scholarly journals Lived Experience of University Continuing Education Leaders

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Landry

This article is based on a study that explored the professional lives of eight leaders of continuing education in Canadian universities, with a focus on their administrative role, to provide a deeper understanding of how they live within their practice (lived experience). A practical listing of 56 horizons of experience was identified, useful as an evolving checklist for university continuing education units and as a self reflection tool for current and future continuing education administrators and leaders. The study provides insight for those considering leadership positions and for those interested in understanding the complexities of the role of leader. On a philosophical level, six essences of lived experience were revealed: responsibility, balance, connectedness, impact, voice, and passion. The experience of leadership through individuals who experience the phenomena provides critical understanding of the realities of practice.

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather McRae

In Canada, a growing interest within higher education in community engagement practices is evidenced through the establishment of national networks, funding opportunities for community-university research partnerships, and the development of specially designated centres on university campuses. However, based on the literature in continuing education, the role of university continuing education (UCE) units in supporting community engagement is not clear. Many UCE units have been involved and continue to be involved in developing and implementing various types of community engagement activities, yet the work of these units is not widely recognized within the university and the community as contributing substantially to the social purpose mission of the institution. The pressures and tensions relating to balancing the social and economic goals of the UCE unit may be influencing the role of UCE in community engagement. Strategies identified in this article that could assist UCE in embedding community engagement within the practice and in reframing the focus of UCE include the development of a community engagement framework and measurement tools that assess outcomes leading to positive social change.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Curtis

Recent educational literature has produced a plethora of gendered experiences encountered by women working towards leadership positions in education. Gender plays a complex role that shapes the relationship between perceived ideals of womanhood and leadership. This paper focuses on the variations in leadership and management distributed in the early years and the competencies needed in areas of socio-economic deprivation. The paper has focused on the findings taken from a research study (2014) that involved the lived experience of eight black women leaders within the UK. The study by Curtis (published 2014, see text for details) highlights a number of demanding complexities that do include gendered assumptions relating to the role of leadership within educational establishments. These issues pertain to certain identifying factors, such as a leader’s accent or choice of dress and traditional hairstyles (e.g. braids, afro, dreads or weaves). Alongside women’s choice of food, including any personal dietary requirements linked to religious beliefs, are areas that identify black women leaders with identities separate from those dominant within society. Such ideals may include a prescriptive view of women as leaders. The road to leadership demands a crescendo of shared voices and visions that support the diversity in the expression of women’s values, shaped by their perception, intuitive lenses, worldviews and lived experiences. This paper is intended to present black women’s intersections as one in which black women share skilfully their biculturalism and their abilities to act as a bridge for others sharing their cultural competencies.


Author(s):  
Thomas Kleinlein

This contribution reflects on the role of tradition-building in international law, the implications of the recent ‘turn to history’ and the ‘presentisms’ discernible in the history of international legal thought. It first analyses how international legal thought created its own tradition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These projects of establishing a tradition implied a considerable amount of what historians would reject as ‘presentism’. Remarkably, critical scholars of our day and age who unsettled celebratory histories of international law and unveiled ‘colonial origins’ of international law were also criticized for committing the ‘sin of anachronism’. This contribution therefore examines the basis of this critique and defends ‘presentism’ in international legal thought. However, the ‘paradox of instrumentalism’ remains: The ‘better’ historical analysis becomes, the more it loses its critical potential for current international law. At best, the turn to history activates a potential of disciplinary self-reflection.


Author(s):  
Sunil Bhatia

This chapter documents the ethnographic context in which the interviews and participant observation were conducted for the study presented in this book. It also situates the study within the context of narrative inquiry and develops arguments about the role of self-reflexivity in doing ethnography at “home” and producing qualitative forms of knowledge that are based on personal, experiential, and cultural narratives. It is argued that there is significant interest in the adoption of interpretive methods or qualitative research in psychology. The qualitative approaches in psychology present a provocative and complex vision of how the key concepts related to describing and interpreting cultural codes, social practices, and lived experience of others are suffused with both poetical and political elements of culture. The epistemological and ontological assumptions undergirding qualitative research reflect multiple “practices of inquiry” and methodologies that have different orientations, assumptions, values, ideologies, and criterion of excellence.


Author(s):  
Douglas C. Orzolek

This chapter outlines the nature of music teacher evaluation found in existing and related literature and research. From these writings, there are an abundance of emergent themes that provide stakeholders with an opportunity to examine this topic and consider its application in their own settings. These themes include ideas related to the following: the intent of teacher evaluation; the role of teacher evaluation; what an effective teacher is; the importance of multifaceted evaluation systems; the place of student learning in the evaluative process; the various forms of evidence used to evaluate educators; the fact that research and practice should be intertwined in developing evaluation systems; the role of testing; the degree to which observation and self-reflection should be involved in teacher evaluation; the importance of clear and concise goals for learners; and the impact that systems of evaluation will have on the educators, schools, students, and American education as a whole. This chapter intends to allow stakeholders the opportunity to reflect on all of these issues and challenges.


2020 ◽  
Vol 186 (11) ◽  
pp. 349-349
Author(s):  
Lauren Landfried ◽  
Patrick Pithua ◽  
Roger D Lewis ◽  
Steven Rigdon ◽  
Jonathan Jacoby ◽  
...  

BackgroundIn a previous study, we found that rates of antibiotic residues in goat carcasses in Missouri were three times the published national average, warranting further research in this area.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional survey of goat veterinarians to determine attitudes and practices regarding antibiotics, recruiting 725 veterinarians listed on the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners (AASRP) website and 64 Missouri Veterinary Medical Association (MVMA) veterinarians.ResultsWe collected 189 responses (26.1%) from AASRP members (170 valid) and 8 (12.5%) from MVMA veterinarians totalling 178 responses. While the vast majority of all veterinarians indicated that they prescribed antibiotics less than half of the time, Missouri veterinarians indicated that they spent more time treating goats for overt disease like intestinal parasites and less time on proactive practices such as reproductive herd health management comparatively. While veterinarians agreed that antibiotic resistance was a growing concern, veterinarians outside of Missouri seemed more confident that their own prescription practices was not a contributor. Although nationally most veterinarians felt that attending continuing education classes was beneficial, 73.4% in other states attended classes on antibiotic use compared to only four of the nine Missouri veterinarians.ConclusionMissouri veterinarians had less veterinary experience than veterinarians in other states, and this, in conjunction with low continuing education requirements in Missouri relative to most other states, may hinder development of more proactive and effective client–veterinary relationships.


2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Adria ◽  
Patricia Boechler

Practitioners and theorists have given attention recently to the role and status of research activities in Canadian university continuing education units. For individuals in units that are increasing the proportion of their organizational activities devoted to research, there will be an ongoing process of cognitive change and development as a new organizational culture emerges. Sensemaking is used in this article as a heuristic for exploring the process of incorporating and developing research activities in university continuing education units. Sensemaking is the cognitive process of justifying or legitimating a decision or outcome after the decision or outcome is already known. It is associated with organizational models that reject an exclusively rational decision-making paradigm of organizational action. Sensemaking recognizes the centrality of the following elements in the interpretation of research activities and their relationship to organizational life: time, identity construction, and the ongoing creation of context. The authors provide an extended reflection on the process of meaning-making that may be experienced by individuals as conventional research becomes a more important part of organizational life. Such a reflection may support and inform the change process as it occurs in university continuing education units.


2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 219-233
Author(s):  
William “Chip” Gruen

Abstract The agonistic character of the Apocryphal Acts literature has been well documented. The vast majority of these traditions revolve around the apostolic figure battling both demonic and human adversaries. The Acts of Thomas is no exception, showing the protagonist as Christian hero par-excellence, navigating both cosmological and theological adversaries, always emerging triumphant. Beyond the narration of these competitions themselves, however, the reader also witnesses Thomas navigating different places and spaces in his journeys. The dichotomies of deserted/inhabited, public/private, sacred/profane, domestic/communal are all encountered and their meanings adjudicated through the apostolic competitions. This paper will use spatiality theory to interrogate the use of these narrative topoi. In so doing, the role of space will not only be explored in these imagined places of the Acts of Thomas, but implications for the lived experience of the community will be investigated.


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