Search results for: Conceptual framework

This paper presents the outcomes of an empirical investigation into the validity of Bryan Cunningham's thesis that the effectiveness of teacher mentoring is enhanced by a supportive institutional framework comprising eight ‘architectural design features’. It draws upon analyses of data from a mixed methods study of mentoring in the English Further Education sector. Data were generated via 40 semi-structured interviews with teachers, mentors and other stakeholders, and a national online survey of teachers of all subjects/vocational areas, completed by 392 respondents across all nine regions of England. The paper presents a reconceptualisation of the architecture for mentoring, which encompasses both a mentoring substructure and superstructure. Cunningham’s institutional architecture (reconceptualised as a mentoring substructure) is extended through the identification of additional design features, while limitations of the concept of an institutional mentoring architecture are exposed and evidence presented to show that a complementary superstructure is a necessary additional means of seeking to achieve optimally effective mentoring. A new research agenda is proposed to explore the extent to which the proposed mentoring substructure and superstructure are applicable in different professional and international contexts, and to identify common features of optimally supportive mentoring superstructures.

Guided in part by social-ecological analysis and social-cultural theory, engagement is conceptualized as a dynamic system of social and psychological constructs as well as a synergistic process. This conceptualization invites researchers, policymakers, and school-community leaders to develop improvement models that provide a more expansive, engagement-focused reach into students’ family, peer, and neighborhood ecologies.

This article reports on the research project 'Shifting conceptualisations of knowledge and learning in the integration of the new New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) in initial and continuing teacher education'. The project maps the learning processes of practitioner-researchers in their initiatives in the integration of the new NZC in their teacher education practices. This research focuses on teacher educators' narratives and strategies used to negotiate their theories/practices and subjectivities within the complexities and constraints of their own narratives, institutions and communities.

A type of studies called ‘Governance Studies’, ‘Governance Research’ or ‘Governance Perspective’ has recently evolved in German-speaking social sciences. The goal of this article is to make accessible the strand of research which has not yet been extensively published in languages other than German. Further, the article intends to explore its links and relationships to other European research approaches.