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Early childhood education (ECE) centre directors have to meet various leadership demands at present, and this has become even more important in a time of extensive policy changes. There is little research on work-related stress from the perspective of ECE directors. The purpose of this study was therefore to enhance one’s knowledge of (a) what ECE centre directors perceive to be work-related stressors; (b) what causes stressful situations; and (c) how they cope with the identified stressors.

Eighty directors from three groups in part-time leadership education programmes participated between 2017 and 2020. Data was collected through class discussions and whiteboard notes, focus group interviews with 24 directors and student role-play scenarios that were acted out in class.

The findings illustrated three main categories of stressors: an overwhelming number of administrative tasks, leading others and lack of social support. Unexpected findings were a lack of knowledge about coping strategies and a need for more resources so that directors can focus on pedagogical leadership.

The study has been done in the Norwegian educational context with Norwegian ECE centre directors participating in a leadership programme. Several qualitative methods were used on three groups of centre directors. These limitations must be considered when generalizing.

The results can be used as guidance for supporting ECE centre directors, owners and policymakers in how to develop and sustain leadership and increase well-being and work satisfaction.

The current study is among the few ones focussing on perceived stressors among centre directors and the consequent coping in the early childhood setting.

The project “Public schools in change – collaboration as a resource” was aimed to strengthen professional capital (social- human- and decision-capital) in public schools and as a part of this to strengthen collaboration within teams. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the approach of linking development of professional capital to the development of team competence through facilitating and discuss the adequacy of the methods used to fulfil the purpose.

This study was designed as a multiple case intervention implemented at four worksites. It was organized as a course consisting of four sessions among 15–20 team coordinators from each school unit. The research group provided insights and methods to increase the team’s ability to manage tasks and cooperate.

Based on observations of team meetings, the study provides a discussion on the usefulness of the approach of linking team competence and professional capital. Both at theoretical and practical levels, the study finds it is meaningful to combine facilitating as methods to ensure the creation of value in organizational teamwork, in general, with the concept of professional capital pointing on the quality of the core task and particularly developed within an educational context.

The study provide a presentation of two theoretical frameworks and a discussion of the adequacy of linking these frameworks to the development of team competences in a school context.

The study suggests that organizations and educational institutions (of teachers, physicians, and social workers) may benefit from linking professional capital and facilitating and thereby provide employees and students training in professional collaboration.

In a still more complex society, collaboration is crucial. The study suggests ways to improve collaboration, quality of the core task along with the relational dimensions in the psychosocial work environment.

Development of professional capital through increased team competences and facilitating skills represents a new and promising approach with theoretical as well as practical implications within a school context. Indeed, not only school teams but also teams in other organizations dealing with social- task- and contextual complexity can benefit from the insights and experiences of this study.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate a practical laboratory task where final year undergraduate students design, implement and validate an inferred security wireless sensor access system.

The quality of the learning and technical environment was evaluated from a number of perspectives using a mixed methods approach where both quantitative and qualitative data was collected and analysed. Two‐tailed paired t‐tests were used to analyse data on student performance, while a targeted survey was used to assess the achievement of the learning outcomes. The students’ experience of working with the Sun Microsystems SunSPOTs was evaluated and the evolution of their perception of both ubiquity and security from inception to completion of the activity was explored.

The results of this study indicate that the students’ level of engagement with the assigned laboratory task was higher than with the two other forms of continuous assessment used on the module. Quantitative feedback gathered indicated that the learning outcomes were achieved, while the qualitative data indicated a high level of student satisfaction with the laboratory assignment.

A novel wireless sensor network laboratory that encourages students to engage with the concepts of ubiquity and security is presented and evaluated.

The present study aims to reveal common and diverging trends in the development of pedagogical competences of vocational education and training (VET) teachers and trainers in Italy and Lithuania.

A structured survey was administered to Italian and Lithuanian teachers. The collected data were analysed and compared.

Results show that there are many common challenges and problems in the development of pedagogical competencies of the VET teachers in both countries; e.g.: the marginalisation of the VET teacher's work and working conditions, especially the dissatisfying wages and poor career opportunities, and the absent or weak institutionalisation of the VET teacher's qualifications and training.

The emerged results can be useful for directors of VET-centres and VET-schools to manage training and pedagogical growth of teachers both in Italy and in Lithuania. Moreover, the outputs can be considered as a set of suggestions also by the policymakers both at national and European level.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the professional norms surrounding school development, with a special emphasis on school principals’ pedagogical leadership.

A norm perspective is used to identify possible links between legal norms, professional norms, and actions. The findings are based on answers given by 974 school principals in a web-based questionnaire. The design of the study and the findings are structured around three questions used to identify professional norms: what tasks principals prioritize as pedagogical leaders, where the external expectations on principals are derived from, and with whom school principals communicate regarding issues related to their pedagogical leadership.

The most evident professional norms identified in this study are that principals should: be present and close to the teaching and learning processes; involve teachers in quality development; enhance the development of formative assessments; engage in teacher development; develop the internal organization of the school to promote learning.

The norm perspective and the findings of this study could be used by principals, principal trainers, and researchers to reflect on pedagogical leadership in different contexts. A challenge for principals is to become aware of the professional norms that guide them, and to close the gap between their “desirable” norms and their actions. Action alternatives and professional norms become visible through discussions emanating from questions about what leaders do, how they do so and why they do what they do, which is a way to strengthen both the profession and the individual principals.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a piece of research concerning the time management of Cypriot primary school principals. Time management refers to the interrelation of five independent variables: the various tasks principals perform, their frequency, the degree of accomplishment of those tasks, the use of time management techniques and time management style (from monochronic to polychronic).

Quantitative methods were used (questionnaire) together with qualitative methods (observation, interviews, collection of artifacts), in order to obtain richer, deeper data and view multiple angles of the same phenomenon.

The results of cluster analysis indicated three different time management profiles/types of principals: The Centralized Monochrons, the Procrastinative Managers and the Decentralized Polychrons. One basic conclusion is that the principals who adopt the practices of the Decentralized Polychrons manage better their time.

The three time management profiles of principals are described, analysed, and discussed in order to reach conclusions about the selection, training, and placement of school principals. Through the description of the everyday practice of Cypriot principals useful information concerning school leadership and management are also provided. Finally, the conclusions of this research may prove useful for principals, because they are provided with the opportunity to rethink and evaluate their own time management and effectiveness of their daily practices.

The creation and description of the three time management profiles is the main contribution of this piece of research, since there are not any time management types-profiles registered in the bibliography, which were produced with the use of scientific instruments and procedures.

It is possible for civil engineering (CE) students to graduate from a degree programme without gaining experience on a construction site. The implementation of virtual field trips using virtual reality (VR) in CE education is a development that can address this phenomenon and help facilitate the consolidation of abstract theories into tangible competences. This project aims to solve a fundamental CE education problem: once a structure has been completed, it is often impossible to see how it was built; hence, how can you demonstrate the construction process to a student?

This research used the opportunity of a new campus library development to record its construction sequence. This was achieved by visiting the site eight times to take panoramic stereoscopic photos of the construction process. By its nature, using VR as a didactic tool facilitates experiential learning, but this project also incorporates discovery learning and situated cognition to develop students’ understanding of the construction process.

The use of VR in education is becoming increasingly common, but the explicit pedagogy used in these environments is rarely obvious or stated. This project draws upon current VR education discussions and explores the development of a VR environment with a pedagogical context.

The development of the VR resource draws upon the pedagogical frameworks of discovery learning (Bruner, 1961) and situated cognition (Lave and Wenger, 1991). A further unique aspect of this research is the use of stereoscopic cameras to capture the library’s construction over time.

Disciplinary differences in approaches and methodologies to research present an important challenge to humanities practitioners wishing to engage in pedagogic research. This article outlines the development of a social sciences research methods workshop as an example of an intervention to provide a bridge for modern languages practitioners to engage with pedagogic research. The workshops have also raised questions about the capacity of UK higher educational institutions to provide research training for their staff at introductory levels, as well as identifying barriers to languages practitioners contributing to “generic” pedagogic research. Overcoming these barriers is a long term process, but in the shorter term the workshops are good way of raising awareness of social science research methods and offering a possible route into publishing pedagogic research which has an audience beyond the languages community.

This chapter introduces a theoretically grounded pedagogical procedure of moral argumentation that aims to facilitate student teachers’ learning of moral competencies during teacher education. Despite the essentiality of the moral aspects of teaching, they often remain implicit in the curricula and pedagogical practices of teacher education. Thus, there is a clear need to bring these aspects to the foreground and create possibilities for student teachers to elaborate them thoroughly during teacher education. Authentic cases capturing classroom realities and moral dilemmas at school as well as their systematic analysis and reflection from various lenses form the core of the procedure. Based on the results of the use of the procedure in the practice of teacher education, it promisingly fulfills the aims to demonstrate the moral core of teaching and teacher’s central role in it for student teachers.

Fischer et al. (2022) present a framework for rethinking education, including broad design components such as learning-on-demand or learning takes place in the context of authentic problems. How can we bring those design components into practice? I argue that the design of innovative learning approaches for the digital age requires rigor in design and evaluation methods to understand what works and how and why it works.

This case study applies the research to improve approach with iterative steps of design, development, and formative evaluation. Methods to be used are borrowed from user and learning experience fields, such as usability studies and pre/posttests for learning growth.

The design of digital learning experiences rests on the three dimensions of how learners interact with (a) the digital tool, space, or service; (b) the pedagogical elements of goals, activities, and assessments (e.g. sense-making); and (c) other peers or instructors.

This study provides useful insights on how to conduct research to improve versus research to prove and indicates the importance of data analysis related to the effectiveness, efficiency, and attractiveness of digital learning experiences. Learning experience design and research provides sufficient rigor and could play an important role in new ways of learning in the digital age with the goal “making learning a part of life” as pointed out by Fischer et al. (2022).