scholarly journals The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the COVID-impacted 2020-21 School Year

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Esteves ◽  
Christopher J. Buttimer ◽  
Farah Faruqi ◽  
Aïcha Soukab ◽  
Raelee Fourkiller ◽  
...  

To develop an in-depth, nuanced understanding of what teaching was like during the COVID-impacted 2020-21 academic school year, we interviewed 57 U.S. PK-12 teachers from across the country in public, charter, and private schools, at different grade levels, and in different subject areas. The primary message we heard from teachers is that they have not been valued as partners in designing our educational response to COVID. Specifically, the following three themes emerged from our interviews: 1.) exclusion from decision-making processes is demoralizing to teachers, especially when combined with worsening working conditions and widening inequalities; 2.) ignoring the concerns of teachers led to policymakers and school leaders advancing several seriously ill-considered ideas over the objections of practicing teachers; and 3.) teachers have developed a variety of effective instructional strategies in response to the challenging conditions of COVID. Delta is already disrupting school openings across the country. The school systems with the most effective approaches to pandemic schooling over the next year and beyond will be those that listen seriously to the concerns and insights of teachers and include them in design and decision-making.

Author(s):  
C. L. Yeung ◽  
C. F. Cheung ◽  
W. M. Wang ◽  
E. Tsui

This paper presents an overview of current decision making approaches. For some approaches abstract information is provided, whereas others require a large amount of labor and time resources to facilitate decision making. However, few address the issues of assisting participants in learning how to make decisions and provide prompt responses to the situations. Harnessing lessons learned from making inappropriate decisions is expensive. To redress this problem, this paper presents a pilot study of the investigation of the psychological behaviors of humans to improve decision making processes with the use of organizational narrative simulation (ONS). By using the ONS method, possible and plausible narrative-based environments can be simulated. Participants can take actions based on their decisions; they can also observe the changes and the consequences. The decisions for handling new challenges generated purposely are validated in a trial that allows prompt responses to the situations. The ONS method is implemented in a selected reference site. The implementation processes, findings, and benefits are presented.


Author(s):  
Carlos Quental ◽  
Luis Borges Gouveia

The e-participation can be considered an area under constant focus. This paper presents a brief analysis of e-participation and e-democracy, and proposes a platform for electronic participation based on social media principles, designed to gather teachers and unions in a shared deliberative space. Interaction and collaboration are supported through questions, answers, suggestions, comments, votes, surveys and live debates. This proposal is intended to narrow the communication gap between teachers and unions and encourage teachers to become involved and participate in educational debates and important topics about the profession. The platform presented enables effective participation in formal and informal decision-making processes via the Internet, either as standalone or widgets with full integration into any Website. It is under constant development and will be improved along with this project. The actors in this study were chosen from the National Federation of Teachers due to its representativeness regarding associate teachers and provide an opportunity to assess the platform potential to support participation in a union context. The platform will be used in a trade union linked to teachers of several grade levels to understand their participation in this organization.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Quental ◽  
Luis Borges Gouveia

The e-participation can be considered an area under constant focus. This paper presents a brief analysis of e-participation and e-democracy, and proposes a platform for electronic participation based on social media principles, designed to gather teachers and unions in a shared deliberative space. Interaction and collaboration are supported through questions, answers, suggestions, comments, votes, surveys and live debates. This proposal is intended to narrow the communication gap between teachers and unions and encourage teachers to become involved and participate in educational debates and important topics about the profession. The platform presented enables effective participation in formal and informal decision-making processes via the Internet, either as standalone or widgets with full integration into any Website. It is under constant development and will be improved along with this project. The actors in this study were chosen from the National Federation of Teachers due to its representativeness regarding associate teachers and provide an opportunity to assess the platform potential to support participation in a union context. The platform will be used in a trade union linked to teachers of several grade levels to understand their participation in this organization.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-41
Author(s):  
C. L. Yeung ◽  
C. F. Cheung ◽  
W. M. Wang ◽  
E. Tsui

This paper presents an overview of current decision making approaches. For some approaches abstract information is provided, whereas others require a large amount of labor and time resources to facilitate decision making. However, few address the issues of assisting participants in learning how to make decisions and provide prompt responses to the situations. Harnessing lessons learned from making inappropriate decisions is expensive. To redress this problem, this paper presents a pilot study of the investigation of the psychological behaviors of humans to improve decision making processes with the use of organizational narrative simulation (ONS). By using the ONS method, possible and plausible narrative-based environments can be simulated. Participants can take actions based on their decisions; they can also observe the changes and the consequences. The decisions for handling new challenges generated purposely are validated in a trial that allows prompt responses to the situations. The ONS method is implemented in a selected reference site. The implementation processes, findings, and benefits are presented.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Gerd Buziek

Abstract. As of March 2020, Esri Germany administers the Berlin based Robert Koch-Institute official COVID-19 Dashboard (Figure 1). During Esri’s evolvement both, organizational and technical processes have had to be built from scratch. Our objective was to keep society, as well as the disaster response units 24/7 informed about the spatiotemporal patterns of Corona pandemic. To achieve this several challenges had to be overcome. These challenges ranged from data gathering to data dissemination, from the delivery of COVID-19 information to the general public, as well as to the crisis prevention teams, and from the communication to individuals as well as to various specialists such as data journalists. Having a COVID-19 dashboard online results in a lot of publicity to the provider, but also requires a lot of effort to deliver a reliable and sustainable COVID-19 service, as many external decision making processes depend on the dashboard and the data which drives it. This presentation is not only about how we provided this service but will also include a look at the lessons learnt and how we can be best prepared for future spatiotemporal phenomena to help crisis response and perhaps even prevention.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Reich ◽  
Christopher J. Buttimer ◽  
Dan Coleman ◽  
Richard D Colwell ◽  
Farah Faruqi ◽  
...  

To more deeply understand the practice and professional experiences of educators during the 2020 extended school closures, we interviewed 40 teachers from across the country in public, charter, and private schools, at different grade levels, and in different subject areas. From our conversations, three key themes emerged: 1) Student Motivation: Teachers struggled to motivate their students through two layers of computer screens; 2) Professional Loss and Burnout: As they lost familiar means of teaching, teachers also lost a fundamental sense of their own efficacy and professional identity;and, 3) Exacerbated Inequities: This sense of loss grew deeper as teachers witnessed the dramatic intensification of the societal inequalities that had always shaped their students’ lives. Effective planning for school reopening in Fall 2020 will require understanding and addressing these challenges facets of teachers’ experience. We propose five design considerations to plan for resilience: center equity, focus on relationship-building, address student motivation, address staff motivation and burnout, and mitigate uncertainty.Full, de-identified transcripts of most teacher interviews are available at https://osf.io/2fjtc/. Other researchers who have interviewed teachers this spring and summer are encouraged to share their data there as well.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zul-Atfi Ismail

Purpose The conventional e-complaint method provides a platform that contains multiple data sources of an infrastructure project, including building facilities, associated asset documentation of the asset. However, the conventional e-complaint method practised by the Development and Facilities Management Unit (UPPF) faces issues due to management deficiencies and negligent staff to handle operations and maintenance processes within facilities management at Malaysian Polytechnic. This paper aims to identify the different maintenance management system (MMS) approaches using information and communication technology that is equipped with decision-making processes. Design/methodology/approach This research presents eight cases of the use of e-complaint in major facilities management platforms in Malaysian Polytechnic, identifying the major problems using the conventional e-complaint method, the current technologies realised, as well as the procedures for learning and improving e-complaint to the Polytechnic institution. The major conclusion drawn from the interview results was that there is a lack of comprehensive MMSs that integrate operations and maintenance processes within facilities management and software programming to provide guidelines for decision-making processes. Findings The findings demonstrate that the conventional e-complaint method cannot be used effectively to support the defect diagnosis process during maintenance assessment and development. The case studies further demonstrated that the conventional e-complaint method will be particularly led to inadequate strategic decision-making to analyse information to improve the maintenance project outcomes for Malaysian Polytechnic’s buildings, thereby, ignoring the accuracy and reliability of information for operations and maintenance. New MMS tools are suggested from the findings and lessons learned as a good practice to reduce defect repetition on the design specifications used and construction methods practised. Originality/value Due to the increasingly complex nature of projects in terms of size and information technology, realising these current technologies would require a learning process for all stakeholders involved in financial and managing assets. This research proposes stepped change and learning opportunity for maintenance value maximisation and delivery, management and operation efficiency using MMS. The new MMS can potentially transform operational and maintenance processes within facilities management into one of the most sophisticated technologies by accommodating data recordings, such as complaints and specific items needed for maintenance through the internet and intranet to facilitate improved execution of Polytechnic’s building activities.


Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Roche ◽  
Arkady Zgonnikov ◽  
Laura M. Morett

Purpose The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the social and cognitive underpinnings of miscommunication during an interactive listening task. Method An eye and computer mouse–tracking visual-world paradigm was used to investigate how a listener's cognitive effort (local and global) and decision-making processes were affected by a speaker's use of ambiguity that led to a miscommunication. Results Experiments 1 and 2 found that an environmental cue that made a miscommunication more or less salient impacted listener language processing effort (eye-tracking). Experiment 2 also indicated that listeners may develop different processing heuristics dependent upon the speaker's use of ambiguity that led to a miscommunication, exerting a significant impact on cognition and decision making. We also found that perspective-taking effort and decision-making complexity metrics (computer mouse tracking) predict language processing effort, indicating that instances of miscommunication produced cognitive consequences of indecision, thinking, and cognitive pull. Conclusion Together, these results indicate that listeners behave both reciprocally and adaptively when miscommunications occur, but the way they respond is largely dependent upon the type of ambiguity and how often it is produced by the speaker.


2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erinn Finke ◽  
Kathryn Drager ◽  
Elizabeth C. Serpentine

Purpose The purpose of this investigation was to understand the decision-making processes used by parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) related to communication-based interventions. Method Qualitative interview methodology was used. Data were gathered through interviews. Each parent had a child with ASD who was at least four-years-old; lived with their child with ASD; had a child with ASD without functional speech for communication; and used at least two different communication interventions. Results Parents considered several sources of information for learning about interventions and provided various reasons to initiate and discontinue a communication intervention. Parents also discussed challenges introduced once opinions of the school individualized education program (IEP) team had to be considered. Conclusions Parents of children with ASD primarily use individual decision-making processes to select interventions. This discrepancy speaks to the need for parents and professionals to share a common “language” about interventions and the decision-making process.


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