Challenging The Professions

Teachers and trainers are dual-professionals – they are required to have up-to-date industry skills and also skills in teaching and learning. The issue of professional identity, and the promotion of maintaining and building pedagogic expertise in relation to their vocational work, is therefore an extremely important one. This book argues that quality teaching and learning is very much dependent upon teachers and trainers undergoing continuing professional development (CPD), engaging actively in professional learning activities, generating professional learning communities and building their level of professionalism to meet increasing teaching standards. Unfortunately, CPD is battling a context of intensification of work, pressure of time and economic restrictions. The completion of CPD under such conditions can often become tokenistic and hitherto there has been very little research or evidence base for determining what approaches to CPD are most effective and efficient. Challenging Professional Learning draws on a wealth of recent research and evidence on what ingredients are necessary for effective and efficient (crucial at a time of such fiscal constraints) professional learning. It also explores the wider implications of these findings and the concept of learning as a collective activity. It argues that real professionalism cannot be achieved in isolation but instead takes place in a context that has political, social and cultural influences. The book brings together research from the Institute for Learning and practice around professional learning to link both individual and collective professional learning to organisational learning, leadership and the management of change whilst offering practical suggestions for improving these practices. It will be of great interest to teacher educators and their students at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, as well as anyone who works in higher education and with professional development.

Questioning the dominant approaches taken by many professionals concerned with rural development the theme of this book is that "we" - the professionals - are much of the problem. New frontiers could be opened by reversing many ideas and practices.

Teachers and trainers are dual-professionals – they are required to have up-to-date industry skills and also skills in teaching and learning. The issue of professional identity, and the promotion of maintaining and building pedagogic expertise in relation to their vocational work, is therefore an extremely important one. This book argues that quality teaching and learning is very much dependent upon teachers and trainers undergoing continuing professional development (CPD), engaging actively in professional learning activities, generating professional learning communities and building their level of professionalism to meet increasing teaching standards. Unfortunately, CPD is battling a context of intensification of work, pressure of time and economic restrictions. The completion of CPD under such conditions can often become tokenistic and hitherto there has been very little research or evidence base for determining what approaches to CPD are most effective and efficient. Challenging Professional Learning draws on a wealth of recent research and evidence on what ingredients are necessary for effective and efficient (crucial at a time of such fiscal constraints) professional learning. It also explores the wider implications of these findings and the concept of learning as a collective activity. It argues that real professionalism cannot be achieved in isolation but instead takes place in a context that has political, social and cultural influences. The book brings together research from the Institute for Learning and practice around professional learning to link both individual and collective professional learning to organisational learning, leadership and the management of change whilst offering practical suggestions for improving these practices. It will be of great interest to teacher educators and their students at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, as well as anyone who works in higher education and with professional development.

This book explores how best to invest in and nurture teachers. It examines deprofessionalisation and reprofessionalisation in the recent developments in the understanding of teaching and learning, including the effects of standardizing teaching, education shaped by student satisfaction data and basic skills tests. The book focuses on Australian context and takes on an international perspective. It investigates fundamental issues affecting teacher quality, morale, attrition and retention, learner and teacher autonomy, and assessment and evaluation. It encourages teachers and teacher educators to assert centrality to teachers and question and challenge outside forces that suppress teacher autonomy and associated agency and creativity. It challenges administrators and educational jurisdictions to rethink their assumptions on their own capacities and limitations and teachers' capabilities to shape education in optimal ways and the impact of outcomes of the decisions they make.

Tim Noakes is one of the world’s leading authorities on the science behind sport and a successful sportsman in his own right. Through a lifetime of research, he has developed key scientific concepts in sport that have not only redefined the way elite athletes and teams approach their professions, but challenged conventional global thinking in these areas. In this new and updated edition of Challenging Beliefs, Noakes shares his views on everything from the myths perpetuated by the sports-drink industry to the prevalence of banned substances, the need to make rugby a safer sport and the benefits of a high-protein, low-carb diet. The teams and athletes with whom Noakes has worked make fascinating backdrops to these topics, highlighting the importance of science in sport in human terms. In providing an intimate look at the golden threads running through Noakes’s life and career, this remarkable book reveals the landmark theories and principles generated by one of the greatest minds in the history of sports science.

With a new preface outlining the most recent critical developments, this updated edtion of The Future of the Professions predicts how technology will transform the work of doctors, teachers, architects, lawyers, and many others in the 21st century, and introduces the people and systems that may replace them.

In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.

This book addresses health professions educational challenges specific to non-Western cultures, implementing a shifting paradigm for educating future health professionals towards patient-centered care. While health professions education has received increasing attention in the last three decades, promoting student-centered learning principles pioneered by leaders in the medical community has, for the most part, remain rooted in the Western context. Building from Hofstede's analysis of the phenomena of cultural dimensions, which underpin the way people build and maintain their relationships with others and influence social, economic, and political well-being across nations, this book demarcates the different cultural dimensions between East and West, applied to medical education. The respective 'hierarchical' and 'collectivist' cultural dimensions are unpacked in several studies stemming from non-western countries, with the capacity to positively influence healthcare education and services. The book provides new insights for researchers and health professional educators to understand how cultural context influences the input, processes, and output of health professionals' education. Examples include how cultural context influences the ways in which students respond to teachers, how teachers giving feedback to students, and the challenges of peer feedback and group work. The authors also examine causes for student hesitation in proposing ideas, the pervasive cultural norm of maintaining harmony, the challenges of teamwork in clinical settings, the need to be sensitive to community health needs, the complexity of clinical decision making, and the challenge of how collectivist cultural values play into group dynamics. This book aims to advocate a more culturally-sensitive approach to educating health professionals, and will be relevant to both students and practitioners in numerous areas of public health and medical education.