Search results

Digital technologies can enable engagement online as well as in physical infrastructures like large lecture theatres. Avoiding a tech-first approach to curriculum design, this article reviews a key resource for the use of a pedagogy-first, co-design approach in a specific instance of developing curriculum for connected learning at scale.

This article summarises key guidance for applying a co-design approach to a large educational transformation project (connected learning at scale) and reflects on the application in the UK (a developed economy) and in Vietnam (one of the fastest growing economies).

The guidance is found to reflect similar co-development processes in the UK and Vietnam, but adds additional layers of infrastructure and support to enable rich co-design processes. These are seen as proportionate given the impact of large-scale curricula.

This is the first time a review has been conducted from the perspective of different countries.

In the higher education sector, the evaluation of learning and teaching projects is assuming a role as a quality and accountability indicator. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how learning and teaching project evaluation is approached and critiques alignment between evaluation theory and practice.

The emergent realism paradigm provides the theoretical framework with a pragmatic approach to mixed-methods data collection. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the transcripts of interviews with 15 project leaders.

Four key themes on project evaluation emerged: how evaluation is conceptualized, particularly the overlap, even conflation, between evaluation and research; capability building within the sector; resourcing in terms of time and money; and the role of an action-oriented approach to evaluation. The authors conclude that misalignment exists between evaluation theory and the practice of project evaluation and that this relationship can be further inhibited by a project leader’s perception of evaluation.

A series of strategies for developing capacity across the higher education sector for project evaluation are presented. These include the development and provision of: a time allocation for evaluation in future and ongoing project plans with procedures to revisit the project and assess impact; models of how to incorporate evaluation into the research cycle; constructive feedback on evaluation reports from the university funding body; and networking opportunities to disseminate learnings from project evaluations.

This study focusses on the under-researched area of evaluation of learning and teaching projects in higher education, providing research-based evidence for strategies to develop sector capacity.

In the introductory chapter to this book, we invited the reader to join us along the banks of the braided rivers of narrative inquiry research. We hoped to convey through that metaphor the interconnections we find among the work of our contributing colleagues. As we conclude this book, we ask the reader to join us as we visit the headwaters and tributaries of this research tradition. Nearly three decades ago, Michael Connelly and Jean Clandinin embarked upon a study at Bay Street School (Clandinin, 1986; Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Connelly, Phillion, & He, 2003) to investigate teachers’ personal practical knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1985). Using narrative as both phenomenon and methodology (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Clandinin & Connelly, 1992, 2000; Clandinin, 2008) for this study, their work in the field was integral to the adoption of narrative inquiry as a research methodology in the, then, burgeoning study of teacher knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, 1990, 1999), teacher education (Clandinin, 1991, 1992; Connelly & Clandinin, 2000), and curriculum studies (Clandinin & Connelly, 2002). In these areas, as well as in others (i.e., Nursing; Chan, 2008; Chan & Schwind, 2006; Lindsay, 2006a, 2006b), this research, which focused on experience, became well-established and expanded.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to explore and deliberate over ways in which culture may contribute to the interpretation of field texts while also intersecting the dimensions of time, space, and sociality in accordance with Clandinin and Connelly's (2000) notion of the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space.

Approach – This chapter highlights research interactions within a long-term, school-based narrative inquiry dealing with lived curriculum experiences.

Findings – The researchers gained insight into some of the nuances of interpreting field texts. In particular, this study highlighted the potential influence of the cultural, racial, religious, ethnic, or linguistic backgrounds of researchers and their participants in shaping the interpretation of field texts.

Research implications – The field texts that were presented and examined in this chapter shed light on key curricular experiences, spaces, and silences that might occur in relational and interpretive research stemming from cross-cultural experiences and vantages. This uncovered strand of inquiry interpretation has wide implications for qualitative work.

Value – Narrative inquirers and researchers employing other interpretive forms of qualitative investigations might be influenced to attend to the themes of culture in their work in novel ways. New understandings of researcher bias and the subsequent interpretation of results can be seen from a cross-cultural experiential paradigm.

Arguments for the development and use of narrative inquiry come out of a view of human experience in which humans, individually and socially, lead storied lives. People shape their daily lives by stories of who they and others are and as they interpret their past in terms of these stories. Story, in the current idiom, is a portal through which a person enters the world and by which his or her experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful. Viewed this way, narrative is the phenomena studied in inquiry. Narrative inquiry, the study of experience as story, then, is first and foremost a way of thinking about experience. Narrative inquiry as methodology entails a view of the phenomena. To use narrative inquiry methodology is to adopt a particular view of experience as phenomena under study. (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 377)

We introduce this volume featuring the work of C. L. Clarke and D. A. Hutchinson with references to existing literature addressing complexities of teacher knowledge development. Drawing from their metaphor of the muskeg, we write about ways in which notions of teacher knowledge intersect with prior personal and professional experiences across time, place, and social interaction. Clarke and Hutchinson write about ways in which identities that they view as having developed at the edges of their communities have contributed to shaping their sense of professional and personal identity in profound ways. They examine the potential impact of these experiences in: shaping their research and the building of research relationships with their participants using a narrative inquiry approach; and developing ways in which the use of poetic expression and word images enriched their understanding of the development of teacher identity and knowledge and informed their curriculum making. A chapter written by their dissertation supervisor offers further insight into ways in which their use of a narrative inquiry approach shaped their research work and writing, and offered a unique glimpse into their research phenomenon. We position this work in relation to existing research in the area of teacher knowledge and highlight ways in which this work contributes to knowledge in the area, as well as contributing to ideas about how narrative inquiry methodology has informed the examination of their research phenomenon.

My research is a personal effort to understand the experiences that have shaped my work, practice, and living of teaching mathematics. From the boy storied as being smart in mathematics to the man who was tasked in finding ways to Indigenize school mathematics, I have composed stories to live by that share the tensions, conflicting stories, and mis-educative experiences that have shaped who I am as a White Euro-Western mathematician in a Canadian prairie province. My research wonder serves a practical justification as I “attend to the importance of considering the possibility of shifting, or changing practice” (Clandinin, 2013, p. 36) in the context of cross-cultural teaching and learning. Much of the research around Indigenous mathematics education is shaped by misconceptions of Indigenization and inconsistent practices of how this is taken up by practitioners – topics that I analyzed during my doctoral studies. Through my inquiry described in the chapter, I hoped to achieve a nuanced understanding of how the experiences of diverse lives shape the learning of school mathematics.

This study explores consumers' self-congruence with luxury fashion brands they mention on Facebook. It investigates the extent to which those brands are congruent with the actual self (ASC) or the ideal self (ISC), and whether ASC or ISC of luxury fashion brands on Facebook predicts purchase intention. It also examines trait antecedents of both ASC and ISC Facebook mentions of luxury fashion brands, specifically materialism, self-monitoring and self-esteem.

Findings are presented from a survey of Facebook users who mention luxury fashion brands on the social medium.

Self-esteem was revealed as an antecedent of ASC luxury fashion brands mentioned on Facebook, while materialism and high self-monitoring predicted ISC luxury fashion brands. Only ASC luxury fashion brands mentioned online were positively associated with purchase intention.

Results are exploratory, and they are limited to those who are active Facebook users and who mention a luxury fashion brand on Facebook.

The study offers implications for managers of luxury fashion brands seeking to utilise Facebook to enhance the purchase intention for their brands or to increase the idealisation of the brand.

The paper provides new insights into the relationship between self-congruent mentions of luxury fashion brands on Facebook and purchase intention of those brands, distinguishing between ISC and ASC. This research also offers valuable and useful insights into ISC and ASC antecedents.