Education Commons^™

Taking Time To Pause: Engaging With A Gift Of Reflective Practice, Patricia Ganly

Articles

This paper is a call to action to engage readers in cultivating reflective practice. The demands of a rapidly changing global society, the influences on emerging learning and teaching landscapes, and the ubiquity of information in twenty-first century society are catalysts for this focus on reflection. The author conducted a literature review, integrated with personal experience, resulting in a proposed PARA model (pausing, attending, revising, adopting, adapting) as an extension to existing reflective practice models. In the context of this paper, reflective practice is addressed in terms of professional development within higher education (HE) and the personal experience of its …

Promoting Student Engagement Within A Practical Class Through The Use Of A Learning Portfolio, Niall Delaney, John A. Nolan

Conference papers

This paper looks at an exploratory case-study undertaken to try and investigate student engagement within a practical wood machining class.

Due to the nature of the course and the cohort of students, the current lecturer pedagogic practice has to be behaviourist, but from this a culture of expectancy has developed among the students. It was felt that something had to be done to revitalise student interest in the work they were doing and also give them the chance to address the perceived shortfall in their learning. There was potential for a lot of failures, but also much worse, there was …

Supporting Professionalism In Educational Development In Irish Higher Education, Muireann Okeeffe

Articles

Higher education, in Ireland and globally, is undergoing profound change influenced by a variety of factors. In conjunction with these changes many initiatives to improve teaching and learning and the quality of graduates in higher education have been introduced in recent years. The changes and expansions in the sector has enabled growth of new roles in higher education described as ‘third space’ professionals by Whitchurch (2008).

This paper describes the struggle of those in third space professions, such as academic development, to establish a professional identity in higher education. The benefits of these contemporary roles to higher education are …