Collaborative Reflection-Augmented Autoencoder Network for Recommender Systems

As the deep learning techniques have expanded to real-world recommendation tasks, many deep neural network based Collaborative Filtering (CF) models have been developed to project user-item interactions into latent feature space, based on various neural architectures, such as multi-layer perceptron, autoencoder, and graph neural networks. However, the majority of existing collaborative filtering systems are not well designed to handle missing data. Particularly, in order to inject the negative signals in the training phase, these solutions largely rely on negative sampling from unobserved user-item interactions and simply treating them as negative instances, which brings the recommendation performance degradation. To address the issues, we develop a C ollaborative R eflection-Augmented A utoencoder N etwork (CRANet), that is capable of exploring transferable knowledge from observed and unobserved user-item interactions. The network architecture of CRANet is formed of an integrative structure with a reflective receptor network and an information fusion autoencoder module, which endows our recommendation framework with the ability of encoding implicit user’s pairwise preference on both interacted and non-interacted items. Additionally, a parametric regularization-based tied-weight scheme is designed to perform robust joint training of the two-stage CRANetmodel. We finally experimentally validate CRANeton four diverse benchmark datasets corresponding to two recommendation tasks, to show that debiasing the negative signals of user-item interactions improves the performance as compared to various state-of-the-art recommendation techniques. Our source code is available at https://github.com/akaxlh/CRANet.

Transforming Educator Practice Through a Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Pedagogies Rubric

While the value of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies in education is largely accepted, how to equip educators to integrate these pedagogies in their practice is far less understood. In this chapter, the authors discuss how teacher education faculty's understanding and implementation of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies were strengthened through an iterative and co-constructed process of tenet and rubric development, scaffolded implementation, peer feedback, and collaborative reflection. Drawing from four years of faculty inquiry group work in ongoing professional learning settings, the authors discuss the importance of a localized, evolving central framework which both informed practice and was grounded in praxis. The authors argue for the importance of systematic approaches, including both self-work and engagement with structural inequities, using shared understandings to affect enduring, multi-layered transformation across a large and diverse set of teacher education programs.

Conceptualizing and Engaging in Reflective Practice: Experienced Evaluators’ Perspectives

The purpose of this study was to determine professional evaluators’ perceptions of reflective practice (RP) and the extent and manner in which they engage in RP behaviors. Nineteen evaluators with 10 or more years of experience in the evaluation field were interviewed to explore our understanding and practice of RP in evaluation. Findings suggest that RP is a process of self and contextual awareness, involving thinking and questioning, and individual and group meaning-making, focused on facilitating growth in the form of learning and improvement. The roles of individual and collaborative reflection as well as reflection in- and on-action are also discussed. Findings support a call for the further refinement of our understanding of RP in evaluation practice. Evaluators seeking to be better reflective practitioners should be competent in skills such as facilitation and interpersonal skills, as well as budget needed time for RP in evaluation accordingly.

Becoming mentors: a narrative exercise to unveil struggles guiding an english language teaching practicum

This paper analyses the memories of two English language teachers recollected about their struggles to break through as practicum mentors in two public universities. This small- scale narrative study emerged from the constant and collaborative reflection upon their long years of experience advising primary and secondary schools’ mentees, and upon the different situations mentors had to experience while performing their job. Findings revealed that despite having worked in two allegedly different settings, both mentors faced similar issues regarding their vision of education, their view on language and their own identity as teachers, which affected their guidance. They also found that the feedback they provided their mentees perpetuated or contradicted dominant visions where inclusion and diversity were neutralized.

Micro Change Agents for Gender Equality: Transforming European Research Performing Organizations

This article explores the experiences of micro change agents for gender equality in seven European Research Performing Organizations in seven different countries. The micro change agents were all participants of an international collaborative project consortium, implementing gender equality plans (GEPs), and funded by the European Commission during 4 years. The analysis draws on empirical data consisting of information submitted by the micro change agents during these 4 years and collected using three different monitoring tools, developed within the project to follow the progress of the implementation efforts, but also to provide an arena for individual and collaborative reflection and knowledge exchange between the partners. The aim of the article is to present a systematic analysis of the change practices that these micro change agents experienced as useful and important for promoting gender equality in their different organizational contexts. A total of six such micro change practices are identified, emerging from the empirical data: 1. communicating, 2. community building, 3. building trust and legitimacy, 4. accumulating and using resources, 5. using and transferring knowledge, and 6. drawing on personal motivation. The findings illustrate the multifaceted character of micro change agency for gender equality, particularly in a time-limited project context with a designated funding period. The results from this study can be useful when developing gender equality strategies, policies and practices and can also be used to empower gender equality micro change agents that face challenges while trying to implement GEPs and promote structural change in any kind of institution.

Instructor–Student Mentoring: Strengths of Transformative Sustainability Learning and Its Direct Application to Impact Industry and Curricular Refinement

There is a growing need to educate students about the applications of environmental sustainability to current and future jobs. One method that has emerged to teach this application is transformative sustainable learning (TSL). Instructors can use TSL to understand better how to integrate sustainability topics into seemingly unrelated course topics. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of a series of TSL courses in a graduate sport management program. To this end, a collaborative reflection guided the data collection from weekly one-on-one conversations between the researchers (i.e., instructor, student). Results aligned with TSL themes (i.e., head, heart, hands) and suggested that the intentional TSL course design and scheduled conversations benefited both the instructor and student. The student experienced an in-depth experience to understand and apply course concepts. The instructor was able to gain better insights to structure the class and create assignments adapted to meet student needs through collaborative reflection during mentoring sessions.

A professional knowledge base for collaborative reflection education: a qualitative description of teacher goals and strategies

Introduction For several decades, educational experts have promoted reflection as essential to professional development. In the medical setting, collaborative reflection has gained significant importance across the curriculum. Collaborative reflection has a unique edge over individual reflection, but many medical teachers find facilitating group reflection sessions challenging and there is little documentation about the didactics of teaching in such collaborative reflection settings. To address this knowledge gap, we aim to capture the professional knowledge base for facilitating collaborative reflection by analyzing the formal and perceived goals and strategies of this practice. Methods The professional knowledge base consists of formal curricular materials as well as individual teacher expertise. Using Template Analysis, we analyzed the goals and strategies of collaborative reflection reported in institutional training documents and video-stimulated interviews with individual teachers across all Dutch general practitioner training institutes. Results The analysis resulted in a highly diverse overview of educational goals for residents during the sessions, teacher goals that contribute to those educational goals, and a myriad of situation-specific teacher strategies to accomplish both types of goals. Teachers reported that the main educational goal was for residents to learn and develop and that the teachers’ main goal was to facilitate learning and development by ensuring everyone’s participation in reflection. Key teacher strategies to that end were to manage participation, to ensure a safe learning environment, and to create conditions for learning. Discussion The variety of strategies and goals that constitute the professional knowledge base for facilitating collaborative reflection in postgraduate medical education shows how diverse and situation-dependent such facilitation can be. Our analysis identifies a repertoire of tools that both novice and experienced teachers can use to develop their professional skill in facilitating collaborative reflection.