Now showing 1 - 10 of 25
  • Publication
    Young children's understandings and experiences of parental deployment within an Australian Defence Force family
    Military deployment is considered a stressful period for families (Palmer, 2008), typically lasting three to nine months for Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel. To date, insufficient research has been conducted concerning children who experience deployment (Siebler, 2015). This study seeks to provide valuable insights into young children's understandings and experiences of their parents' military deployment in an Australian context. An adapted research framework, based on the policies from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 2015) and Clark and Moss (2011), has been created to listen to and privilege the often marginalised child's voice. Employing a qualitative research approach known as Mosaic research, multiple methods of data collection are combined to gather various insights into children's experiences. Embracing an interpretivist epistemology, the researcher aims to create shared knowledges of children's understandings and experiences, progressively building insights into the child's experience and inviting discussions to take place about their experiences. The study found that young children's experiences of parental deployment included stressors, responses, adaptations and protective factors. Another major finding was that children's understandings of parental deployment were often underestimated by parents. Children's understandings were strongly influenced by time, place, acculturation, narrative, digital technology, cognitive development, adult reinforcement and the use of age and culturally appropriate resources. The central goal of Mosaic research 'is not to make children's knowledge unquestionable, but to raise it to such a level that children's knowledge about their lives is central to adult discussions' (Clark & Moss, 2011, p. 65). Such knowledge about children's understandings and experiences of deployment can inform effective support strategies for parents, educators and professionals who work with these children in the ADF and wider community.
  • Publication
    Developing an integrative methodology to explore variations in experiences of partnership leading to a reconceptualised model of partnership
    (British Educational Research Association (BERA), 2010)
    Central to our consideration of the role of ITE at Liverpool Hope University is the partnership between academics, professionals and other specialists in training student teachers to contribute to improving the life chances of children and young people. Reports from various organisations, including AIM (2006) and The Work Foundation (2008) highlight how partnership and collaborative learning are viewed as a critical competence for organisations. This research project recognizes that our existing collaborative relationships are not unproblematic. Of particular concern, is that current practices are not fully aligned to our vision of the role of ITE for the 21st Century. For example, with most of our collaborative relationships the University (academic) is viewed as the primary collaborator/partner, and, whilst relationships are symbiotic, the 'power' tends to flow one way. Further concerns are to do with the transparency of partnership agreements (including clear rationale, roles and responsibilities), capability (involving appropriate training and development), and ownership (linked to one's sense of being central to, and, having some control over, the ways in which the partnership has evolved). Such concerns bring into sharp relief the interface between the University, and other professionals and organisations, in supporting the development of subject knowledge for teachers and, ultimately, the wellbeing of the child. By identifying successful partnership practices these can be used to inform ITE programmes looking to create a 'new professionalism'. This allows student teachers to relate to other professionals in an effective way, engaging students in interprofessional activity in the context of the integrated children's workforce.
  • Publication
    Vietnamese Students' Perception and Loyalty towards an Image of Vocational Education and Training
    (International Foundation for Research and Development, 2014)
    Dang, Vi Hoang
    ;
    Stakeholders' perceptions towards a career in vocational education and training (VET) in Vietnam negate the country's industrial development plan. During the last 15 years, the Vietnamese Governments investment in to the sector increased annually. However, parents and their children still pursue the goal of higher education via the mainstream rather than a career path way using the vocational education and training system. Although stereotypical views of vocational students are being challenged, Confucian ideology maintains some influence over stakeholders' educational decisions leading to the sustained popularity of higher education. This study explores the perceptions of students on the image of and their loyalty towards vocational education and training. A sample of 300 lower secondary school, 300 upper secondary school, and 300 vocational students was drawn from across the Northern and Southern regions of Vietnam. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data and mean analysis conducted to explore the data. The findings indicate that agreement with statements about facilities and equipment, teacher's ability, curriculum, and soft skills are the clearest indicators of enhanced perceptions about the image of vocational education and training. Encouragement from parents appears most influential to positively affecting lower secondary students' loyalty. Unexpected was that vocational students had less interesting continuing in vocational education and training compared to lower and upper secondary school students inclination towards a career in VET. First-hand experience seemingly leads to diminished perceptions and loyalty towards vocational education.
  • Publication
    Exploring the Pedagogy Associated with Transformational Learning in the Initial Teacher Education Context
    (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2011) ;
    Rush, Linda
    The highly regulated practice of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in the UK represents an area of learning in higher education that is characterised by traditional pedagogies that are often functionally driven and instrumentally oriented. This is incongruent with the reality of the school environment, which requires teachers to be adaptive learners, self-motivating, and self-determining in respect of their initial, early, and continuing professional development. Here a signature pedagogy of partnership is offered that represents a paradigm shift in thinking about teacher learning, repositioning the focus of learning from content to concepts and towards a vision in which key learning dispositions and capacities are fore grounded. Underpinning this pedagogy is the notion of transformational learning and its epistemological foundations for ways of knowing and understanding the 'classroom'. This vision builds on research investigating the conceptions of trainee teachers, academics and professionals in an ITE partnership concerning the promotion of subject knowledge for teaching. Initial findings have revealed three hierarchically inclusive pedagogies associated with teacher learning: teacher replication in practice, teacher formation and teacher transformation. The affordances and constraints of an ITE pedagogy and architectural design aligned with transformational learning in which a willingness to engage in, persist with and comprehend challenging tasks and concepts in an 'uncomfortable time of uncertainty', is one which is elaborated here. Key partnership practices and learning designs are identified that promote the learning dispositions and capacities characteristic of effective teachers in the 21 st Century.
  • Publication
    Thrust-related permeability in the South Wales Coalfield
    (Geological Society Publishing House, 1996) ;
    Gayer, R A
    The South Wales Coalfield is a Variscan foreland basin extensively deformed by both linked and isolated thrusts in response to regional NW-SE compressive stress. Thrusts normally strike NE-SW, but transpression has caused a variable dextral rotation of the thrusts to strike E-W and even NW-SE. The range in orientation has allowed thrust-related fractures locally to be opened within the neotectonic stress field in which 0'1 is oriented NW-SE. It is argued that similar thrust-related permeability should be developed in other coal-bearing foreland basins both associated with the Late Carboniferous Variscan/ Appalachian orogeny and with younger compressional tectonic systems. The dominant meso- to major-scale structures formed during the compression of coalbearing sequences are thrusts and folds. Strains at leading and trailing tip-lines of isolated thrusts and in the immediate hanging wall and footwall generate tension cracks which may act as methane conduits. Unsealed, these allow permeability parallel to thrust strike. Decollements form as bed-parallel detachments within coals, developing as pervasive shear zones, characterized by cleavage duplexes and C-S fabrics in which a penetrative new hinterland-dipping fabric is formed. This fabric, under changing regional stress conditions, may be opened to form a highly effective gas migration pathway. Coal-bearing strata develop chevron folds with flexural slip in fold limbs and tension gashes in competent strata, generating porosity and permeability parallel to the strike of fold limbs. Incompetent coal seams are strongly sheared, producing cleavage duplexes with contrasting vergence in opposing limbs.
  • Publication
    Recalibrating the principles of teacher learning to focus on productive activity and quality pedagogy
    Recent policy developments in teacher education in the UK are seen as central to initial and continuing professional development for teachers. In the five years following the launch of several statutory frameworks, guidance and other initiatives by England's former Training and Development Agency for Schools, the debate continues about how teachers best learn in their lives (Pickering, Daly & Pachler 2007). Frameworks such as the recent Teachers' Standards (May 2012), Developing trainees' subject knowledge for teaching (2007) and guidance such as the Masters in Teaching and Learning (2008) and Being the best for our children: Releasing talent for teaching and learning (2008) are based on understandings of the effective teacher as being central to pupil learning (Darling-Hammond 2010; Opfer and Pedder 2011; Barber and Mourshed 2007; OECD 2009). The thinking behind these frameworks recognises the unique features of 21st Century classrooms and the increasingly complex and challenging characteristics of pupil learning. Consequently, the teaching profession requires teachers who can enact sensitive pedagogies that are less technical or prescriptive and more discerning, personalised and intuitive, drawing on a subject vernacular and description that is responsive yet productive in the sense that they personalise pupil learning and enable all pupils to connect with subjects (Lingard 2005). Whilst appearing innovative and moving with the times, recent interpretations of such policy for teacher education and professional development have reinforced routinized teacher learning, rather than encouraging originality to the application of knowledge. Constrained within the boundaries of conventional subject curricula and practices, effective teaching behaviours and best practice pedagogies are masqueraded as 'innovation'. Instances exist where student teachers are restricted to mimicking authoritative re-presentations of subject knowledge and portraying normalised understandings. Whilst, for others the boundaries and limits to existing forms of knowledge are dissolved. Ultimately, the outcomes of such an unequal learning process are, at a teacher level, variation in the quality of pedagogy in the classroom. Teachers' abilities to creatively adapt teaching methods and tailor subject knowledge to context specific needs (Reynolds 2008), are in question.
  • Publication
    The influence of vocational education training image on students' loyalty: Case study in Vietnam
    (Academic Journals, 2015)
    Dang, Vi Hoang
    ;
    A model of the dimensions that measure the way students perceive and think about the image of vocational education training (VET) was developed together with an instrument to measure the impact of VET's image on students' loyalty towards the VET sector in the Vietnamese context. The data were collected from 900 students: 300 in lower secondary school, 300 in upper secondary school and 300 in vocational education and training using a face-to-face administered survey questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the nature of the constructs or dimensions quantifying the image of vocational education and students' loyalty towards VET. Correlation analysis was used to examine the relationships between the independent variables that comprised the image of VET and the dependant variables of students' loyalty and, finally, regression analysis was used to measure the impact of the image of VET on the students' loyalty. Three main findings emerged from the study: (1) the image of VET was constructed by seven dimensions (entry requirement, facility and equipment, recognition of qualification, student career and job potential, quality of curriculum, social skills and soft skills); (2) students' loyalty was constructed by two dimensions (future study choice and earning potential); and (3) students' loyalty towards VET, namely the rationale underlying their decisions about whether to continue their future studies in higher education or VET, and their perceptions of the earning potential offered by obtaining a qualification in VET, were impacted significantly by their perceptions of the relevance or quality of the VET curriculum to the emerging industrialised and market-led economy of Vietnam, and the level of entry requirements for VET courses, with exception of lower secondary students.
  • Publication
    Strike-slip fault bridge fluid pumping mechanisms: insights from field-based paleostress analysis and numerical modelling
    (Pergamon Press, 2002)
    Nemcok, Michal
    ;
    Henk, Andreas
    ;
    Gayer, Rodney A
    ;
    Vandycke, Sara
    ;
    We present a finite-element study of stress perturbation in evolving compressive and extensional strike-slip fault bridges. The results are compared with a fracture study of a compressive bridge at St Donats, UK. Horizontally interbedded calcareous mudstone and bioclastic calcilutite at St Donats have a distinct vertical permeability anisotropy. This sedimentary sequence behaves as a set of horizontal aquifers. The fluid flow in these aquifers is sensitive to mean stress gradients. Paleostress analysis of field fracture data, verified by finite-element modelling, indicates a rotation of σ1 towards parallelism with boundary faults inside the growing compressive bridge. Boundary faults and bridge faults recorded numerous fluid flow events. The modelled mean stress pattern shows a regional maximum within the bridge and local maxima/minima pairs at boundary fault tips. Finite-element modelling of an extensional bridge indicates that σ3 rotates towards parallelism with boundary faults. The mean stress pattern is similar to the pattern in compressive bridge but with maxima and minima locations interchanged. The stress patterns are reestablished by each stress build-up preceding the rupturation of the boundary faults throughout the development stages of strike-slip fault bridges. Mean stress gradients developed pre-failure control the fluid flow in fractures of the strike-slip fault system at and after the end of each stress build-up and the fluid flow in boundary faults post-failure. Fracture reactivation and new fracture generation within an evolving bridge is a process consisting of multiple successive events that retain the storage capacity of the bridge. Rupture and sealing of the main bounding-faults is a step-wise process that opens and closes fluid conduits between areas with different pressures.
  • Publication
    Transpressionally driven rotation in the external orogenic zones of the Western Carpathians and the SW British Variscides
    (Geological Society of London, 1998)
    Gayer, Rod
    ;
    ;
    Nemcok, Michal
    Analysis of two examples of obliquely convergent external orogenic zones, the western part of the Western Carpathians and the northern Variscan margin in southwest Britain, indicates the operation of two dominant stress rotation mechanisms in the transpressionally deformed thrust wedge: (1) the rotation of an inferred stress field; (2) the rotation of a deforming body within a constant stress field. In the thinnest, external parts of the thrust wedge, σ1 stress trajectory rotations of up to 90° occur with deformation having a relatively small component of pure shear. Towards the hinterland, σ1 stress trajectories in thicker parts of the wedge are progressively less rotated but develop a larger component of pure shear. Resultant σ1 trajectories are curvilinear, lying parallel to the orogenic convergence vector in the hinterland but diverging progressively from this direction towards the foreland, where they lie at high angles to the external margin in frontal parts of the thrust wedge. It is argued that balanced cross-sections should be constructed parallel to the curved trace of the σ1 stress trajectories.
  • Publication
    Variations in the style of thrust faulting in the South Wales Coalfield and mechanisms of thrust development
    (Ussher Society, 1994) ;
    Gayer, Rodney A
    Variscan compressional deformation in the western and central coalfield of South Wales is dominated by thrust faulting. Opencast extraction records and field data have shown the existence of distinct levels of thrust development as isolated structures and basal detachments within imbricate systems. Two areas have been studied where the thrust faults exhibit similar features which have formed by different propagation mechanisms. At Nant Helen opencast site major thrusts are separated by smaller isolated structures, which apparently do not link to a basal décollement below the site. The isolated thrusts are adduced to have formed due to fluid over-pressuring and mechanical anisotropies in the rock sequence. In the Ffyndaff district deformation at the Ffyndaff opencast site is characterised by a series of foreland propagating thrusts linked by a detachment below the Nine Foot Seam, whereas to the west at Rhigos and Dunraven the detachment rises to a higher level and is interpreted as a gentle eastwards dipping lateral ramp.