This article reports on a study examining continuing professional development (CPD) for consultant doctors. The aim of the study was to identify what promotes or inhibits the effectiveness of CPD and met the following objectives: comparing and contrasting the experiences of CPD across the range of specialties; identifying and describing the range of different models of CPD employed across the different specialties and clinical contexts; considering the educational potential of reflective practice in CPD and its impact on professional practice and exploring how different professionals judge the effectiveness of current CPD practices. Using a mixture of qualitative (interviews, letters, observation) and quantitative (online questionnaire) methods, the views of CPD providers and users were surveyed. Findings suggested that the effectiveness of CPD, as inferred from the comments made by interviewees and questionnaire respondents, relates to the impact on knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, behaviours and changes in practice in the work place. The quality of CPD was seen as inextricably linked to any improvements in the quality of the professional practices required for service delivery. There was widespread consensus as to the value of learning in professional settings. There was recognition that there needs to be a move away from tick boxes to the in-depth identification of learning needs and how these can be met both within and external to the work place, with learning being adequately enabled and assessed in all locations. In conclusion, it can be said that CPD is valued and is seen as effective when it addresses the needs of individual clinicians, the populations they serve and the organisations within which they work. However, the challenge for CPD may lie in the dynamic interaction between educational opportunities and service delivery requirements, as there may be occasions where they vie with each other for resources.

This article reports on research into primary student teachers' understanding of mathematics and its teaching undertaken at the Manchester Metropolitan University and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The research set out to investigate the ways in which non-specialist student teachers conceptualise mathematics and its teaching and how their views evolve as they progress through an initial training course. The study has shown how the mathematical understanding of such students is, in the first instance, embedded in a strongly affective account of their own mathematical experiences in schools, where mathematics was often seen as difficult and threatening. College training successfully nurtures a more positive attitude to mathematics as a subject, albeit couched in a pedagogically oriented frame. In later stages of training however, their conceptions of mathematics and its teaching are subsumed within the organisational concerns of placement schools and school experience tutors, and shaped by commercial schemes. It is suggested that alternative conceptions of mathematics assumed at different stages of this training appear incommensurable. A theoretical framework is offered as an approach to reconciling this conflict. This demonstrates how three potential dichotomies, phenomenological/official versions of mathematics, discovery/transmission conceptions of mathematics teaching, and perceptual/structural understandings of the mathematics teacher's task can be seen as productive dualities harnessing both qualitative and quantitative perspectives.

Abstract:Casualisation

No abstract

No abstract