Search results

1 – 10 of over 1000
Book part
Publication date: 24 June 2013

Geert Kelchtermans

The person of the teacher is an essential element in what constitutes professional teaching and therefore needs careful conceptualisation. In this chapter the author argues for…

Abstract

The person of the teacher is an essential element in what constitutes professional teaching and therefore needs careful conceptualisation. In this chapter the author argues for this central thesis, presenting a wrap up of his theoretical and empirical work on the issue over the past decade. These studies have been inspired – both conceptually and methodologically – by teacher thinking-research as well as the narrative-biographical approach to teaching and teacher development. The result is an empirically grounded conceptual framework on teacher development and teacher professionalism. Central concepts are ‘professional self-understanding’ and ‘subjective educational theory’ as components of the personal interpretative framework every individual teacher develops throughout his/her career. This personal framework results from the reflective and meaningful interactions between the individual teacher and the social, cultural and structural working conditions constituting his/her job context(s). As such the framework is the dynamic outcome of an ongoing process of professional learning (development). Furthermore, it is argued that the particular professionalism or scholarship of teachers is fundamentally characterised by personal commitment and vulnerability, which eventually have consequences for the kind of reflective attitudes and skills professional teachers should master.

Details

From Teacher Thinking to Teachers and Teaching: The Evolution of a Research Community
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-851-8

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 7 March 2013

Charlotte Struyve and Geert Kelchtermans

The phenomenon of teachers taking on leadership tasks beyond their classroom duties has become widespread internationally. Although presented as a catalyst for school improvement…

Abstract

The phenomenon of teachers taking on leadership tasks beyond their classroom duties has become widespread internationally. Although presented as a catalyst for school improvement and professional development, the practices and experiences of teacher leaders are more complex than that. The change in roles blurs the traditional division between teaching and leading and therefore challenges the conventional professional relationships in schools. We conducted semi-structured interviews of 28 ‘teacher leaders’ in Flemish primary and secondary schools. We explored their perceptions and evaluation of their position in schools as well as the way their position and role as teacher leaders affected their professional relations with teacher colleagues and school leaders. The results demonstrate how the introduction of new positions and roles in the school as an organisation affects the professional relationships and collegiality. From a micro-political perspective, we show that the new positions also create emotional labour for the teacher leaders, since they find themselves juggling two different agendas of professional interests: on the one hand, receiving recognition by others of their position as teacher leaders, while on the other hand maintaining their former social–professional relationships as teachers with their former colleagues.

Details

Emotion and School: Understanding how the Hidden Curriculum Influences Relationships, Leadership, Teaching, and Learning
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-651-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 13 April 2021

Nora Sophie Schröder

The contribution draws upon the protests against a proposed trade deal between the European Union (EU) and the United States as an example of the potential to identify as European…

Abstract

The contribution draws upon the protests against a proposed trade deal between the European Union (EU) and the United States as an example of the potential to identify as European citizens. It is relevant given the multiple challenges the EU is currently facing, particularly a crisis of democratic legitimacy. While trust in EU institutions is at a historic low, some citizens – such as the Anti-Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) protestors – want to have a say in EU decision-making. The resulting conflicts should not be misunderstood as a threat. Instead, the author’s suggestion here is that democratic conflict has the potential to contribute to the politicisation and the identification of citizens with the European project. Following this line of thought, the potential of the Anti-TTIP protests lies in a civic democratisation of the EU through conflict. The author focusses on protestors’ participation experiences and their self-understanding processes as European citizens. The author explores the different ways in which protestors experience themselves as European citizens which aims to open up the discourse about the multiplicity of European citizenship. This variety of meanings ascribed to European citizenship is not regarded as a danger, but as the potential to enrich Europe with new ways of being and acting as European citizens.

Details

Political Identification in Europe: Community in Crisis?
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83982-125-7

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Communication as Social Theory
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-985-6

Article
Publication date: 28 January 2022

Marianne Buen Sommerfeldt

A residential care is home for children who live there and is simultaneously a workplace for employees aiming to safeguard the needs and development of children. Studies have…

Abstract

Purpose

A residential care is home for children who live there and is simultaneously a workplace for employees aiming to safeguard the needs and development of children. Studies have shown that adolescents’ descriptions of life in residential care are connected to feelings of otherness and deviance. The purpose of this study is to explore how adolescents in residential care in Norway relate residential care as a home to their experiences of everyday life in this context and to their relationships with the employees.

Design/methodology/approach

This study draws on individual, qualitative interviews with 19 boys and girls (aged 15–18 years) living in residential care homes in Norway. The interviews explored their narratives of everyday life in residential care. The adolescents were encouraged to tell about yesterday and were asked follow-up questions regarding everything that had occurred during encounters with employees. The Norwegian Center for Research Data approved the study.

Findings

The analysis shows tensions in the adolescents’ accounts between the institution as an abnormal context and their own subject position as normal. By drawing upon the terms “stigma” and “recognition” in the analysis, the study shows how recognising relationships between the youth and staff decreases the potential to experience stigma.

Originality/value

This study contributes to existing knowledge on social work in residential care. The paper shows how the institutional framework and employees’ practices impact adolescents’ self-understanding and their experiences of residential care as a home.

Details

Journal of Children's Services, vol. 17 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-6660

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 June 2011

Ashly H. Pinnington

The purpose of this paper is to learn about professional employees in the early stage of their careers, particularly, their understanding of competence development and career…

5124

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to learn about professional employees in the early stage of their careers, particularly, their understanding of competence development and career advancement. Law firms have a relatively low rate of turnover of professional staff when compared with employee flow rates that are standard in other organisations and industries. In law firms, the collective stock of embodied knowledge changes gradually influenced by recruitment cohort phases and employee departures. This paper aims to analyse lawyers employed in a reasonably munificent internal labour market context, seeking to understand their accounts of how their competencies can be developed and how their careers may be advanced.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper considers the competences and careers of a group of junior professional knowledge workers employed full‐time in a large law firm and conceptualises their competence development and professional career advancement through an existential ontological conceptualisation using a qualitative interpretive research methodology.

Findings

The findings from interviews with lawyers in the Planning and Environment area of specialisation are reported concentrating on employees' perspectives. Lawyers' self‐understanding is strongly influenced by career stage and position in the organisation. Their understanding of work in contrast reveals more individual and idiosyncratic clusters of work activities and distinctive ways of acknowledging and developing technical and professional expertise. They express a preference for a focal group of other people at work selecting from primary orientations to either clients or peers or self.

Originality/value

It is concluded that policy makers, practitioners, and academic researchers all have roles to play in assisting people at an early stage in their career to reflect on their existing expertise, assess current work practices, and develop and pursue strategies for competency development and career advancement.

Details

Personnel Review, vol. 40 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0048-3486

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 19 February 2021

Sally Myers

Abstract

Details

Jerome Bruner, Meaning Making and Education for Conflict Resolution
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-074-0

Book part
Publication date: 1 December 2014

Geert Kelchtermans

Narrative-biographical perspectives have taken on a very prominent role in both the research on and practices of teacher education (both preservice and in-service) over the past…

Abstract

Narrative-biographical perspectives have taken on a very prominent role in both the research on and practices of teacher education (both preservice and in-service) over the past decades. This chapter briefly situates and explains this “narrative turn,” and continues with the presentation and discussion of concrete pedagogical applications of narrative-biographical approaches. A storied example of one approach is followed by a general discussion of its educational rationale and the necessary conditions for its use. References are made to narrative language as a genre, its contextualized nature as well as the connection with (student) teachers’ developing sense of self.

Details

International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part A)
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-136-7

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 November 2018

Rafael Heinzelmann

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of IT systems on occupational identities of management accountants. The author highlights the pivotal role of the IT system…

2026

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of IT systems on occupational identities of management accountants. The author highlights the pivotal role of the IT system as a central reference point for organisational identity regulation and identity work.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on a qualitative case study approach.

Findings

The IT system presents the central means of establishing appropriate behaviour in case organisation (“identity regulation”). At the same time, the IT system acts as a sense-giving device (“identity work”) – the central reference point for management accountants to make sense of their work. In addition, the system creates more dirty and unclean work (Morales and Lambert, 2013), producing dissonance between the business partner role and the organisational reality, which is resolved by relating dirty and unclean work through use of the SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

Research limitations/implications

The paper suggests to understand IT systems as an important driver of the management accounting work shaping the occupational identity of management accountants.

Practical implications

The author aims to sensitise practitioners and organisations to the potential risks of relying too strongly on IT systems – a behaviour which can limit the professional judgement and business insight of management accountants.

Originality/value

The author contributes to the discussion on how technological disruptions, e.g. ERP implementation, Big Data, business analytics, digitalisation, change management accountants’ identity and management accounting work. The author shows how organisations establish appropriate behaviour and how management accountants make sense upon dissonances between the professional ideals exemplified by business partner role and the organisational realities.

Details

Journal of Applied Accounting Research, vol. 19 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0967-5426

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 December 2020

Jon Sunnerfjell

The purpose of this article is to complement the literature understanding present labour market measures as infused by a so-called neoliberal rationality, fostering…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to complement the literature understanding present labour market measures as infused by a so-called neoliberal rationality, fostering self-managerial selves by means of self-inspection. It does so by providing a much-needed illustration of how such “work on the self” is achieved in practice.

Design/methodology/approach

The analysis draws on ethnographic fieldwork tracing the “active society” at the local level, depicting practices aimed at activating welfare clients in a local labour market measure organised in a rural Swedish municipality. Here, the author was offered to undergo a method aimed at enhancing participants' employability. As a result, data consists of ethnographic as well as auto-ethnographic accounts from this experience.

Findings

This analysis shows how destabilisation of subjectivity was central to the remoulding of individuals into employable and self-reliant selves. Moreover, by dispersing responsibility to the individual, it is shown how the organisation was able to refrain from accountability, hence reducing the levels of uncertainty and ambiguity that is part and parcel of people-processing welfare organisations.

Practical implications

The article concludes with the warning that, in the wake of “local worlds of activation”, municipalities may sometimes draw on questionable assumptions of the human mind and behaviour, as well as the vulnerability of individuals' self-understanding, as a way of managing the “active society” at the local level.

Originality/value

The literature on activation lacks ethnographic accounts depicting concrete practices of turning the socially excluded into active and employable selves. Here, this article offers an illustrating example of such practices in action.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 11 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 1000