. A sometime neglected aspect of the future of intelligence (see Agrell, 2012), an emergent picture can be drawn of three sites of intersection: covert; overt and the covert–overt.
This research project investigated primary and secondary school teachers' perceptions of the impact of continuing professional development (CPD) at the individual, classroom and organisational levels. The perceptions of the head teachers of staff involved on these programmes were also elicited. Data were collected using questionnaire and interview instruments, and involved teachers who have been studying on MA and BA Education programmes in Anglia Polytechnic University's School of Education. Findings indicated that teachers perceive significant gains from accredited CPD in relation to professional reflection and knowledge, confidence, articulating practice at higher cognitive levels, improving classroom management and professional discourse. Teachers perceived significant impact on pupils' achievements in the longer term, but this raised the issue about providing evidence in support of this judgement. The impact of new learning from CPD at the organisational level appears to be less significant.
Drawing on a single case study in the Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC-FE) project, discussed in the introduction to this volume, this article explores contrasting perspectives of tutors’ and students’ experiences of a General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ). The ‘case in point’ is an Intermediate level GNVQ in Business Studies. The study juxtaposes the official discourse of GNVQ as a high skill qualification, offering parity of esteem and access to higher education and employment, with the reality as tutors and students experience it. The article explores the often contradictory ways in which these experiences interrelate with one another in shaping the teaching and learning culture of the GNVQ site. The term ‘site’ is used here to denote the context and situation that frames the teaching and learning experiences of tutors and students. As the title suggests, the article identifies ambiguities in the way tutors and students make sense of GNVQ Business Studies, in the wider context of vocational education and training (VET) policy. A number of overlapping themes are identified that connect the contrasting biographies and identities of tutors and students with the development of learning cultures in the site. The article deals with each of these in turn to illuminate the complex ways in which the ‘empty shell’ of GNVQ is given meaning in the often paradoxical conditions of further education (FE) practice. It is pertinent to examine this site in such depth at a time when Intermediate GNVQs are being transformed into Vocational General Certificates in Secondary Education (VGCSEs), which form part of the wider reform of 14-19 education and training in England.
Explaining Creativity is an accessible introduction to the latest scientific research on creativity. In the last 50 yearss, psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have increasingly studied creativity, and we now know more about creativity that at any point in history. Explaining Creativity considers not only arts like painting and writing, but also science, stage performance, and business innovation. Until about a decade ago, creativity researchers tended to focus on highly valued activities like fine art painting and Nobel prize winning science. Sawyer brings this research up to date by including movies, music videos, cartoons, videogames, hypertext fiction, and computer technology. For example, this is the first book on creativity to include studies of performance and improvisation. Sawyer draws on the latest research findings to show the importance of collaboration and context in all of these creative activities. Today's science of creativity is interdisciplinary; in addition to psychological studies of creativity, Explaining Creativity includes research by anthropologists on creativity in non-Western cultures, and research by sociologists about the situations, contexts, and networks of creative activity. Explaining Creativity brings these approaches together within the sociocultural approach to creativity pioneered by Howard Becker, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Howard Gardner. The sociocultural approach moves beyond the individual to consider the social and cultural contexts of creativity, emphasizing the role of collaboration and context in the creative process.
Currently, ‘Practice as Research’ (PaR) offers a mode of study relevant to arts practice in many post-graduate programmes. "Practice as research, in any disciplinary area, privileges action as a methodological imperative" (Sjoberg & Hughes, n.d.). It offers a process in which practical knowledge is recognised as a foundation from which to build and develop new knowledge through research practices which synthesise theoretical and bodily investigation. As such, it could be suggested that HE undergraduate programmes which include elements of creative practice should recognise the importance of being able to investigate and research through doing, and the value of experiential learning, and should therefore consider the relevance of PaR within their curriculum. Differentiating between research-led practice, research-based practice and practice as research, this paper questions what PaR is, drawing on a range of postgraduate practices to provide examples, and raising the debate of whether PaR is a relevant mode of learning and assessment for undergraduate study.This paper provides a reflective evaluation of the tentative steps towards the introduction and development of PaR as a teaching and assessment process within the formation of a ‘choreography as investigation’ module on the FdA Contemporary Dance programme at Newcastle College. It highlights PaR concepts and questions how these could be adopted to enhance undergraduate practices. The article considers the benefits of Practice as Research within a vocational based HE programme, suggesting that PaR concepts support a reflective and considered approach to practical work, encouraging students who may not initially consider themselves academic to participate in and be discursive in academic debate relating to processes and experiences within the arts.