Paraxis on Geography Education in Nepal

This paper attempts to analyze the paradoxical view on geography education in Nepal. Praxis interplays the relationships between theory and practice-reflection in action in any academic discipline, like geography education. Geography education demonstrates the strategic linkages of content and pedagogy in teaching and research activities. Even now, geography occupies an important place not only in schools but also in university curricula. However, the easier it is to define geography, the harder it is to define geography education. Butt (2011) includes both parameters of geography (as a discipline) and education (as an activity) in the definition of geography education. This paper fulfills the objectives through systematic reviews of appropriate literature related to geography education. For this purpose, 50 documents were searched from different sources, such as Google, abstracts, keywords, and books. Only 15 papers and books were selected that gave pace to theories, methods, and pedagogical practices in geography education. The findings of this paper show that the definition of geography education is limited only to teaching geography in schools and colleges. In addition, teaching requires content knowledge (subject matters) related to geographic concepts, themes, traditions, tools and techniques, and contemporary issues related to climate change, environmental degradation, disasters, etc., in the curriculum. Pedagogical knowledge is also equally essential to deliver that content effectively to learners. Thus, geography provides the basis for choosing what content to teach at a particular level and, geography education helps to select teaching methods. It shows that the first is focused on the content and the second on pedagogy.

Reflection-in-action: Measuring ‘context’ in medical interpreting

Community interpreting scholarship has solidly established the importance of appreciating the nuances of context to effective interpreting practice (Angelelli, 2004; Wadensjo?, 1998). Several frameworks for identifying and articulating the way context affects interpreting work have been articulated (Dean & Pollard, 2011). What is less well documented is the way interpreters learn to develop an understanding of context and how that subsequently informs their practice. This article describes the development and implementation of a tool to assess interpreters’ facility in identifying and articulating context – specifically in healthcare settings. The activities and the assessment tool are grounded in the educational theories of Donald Schön and his foregrounding of the intuitive practice abilities of professionals. The resulting assessment tool was refined through its use in postgraduate courses in healthcare interpreting, where various aspects of the healthcare context were explained using videos of provider–patient interactions. Through reflective practice activities, students analysed their practical knowledge and skills and improved their context-based insight. Currently designed for signed language interpreters in medical settings based in the United States, this multi-component assessment tool can be adapted to various contexts in community interpreting.

Reimagining Otherness, Recreating the Public Space: Public Administration and the U.S.-Mexico Border

How can public administrators tasked with enforcing immigration laws bring care and commitment to human relationships and public connections? The contemporary anti-immigrant (anti-Other) “narrative” related to immigration policy is provided as exemplary socio-political-administrative terrain for exploring this question. Considering the undocumented alien as the “other” that possess a threat to the whole is problematic for democratic immigration policy making and governance. This paper suggests that pragmatism and Hannah Arendt’s political theory of publicness offer a theoretical groundwork for understanding and overcoming the destructive dynamics of “othering.” This framework can help administrators, through reflection in action and situational awareness, make sense of their daily practice. Finally, the discussion centers on lessons for street-level bureaucrats to reconsider the border and “others” under a new light, as constitutive of the public space.

The contribution of simulated patients to meaningful student learning

Introduction Communication training with simulated patients (SPs) is widely accepted as a valuable and effective means of teaching communication skills. However, it is unclear which elements within SP-student encounters make these learning experiences meaningful. This study focuses on the SP’s role during meaningful learning of the student by giving an in-depth understanding of the contribution of the SP from a student perspective. Methods Fifteen bachelor Technical Medicine students were interviewed. Technical medicine students become technical physicians who optimize individual patient care through the use of personalized technology. Their perceptions of meaningful learning experiences during SP-student encounters were explored through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results Three main themes were identified that described what students considered to be important for meaningful learning experiences. First, SPs provide implicit feedback-in-action. Through this, students received an impression of their communication during the encounter. Implicit feedback-in-action was perceived as an authentic reaction of the SPs. Second, implicit feedback-in-action could lead to a process of reflection-in-action, meaning that students reflect on their own actions during the consultation. Third, interactions with SPs contributed to students’ identity development, enabling them to know themselves on a professional and personal level. Discussion During SP encounters, students learn more than just communication skills; the interaction with SPs contributes to their professional and personal identity development. Primarily, the authentic response of an SP during the interaction provides students an understanding of how well they communicate. This raises issues whether standardizing SPs might limit opportunities for meaningful learning.

Exclusion from constructive alignment unmasked by emergency teaching

CONTEXT The research study was conducted at a contact-based, research-intensive university in South Africa, where the faculty of engineering has adopted a feedback-feedforward approach to improving engineering pedagogy through theoretically-supported, interdisciplinary and community-of-practice approaches. The outcomes-based curricula are designed to explicitly align teaching/learning activities, the intended learning outcomes and assessment tasks. The Covid-19 emergency remote teaching (ERT) phase has raised the question of the disjuncture between student perceptions and assessment performance during independent, remote learning.PURPOSE OR GOALA faculty-wide research initiative to determine how undergraduate engineering students were experiencing ERT revealed significant systemic challenges and heightened academic stress. Of particular concern in 2021 is the 2nd year cohort, whose entire 1st year was under ERT conditions. Poor first term assessment performance suggested the need to investigate not only how students were studying, but their perceptions of their practices and efforts in relation to their perceptions of course requirements, and consequently their performance.APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS A mixed-method survey-based approach was used to assess second year students’ perceptions of a design-based module. The surveys were sent out when it became clear that performance was going to be substantially poorer than expected for their first in-person and closed-book assessment after ERT. The samples were taken after the assessment, after the model answers lecture, after the marks were published, and again after an intervention. The 2020 marks were compared with the last in-person assessments from 2019. Out of the 280 students, 142 responded to the survey.ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES Students overestimated their marks after writing, even after seeing the model answers. Two thirds reported the paper as difficult, which reduced to 58% after the model answers, and 74% after releasing the marks. Two thirds said online lectures prepared them sufficiently, but after the marks only 45% did. After a reflection-in-action intervention, 81% considered them sufficient and the error in estimated marks for the next assessment reduced by 41%. Despite 97% engagement with the lectures and 96% claiming to have done the tutorials and practicals on their own, only 38% used the Q&A forums, and not a single student made an appointment with the lecturer.CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY While constructive alignment is a common pedagogical approach, it does not explicitly include alignment to student abilities or perceptions. In contact-based, socio-culturally mediated contexts, educators may tacitly be responsive to (mis)conceptions to enhance alignment between student abilities, expectations and intended course outcomes. We suggest, in this paper, that a constructive alignment model needs to include methods to overcome self-efficacy gaps, given that we need to produce critically-thinking, confident, and capable graduates.

19th and 20th Century Philosophical Foundations of Curriculum

This chapter explores more recent and more relevant philosophies: Existentialism-phenomenology, and Pragmatism. Existentialism is examined, first of all, in terms of its early roots in the theological philosophy of Kierkegaard and its emphasis on self-reflection in action, then as extended by humanistic existentialism and humanistic psychology. Pragmatism examines the nature of educational experiences, the action implications of “musicing” and “amateuring,” and its critique of traditional aesthetics rooted in Kantian idealism. Both topics are extensively applied to major considerations of curriculum planning. Frequent references to pragmatism continue in the following chapters.

Reflective practice strategies of pre-service English teachers during teaching practicum to promote professional development

Reflective practice in pre-service language teacher education is required as a tool to critically evaluate the link between theory and practice as well as to explore the beliefs and practices of pre-service English teachers during the teaching practicum programs. This study was aimed to explore the strategies of reflective practice used by pre-service English teachers during their teaching practicum to promote professional development. A case study was adopted as a research design and reflective journals were employed to collect data. The participants involved were six pre-service English teachers who had joined teaching practicum at schools for three months. This study employed thematic analysis for analysing the data from reflective journals. The results revealed that three strategies of reflective practice were identified: recollection, reflection-in-action, and mentoring process. In each strategy, the participants reflected differently based on the learning experiences they had, the teaching situation they faced, the ability to make decisions, and the beliefs they possessed. Through these strategies, they learned how to develop their own theories of teaching, how to make various links between theory and practice, and how to develop the level of thinking, problem solving, and decision making. If these strategies are continuously conducted, they ultimately can develop their professionalism as teachers. This study implies that reflective practice can also be incorporated in the curriculum of pre-service teachers and not only during teaching practicum since it entails huge benefits for pre-service English teacher development.

It’s How We Practice That Matters: Professional Identity Formation and Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Medical Students: A Qualitative Study

BackgroundThe process of Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) within a community of practice framework (CoP) was used to explore graduate entry medical students’ professional identity formation (PIF) during their first year of study. A conceptual model has been developed that can be used by medical educators to better understand PIF and to aid the explicit incorporation of PIF activity within the undergraduate curriculum. MethodsTen students from one UK medical school participated in the longitudinal study and were interviewed at three points during the first year. Semi-structured group interviews were used to explore students’ experience of the clinical environment and the nature of their interactions with both clinicians and patients in a community-based medicine practice. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. Thematic analysis was used to identify overarching themes which are represented as facets in the model of PIF. ResultsResults demonstrate that students are legitimately peripherally participating within both medical student CoPs and wider medical CoPs. Themes identified within the narratives have allowed the development of a new model to understand PIF within the context of LPP in a CoP. This has five facets: Awareness, Collaboration, Negotiation, Evaluation and Realisation. Sophisticated reflection-in-action is shown to be an important aspect of PIF and enables a more conscious understanding of the change that is occurring in our students. ConclusionPIF is a complex, non-linear process that is supported by reflection-in-action and early student introduction to clinical practice. It can be recognised in students’ narratives in their changing use of language, their understanding of the medical COP, and their evolving relational participation with those around them. This study adds to those that have previously explored PIF. The model of PIF developed in this study illustrates how experiences in the clinical environment support PIF. Medical educators may find this model helpful when considering how PIF can be explicitly encouraged in the medical curriculum and how reflection may be used for the purpose of identity change.