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Category: CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

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CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

Teaching and Learning Qualitative Research

RCC group of learners

The majority of students enrolled in graduate programs representing schools and colleges of education are required to take one or more courses in qualitative research(Leech & Goodwin, 2008; see also Capraro & Thompson, 2008).

Unfortunately, despite the prevalence of qualitative research courses, and although an abundance of information is present in the published literature on how to conduct qualitative research, with a few exceptions (cf. Chenail, 2007; Hurworth, 2008), little explicit guidance is present on how to teach qualitative research. For example, in the previous edition of the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005b), one of the leading textbooks used in qualitative research courses in the United States, none of the 44 chapters deal explicitly with teaching qualitative research.

The first phase, the Conceptual/Theoretical Phase, involves an overview of the qualitative research process, using Leech and Onwuegbuzie’s (2006) model. In the second phase, the Technical Phase, the instructors describe 18 qualitative analysis techniques from different traditions and different epistemologies (e.g., constant comparison analysis, discourse analysis), delineating when to use each type of analysis and how to conduct each of these analyses using Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS; e.g., NVivo 9; QSR International Pty Ltd., 2011; QDA Miner 3.2; Provalis Research, 2009). For instance, we provide students with works that demonstrate how NVivo 9 (Leech & Onwuegbuzie, 2011), Excel (Combs & Onwuegbuzie, 2010; Meyer & Avery, 2009), and SPSS (Onwuegbuzie & Combs, 2011) can be used to conduct qualitative analyses.

The third phase, the Applied Phase, involves the instructors teaching students how to collect, to analyse, and to interpret qualitative data, and how to write up qualitative research. With respect to data collection, students practice collecting data via observations, interviews, and focus groups—as well as gathering field notes. With regard to data analysis and data interpretation, students write a series of what the instructors call qualitative notebooks, in which students use NVivo 9 or another CAQDAS to facilitate the analysis of data they had collected during the course using several qualitative analytic techniques.

CONCLUSION

There is a need for an emphasis on developing students’ abilities to write-up qualitative research will help students see that writing represents a method of inquiry (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005)—going far beyond being a passive or reactive process—that is, writing represents an active meaning-making endeavour.

As stated by Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre, “writing is thinking, writing is analysis, writing is indeed a seductive and tangled method of discovery” (emphasis in original); Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005, p. 967). Simply put, writing is an interactive, iterative, and dynamic method of data collection, data analysis, and data interpretation.

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CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

Workplace Practices, Training and Quality of Work

Group of Child Care Learners

There is a long-standing and extensive literature on the ways in which workplaces are organised, including who gets access to training and promotion, who gets to be involved in decision-making and the relationship between these factors and the quality of work itself (see, inter alia, Warhurst et al, 2012; Felstead et al 2009; Green, 2006; Rainbird et al 2004).

The concept of the workplace as a learning environment and the ways in which individuals can be said to learn in the workplace has also generated a considerable body of research (see for a review, Fuller and Unwin 2011).

Given the mandatory requirement for adult apprentices to achieve Level 2 in Functional Skills, the OECD’s findings from the first round of its Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) are highly relevant for our study. The findings showed how newly acquired skills need to be used and refined through use in the workplace. This aligns with research by Wolf and Evans (2010) on the problems faced by employees who are trying to improve their competence in literacy, numeracy and ICT, yet find they have limited opportunity to practice these skills due to the nature of their jobs. Similarly, given the central involvement of a trade union in one of our case studies, we note the findings of Wanrooy et al (2013) that unionised workplaces and those in the public sector are more likely to display higher levels of training. 2.14.

The overwhelming picture from the literature is one of employer discrimination towards older workers and a reluctance to plan for the demographic changes highlighted earlier in this review (see, inter alia, Martin et al, 2014; Parry and Tyson 2010; Taylor 2013). Loretto and White (2006) argue that there is an ‘enactment gap’ between the stated equality policies of organisations and actual practice and behaviour on the other (see also McVittie et al, 2003). Van Dalen and Henkens (2005) remind us, however, that some employees hold even stronger stereotypical views than senior managers.

Yet, again, we have to be careful not to fall into the stereotyping trap ourselves and condemn all workplaces. One study that has particular resonance in the light of our findings is McBride’s (2011) research on female workers’ access to training in the National Health Service. She highlighted the positive influence of ‘enthusiastic local actors’ (corporate staff, workforce development managers and external actors) who were facilitating women’s training and development (ibid: 543).

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CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence – Adult learning and development.

Two Types of Learning Training and development efforts in industry have not always distinguished between cognitive learning and emotional learning, but such a distinction is important for effective practice. For instance, consider the example of the engineer whose career was stymied because he was shy, introverted, and totally absorbed in the technical aspects of his job. Through cognitive learning, he might come to understand that it would be better for him to consult other people more, make connections, and build relationships. But just knowing he should do these things would not enable him to do them. The ability to do these things depends on emotional competence, which requires emotional learning as well as cognitive learning.

Emotional incompetence often results from habits deeply learned early in life. These automatic habits are set in place as a normal part of living, as experience shapes the brain. As people acquire their habitual repertoire of thought, feeling, and action, the neural connections that support these are strengthened, becoming dominant pathways for nerve impulses. Connections that are unused become weakened, while those that people use over and over grow increasingly strong.

When these habits have been so heavily learned, the underlying neural circuitry becomes the brain’s default option at any moment with what a person does automatically and spontaneously, often with little awareness of choosing to do so. Thus, for the shy engineer, diffidence is a habit that must be overcome and replaced with a new habit, self-confidence. Emotional capacities like empathy or flexibility differ from cognitive abilities because they draw on different brain areas. Purely cognitive abilities are based in the neocortex. But with social and emotional competencies, additional brain areas are involved, mainly the circuitry that runs from the emotional centre’s particularly the amygdala deep in the centre of the brain up to the prefrontal lobes, the brain’s executive centre.

Effective learning for emotional competence has to re-tune these circuits. Cognitive learning involves fitting new data and insights into existing frameworks of association and understanding, extending and enriching the corresponding neural circuitry. But emotional learning involves that and more, it requires that we also engage the neural circuitry where our social and emotional habit repertoire is stored.

Changing habits such as learning to approach people positively instead of avoiding them, to listen better, or to give feedback skilfully, is a more challenging task than simply adding new information to old.

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CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

Role of Educators

Educator in RCC to group of seminar attendees in conference hall.

Introduction

It may be suggested that the role of educators through qualitative research Garcia & Quek, (1997) and the mandate of Higher Education, in the context of social debates relates to the rise of populism as suggested by Muller, (2016).

Can society create a specific purpose for Higher Education without negating either populism or elitism boundaries? According to Bess and Dee (2008) who suggest to organisational learning approaches– e.g. cognitive conceptions, cultural conceptions may have become entangled within heterogeneous subgroups ideals towards the motivational (Wijnia, et al. (2011) collaborative learning process?

Subjectivity that is naturally imposed on research? 

Educators observations on controlling behaviors (Wijnia, Loyens, & Derous 2011) with the view to maintain learner engagement (Hung 2011) requires further research into the understanding of pedagogy engagement and achievement.  According to Orey (2010)

to enable the adoption of future behaviour change (Wood 2000) the predication towards learning stagey approaches will support achievement; ‘’ “the accreditation and certification of knowledge” (Brennan, 2012, p. 197)

This support Cohen et al (2013), ‘’the search for the truth’’ we as educators will explore as our current and previous experience, subjective reasoning and current epistemology research (Mouly 1978). Critical reflection provides the individual to self-challenge, and reflect on their own beliefs.

How can critical rationale emphasises/justify our decisions making from inherent core beliefs? “Incremental fluctuation or road running” (Brookfield, 1994) as we journey on Doctorate program, we attempt a change in our decision making and research techniques.

According to McKay and Dunn (2015) they refer to students being less inclined to reflect well during early development, further suggesting that they would focusing more on descriptive than critically reflective insights.

Conclusion

Hampden-Turner (1970) suggest that through the lens of social science, we view ourselves as human beings being or becoming biased and neglecting qualities. We are as Blumer (1969) Woods (1983: 15–16) suggest we create our intended actions to reach a result, and justify these action by our interpretation of its meaning through the activity.

Question

How do we self-organise, when addressing collaborative and multi-perspectival approaches to educational research?

Reference

Borman, K. M., LeCompte, M. D., & Goetz, J. P. (1986). Ethnographic and qualitative research design and why it doesn’t work. American behavioral scientist, 30(1), 42-57.

Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2013). Research methods in education. Routledge.

Checkland, P., & Holwell, S. (1998). Action research: its nature and validity. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 11(1), 9-21.

Eisenhart, M., & Towne, L. (2003). Contestation and change in national policy on “scientifically based” education research. Educational researcher, 32(7), 31-38.

Elo, S., & Kyngäs, H. (2008). The qualitative content analysis process. Journal of advanced nursing, 62(1), 107-115.

Garcia, L., & Quek, F. (1997). Qualitative research in information systems: time to be subjective? In Information systems and qualitative research (pp. 444-465). Springer US.

Hung, W. (2011). Theory to reality: A few issues in implementing problem-based learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 59(4), 529-552.

Lund, T. (2005) The qualitative-quantitative distinction: some comments.  Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 49(2), 115-132. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00313830500048790

Müller, J. W. (2016). Trump, Erdoğan, Farage: The attractions of populism for politicians, the dangers for democracy. The Guardian. https://www. theguardian. com/books/2016/sep/02/trump-erdogan-farage-theattractions-of-populism-for-politicians-the-dangers-for-democracy Accessed, 18.

Wijnia, L., Loyens, S. M., & Derous, E. (2011). Investigating effects of problem-based versus lecture-based learning environments on student motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36(2), 101-113.

Wood, W. (2000). Attitude change: Persuasion and social influence. Annual review of psychology, 51(1), 539-570.

 

 

 

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CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

Self-Efficacy, Motivation, and Performance

Excited african American woman sit at desk feel euphoric win online lottery, happy black woman overjoyed get mail at laptop being promoted at work, biracial girl amazed read good news at computer

The role of self-efficacy in motivation and performance has been increasingly explored since Bandura’s (1977a, 1977b) original publications. Self-efficacy refers to, “People’s judgments of their capabilities to organise and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances” (Bandura, 1986, p. 391). Stated differently, we might say that self-efficacy involves one’s beliefs about accomplishing a task. Research shows that self-efficacy predicts such outcomes as cognitive skill learning, smoking cessation, pain tolerance, athletic performance, career choices, assertiveness, coping with feared events, recovery from heart attack, and sales performance (Bandura, 1986; Maddux, 1993; Schunk, 1989).

Self-efficacy Theory

Bandura (1977a) hypothesized that self-efficacy affects choice of activities, effort, persistence, and achievement. Compared with persons who doubt their capabilities, those with high self-efficacy for accomplishing a task participate more readily, work harder, persist longer when they encounter difficulties, and achieve at a higher level. People acquire information to appraise self-efficacy from their performances, vicarious (observational) experiences, forms of persuasion, and physiological reactions. One’s performances offer reliable guides for assessing self-efficacy. Successes raise efficacy and failures lower it, but once a strong sense of efficacy is developed a failure may not have much impact (Bandura, 1986).

Allowing individuals to set goals can raise self-efficacy, motivation, and performance, presumably because self-set goals enhance goal commitment. Schunk (1985) gave learning-disabled sixth graders subtraction instruction. Some set daily performance goals, others had comparable goals assigned, and those in a third condition worked without goals. Self-set goals led to the highest judgments of confidence for attaining goals (a type of self-efficacy measure), as well as the highest levels of self-efficacy and skilful performance.

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CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

Creative Practice

A contribution to knowledge is more like dictionary definition, your research and/or writing helps to advance understanding about a particular topic. 

People know a little or a lot more about a topic because they’ve engaged with your work, read what you’ve written and you’ve been able to explain to readers, then that the work adds up to a contribution – it takes the field somewhere – through

  • a defensible and well-designed inquiry, investigation, exploration, interrogation, deconstruction, experimentation, testing out, bringing things together that were previously apart and so on
  • a thorough analysis which is explained and available for scrutiny 
  • the development of a credible and clearly ordered argument that explains the results, which leads to 
  • a conclusion about the specific place of the results within the existing research on the topic – and how it complements, contradicts, adds something new, challenges, questions, confirms, reframes etc what is already known. 
  • pointers for further development in policy or practice or further research. 

Claim

A claim is a statement or action geared to get something to happen. 

Now in research, claims have quite a specific meaning. A claim has to backed by evidence and argument, and we researchers understand that a claim is always subject to interpretation. However, in some disciplines, a claim might also be a truth claim, well certainly of the this-is-the-best-version-of-truth-we-have-now-but-it-is-always-up-for-change variety. 

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CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

You’ve submitted, now it’s wait time…

now waiting

You’ve submitted, now it’s wait time your work is a portrayal of your understanding.

There is, rightly, a lot of emphasis on getting WORK written and submitted. That end-SUBMSSION writing can be tough and it’s important that people do get as much help as they want and need to complete.

There’s not enough said about the waiting that happens after you’ve handed in. Anticipating the viva to come. Not knowing what you’re going to be asked. Looking back over the text and seeing all the little typos. Identifying places where you could have said something else, something different, possibly something better. Worrying about whether its going to be minor or major corrections. Hoping, against the odds, it’s going to be no corrections at all. Waiting.

We live across mood-worlds. We live through a plethora of feelings. Some moods and feelings are dramatic and intense; their presence is emphatic, insistent. Other feelings are relatively inconspicuous because they occur too often to be noticeable, or because they saturate a particular situation. Some are just a low hum. We don’t notice the mood of the place where we work until it is somehow ‘off ’. But the day- to- day mood of our workplace isn’t the absence of mood. We know this because it is significantly different from the atmosphere in our homes, even though we might not notice that mood either. All of the feelings we experience are relational, and to a greater or lesser extent those relations are deeply entwined with the social worlds that we inhabit.

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CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

The ABC of organising your time

We keep looking for better ways to manage our time

“Lots of us scholarly peeps struggle to find time to write. ‘Time’ is on pretty well everyone’s list, so we keep looking for better ways to manage it,  so that we can get more of it to write. “

My proprietary university software seems to want to help – it now issues a weekly bulletin, whether I want it or not, telling me how much time I’ve spend “collaborating” compared to the amount of time I’ve spent on screen. The stats are pretty misleading given that collaboration seems to include any email I’ve sent – this is an algorithmic joke, right – very few emails are actually collaboration. Interaction maybe.

Of course, there are apps which do help keep track of time. I’ve tried a lot of them and none of them work for me. They seem to require time and energy that I’m not really prepared to donate to time-tracking. I did once keep a diary for a week of everything I did which, in the end, didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know.

Whilst a lot of people like time-tracking devices and find them helpful, I’m not one of them. So please don’t tell me your favourite fail-safe time-tracking device, because I’m really not going to go there.

I’m much more your calendar/diary blocking type. Blocking out all of the meetings, teaching, research, visits etc so I can see what time is left, then I apply the old ABC rule.

You’ve probably heard the ABC rule but it bears repeating for those who haven’t.

A, writing time is when you are at your focused and insightful best – it’s thinking writing, working out arguments, structuring, putting bits and pieces together, composing your tiny text, knocking out a first draft, doing some serious revising, it’s challenging reading. I put peer reviewing and examining PhDS as A time. Preparing research bids and developing teaching courses requires A time as well.

B writing time is when you are able to get things done, but the task is not too challenging. You can concentrate but you don’t expect to have to do anything particularly creative or taxing. I put proofreading, entering references into Endnote, searching for literature, basic summarising, note-taking, reading reports and straightforward tasks, as B time.

Some teaching preparation can go in here, as does a lot of marking. You still have to be alert and thinking in B time but the tasks are less demanding of high energy and creative engagement.

C writing time is associated necessary writing, mundane stuff, ‘switch off ‘most of the brain stuff. So it’s generally most of the admin and emailing. Interacting emails.

Real collaboration via email is probably B time.

Because we can get trapped in C time, as we respond like well-trained rats on a treadmill to the latest urgent request, we often have to take deliberate action to make sure that we have A time. 

But here’s the thing about A time. You have to know when you are likely to be at your best, or when you can summon up something approximating your best. I have no children at home, so I’m a morning A time person. But I know people who are afternoon people, and I know a lot of night-time people. However whether A time is morning afternoon or night-time it is often about what’s possible. People with children often do their A time after everyone else, including when their partner has gone to bed. A few can get A time while children are at school, but many carers also rely on squeezing in A time a few times a year when they can get consecutive ‘day time’ to work in A mode. People with full-time jobs, including we academics, also have to work hard on finding A time.

The key thing really is to make sure that you programme in some regular A and B time so that you can keep connected with your major project. If you can only get A time in blocks a few times a year, alternatively doing weekly B time is generally enough to keep your project on track.

I also now add in a D time to my week. D time is time which appears to be devoted to doing something other than writing, research, teaching or admin, but it is actually also time when something might just come to you. Lots of people use D time for exercise.

Now I am sure the ABCD approach won’t work for everyone.

It will not work for everyone. any more than those time tracking aps work for me, but it might be of help to some of you. And for those you who want to try ABCD, the thing is to make sure that you block out your ABC and D time, and then stick to these slots for a while to get into the habit of working this pattern.

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CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

Pillars of tertiary student engagement

CYPW training levy

Introduction

The notion of the ‘student experience’ in higher education has a long and rich history. 

Systematic measuring of the student experience has historically focused on pedagogical approaches, educational practices, and student evaluations of teaching practice (Grebennikov and Shah 2013). 

Measuring attribute-level evaluations of the student experience has allowed institutions to quantify and monitor the extent to which the institution is meeting students’ baseline expectations. Student satisfaction is a key benchmark metric of institutional performance and it continues to be prioritized in government policy;

 

Student engagement has been linked to an array of traditional success factors such as increased retention (Khademi Ashkzari, Piryaei, and Kamelifar 2018); high impact and lifelong learning (Artess, Mellors-Bourne, and Hooley 2017); curricular relevance (Trowler 2010); enhanced institutional reputation (Kuh et al. 2006); increased citizenship behaviours (Zepke, Leach, and Butler 2014); student perseverance (Khademi Ashkzari, Piryaei, and Kamelifar 2018); and work-readiness (Krause and Coates 2008). It has also been linked to more subjective and holistic outcomes for students themselves including; social and personal growth and development (Zwart 2009); transformative learning (Kahu 2013); enhanced pride, inclusiveness and belonging (Wentzel 2012); student wellbeing (Field 2009)

 

Behavioural engagement

The behavioural dimension of engagement is defined as the observable academic performance and participatory actions and activities (Dessart, Veloutsou, and Morgan-Thomas 2015; Schaufeli et al. 2002). Positive behavioural engagement is measured through observable academic performance including: student’s positive conduct; attendance; effort to stay on task; contribution; participation in class discussions; involvement in academic and co-curricular activities; time spent on work; and perseverance and resiliency when faced with challenging tasks (Kahu et al. 2015; Klem and Connell 2004). Therefore, behaviourally engaged students exhibit proactive participatory behaviours through their involvement and participation in university life and extracurricular citizenship activities (Ashkzari, Piryaei, and Kamelifar 2018). The behavioural dimension is the most frequently measured dimension within national barometers of the student experience (Kuh 2009; Zepke 2014)

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CYPW, HSC and Dementia Care Training

Employee Wellbeing

Five cheerful diverse multiracial millennial businesspeople students holding hands standing opposite wall smiling and looking at camera. Team building unity support teamwork or common goal concept

Employee workplace wellbeing, which can be viewed as positive sentiments experienced at work, can be used as an indicator to measure the mental health of staff in an organisation (Chari et al., 2018) and is very important for ensuring the success of an organisation (Daniels and Harris, 2000; Su and Swanson, 2019).

Studies have shown that employee workplace wellbeing can affect attitudes and behaviours (Sharma et al., 2016), such as supportive green behaviours (Su and Swanson, 2019), loyalty (Chiu et al., 2013), and turnover intention (Gong et al., 2018). Employee workplace wellbeing can also yield outcomes at the organisational level, such as improved organisational performance (Taris and Schreurs, 2009). Hence, in recent years, employee workplace wellbeing has become a key concern for both academics in the field of organisational behaviour and managers in organisations (Zheng et al., 2015). Given its significance, the study on employee workplace wellbeing has continued to increase over the past few decades.

Relating to the prevalence of employee workplace wellbeing, researchers have primarily focused on its favourable antecedents, such as individual-, group-, leader-, and organisation-level workplace resources (Nielsen et al., 2017). In particular, the importance of motivational resources in influencing work motivation and employee workplace wellbeing has been emphasized by organisational psychology scholars (Boncquet et al., 2020).

The future work self is defined as an image or a reflection of an individual in future work expectations and ambitions (Strauss et al., 2012). It is the embodiment and extension of the individual “possible self ” in the workplace (Markus and Nurius, 1986). Strauss et al. (2012) hold that it includes two dimensions, namely, salience and elaboration. An elaborate future work self is complicated and comprises manifold components, which is difficult to measure (Strauss et al., 2012).

Therefore, considering the research theme of our investigation and the critical role of the salient future work self in the motivation process of individual self-concept, we focused on the salient dimension of future work self in this study (i.e., the degree of clarity and easy imagination of the future work self, contributing to positive feelings about the self; Strauss et al., 2012).

Prior empirical studies have also used the salient dimension to measure future work self (Taber and Blankemeyer, 2015; Zhang et al., 2016; Guan et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2019). When individuals perceive their possible self, they experience increased personal motivation, which has an effect on their career-related behaviours (Hoyle and Sherrill, 2006). Earlier studies have demonstrated that the future work self positively predicts career-related outcomes (Taber and Blankemeyer, 2015), career adaptability (Guan et al., 2014), performance (Lin et al., 2016; Oh, 2020), the meaning of life, calling (Zhang et al., 2016), employee creativity (Yang et al., 2019), and job search behaviours (Kao et al., 2020).

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