Yes / In this conceptual paper we argue that, to date, principles of responsible management have not impacted practice as anticipated because of a disconnect between knowledge and practice. This disconnect means that an awareness of ethical concerns, by itself, does not help students take personal responsibility for their actions. We suggest that an abstract knowledge of principles has to be supplemented by an engaged understanding of the responsibility of managers and leaders to actively challenge irresponsible practices. We argue that a form of moral reflexive practice drawing on an understanding of threshold concepts is central to responsible management, and provides a gateway to transformative learning. Our conceptual argument leads to implications for management and professional education.

Biological evolution can be described as a unifying concept in biology. A thorough understanding of evolution is thus important to fully understand different areas of biology. However, learning the concepts of evolution has proven difficult, both to students and teachers. During the last decade, the notion of threshold concepts in learning has emerged. Passing the threshold or grasping the threshold concept is a transformative process, thought to be irreversible and has been described as passing a portal to new areas of understanding. Threshold concepts of importance to understanding evolution has been suggested to be time, spatial scale, complexity, randomness and probability. A hypothesis is therefore that facilitating understanding of those threshold concepts also will lead to a greater understanding of evolutionary mechanisms. Visualisations in science communication and learning has gained increased interest and animations as a form of visualisations has proven to facilitate learning in some situations. Since many (threshoid) concepts in evolution are untangible, such as deep time, small scale (micro and sub micro scale) animations could be a way to make those concepts more tangible for learners. In order to explore the potential for animations in learning evolution by making threshold concepts more tangible an interactive animation was designed and tested with upper secondary students in the course Biology 1. The subject of the animation was development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Learning effect was measured as differences in pre and post test scores on a selection of previously used concept questions from the literature, the concept inventory of natural selection (CINS). Open ended questions were also used as well as interview sessions, to gain more insight to the eventual effects of the animation. No statiscally significant improvement in the CINS scores could be observed in total, however improvement on a specific question category (biotic potential) could be observed. The number of misconceptions on evolution seemed unaffected after animation. Indications of conceptual conflicts could also be observed after the animation, indicating a potential for conceptual change with future revisions of the animation.

In recent times the need for educational research dedicated to engineering education has been recognised. This PhD project is a contribution to the development of engineering education scholarship and the growing body of engineering education research. In this project it was recognised that problem solving is a central activity to engineering. However, it was also recognised that the conditions for doing engineering are changing, especially in light of pressing issues of poverty and environmental sustainability that humanity currently faces, and as a consequence, engineering education needs to emphasise problem definition to a greater extent. One mechanism for achieving this, which has been adopted by some engineering educators in recent years, is through courses that explicitly relate engineering to social justice. However, creating this relationship requires critical interdisciplinary thinking that is alien to most engineering students. In this dissertation it is suggested that for engineering students, and more generally, engineers, looking at their practice and profession through a social justice lens might be seen as a threshold that needs to be crossed. By studying the variation present among students in three different courses at three different North American universities, the intention was to understand how students approach and internalise social justice as a perspective on engineering and/or develop their abilities to think critically. A conceptual model to frame the study was developed by combining elements of threshold concept theory and the educational research methodology, phenomenographic variation theory. All three of the courses studied operated on a similar basic pedagogical model, however, the courses were framed differently, with social justice in the foreground or in the background with the focus on, in one case, ethics and in the other, sustainability. All courses studied appeared to be successful in encouraging engineering students to engage in critical thinking and a similar general trend in the development of students’ conceptions of social justice was observed in each of the three courses. However, it does appear that if one is interested in developing an articulated understanding of social justice, with respect to engineering, that an explicit focus on social justice is preferable. / Thesis (Ph.D, Chemical Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-07 13:12:29.207

Yes / An innovative new midwifery programme leading to midwifery registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) developing potential registrants at both BSc and MSc levels commenced in September 2016. The programme is delivered utilising problem-based learning (PBL) as both a content delivery method and a philosophical approach, underpinning student learning at the UK's University of Bradford, School of Midwifery. A requirement for NMC revalidation at a five-year juncture and institutional programme reapproval acted as a catalyst for change. The programme team embraced a new curriculum framework which emphasised a move to reviewing stage and programme outcomes rather than concentrating on the minutiae of module outcomes. This new approach suited the holistic nature of PBL ensuring an intellectually challenging and inclusive method of teaching and learning for midwifery practice. A further progression for the programme team was to develop an understanding of, and to integrate, ‘threshold concepts’ or ‘troublesome knowledge’. These are defined as knowledge, principles or components which students find difficult to understand and therefore to utilise to improve practice and deliver high-quality care. This article explores the integration of threshold concepts into a problem-based midwifery curriculum.

This thesis is concerned with student understanding of key concepts in electrical engineering teaching within higher education. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many students struggle to understand threshold concepts and therefore encounter difficulties in learning theoretical models which are underpinned by such theoretical concepts. This research utilised a mixed methods approach to investigate the factors that influence student understanding of key theoretical concepts within electrical engineering. The initial study used a questionnaire to evaluate student understanding of concepts which were identified by teaching staff as being core to a particular module. The study identified that students commenced the module with poor understanding and that instruction on the module ELC040 Electrical Machines and Systems did not lead to improved understanding of core concepts. This suggests that the roots of student misunderstanding lay elsewhere. Desk research was subsequently employed to explore the sources of student misunderstandings. Performance data was analysed and demonstrated that the roots of the student misunderstanding of Electrical Machine Theory lay in the pre-requisite module Electrical Power B. Students routinely failed to achieve high levels of understanding in this module and as a result were unable to successfully build upon it in the third year module. Semi-structured interviews were then undertaken with Part C students who were undertaking the Electrical Machines and Systems module. In addition, structured interviews were administered with the Part B students. The interviews aimed to establish the study practices adopted by students across both years. The study showed that students found the ELA001 module difficult, and the majority believe that most other students felt the same way as they did. Students provided evidence of poor study techniques, by reporting last minute sessions to complete coursework and last minute revision for exams. This research informed the development of an interactive learning tool which was piloted on a small cohort of students. The research has also established that there are many influences on the development of student understanding of threshold concepts within electrical engineering and argues for a more active style of teaching in order to address student misunderstanding.

Much of literature is predicated upon the assumption that learning occurring inside the workplace is related to developing expertise associated with the tasks for which the individual is employed and has a background in. This research investigates those individuals who acquire expertise in other disciplines and how the application of that additional expertise changes and enhances the individual and the organisation. By combining perspectives across the disciplinary boundaries and developing multidisciplinary expertise, these individuals demonstrate better methods of achieving business objectives, leading to faster, more imaginative solutions, more frequently, and with significantly less effort. The literature review commenced with defining “multidisciplinary” before addressing communities that cluster around disciplines such as professional societies and Communities of Practice, Aspects of organisational, team and “learning by participation” (Ashton, 2004) literature were also considered. The study took an inductive approach using an ethnographical perspective to data collection and analysis to achieve its aim of determining the existence of multidisciplined individuals and how they acquire additional disciplines. The study used interviewing as its primary method yielding both qualitative and quantitative data from a cross sectional sample set inside a medium sized oil and gas consultancy offering technical and management advice. The disciplines inside the case organisation were mapped to ascertain boundaries where the richest learning opportunities lie. Measuring learning across the disciplines confirmed the existence of multidisciplined individuals with evidence pointing towards the integrated multidisciplined team being the ideal learning environment. The study was able to use Threshold Concepts (Meyer and Land, 2003) to demonstrate the multidisciplinary individual development process. Moreover, having examined the social interaction learning processes the potential negative impacts of Communities of Practice in encouraging this type of multidiscipline approach was highlighted. The study concluded that developing multidisciplined individuals was worthwhile but required organisations to be willing to provide the appropriate platform for such learning by more adventurous individuals who held the appropriate underlying abilities required by the additional discipline (s).

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics threatens modern healthcare on a global scale. Several actors in society, including the general public, must become more involved if this development is to be countered. The conveyance of relevant information provided through education and media reports is therefore of high concern. Antibiotic resistance evolves through the mechanisms of natural selection; in this way, a sound understanding of these mechanisms underlies explanations of causes and the development of effective risk-reduction measures. In addition to natural selection functioning as an explanatory framework to antibiotic resistance, bacterial resistance as a context seems to possess a number of qualities that make it suitable for teaching natural selection – a subject that has been proven notoriously hard to teach and learn. A recently suggested approach for learning natural selection involves so-called threshold concepts, which encompass abstract and integrative ideas. The threshold concepts associated with natural selection include, among others, the notions of randomness as well as vast spatial and temporal scales. Illustrating complex relationships between concepts on different levels of organization is one, of several, areas where visualizations are efficient. Given the often-imperceptible nature of threshold concepts as well as the fact that natural selection processes occur on different organizational levels, visual accounts of natural selection have many potential benefits for learning. Against this background, the present dissertation explores information conveyed to the public regarding antibiotic resistance and natural selection, as well as investigates how these topics are presented together, by scrutinizing media including news reports, websites, educational textbooks and online videos. The principal method employed in the media studies was content analysis, which was complemented with various other analytical procedures. Moreover, a classroom study was performed, in which novice pupils worked with a series of animations explaining the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Data from individual written assignments, group questions and video-recorded discussions were collected and analyzed to empirically explore the potential of antibiotic resistance as a context for learning about evolution through natural selection. Among the findings are that certain information, that is crucial for the public to know, about antibiotic resistance was conveyed to a low extent through wide-reaching news reporting. Moreover, explanations based on natural selection were rarely included in accounts of antibiotic resistance in any of the examined media. Thus, it is highly likely that a large proportion of the population is never exposed to explanations for resistance development during education or through newspapers. Furthermore, the few examples that were encountered in newspapers or textbooks were hardly ever visualized, but presented only in textual form. With regard to videos purporting to explain natural selection, it was found that a majority lacked accounts of central key concepts. Additionally, explanations of how variation originates on the DNA-level were especially scarce. These and other findings coming from the content analyses are discussed through the lens of scientific literacy and could be used to inform and strengthen teaching and scientific curricula with regards to both antibiotic resistance and evolution. Furthermore, several factors of interest for using antibiotic resistance in the teaching of evolution were identified from the classroom study. These involve, among others, how learners’ perception of threshold concepts such as randomness and levels of organization in space and time are affected by the bacterial context

Internet är en plats där alla kan lära sig. Vem som helst kan publicera vilket digitalt läromaterial som helst. För att säkerställa att ett publicerat material är lämpligt är det viktigt att materialet är utformat på ett pedagogiskt sätt. Det är dessutom viktigt att nyttja de fördelar ett digitalt läromedel har som en konventionell bok inte har. Detta arbete undersöker hur Matteboken presenterar tröskelbegrepp i kursen Matematik 1. I arbetet har tröskelbegreppen på Matteboken analyserats med hjälp utav två didaktiska teorier. Den ena är variationsteorin, vilken handlar om att variera aspekter av ett innehåll för att göra uppenbart vad lärandeobjektet är. Den andra är att använda sig av olika representationer, vilket handlar om att representera ett material på olika sätt för att öka förståelsen av lärandeobjektet. Innehållet har även analyserats utifrån det faktum att det är konstruerat för att läsas på en skärm. Arbetets resultat är att det existerar två tröskelbegrepp inom kursen Matematik 1. Dessa två är funktionsbegreppet och bråkbegreppet. Ett centralt resultat i arbetet är att presentationen av dessa tröskelbegrepp på Matteboken kan förbättras med hjälp utav interaktiva moment, variation och olika representationer. / The Internet is a place where everyone can learn and anyone can publish any digital educational material. To make sure that the published material is adequate, it is important that the material is written with pedagogical support. It is also important to utilize the advantages a digital educational material has over conventional educational material. This paper examines and analyses how Matteboken is presenting threshold concepts in the course Matematik 1. This work is done by conducting literature studies and by analyzing Matteboken's presentation of threshold concepts. The analysis is done using two pedagogical theories. One of them is the theory of variation, explaining how varying certain critical features of a critical aspect is a good way to learn. The other one has to do with representations, utilizing different representations of a learning object to increase the understanding of the object of learning. The material at Matteboken has also been analyzed from the fact that the material is supposed to be read on a screen. The result of the paper is that there exists two threshold concepts in Matematik 1. The concept of a function and the concept of a fraction. The result of the paper indicates that Mattebokens’ presentation of the threshold concepts may be improved using interactive tools, variation and different representations.

Thesis (Doctor of Radiography)--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2020 / Radiation therapy has undergone significant changes with regard to new medical imaging technologies, including computerised tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Practitioners now have access to technologies that provide anatomical information in an infinite selection of views. Earlier advances in three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3D-CRT) allowed for the site of treatment to be accurately located. Intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) enabled practitioners to accurately focus the ionising radiation beam, while modulating the intensity of the dose being administered. Currently, using image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) methods, radiation therapists can track the effectiveness of treatment in real-time to provide better protection for the organs and tissue that are not targeted for treatment. The changes described above have fundamentally changed radiation therapy practice, and thus have implications for the training of radiation therapists. This thesis argues that without a deep understanding of the science underpinning the advancements in radiation therapy techniques, practitioners will be unlikely to achieve the necessary level of accuracy and consistency in treatment. Radiation physics concepts, such as sources and types of ionising radiation, ionisation, the isocentre and the Inverse Square Law underpin competent and safe practice. Threshold concepts, such as those listed above, have been identified as concepts that pose difficulty to students due to its complexity and the increased levels of cognitive challenge required to master a threshold concept. In applied disciplines, such as radiation physics, threshold concepts are strongly associated with competent practice. This study focused on the first year radiation physics curriculum and addressed the overarching research question: What is the relationship between threshold concepts in the radiation physics curriculum and radiation therapy practice? The study was guided by a translation device that combined two conceptual frameworks namely the Threshold Concept Framework and Legitimation Code Theory’s (LCT) Semantics dimension. LCT is a knowledge base theory that explains the complexity of knowledge structures. The Semantics dimension provided an explanation of the difficulty of concepts and proposed five pedagogies for the cumulative learning of complex concepts. A case study research design and methodology guided the research process. Data for the study comprised curriculum documents, and semi structured focus group and individual interviews with students, academic staff and clinical educators. The data were analysed using a translation device to show the semantic profile of curriculum documents, pedagogies and participants’ different understandings of the threshold concepts in radiation physics. The study found that threshold concepts in radiation physics underpin competent and safe practice. An external language of description was developed to identify the characteristics of threshold concepts. A virtual clinical environment was proposed as one of the pedagogies to aid mastering of threshold concepts through visualisation of the unseen by facilitating students’ understanding of threshold concepts for competent and safe radiation therapy practice. The study showed that students’ mastery of threshold concepts in radiation physics is critical for practice.

No description available.