Teacher beliefs have been shown to play a major role in shaping educational practice, especially in the area of grammar teaching―an area of language education that teachers have particularly strong views on. Traditional grammar education is regularly criticized for its focus on rules-of-thumb rather than on insights from modern linguistics, and for its focus on lower order thinking. A growing body of literature on grammar teaching promotes the opposite, arguing for more linguistic conceptual knowledge and reflective or higher order thinking in grammar pedagogy. In the Netherlands, this discussion plays an important role in the national development of a new curriculum. This study explores current Dutch teachers’ beliefs on the use of modern linguistic concepts and reflective judgment in grammar teaching. To this end, we conducted a questionnaire among 110 Dutch language teachers from secondary education and analyzed contemporary school textbooks likely to reflect existing teachers’ beliefs. Results indicate that teachers generally appear to favor stimulating reflective judgement in grammar teaching, although implementing activities aimed at fostering reflective thinking seems to be difficult for two reasons: (1) existing textbooks fail to implement sufficient concepts from modern linguistics, nor do they stimulate reflective thinking; (2) teachers lack sufficient conceptual knowledge from linguistics necessary to adequately address reflective thinking.
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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: High-velocity low-amplitude thrust spinal manipulation (SM) is a recommended and commonly used manual therapy intervention in physiotherapy. Beliefs surrounding the safety and effectiveness of SM have challenged its use, and even advocated for its abandonment. Our study aimed to investigate the knowledge and beliefs surrounding SM by Italian physiotherapists compared with similar practitioners in other countries.METHODS: An online survey with 41 questions was adapted from previous surveys and was distributed via a mailing list of the Italian Physiotherapists Association (March 22-26, 2020). The questionnaire was divided into 4 sections to capture information on participant demographics, utilization, potential barriers, and knowledge about SM. Questions were differentiated between spinal regions. Attitudes towards different spinal regions, attributes associated with beliefs, and the influence of previous educational background were each evaluated.RESULTS: Of the 7398 registered physiotherapists, 575 (7.8%) completed the survey and were included for analysis. The majority of respondents perceived SM as safe and effective when applied to the thoracic (74.1%) and lumbar (72.2%) spines; whereas, a smaller proportion viewed SM to the upper cervical spine (56.8%) as safe and effective. Respondents reported they were less likely to provide and feel comfortable with upper cervical SM (respectively, 27.5% and 48.5%) compared to the thoracic (respectively, 52.2% and 74.8%) and lumbar spines (respectively, 46.3% and 74.3%). Most physiotherapists (70.4%) agreed they would perform additional screening prior to upper cervical SM compared to other spinal regions. Respondents who were aware of clinical prediction rules were more likely to report being comfortable with SM (OR 2.38-3.69) and to perceive it as safe (OR 1.75-3.12). Finally, physiotherapists without musculoskeletal specialization, especially those with a traditional manual therapy background, were more likely to perform additional screening prior to SM, use SM less frequently, report being less comfortable performing SM, and report upper cervical SM as less safe (p < 0.001).DISCUSSION: The beliefs and attitudes of physiotherapists surrounding the use of SM are significantly different when comparing the upper cervical spine to other spinal regions. An educational background in traditional manual therapy significantly influences beliefs and attitudes. We propose an updated framework on evidence-based SM.
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L1 grammar teaching worldwide often takes the form of traditional grammar teaching with decontextualized parsing exercises and rules of thumb. Some researchers have proposed enriching such forms of grammar teaching by relating traditional grammatical concepts to underlying metaconcepts from linguistic theory. The merits of such an approach have become apparent in recent intervention studies, but the question remains how teachers perceive such forms of grammar teaching, which is of particular importance for curriculum development. The present study investigated Dutch teachers’ beliefs in focus groups and a national survey (N = 127). It is found that Dutch language teachers see important benefits of a metaconceptual approach to grammar teaching, particularly as a means to improve students’ grammatical understanding. However, results also indicate that while teachers may see clear pedagogical and conceptual advantages of working based on underlying metaconcepts, their own teaching practice appears to be much more traditional. This discrepancy is explained by assuming that contextual factors have a restraining effect on what teachers can or want to do in reality. Once such contextual factors no longer play a part, teachers’ views tend to be much more geared towards a metaconceptual approach. The paper concludes with some implications for future research.
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This article aims to provide an insight into how students construct their professional knowledge and what the content and nature of personal professional knowledge is through the concept of PPTs (personal professional theories).
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Our ageing population is the result of two demographic trends: decreasing fertility levels and higher life expectancy. As a corollary to these demographic trends, the working population is ageing and shrinking at the same time. This development will affect the performance of organizations in the next decades. As today‟s economy and the performance of organizations is mainly based on knowledge, the ageing workforce will mainly affect the organizations ability to be knowledge productive. As current knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC) literature hardly addresses the issue of ageing, the aim of this paper is to explore this topic in order to formulate an agenda for further KM/IC research. Combining the temporary consequences of ageing (brain drain and talent gap) and the false assumptions about the capabilities of older workers (older workers contribute negatively to a firm‟s performance), the current ageing of the working population reveals two main risks for organizations and management: underutilization of older employees, and loss of knowledge. Based on the exploration of these two risks in this paper, several issues are proposed for further research. These issues focus on the specific competences of the older knowledge worker, the implications for talent development programs, the benefits of inter-generational learning, and effectiveness of knowledge retention strategies. Today, the main fear is that large scale retirement will lead to a shortage of skills, talents, knowledge. Although acknowlegding the risks and threats of this brain drain, the current temporary ageing of our workforce might also contribute to a structural better valuation of the potential of the older knowledge worker and its specific contribution to the process of knowledge creation. In an ageing knowledge economy, increased understanding about the abilities and distinct qualities of older workers will provide opportunities for organizations to enhance knowledge productivity and thus gain competitiveness.
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Background: The aim of this study is to validate a newly developed nurses' self-efficacy sources inventory. We test the validity of a five-dimensional model of sources of self-efficacy, which we contrast with the traditional four-dimensional model based on Bandura's theoretical concepts. Methods: Confirmatory factor analysis was used in the development of the newly developed self-efficacy measure. Model fit was evaluated based upon commonly recommended goodness-of-fit indices, including the χ2 of the model fit, the Root Mean Square Error of approximation (RMSEA), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR), and the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). Results: All 22 items of the newly developed five-factor sources of self-efficacy have high factor loadings (range .40-.80). Structural equation modeling showed that a five-factor model is favoured over the four-factor model. Conclusions and implications: Results of this study show that differentiation of the vicarious experience source into a peer- and expert based source reflects better how nursing students develop self-efficacy beliefs. This has implications for clinical learning environments: a better and differentiated use of self-efficacy sources can stimulate the professional development of nursing students.
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This paper presents the findings of a study conducted among primary geography teacher educators. The research examines the perceptions of educators of primary teacher students’ desired and achieved levels of substantial knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and beliefs about the subject of geography. The findings indicate that primary teacher educators do not view their students as having significant knowledge about geography. They believe their students have better syntactic knowledge and beliefs about the subject of geography, however. Teacher educators believe that more hours of teaching and more attention to subject knowledge could raise the quality of primary teacher training in geography. Artikel is te lezen middels aankooplink: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10382046.2014.967110#.VNDEHVRgXcs
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Background: Collaboration between Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) and parents is considered best practice for children with developmental disorders. However, such collaborative approach is not yet implemented in therapy for children with developmental language disorders (DLD) in the Netherlands. Improving Dutch SLTs’ collaboration with parents requires insight in factors that influence the way SLTs work with parents. Aims: To explore the specific beliefs of Dutch SLTs that influence how they collaborate with parents of children with DLD. Methods and procedures: We conducted three online focus groups with 17 SLTs using a reflection tool and fictional examples of parents to prompt their thoughts, feelings and actions on specific scenarios. Data were organised using the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF). Outcomes and results: We identified 34 specific beliefs across nine TDF domains on how SLTs collaborate with parents of children with DLD. The results indicate that SLTs hold beliefs on how to support SLTs in collaborating with parents but also conflicting specific beliefs regarding collaborative work with parents. The latter relate to SLTs’ perspectives on their professional role and identity, their approach towards parents, and their confidence and competence in working collaboratively with parents.
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PCK is seen as the transformation of content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge into a different type of knowledge that is used to develop and carry out teaching strategies. To gain more insight into the extent to which PCK is content specific, the PCK about more topics or concepts should be compared. However, researchers have rarely compared teachers’ concrete PCK about more than one topic. To examine the content dependency of PCK, we captured the PCK of sixteen experienced Dutch history teachers about two historical contexts (i.e. topics) using interviews and Content Representation questionnaires. Analysis reveals that all history teachers’ PCK about the two contexts overlaps, although the degree of overlap differs. Teachers with relatively more overlap are driven by their overarching subject related goals and less by the historical context they teach. We discuss the significance of these outcomes for the role of teaching orientation as a part of PCK.
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Meaning-making and sense-making are generally assumed to be part of students’ personal vocational knowledge development, since they contribute to both students’ socialisation in a vocation and students’ personalisation of concepts, values and beliefs regarding that vocation. However, how students in vocational education acquire meaning and make sense of vocational knowledge is not explained. Furthermore, examples of what these processes entail in the context of vocational education are lacking. A multiple case study was performed to explore students’ meaning-making and sense-making in classroom interactions in Dutch senior secondary vocational education. Our results show that meaning-making is a process in which students interpret vocational knowledge by explicating and clarifying this knowledge. Sense-making is perceived to be a process in which students concretise vocational knowledge by testing and justifying this knowledge. A research model was developed to describe how students make meaning and sense of vocational knowledge in interaction with practitioners.
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