Core Practices for World Language Teaching in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This chapter presents the results of a nationwide questionnaire of world language teachers in the United States (n=135) that sought to examine how they perceived the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their ability to enact certain “core practices” for world language teaching. Quantitative analysis of Likert items and qualitative analysis of open-ended questions allowed for the examination of the teacher's perceptions of their practice related to three core practices that have been identified as essential to the work of contextualized, standards-based instruction. The findings contribute to an understanding of the realities of world language teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, the disruptions created by it, and the challenges faced in carrying out the work of world language teaching. Given these insights, suggestions are made for ways forward for the work in core practices in world language teacher education, as well as for pedagogies for practice-based world language teacher education.

Multilingual Youth Perspectives on Humanizing Core Practices

In this chapter, the authors draw upon the teaching practices multilingual youth identified as important to their learning in the classroom, to add to the field's understanding of core practices for teaching multilingual learners. This qualitative study highlights various strategies that secondary immigrant multilingual youth recommend teachers use when supporting learning in the classroom, some that bolster the existing research base on learning English as an additional language, and others that were relatively new contributions based on youth perspectives. A close examination of the multilingual youth perspectives and experiences has implications for creating and sustaining humanizing and equitable pedagogical practices in the classroom.

How Innovative Technologies Are Improving the Delivery of E-Assessment in Higher Education

The impact of the swift evolution of technology has rippled across all areas of society with technological developments presenting solutions to some of society's greatest challenges. Within higher education, technology is welcomed with the necessary caution of a sector that is responsible for educating and empowering the future workforce. The progressive, and more recently accelerated, digitalisation of education causes the core practices and procedures associated with teaching and learning, including assessment, to be delivered in innovative formats. Technology plays a central role in the delivery of e-assessment, widening its possibilities and broadening its methods and strategies. This chapter aims to examine how innovative technologies are shaping and improving the delivery of e-assessment in the context of higher education. More specifically, it examines the role of artificial intelligence, gamification, learning analytics, cloud computing, and mobile technology in how e-assessment can be delivered.

Linking school leaders’ core practices to organizational school climate and student achievements in Norwegian high-performing and low-performing rural schools

Prior research has suggested that well-performing school leadership clusters around a set of general core practices, which appear to be effective across a range of national, social and cultural contexts, yet contingent of school leaders being responsive to context and responding appropriately to their different contextual demands when they employ these core practices. So far school leadership in rural regions has received only modest attention in leadership research. Therefore, this study was designed to explore the relationship between the core practices of school leaders, organizational school climate and student academic achievement in primary and lower secondary rural schools in a county in Norway. The research design involved a cross-sectional study based on ratings from 275 teachers situated in 20 rural schools, split into two sub-groups of 10 ‘high-performing’ and 10 ‘low-performing’ schools. The results from the multivariate analysis and comparisons between the sub-groups suggest that two distinct core practices of school leadership emerge as critical in Norwegian rural school settings. Further, the results indicate that in the higher performing rural schools, the teachers reported a more positive organizational school climate, with higher level of collaborative learning and self-confidence, than in the opposite sub-group.

Exploring tensions in integrating core practices into initial EFL teacher education programs in the Chilean context

Internationally, there is increasing interest in the value of incorporating core practices into second language (L2) teacher education programs. This article reports on a research project that investigated how a set core practices are integrated into the Methods courses and practicums in Chilean language teacher education programs for English as a foreign language (EFL). The study was framed by a two-stage, sequential data collection strategy based on a questionnaire ( n = 48) and semi-structured interviews ( n = 21) to university-based, Chilean English teacher educators. The questionnaire identified teaching practices in use, whilst the interviews sought to understand how teacher educators taught these identified teaching practices, as well as the rationale for these choices. Two practices – facilitating target language comprehensibility and building discourse communities – emerged as the most prominent practices. Primarily, these practices were taught through modelling, decomposing, planning and simulations. However, potentially more complex issues around translanguaging, inclusion strategies and cultural practices tended to be framed using more directive and teacher-centred pedagogies. The outcomes of the study highlight several critical issues for L2 teacher education: the relative balance between theoretical and practical domains often compounded by the lack of meaningful opportunities for authentic classroom practice; and the significant challenges faced by teacher educators by engaging in ‘practice’ in a crowded program structure.

Mental health service engagement with family and carers: what practices are fundamental?

Background Substantial and important benefits flow to all stakeholders, including the service user, when mental health services meaningfully engage with carers and family members. Government policies around the world clearly supports inclusiveness however health service engagement with family and carers remains sporadic, possibly because how best to engage is unclear. A synthesis of currently used surveys, relevant research and audit tools indicates seven core ways that families and carers might be engaged by health services. This study sought to confirm, from the perspective of family and carers, the importance of these seven health service engagement practices. Methods In a mixed method online survey, 134 family members and carers were asked what they received and what they wanted from mental health services. Participants also quantified the importance of each of the seven core practices on a 0–100 point likert scale. Results Almost 250 verbatim responses were deductively matched against the seven themes, with additional unaligned responses inductively categorised. The findings triangulate with multiple diverse literatures to confirm seven fundamental engagement practices that carers and family want from health services. Conceptually, the seven practices are represented by two broad overarching practice themes of (i) meeting the needs of the family member and (ii) addressing the needs of the service user. Conclusion Policy, clinical practice, training and future research might encompass the seven core practices along with consideration of the intertwined relationship of family, carers and the service user suggested by the two broader concepts.

Editorial

El comité editorial recientemente efectuó un ajuste en la política de la revista, con el fin de ponerla a tono con las tendencias de las publicaciones científicas internacionales. La presentación se sintetiza de la siguiente manera: La Revista de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación (RIDI), es una publicación científica multidisciplinaria, de acceso abierto, que se dirige a la comunidad internacional de investigadores de las ciencias sociales y aplicadas. Tiene como objetivo la publicación de artículos de investigación y revisión, escritos en español e inglés, en las áreas de educación, administración, energía y medioambiente. El principal cambio se relaciona con el público objetivo, que ahora abarca a la comunidad científica internacional. Igualmente, se enfatiza en la publicación de artículos de investigación, teniendo en cuenta que este tipo de documentos son los que establecen la calidad de una revista científica. También se admiten artículos de revisión, en la medida en que surjan de la experiencia investigativa de los autores y brinden una perspectiva del área que están reportando. En cuanto a los aspectos éticos, se destaca que RIDI suscribe las recomendaciones y buenas prácticas (core practices), del Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), y para este fin incluye dentro de su política una serie de consideraciones éticas, en el apartado de Declaración de Ética y Buenas Prácticas Editoriales. Se invita a los autores a consultar este apartado en la página web antes de postular un manuscrito a RIDI, para que tomen conciencia de su responsabilidad frente al proceso editorial de la revista. En el presente fascículo, Vol. 11 No. 3, se incluyen catorce artículos, los cuales invitamos a consultar y utilizar en sus trabajos académicos. Asimismo, se invita a los interesados en publicar los resultados de sus trabajos de investigación, a que envíen sus manuscritos a la revista. Los requisitos de forma se pueden consultar en nuestra página WEB, en el apartado de instrucciones para los autores, los cuales deben ser atendidos escrupulosamente para reducir los tiempos de evaluación. Cordialmente, FLAVIO HUMBERTO FERNÁNDEZ MORALES Editor Revista de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación ISSN: 2027-8306 - ISSN-e: 2389-9417 Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia

The Biopolitics of Synthesizers

This chapter outlines how the design of synthesizers and digital instruments in twenty-first-century EDM reflects a biopolitics of software that arises when sound and signal are analogized as dynamic bodies, and the core practices of music production center on the attempt to control, manipulate, and repair those bodies. Combining Tara Rodgers’ work on metaphor in audio-technical discourse and Robin James’s ideas about EDM and the sonic signatures of neoliberalism, this chapter argues that the intersonic control network of synthesizers—a modular, interconnected system of oscillating waveforms, filters, modulation envelopes, and effects—embodies fundamental shifts in the creative practice of electronic music production, the cultural economy of the music products industry, and the nature of labor in the software and media industries. The blurred lines between production and consumption, hardware and software, and labor and leisure define what the author calls the biopolitics of synthesizers. The author details three aspects of these biopolitics in this chapter, including the relationship between synthesizers and masculinity post-2008, synthesizer design and manufacturing as an agent of neoliberal capitalism, and the nature of commodity fetishism and gearlust in an era of plugins, sample packs, and other types of downloadable content.