A Backwards Step for New Zealand Career Development

Lifelong careerist, Tony Watts, is a great proponent of career development as a system within society. He was a great proponent of career guidance as a public good.

Watts feels that one of the measures of a 'successful' society is one which takes a national stance of "career development services as a system". An optimal system takes a long-term view of career, develops strategies for society and individuals that benefit all (2014, p. 2).

From the individual's perspective, this would be "as seamless as possible", so, although there would be sub-systems to serve specific needs - like career guidance in schools, or in retirement villages - all aspects of the system would be unified with a common purpose (Watts, 2014, p. 2).

In many countries, New Zealand included, career guidance has been largely provided as a government service. Because of this, having a supportive, strategic and long-term public stance on career development is critical to the appropriate delivery career development services (Watts, Sultana & McCarthy, 2010).

Australia has a national career policy. The Australian Government defines career development as "the ongoing process of a person managing their life, learning and work over their lifespan. It involves developing the skills and knowledge that enable individuals to plan and make informed decisions about education, training and career choices" (2013, p. 3).

Further, this policy is underpinned by belief that career development is not something that happens once. It explicitly states that career development begins "at school and continue[s] throughout life, including: transitioning from school to further education, training or work; entering, re-entering or changing employment; and transitioning to retirement" (Australian Government, 2013, p. 4).

In New Zealand, we didn't ever get to a national policy statement, which has proved to be unfortunate. It has left us unable to hold our government unaccountable for the delivery of career services, and the erosion of those services it once supplied.

The New Zealand government's - unquantifiable - career strategy has been largely delivered through Careers New Zealand (CNZ). CNZ was considered internationally to be an ideal for countries to aim for. Kiwis had a dedicated government department which focused on, and resourced, transition and development.

From an outsider's uninformed perspective of CNZ, I feel that over the past decade, where CNZ once focused on the lifespan, their service has been hollowed out to a point where they only just have the capacity to support career development in secondary schools.

Our once proud ship became a stripped and beached shell.

Then, last week our government, instead of appropriately resourcing CNZ and refloating her, have towed her into a backwater to die. She has now been rafted up alongside the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC).

I feel that the message this mooring sends is that career development only happens at a single point in time: CNZ is a one-stop shop for when you leave uni with your freshly minted degree. The likely impression will be that no one other than uni graduates needs career development.

How has New Zealand's thinking become so narrow when others, 'like us', have become so aware? The EU is working towards a continent-wide harmonisation strategy. Australia and the UK take the view that career development increases social inclusion, while Canada focuses on career development to reduce labour market polarisation (Hooley & Barham, 2015). We too need career development as a social driver in New Zealand. We need to harness our human desire to help and be a functional part of society.

We need career development services across the life-span so that New Zealanders are happy societal contributors. We need career development that covers primary, secondary, tertiary, working life, retirement and third age careers.

Further, we need career development as an economic driver: to keep us engaged and fulfilled in our working lives, which must last past retirement age. As a society we cannot afford to pay the 15 year average pension that we will be in retirement (instead of the 3 we once lived past retirement when we first set the age 65 bar).

How effective will TEC be at reaching that growing segment of third agers (tipped to be 20% of the population by 2030; Statistics NZ, 2013)?

The OECD states that nations must “build policy frameworks for lifelong guidance which are capable of integrating a range of interventions associated with different life stages and sectors into a coherent lifelong system” (McCarthy & Hooley, 2015, p. 1). They explain that development of national strategies with policy responsibility shared by the multiple stakeholders is effective for economic growth and societal sustainability.

All I can see is our New Zealand government apparently luffing blindly off into the sunset with no life jackets and the sun their eyes, oblivious to the fact that our friend and neighbour nations are have formed a magnificent armada beating to windward, with eyes wide open and sextants at the ready.

I am deeply saddened by the lack of understanding our government has shown of what career development is, and how it serves society. I am also unhappy that we CDANZ members were unable to influence this outcome.

And the worst thing is that I don't know where we go from here.


Sam

References:

• Australian Government (2013). National Career Development Strategy. Retrieved 2 June 2016 from https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/national_career_development_strategy.pdf
• Hooley, Tristram & Barham Lyn (2015). Career Development Policy & Practice: The Tony Watts Reader. UK: Highflyers Resources Ltd.
• McCarthy, John & Hooley, Tristram (2015). Integrated Policies: Creating Systems that Work. Retrieved 2 June 2016 from http://www.is2015.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Integrated-Policies-Creating-Systems-that-Work.pdf
• Statistics NZ (2013). How will New Zealand’s ageing population affect the property market? Retrieved 2 June 2016 from http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/population/estimates_and_projections/ageing-population-property-market.aspx
• Watts, A. G. (1996). Toward a policy for lifelong career development: A transatlantic perspective. The Career Development Quarterly, September 1996, Volume 45, issue 1 (pp. 41-53).
• Watts, A. G., Sultana, Ronald G. & McCarthy, John (2010). The involvement of the European Union in career guidance policy: A brief history. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, July 2010, Volume 10, issue 2 (pp. 89-107).
• Watts, A.G. (2014). National Lifelong Career Development Strategies: Some Parting Reflections. Retrieved 2 June 2016 from http://www.elgpn.eu/webinars/tony-watts-webinar-presentation1/

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Building in-group behaviours in geographically dispersed classes

As we have some new tutors in our school who are not familiar with teaching over a video link, I got asked by a colleague if I had "a couple of points" to share on creating remote student engagement.

That got me thinking.

And - while I have written a lot more than a couple of points - I came up with a few things which I think makes a difference. Firstly it is (a) mindset: that we are ONE class. Then what follows is (b) practicing and modelling the following behaviours:

1. Considering all the students as being a team who are all in the in-group, regardless of location (read more about in-group behaviours here)
2. Greeting everyone by as they come into the room, regardless of whether they are local or remote so everyone gets to know everyone else's name
3. I set a task each week of students bringing shared stories of leadership into the classroom - two students do this per lecture - started with one remote student and one local student. As a result, the first four weeks had a remote student telling a two minute story each week (probably more like 5 minutes), but it helped to create a single in-group because they all learned something about each other's leadership ideas
4. Treating the TV screen like my rear-vision mirror, so glancing up every three seconds or so to cue in on what is going on, AND treating the screen like an extra person when discussion is happening, so they another set of eyes I connect with when looking around the room
5. When doing cases, often deliberately asking the remote group first for their ideas/questions/opinions before everyone else reports back (probably 2/3rds of the time)
6. Reminding the local students to be quiet so the remote students can speak (usually by simply holding up my hand, palm out, and saying "hang on everyone, be quiet..." with an "...so the [campus] guys can hear", or "...so we can hear [x] speaking". They atune to the hand cue pretty quickly)
7. Apologising when I don't hear a remote student asking a question, and again using the hand cue and asking the local students "hang on...".

I find the local students are very respectful of the remote students.

In addition, as I usually go to our other campus to do a lecture back to my local students close to the end of the semester. Each year some of the local students are keen to come on the road trip, because we have a sense of team in the room, and they want to meet the students in person.


Sam

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Using Problem Steps Recorder to explain IT issues

Who's heard of Microsoft's Problem Steps Recorder?

No?

Neither had I.

What it does is track a problem that you are having on your PC so that you can report exactly what is going on, and send it to someone who will then help you trouble-shoot your issue.

All you need to do is to key "PSR" into the search field on the Windows Start Menu. A dialogue box will pop up (like the one in the image).

Click "Start Record", and then go and do exactly what you were doing when the problem happened. Write some notes (if relevant). Once you are happy, stop recording, then save the resulting zip file.

If you open the zip file, you will find an ".mht" file which contains your notes, a log, and screenshots of all the screens that got focus while you were outlining what was going on.

Then send the .zip to your helpdesk or colleague for a solution. So easy.

Best of all, this is small to email (unlike video, which takes up lots of space).

A simple solution to help provide a solution.


Sam

• Reference: Bott, Ed (18 May 2016). Use the Problem Steps Recorder to help solve problems remotely. Retrieved 19 May 2016 from http://enews.techrepublic.com/hostedemail/email.htm?CID=34711286841&ch=82CC35275B27010EE8572DD9610E581D&h=b4ded617785c85d2b59c11d426d2b51b&ei=W-aDdrYfN&schema=echo3

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Why paraphrasing is important in academic writing

Each new semester brings the need to explain some of the same things to a new group of students.

One thing about that repetition is that (a) it makes you start to think about what is really important, and (b) you get better at explaining the reasons.

Over time I feel that my explanations are getting clearer, and that I become more focused on picking off the really key aspects of work that will add the most value for both the student, for myself, for the institution, and for the business sector as a whole.

However, there are some things that still need to be hammered home for all of us, and one of those is "Don't steal other people's stuff" - or steal our own stuff, already submitted.

Students often copy original author words verbatim, and think that by including a citation, it absolves them of theft. Not so. If we haven't flagged by using double-quote marks that we are using the original author's exact words, the writer's own skull-sweat, we are still stealing: citation or no citation.

What we have to do is either (a) show that we clearly understand exactly what the original author was saying by putting it in our own words and citing the author as the owner of the original ideas, or (b) put double-quote marks around those words and citing them, including a page number.

There is no third option.

When we are writing for academic credit, we cannot get credit for something that we have not written ourselves. If we have loads of 'accidentally' copied sections from other author's work, then this is not our own work: it is the work of others. We have simply done a mash-up.

The illustration on this page shows 272 words from a TurnItIn similarity score run on a piece of student work. Of those 272 words shown, 196 have been stolen and reused without indicating that they were not the student's own writing (72%). They have been cited, but not quoted. Of the 76 that remain, 42 of them are correctly treated quotes (15%). The remaining 26 words are the student's actual work... totalling 10%.

I wouldn't give someone a job if they could only do 10% and nick or borrow the rest. This is shades of Developer Bob (here).

We need to demonstrate our original thinking, not our ability to 'monkey see, monkey do'. Business School students around the world apparently have the highest levels of dishonesty when compared to other faculties (terrifying! McCabe, Butterfield & Trevino, 2006).

What employer wants an employee who steals before they even get into the workplace?

As a result, a large part of my role each year is to model honestly, and to help my students to be able to be honest.


Sam

• Reference: McCabe, D. L., Butterfield, K. D., & Trevino, L. K. (2006). Academic dishonesty in graduate business programs: Prevalence, causes, and proposed action. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5(3), 294-305. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2006.22697018

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The importance of asking questions

I read an essay by Martin Schwartz, who talked about meeting an old Uni friend who had dropped out of post-graduate study because they felt stupid.

Martin went on to explain why it was very important that we felt stupid. He said (2008, p. 1771):

I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science makes me feel stupid too. It's just that I've gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid. I wouldn't know what to do without that feeling. I even think it's supposed to be this way.

In reading Martin's essay, this idea was a "What?!" moment for me.

When you undertake research, the thinking we put into scoping and asking the 'right' question is what makes the difference between not finding anything, and a significant discovery. We have to "design and interpret an experiment so that the conclusions were absolutely convincing; foresee difficulties and see ways around them, or, failing that, solve them when they occur" (Schwartz, 2008, p. 1771).

But what happens next is what is the really cool part.

Schwartz talked about talking to "Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me he didn't know how to solve the problem I was having in his area. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn't have the answer, nobody did. That's when it hit me: nobody did. That's why it was a research problem".

Martin solved his research problem - as he said, once he realised that he could take the problem on and find a solution; that he had the power to make that decision and have a crack at it - an act of leadership - it wasn't that hard (2008).

The trick was to feel the right to have a go at trying to answer the question. To be that liberated, and let go of what we do know for what we don't. In his words, "our ignorance is infinite" (Schwartz, 2008, p. 1771).

We need to get used to asking questions, making mistakes in seeking the answer, suck it up, and give it a try again. That's science, and research.

And we don't teach that change in process well to our students: that we start with "learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries" (Schwartz, 2008, p. 1771).

We need to teach students that it is OK to ask questions, again and again, if we are to keep building those giant shoulders for future generations to stand on (Newton, 1686, citing Bernard of Chartres, 1189, Wikiquote, n.d.).


Sam

References

• GoogleScholar (n.d.). Home. Retrieved 26 May 2016 from https://scholar.google.co.nz/
• Newton, Sir Isaac (1686). Standing on the shoulders of giants in a Letter from Sir Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke. Retrieved 14 May 2016 from http://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/9285
• Schwartz, Martin A. (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science, June 2008, Volume 121, issue 11 (p. 1771)
• Wikiquote (n.d.). Isaac Newton. Retrieved 14 May 2016 from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

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What to write in our Findings

Our findings chapter is where, based upon the methodology we described in the previous chapter, we report what we found.

Sometimes called 'results', the findings section simply describes our data, logically arranged, without bias or interpretation. We don't attempt to apply meaning to our data in this chapter. We simply report what is (University of Southern California, n.d.).

When undertaking qualitative research, Wolcott (2008, p. 27) says "Give your account a firm footing in description". He suggests:

"Description provides the foundation upon which qualitative inquiry rests. Unless you prove to be gifted at conceptualizing or theorizing, the descriptive account will usually constitute the major contribution you have to make. The more solid the descriptive basis, the more likely it will survive changing fads and fashions in reporting or changing emphases in how we derive meaning from our studies."

Analysing our data in our findings helps us "to understand the problem from within, to break it into pieces, and to view the research problem from various perspectives" (University of Southern California, n.d.). We need to look for themes, ways of grouping or clustering our data that starts to make sense of what our research participants have told us.

We should ignore data that doesn't help us to answer our research question, and tell the story of what we HAVE found simply, briefly, and clearly. To answer our research question, as part of being brief, we can use "figures and tables, to present results more effectively". However, we shouldn't include non-summarised raw data, because that will not adequately describe what we have found (University of Southern California, n.d.).

Non-summarised or unanalysed data is simply a data-dump. It adds no context to help the reader understand the evidence that we have collected. Without that understanding, we will not be able to expand our argument in our discussion chapter into meaning.

However, we do have to be careful that we do not get confused between description and meaning. As Wolcott says, there is a "subtle but critical distinction between observed and inferred behavior" (2008, p. 28). In this chapter, we stay with 'observed'.

Think of the results section as the place where you report what your study found; think of the discussion section as the place where you interpret your data and answer the "So What?" question (University of Southern California, n.d.).


Sam

References:

• Feinberg, J. (2015). Wordle | Create. http://www.wordle.net/create
• Wolcott, H. F. (2008). Writing Up Qualitative Research (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.
• University of Southern California. (n.d.). Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: 7 - The Results. http://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/results

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Cross-Pollinating Sport and Business

There are people who think that sport is not like business. However, as someone who teaches in both areas, I can say that sport is BIG business.

It is one of the remaining growth areas for broadcast media, sponsorship, and advertising. Sport is becoming professionalised at all levels, yet retains elements of social and ethical practice.

It is a consumable that can actually do us good as individuals, as communities, and as nations.

Business learns from on-field sport. For example, an HBR emailer, in "Prepare for Tough Business Situations as You’d Practice a Sport" (08 April 2016), said:

One key tenet of coaching professional sports is preparing people in the most realistic contexts possible. For example, a coach might pour water on practice balls to prepare a team for wet gameday weather. You can apply similar thinking to business situations. For example, you might work on rehearsing your pitch to potential VCs in front of colleagues you’ve asked to pepper you with difficult questions. You might create situations where a VC is late to the meeting — or is rushing you to finish your pitch. You might do the session in a setting that mimics what you’ll likely encounter in the real world, whether that’s a noisy coffee shop or an overheated conference room. By sensitizing yourself to the actual challenges you’ll face, you’ll become more adaptable and have a far greater chance of success.

Practice - rehearsal - is a key element in professional development, and practice is more effective if you do it in the most realistic way you can. Fire-fighters, police, paramedics, pilots, musicians and soldiers rehearse realistically. The more real we can make our rehearsal, the better we will deliver when need to.

Surprisingly though, off-field sport learns from business, usually several years after business has learned from on-field sport. Those of us who are teaching in this area are trying to short-circuit the learning from on-field practice to off-field. We are doing that with co-operative learning, where students go into sports organisations to apply their learning directly in projects that they are delivering.

What is now happening at my institution is that we are about to start teaching the same way in our business school.

Time to pick up the pace.

Sam

• Reference: Molinsky, Andy (18 February 2016). Practice for Tough Situations as You’d Practice a Sport. Retrieved 14 April 2016 from https://hbr.org/2016/02/practice-for-tough-situations-as-youd-practice-a-sport?cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-management_tip-_-tip_date&referral=00203&utm_source=newsletter_management_tip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tip_date

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Meta-analysis on the benefits of women leaders

A group of researchers at the University of Pretoria and the University of Illinois at Chicago (Jenny M. Hoobler, Courtney R. Masterson, Stella M. Nkomo and Eric J. Michel) have just published "The Business Case for Women Leaders: Meta-Analysis, Research Critique, and Path Forward" in the Journal of Management.

The abstract gives an interesting overview:

Since the 1990s, a growing body of research has sought to quantify the relationship between women’s representation in leadership positions and organizational financial performance. Commonly known as the “business case” for women’s leadership, the idea is that having more women leaders is good for business. Through meta-analysis (k = 78, n = 117,639 organizations) of the direct effects of women’s representation in leadership (as CEOs, on top management teams, and on boards of directors) on financial performance, and tests that proxy theoretical arguments for moderated relationships, we call attention to equivocal findings. Our results suggest women’s leadership may affect firm performance in general and sales performance in particular. And women’s leadership—overall and, specifically, the presence of a female CEO—is more likely to positively relate to firms’ financial performance in more gender egalitarian cultures. Yet taking our findings as a whole, we argue that commonly used methods of testing the business case for women leaders may limit our ability as scholars to understand the value that women bring to leadership positions. We do not advocate that the business case be abandoned altogether but, rather, improved and refined. We name exemplary research studies to show how different perspectives on gender, alternative conceptualizations of value, and the specification of underlying mechanisms linking leadership to performance can generate changes in both the dominant ontology and the epistemology underlying this body of research.

It is great to see a body of research coming together supporting the benefits of diversity. I can't wait for this to be released so I can read the article in full.

Sam

• Reference (in proof): Hoobler, Jenny M., Masterson, Courtney R., Nkomo, Stella M. & Michel, Eric J. (2016). The Business Case for Women Leaders: Meta-Analysis, Research Critique, and Path Forward. Journal of Management, 2016, Volume x, issue x (pp. x-x).

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Being a Contract Lecturer

A 'contract' lecturer is what we call being an 'adjunct', 'temporary' or a 'casual' lecturer here in New Zealand.

This is where you are not a permanent staff member with research conditions (ie, have to publish in peer reviewed journals in order to keep your teaching hours slightly more manageable).

Being a contract lecturer can be seen as being powerless, overloaded, lumped with crap jobs, and stressed.

Yep: it can be all those things. But frankly, having been a contractor for eight years, I don't see much advantage in being a permanent staff member.

As a contractor you get to choose the level of work you want to agree to, vary the papers you take, try a new challenge, say you are too busy to take on more than you are interested in, work for different schools, experiment, take holidays when you feel like it, teach online and face to face, AND claim your business expenses to offset against the piddling income.

If you get to love teaching, as I do, then that makes it almost like being paid to play (more about the piddling income later).

You can carry on working in your base field, and stay up to speed on as many fronts as you want to. You get to tap into an academic library and infrastructure that helps you stay up to date much better than you would if you were purely consulting.

You get to mix with an awesome array of professionals; learn to teach really well through modelling, observation, PD and coffee conversations; opt out of boring meetings; pull away from the politics of what is a government organisation; and get to ignore most of the restrictions that permanent staff are anchored with.

You get to swan in for lecture times, and then swan out again. You get to do your marking in your pyjamas at home. You get to teach what you apply in the field to new practitioners.

Recently, I undertook a comparison of what I would earn at my institution as a permanent staff member, compared to my contractor payments. I would get more pro rata if I were permanent, but I would lose the ability to claim my expenses (roughly a third of my income) for the added stress of having research conditions, and a quarter more workload.

I decided not to do it.

Which brings up my main point: lecturers are grossly UNDERPAID.

Each paper you take on is usually budgeted at around 60 hours 'delivery' - ie, face time with students - usually somewhere between $50 and $100 per hour. So you get paid between $3000-$6000 for a course. A full time load is 5.5 papers, therefore you get paid between $16,500-$$33,000 per semester. Two semesters equal $33-$66k per year!

OK, then you add research conditions on, and you go up 20%... $39-$69k. Wow. You have a Masters or a PhD and get paid like a plumber's-mate.

This is not cool.

And then there's the workload.

I teach well, and I work hard at continuous improvement. My classes are used as exemplars for new teachers. However, I could easily work 80 hours a week as a part-time lecturer teaching 4 papers (75% of a full time load, not including research conditions). I don't do 80 hours, but the work could easily eat up that much of my time, if I allowed it to.

Which would leave me no time for my consultancy work, for my writing or for my study. Nor would it keep up my retirement savings scheme.

Having a strong management background, I have set up systems and processes to streamline delivery, marking, resourcing and administration, which allow me to appear to deliver a Rolls Royce to students on my bicycle budget.

But that's the point, really: as a good teacher, I shouldn't be on the bicycle salary of a checkout operator or a plumber's-mate, while working twice their hours.

There is something deeply rotten about where the education dollar is spent. It is poured into structures and infrastructure that gobbles up funding, but is not being spent at the front-end: on the person who delivers digestible learning to the learner, and guides that learner to independent, active, life-long learning.

There is a lesson in this, but I am not quite sure how we deliver it.


Sam

• This post was sparked by a LinkedIn discussion. Reference: Boticario, Luis (30 April 2016). Becoming an Adjunct Professor. Retrieved 2 May 2016 from https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2774663/2774663-6131211358298992640?trk=hp-feed-group-discussion

read more "Being a Contract Lecturer"

Creating Independent - Active - Learners

Independent, active learning is where "students engage with the curriculum - and academic staff - to achieve learning goals, [...] interacting with peers [...] and stakeholders". This type of learning puts the "responsibility on students [to] be engaged, [but is] enabled, facilitated and supported by staff through relevant and guided opportunities, suitable pedagogies and an appropriate learning environment" (Thomas, Jones & Ottaway, 2015, p. 6).

To get 'engaged', students need active learning practices, using "higher-order cognitive skills such as the ability to analyse, synthesize, solve problems, and [thinking] meta-cognitively in order to construct long-term understanding. It involves the critical analysis of new ideas, linking them to already known concepts, and principles so that this understanding can be used for problem solving in new, unfamiliar contexts" (Hermida, 2008).

Kiwi students are staircased into active learning from kindergarten. When they get to higher education, they are well on the path to being active, deep, independent learners, who are self-directed, curious, questioning and adept at building and applying theoretical frameworks (Warring, 2007).

However, the main groups of international students who study here - largely Indian and Chinese nationals - tend to find independent, active learning a major challenge (Warring, 2007).

Many lecturers whom I speak with tell me that trying to get international students up to speed feels like trying to get a helpless employee to do a job: that it almost feels easier to do the work yourself.

While I understand that view, this - to me - is not the problem. I reframe this as: we have students who need to make up ten years of deliberate educational development and become independent, active learners in a single semester. What shortcuts can we use?

One idea I am trying out is to clarify what is the lecturer's 'job', and what is the student's 'job'. For example, DeLong (2009, p. 3) lays out learner and lecturer roles as:

Activities to Structure Learning	Student\Learner	Teacher
Diagnose Needs	Understand own values	Help student ID Values
Set Objectives	Describe learning outcomes	Help student ID potential learning outcomes
Identify learning resources	ID preferred learning style	Help student determine their learning style. Know your teaching style
Use resources	Choose appropriate resources	Help student ID resources
Assess learning	Provide honest assessment	Facilitate assessment process

I suspect that we don't explain the learner 'job' explicitly to our international students. I also think they are often blind to what active learning actually is. If we are clear about what they are responsible for, they will learn and apply appropriate behaviours. Using DeLong's framework may help each of us to stay explicitly focused on our own role.

I will formalise other active learner development tools and blog on them in the coming months: and I would be very interested in others' shortcuts.


Sam

References

• DeLong, Suzanne (2009). Teaching Methods to Encourage Independent Learning and Thinking. Retrieved 12 May 2016 from http://www.usma.edu/cfe/Literature/DeLongS_09.pdf
• Hermida, Dr Julian (2008). Deep Learning. Retrieved 12 May 2016 from http://www.julianhermida.com/algoma/law1scotldeeplearning.htm
• Stanger-Hall, Kathrin F. (2012). Multiple-Choice Exams: An Obstacle for Higher-Level Thinking in Introductory Science Classes. USA: CBE—Life Sciences Education, Fall 2012, Volume 11, issue 3 (pp. 294-306). Retrieved 21 November 2012 from http://www.lifescied.org/content/11/3/294.full
• Thomas, Professor Liz, Jones, Dr Robert & Ottaway, Dr James (2015). Effective practice in the design of directed independent learning opportunities. Retrieved 12 May 2016 from https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/resources/effective_practice_in_the_design_of_directed_independent_learning_opportunities.pdf
• Weimer, Maryellen PhD (November 2010). Deep Learning vs. Surface Learning: Getting Students to Understand the Difference. USA: Author. Retrieved 20 November 2012 from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/deep-learning-vs-surface-learning-getting-students-to-understand-the-difference/

read more "Creating Independent - Active - Learners"

Michael Quinion on Lame Ducks

I am sure that you will have heard the term "lame duck" before, referring to incompetence or uselessness on the part of people ...or organisations.

The renowned etymologist, Michael Quinion, has shed light on where the term originated, if not exactly how it came into being.

Michael has explored the British stock market of the 1860s, and found that ducks, bulls and bears were already common members in the menagerie of market practices performed by "London stockbrokers and jobbers [who] operated from coffee houses such as Jonathan’s and Garraway’s in a little street called Exchange Alley, close to the main commodity trading centre, the Royal Exchange" (see cartoon illustrating this piece from the US Library of Congress, showing bulls, bears and lame ducks in Change Alley).

Michael adds some fantastic flavour by relating that "Change Alley or just the Alley [...] still exists, now officially called Change Alley, as a network of five back streets of no particular distinction in the City of London. The coffee houses are long gone; the jobbers and brokers left even earlier, decamping to a specially constructed building in Sweeting’s Alley in 1773, which later became the Stock Exchange".

The lame duck term arose around a century before this, around the 1760s, likely created by a social commentator to describe traders "who failed to pay up when bills became due, effectively bankrupting themselves and leading to their being barred from trading", with "the currently earliest known example appeared in the Newcastle Courant on 5 September [1761], in a brief report of moneys being paid by subscription into the Bank of England, with a note that there were 'No lame ducks this time'."

Michael notes that, while the 'lame' aspect is clear because of the trader's inability to sustain their finances, the origin of the 'duck' part of the phrase is lost in the mists of time.

He notes that:

"almost every one of the many later references to these failed traders refers to them as waddling away, an early example being in the Leeds Intelligencer on 29 June 1762 (emphases in the original): 'Yesterday a lame duck or two made shift to waddle out of ’Change Alley'.

"Perhaps they were low-slung portly gentlemen, the eighteenth-century equivalent of today’s fat cats, and the way they walked suggested a duck with a bad foot? More probably, having established that failures were to be called lame ducks, the derisive image of them struggling away limping was too good not to use."

I wonder if the cricketing term, out for a duck, is related to this?

Sam

References:

• Quinion, Michael (2016). Newsletter: Saturday 7 May 2016. Retrieved 9 May 2016 from http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/stbi.htm
• Quinion, Michael (2004). Bulls and bears. Retrieved 9 May 2016 from http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bul1.htm
• US Library of Congress (1750-1800). Pandemonium college, or The battle of the bulls, bears, and lame ducks, as fought in 'C--ge- Alley. Retrieved 9 May 2016 from https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b44195/

read more "Michael Quinion on Lame Ducks"

Cultural strength to bend, not break

Culture is the set of key values, assumptions, understandings, and norms shared by group members (Yukl, 2006; Jackson & Parry, 2008; Daft, 2007). Deal & Kennedy defined culture as "The way we do things around here" (1982, p. 4).

Strong cultures are those that have a LOT of in-group alignment about the importance of specific values, ways of doing things, and group goal commitment. However, strong cultures aren't always good. They can be so strong that they break rather than bend with change, limit diversity, unbalance members and, by limiting individual choice, can become a tool of manipulation, domination and oppression (Yukl, 2006; Jackson & Parry, 2008; Daft, 2007). So for me, good culture is where the following happens:

Enduring, strong cultures - in order to flex and change with the world around them - foster diversity, aid member balance, and allow individual choice.

Not too long ago, I was illustrating strong cultures to a leadership class. The example I gave was of a friend of mine who was a member of a very strong clique of buddies right from primary school through into secondary school. That's more than twelve years of togetherness. They travelled together, played together (all being rugby boys), and then finally, in senior high school, came to hold each other back. The culture of the group was so strong that no-one was allowed to be different, or to take a different path. It had become a negative culture.

I was reflecting on this when a fellow leadership traveller (Butler, 2016) emailed the following:

We should always be aware of ‘I-knew-you-when-people’. When you let them define your world, they always make it smaller. They will try to keep you stuck at a stage in your life which is passed & gone. They will try to define you on the basis of who you were, not who you have become ~ & certainly not who you will someday be.

They will want you to linger with them in memory lane, & rob you of the momentum you need to soar. They will not permit you to embrace the future. Do not let them!

I feel we all have a duty to do something practical with our lives, even great. We may never reach perfection, but every day we have the chance to try & be better than the day before. We all need to move beyond the ‘good old days’. The past is past, it cannot be rewritten, it can only be replayed over & over.

The future lies before us like an uninhibited land waiting for the pioneers of destiny to explore it. So let us forge ahead & do so.

Wise words.

In that group that my friend was a part of, the fracture came when one group member moved to the other end of the country in order to - their word - 'escape' and to feel free enough to realise their own ambitions. The group splintered. They no longer see each other.

Enduring, strong cultures - in order to flex and change with the world around them - foster diversity, aid member balance, and allow individual choice.


Sam

References:

• Butler, K. (5 May 2016). Forge Ahead. http://us3.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9f97bb333086697c5703a153e&id=1f85f9e04e&e=d3fd8ec5fb
• Daft, R. L. (2007). The Leadership Experience (4th ed.). Thomson South-Western.
• Deal, T. E., & Kennedy, A. A. (1982). Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. Penguin Books.
• Jackson, B., & Parry K. (2008). A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about studying leadership. SAGE Publications Ltd.
• Yukl, G. (2006). Leadership in Organizations (6th ed.). Prentice Hall.

read more "Cultural strength to bend, not break"