Influence of Culture in Nursing Curriculum | Research

Influence of Culture in Nursing Curriculum | Research Amber Hussain Abstract: The aim of this study is to identify the influence of culture in nursing curriculum. 30 nursing instructors participated in the study. A questionnaire was distributed, which included five thematic categories. Findings revealed that teachers view definition of culture differently and they are aware of its importance in nursing in order to provide cultural sensitive patient care, but they view student diversity as challenging in classroom setting. Introduction: Development of curriculum plays a vital role in creating educational change. In order to improve classroom practices and students learning, large-scale curriculum reforms are instigated but these often fall short. There can be variety of reasons for these shortfalls, among which cultural influence is one. To develop and implement a high quality curriculum, a culture-sensitive approach to curriculum development is necessary (Nijhuis, Pieters Voogt, 2013). This approach have equal or even more importance in the field of nursing, as nurses are the one who are confronted with patients who belong to different cultural backgrounds. According to Spritzer et al. (1996), in order to improve nurse’s cross-cultural awareness, major efforts have been made to develop culturally sensitive theoretical knowledge. To develop this awareness, teacher has to play a major role as; teachers’ multicultural competency is becoming an increasingly vital element in educational curriculum (Malta, 2012). Therefore, a teacher’s role is to be aware of their own culture, student’s culture and make students sensitive to cultural diverse patient care, which can be implemented by using varied teaching strategies in classroom setting. According to Maltby (2008), there are a variety of teaching techniques that can be used to engage students in the process of becoming culturally competent such as role plays, using exemplars and web-based interactions. Methodology Using convenience sampling, 30 nursing instructors of more than 1 year experience, participated in study. The participants teach at different teaching institutions of nursing i.e. Ziauddin college of Nursing, Baqai College of Nursing and Aga Khan University School of Nursing. A survey questionnaire was given to rate responses according to five broad aspects: definition of culture, cultural content, students’ diversity, teachers own cultural values and classroom pedagogies on 3 point likert scale (refer Appendix A). Results The study found that the definition of culture is perceived differently by different teachers. 83% view it as lifestyle of people, 33% believe that it is transformed from one generation to another and 37% perceive it as identity of people. 77% teachers disagree that cultural diverse patient care is incorporated in nursing curriculum taught in Pakistan and almost the same percentile (80%) of teachers agreed with the consensus that the curriculum is adapting from west and it diverts students from own culture. 73% stated that diversity among students creates conflict and it arise difficulty in students learning.100% teachers perceive that they are aware of their own culture, 93% knew that it is their responsibility to know about student’s culture and therefore 83% believe that it is important to train teachers regarding cultural diversity. 80% believe that they also face challenge to teach multicultural class. Majority of teachers use different teaching pedagogies like ice breake r (90%), case studies (77%), internet/videos (70%), reflections (67%) and group work (86%), still there are few who are not using these pedagogies. Discussion To investigate what teachers think about the role of culture in teaching and learning in nursing curriculum, questions were asked from them. Results are presented in appendix B and C. The results suggest that teachers in nursing schools perceive the understanding of culture differently. Majority view it as life style of people and few perceive it as identity of people and few believe that it is transformed from one generation to another .There are various understandings regarding culture. According to Stephens (2007, as cited in Nijhuisetal., 2013), culture gives meaning to beliefs and actions of individual and societies. It is an ideational tool which can be used to describe and evaluate that action. Nijhuis, Pieters and Pieters (2013) view culture as static or fixed phenomena. For nursing content part, results show that 77% of the teachers disagree with the opinion that the curriculum present in local context provides enough cultural information. These finding indicated that the kind of information available on the textbooks is not sufficient to teach the culture, which indentifies a gap in the curriculum content that expose students to foreign culture. Maltby (2008) also questioned the depth of cultural content taught in nursing curriculum. Moreover 80% agree that, nursing curriculum is adapted from western culture and it diverts students from their local culture. The idea emphases that, as most of the textbooks of nursing are adapted from foreign culture, they may cause learners to lose their own cultural identity. According to Thomas (1997) Poor contextual curriculum leads to cultural mismatches on the level of local context. In relation to the cultural diversity in students, majority of instructors reported that their classroom students are culturally diverse, and they believe that this creates challenge for both students and teachers, for example for teachers it would be difficult to respect and inculcate each individual student’s cultural needs and use teaching strategies accordingly, whereas, for students, diversity creates difficulty in reaching to a consensus. According to Phuntsog (2001) diversity in student directs teachers to provide equal opportunities to all students irrespective of their culture, caste and learning style. On the other hand, according to Marshall (1995) many institutions value cultural diversity but find it as challenging in a group work because there is a probability of developing a false consensus, as one think differently than other. Moreover, Majority of teachers have reported that they are familiar with their own cultural values and responsible towards knowing student cultural values. This brings forward the idea of culturally responsive teachers who takes the cultural identities of the students in the classroom into account. This would help teachers to teach in a way that recognizes that each learner is an individual, with a particular cultural inheritance, who may rely on a different ways of knowing. According to Malta (2012) by recognizing student diversity it would be possible for teachers to become aware of cultural barriers and learn to teach from a culturally sensitive perspective. Apart from this, majority of teachers had consensus on importance of receiving cultural training, since course trainings would help them to handle cultural themes and topics in more ease due to gaining proficiency in the subject area. Lastly, the study shed light on what kind of activities teachers practice in their Classrooms. Majority of teachers agree that they use different teaching methodologies i.e. icebreakers, case studies, videos, internets, reflection writing and group work, in order make students understand their own culture, be socially comfortable and understand aspects of foreign culture. These findings are parallel to that of Gonen and Saglam (2012) whereby teachers use different channels of information which expose students to foreign culture. Therefore, teachers develop a critical view towards foreign culture and these various sources of information a use to foster understanding of diverse culture. Conclusion In conclusion, culture has an influence in nursing curriculum in the area of content, teaching and learning. In the field of nursing, there is a lack of in depth content regarding culturally diverse patient care and that limited knowledge is mainly adapted from foreign culture due to which we tend to neglect the aspect of native culture. Moreover, students and teachers’ diverse cultural background and values are also affecting the learning outcome in classroom setting. Therefore, it is important for teachers to incorporate those teaching pedagogies which foster the concept of cultural sensitive patient care and respect among each other. References Davidhizar, R., Giger, J.N. (2002). Teaching culture within nursing curriculum using the GigerDavidhizar model of transcultural nursing assessment. Journal of Nursing Education, 40 (6), 282-284. Flintoff, V.J., Rivers, S. (2012). A reshaping of counseling curriculum: responding to the changingcultural context. British Journal of Guidance and Counseling, 40 (3), 235-246. Malta, B.V. (2012). Am I culturally competent? A study on multicultural teaching competencies among school teachers in Malta. The Journal of Multiculturalism in Education, 8 (1), 1-43. Maltby, H.J. (2008). A reflection on culture over time by baccularte nursing students.Contemporary Nurse, 28 (1), 111-118. Marshall, S.P. (2006).Cultural competence in nursing curricula: How are we doing 20years later? Guest Editorial, 45(7), 243-244. Nijhuis, C.G., Pieters, J.M., Voogt, J.M. (2013). Influence of culture on curriculum development in Ghana: an undervalued factor? Curriculum Studies, 45(2), 225-250. Phuntsog, N. (2001). Culturally responsive teaching: what do selected United States elementary School teachers think? Intercultural Education, 12, 51-64. Ruth, L.A. (2003). A critical way of knowing in a multi cultural nursing curriculum. Intuition a Way of Knowing, 24 (3), 129-134. Sairanen, R., Richardson, E., Kelly, L., Bergknut, E., Koskinen, L., Lundberg, P., Muir, N., Olt, H., Vlieger, L. (2013). Putting culture in the curriculum: A European project. Nurse Education in Practice.13, 118-124. Simunovi, V.J., Hren, D., Ivanis, A., Dorup, J., Krivokuca, Z., Ristic, S., verhaaren, H., Sonntag, H., Ribaric, S., Tomic, S., Vojnikovic, B., Selescovic, H., Dahl, M., Marusic, A., Marisic, M. (2007). Survey of attitudes towards curriculum reforms among medical teachers in different socio-economic and cultural environments. Curriculum Reforms among Medical Teachers, 29, 833-835. Spitzer, A., Kesselring, A., Ravid, C., Tamir, B., Granot, M., Noam, R. (1996). Learning about another culture: project and curricular reflections. Journal of Nursing Education, 35 (7), 322-328. Thomas, E. (1997). Developing a culture-sensitive pedagogy: tackling a problem of melding ‘global culture’ within existing cultural contexts. International Journal of Educational Development, 17(1), 13–26. Vikers, D. (2010). Social justice: A concept for undergraduate nursing curricula. Southern Online Journalof Nursing Research, 8(1). Appendix A: Questionnaire used for data collection along with consent form: Purpose: The purpose of this project study is to identify the influence of culture on nursing curriculum. In this study, culture refers to values, beliefs, language and customs of a particular people that impact the area of nursing education and practice. The project basically analyze the presence of cultural content in nursing curriculum and its significance, effects of students diverse cultural characteristic in classroom learning and teachers competency in relation to culture. Consent: This is a project being conducted by Amber Hussain MSCN student in a course of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at IED (institute of Educational Development). You are invited to participate in this project because you are associated with teaching in nursing profession. Your participation in this study is voluntary. The procedure involves filling a questionnaire. Your responses will be kept confidential and the results of this study will be used for research purpose. Participant Signature: ______________________ Appendix B: Compilation of the responses received by respondents on a 3 point likert scale: Appendix C: Graphical representation of the responses based on 5 broad categories: Graph 1: The above graph depicts that 83% of the teacher’s view culture as a lifestyle of people and about one third of the respondents view it as people identity and a permanent phenomena which is transformed from one generation to another. Graph 2: The above graph shows that 77% of the teachers believe that nursing curriculum taught in Pakistan does not provide opportunities for culturally diverse patient care but 77% of the respondents agreed that the nursing curriculum reflect patient’s values and beliefs. Around 80% of the respondent’s view that nursing curriculum is adopted from western culture and it alienates students from native culture. Graph 3: The above graph depicts that more than 77% of the teacher’s agreed that the student body in classroom is culturally diverse. Around 70% of the respondents also agreed that the language barriers create difficulty in learning and diversity creates conflicts in classroom. Graph 3: Graph 5: The above graph depicts that more than 70% of the teacher’s use the above teaching methodologies frequently in order to achieve different learning objectives.

Shifting Experiences of Work and Non-Work Life

Work, Employment & Society http://wes. sagepub. com/ Life after Burberry: shifting experiences of work and non-work life following redundancy Paul Blyton and Jean Jenkins Work Employment Society 2012 26: 26 DOI: 10. 1177/0950017011426306 The online version of this article can be found at: http://wes. sagepub. com/content/26/1/26 Published by: http://www. sagepublications. com On behalf of: British Sociological Association Additional services and information for Work, Employment & Society can be found at: Email Alerts: http://wes. sagepub. com/cgi/alertsSubscriptions: http://wes. sagepub. com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Permissions: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations: http://wes. sagepub. com/content/26/1/26. refs. html >> Version of Record – Feb 17, 2012 What is This? Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 Beyond redundancy: article Life after Burberry: shifting experiences o f work and non-work life following redundancy Work, Employment and Society 26(1) 26–41  © The Author(s) 2012Reprints and permission: sagepub. co. uk/journalsPermissions. nav DOI: 10. 1177/0950017011426306 wes. sagepub. com Paul Blyton Cardiff University, UK Jean Jenkins Cardiff University, UK Abstract This article sheds new light on neglected areas of recent ‘work-life’ discussions. Drawing on a study of a largely female workforce made redundant by factory relocation, the majority subsequently finding alternative employment in a variety of work settings, the results illustrate aspects of both positive and negative spillover from work to non-work life.In addition, the findings add to the growing number of studies that highlight the conditions under which part-time working detracts from, rather than contributes to, successful work-life balance. The conclusion discusses the need for a more multi-dimensional approach to work-life issues. Keywords part-time work, po sitive/negative spillover, redundancy, re-employment, work-life balance Introduction Recent discussion of the relationship between work and non-work life – much f it focused on the notion of work-life balance – has tended to give preference to two aspects of that relationship over others. First, there has been a marked tendency to consider the impact of work on non-work life to a much greater extent than vice versa. Second, as Corresponding author: Jean Jenkins, Cardiff University, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, Wales, UK. Email: [email  protected] ac. uk Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 27 Blyton and JenkinsGuest (2002: 260) has pointed out, there has been an equal tendency to explore ‘work-life conflict’ rather than examine possible positive associations within that relationship. For Guest (2002: 263), this reflects a widely held view that over the past generation the pressure of work has be come a more dominant feature of many people’s lives, as a result of among other things perceived increases in work demands and a widespread expectation to show commitment by working long hours (see, for example, McGovern et al. , 2007; Perlow, 1999).Coupled with the growth in female labour market participation, particularly among women with dependent children, this is seen to increase pressure on non-work activity by reducing the time and/or energy available to fulfil outside responsibilities. Where the possibility for positive ‘spillover’ (Staines, 1980) between work and nonwork life has been examined, this has mainly been undertaken by social psychologists, generally approaching the issue both from an individual perspective and with the non-work focus primarily on the family.Examples include studies that have identified a positive association between an individual’s job satisfaction and their satisfaction with family life (for example, Near et al. , 1987 ). Less attention has been addressed to more aggregate levels of analysis more typically explored by sociologists, such as the influence of the work group or workplace community on life outside work (for a notable exception, see Grzywacz et al. , 2007, and for earlier sociological accounts, see Horobin, 1957; Tunstall, 1962).Yet, despite the attention given to the potential for positive spillover of individual-level factors, even among psychologists the clear direction of travel has been to examine possible conflictual rather than beneficial relationships between aspects of work and non-work life. In their meta-analysis of 190 studies of associations between work and family, for example, Eby et al. (2005) found almost three times the number of studies focusing on the unfavourable effects of one sphere on the other, compared to those considering possible favourable effects.Even more starkly, of all the studies examining the effects of work on family or vice versa, less than one in fi ve of the studies entertained the possibility of the relationship being characterized by both favourable and unfavourable effects. A recent study involving a largely female manufacturing workforce made redundant by factory relocation, most of whom subsequently found alternative employment in a variety of work settings, allows for examination of some of the neglected aspects of the relationship between work and life outside work.In several respects the nature of this study in terms of the workplace and its location – a large clothing manufacturer, Burberry, in the Rhondda Valleys of South Wales – is somewhat distinctive. In earlier times the plant had been one among a cluster of factories in its locality, but the decline of coal and manufacturing meant that it had become the biggest employer for a relatively isolated community in an economically depressed area. Thus, while in operation, the factory exerted a considerable impact on the non-work lives (both in terms of fa mily and community) of its workforce.Indeed, there was a symbiotic relationship between community and workplace in our case that resonates with Cunnison’s (1966) earlier garment factory study. Such windows on the interaction of factory and community are becoming increasingly rare in the context of manufacturing decline in the UK and the changing nature of what a ‘workplace’ has become. The study provides insight into the journey of a redundant manufacturing workforce into new Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 28 Work, Employment and Society 26(1) mployment in the contemporary labour market. In this, there are clear points of reference to be drawn with Bailey et al. ’s (2008) study of redundancy at the MG Rover plant at Longbridge, Birmingham, UK, even though that study dealt with respondents from a quite different demographic and skills base. Manufacturing employment in Britain has typically involved workers employed fulltime and this pattern also prevailed in clothing factories, including our case (see Kersley et al. , 2006: 78; also Phizacklea, 1990: 66).Factory closure and the paucity of good jobs in the immediate locality gave workers limited choice and the subsequent employment experience of many of our female respondents (the majority of whom were over 45 years of age) involved part-time jobs in the service sector. Their responses usefully contribute to discussions (led by Walsh, 2007; Walters, 2005; Warren, 2004, among others) on the extent to which (and conditions under which) part-time working may contribute to (or detract from) a successful work-life balance.It is evident from the present sample that both part-time employment – particularly the lower incomes deriving from that work – and the lack of stability in the hours worked, had a significant negative impact on different aspects of non-work life. What emerges is a picture that highlights the obstacles to positive sp illover in part-time, low wage service sector occupations which fail to offer workers stability and security in terms of contracts, hours or earnings.To explore these issues, the remainder of the article is divided into five sections. First, the context of the study is outlined: the nature of the community and the closure of the factory that was the focus for our enquiry. Second we describe our investigation and our maintained connection with a sample of the workforce made redundant and their trade union representatives. The third and fourth sections trace the changing nature of the relationship between workplace and life outside work: the shift from a largely positive o a more problematic association as employment experiences altered. While the third section examines the association between Burberry and broader features of workers’ lives, the fourth explores work and non-work experiences of workers following the Burberry closure. This fourth section explores, among other thi ngs, the effects of parttime working and unpredictable work hours on the families and social lives of our respondents.The final, fifth section reflects on the findings and underlines the value of work-life enquiries adopting a more context-sensitive and multi-dimensional approach to the interconnections between work, family and community. The context: the locality and the factory This study centres on the experiences of women and men employed by Burberry, until the closure of its manufacturing plant in South Wales in 2007. The Burberry factory studied was located in Treorchy, a former coal-mining town in the Rhondda Valleys.This region saw ‘permanent structural change’ during the last quarter of the 20th century, due to the acute decline of coal mining and steel (Williams, 1998: 87, 121). Regeneration has been a regional government priority but the relative geographical isolation of valley towns like Treorchy presents particular challenges for individuals in travelling for work and also for agencies charged with attracting alternative sources of investment (Bryan et al. , 2003).Founded in 1939, the factory changed ownership more than once, with Burberry being a customer throughout its history and taking full ownership in the late Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 29 Blyton and Jenkins 1980s. At its height, the factory employed 1500 employees and though employment levels had contracted to around 300 by 2007, it remained a key employer in the area. As was the case in Cunnison’s (1966) study, the community outside the workplace entered the factory gates in the form of amilial ties, friendships and long-established associations and over time the plant had acquired a strong local identity as an example of the surviving manufacturing sector and a bastion of ‘jobs in the Valleys’. The factory’s workforce was overwhelmingly female, reflecting the gender profile of the clothing sector gener ally (Winterton and Taplin, 1997b: 10). Low levels of recruitment in latter years had resulted in an ageing workforce, with the majority of workers at the factory being 45 years or older.As part of a ‘buyer-driven’ global value chain (Gereffi, 1994), the British clothing industry has experienced structural change associated with outsourcing and outward processing of production (Jones, 2006: 101). While Burberry had formerly set itself apart from the trend to off-shoring by ‘focussed differentiation and niche marketing’ (Winterton and Taplin, 1997a: 194) of its high value garments as ‘quintessentially British’, in 2006 it joined the ranks of other producers and gave notice of its intention to relocate the Treorchy plant’s production to China in the interests of cheaper labour costs.The shock of the notice of closure was deeply felt in a community with limited prospects of alternative work and within a workplace with a strong social networ k. In his earlier study of garment workers, Lupton (1963: 72–3) comments that factory life was made tolerable by the sociable groupings that evolved within their walls, and that workers’ attachment to the company ‘sprang very largely from [their] emotional attachment to the small group of friends rather than any love for work that had little intrinsic value, or for their employer’.As well as the loss of these sorts of relationships, the Burberry workers also feared the loss to the local community of a factory which had, over its 70-year history, become emblematic of secure employment and was regarded, as one respondent commented, as a ‘guaranteed job †¦ a job for life’. Thus, when Burberry made its announcement, the workforce reacted with outrage and disbelief. A fierce campaign attracted considerable media attention, but the plant closed in March 2007 (for a discussion of the closure campaign, see Blyton and Jenkins, 2009).For the majori ty of our respondents, closure meant the end of their workplace community and the rupture of friendships and associations that had been built up over lifetimes. It also meant entry into a new world of job search or enforced ‘retirement’ in the context of low pay and limited choice. The study Using survey, interview and observational methods, we have examined several aspects of the redundancies, and individuals’ subsequent employment experiences, over a longitudinal research period which had key stages in 2007, 2008 and 2009.The research began in January 2007, and initially concentrated on the workers’ campaign against closure of the plant. Regular interviews were held with full-time and lay union representatives, and shop-floor staff, and a short survey was issued to employees in February 2007, while the plant was still open. A further survey of the effects of redundancy was issued in March 2008 (one year after plant closure) and interviews with union repr esentatives have continued up to the present. In addition, the authors attended various public and trade union meetings and workers’ reunions occurring since the plant closure. Downloaded from wes. sagepub. om at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 30 Work, Employment and Society 26(1) As the initial 2007 survey sought information specifically on employees’ response to the union campaign against closure, it has only a limited contribution to make to this article’s focus on the effects of redundancy. The 2008 survey and interviews conducted in 2009 provided the main sources of information about the effects of redundancy. It was in this phase of the research that the focus was on workers’ employment experiences since redundancy as well as aspects of their previous employment and comparisons were drawn between life ‘before and after Burberry’.The 2008 survey was posted to the homes of 191 former shop-floor staff (all the staff we were able to s ecure home addresses for) and 80 usable replies were received (a response rate of 42%). Reflecting the lower levels of recruitment at the factory in latter years, 70 per cent of the respondents were 45 years or older (74% were married or living with a partner, and 70% had no children living at home). Of the 80 respondents, 71 (89%) were female. The full-time union representative for the largest union in the plant, the GMB,1 estimated the ratio of female to male employment within the factory at 80:20.Employment records could not be obtained to verify this estimate but it was a good reflection of the profile of shop-floor union membership, which stood at around 80 per cent density. In January 2009, the 28 respondents to the 2008 survey who had indicated their willingness to participate in ongoing research were contacted and asked to participate in interviews about their experiences since redundancy. Eleven agreed and semistructured interviews took place, focusing on their experiences while employed at the factory and the way their lives had changed in the two years since the closure.Interviews took place in respondents’ own homes and lasted, on average, one hour and 40 minutes. Two interviewees were male, nine were female. Despite the predominance of female respondents in the survey and interviews, male workers at the plant participated in all phases of the research in rough proportion to their representation at the workplace, and work-life issues for both men and women in the study were negatively impacted by low paid, insecure work in the prevailing labour market environment.In terms of its representativeness and relevance for wider social enquiry, it is acknowledged that this study has many distinct features in terms of workplace and location, but it contributes to the building of generalizations (see Gerring, 2004: 341, 352) in two areas. First, Burberry’s own cost-focused rationale for closure highlights the workings of the garment value chain and the fact that low paid female workers in a mature economy are now ‘too expensive’ to manufacture garments – even those at the high end of the retail market.Thus, what is examined in this case is a particular instance of the ‘new forms of inequality’ (Glucksmann, 2009: 878) which result from an international division of labour where labour is casualized and ‘recommodified’ in the service sector of the global north (see Standing, 2009: 70–78) as manufacturing relocates for cheaper people and more favourable regulatory regimes elsewhere. Second, the respondents’ experiences of job search contribute to analysis and understanding of the contemporary British labour market and the increasing phenomenon of nvoluntary part-time working, particularly among women (Yerkes and Visser, 2006: 253). In this respect, Bailey et al. ’s (2008) study of job search and re-employment of Longbridge workers is a useful comparator for th e present enquiry even though their respondents differed from the Burberry workforce in that 90 per cent were male and were mainly professional, skilled, semi-skilled or technical workers. The Longbridge results indicate that, post-closure: Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 31 Blyton and Jenkins igher earning occupations were more likely to travel for work and were consequently much better placed to cope with job loss; men were more likely to find alternative full-time jobs; redundant workers needed ongoing support and training; women were more likely to be found in part-time employment in the service sector; and those workers moving from manufacturing into public services in education, health and social care (as did the majority of the Burberry respondents) reported the largest decline in salary, which Bailey and colleagues (2008: 54) refer to as a particular indicator of ‘growing labour market polarization and inequality’.In det ailing key factors in successful efforts at re-employment, Bailey et al. ’s findings help to illuminate what was absent from the demographic and skills profile of the Burberry respondents and highlight the factors which limited their prospects for re-employment. It is evident in the Burberry case that low paid, full-time female manufacturing workers classed as unskilled became low paid, part-time service sector workers out of necessity not choice.The majority of workers could not travel for work due to a range of factors, among which low earnings, job insecurity and the close intersection between their work and non-work lives were prime considerations. While it was perhaps the very legacy of poor pay and the marginalization of women’s work as ‘unskilled’ at the Burberry plant which presented the greatest challenges for e-employment, the factory had undoubted compensations: it offered a working week that had fixed boundaries of time and effort, perceived jo b security, norms of employment that followed women’s life patterns and strong sociable groupings, all of which allowed workers to make positive accommodations between their paid and unpaid working lives. In the contemporary ‘low-skilled’ labour market outside the plant, most of these compensations were absent and the combined effects of low hourly rates of pay and unpredictable part-time hours in their changed employment eroded any positive spillover from work.The following sections examine these factors in greater detail. The changing relationship between work and life outside work: Burberry and community integration As the majority of employees and our respondents were female, a key issue in the findings related to the intersection of paid and unpaid work in the lives of women workers. Working near to home in a close-knit workplace had helped women manage the integration of their work and non-work lives in various ways; these were explored in interviews at the time of the closure, in unstructured discussions at public events, and in the interviews conducted in 2009.Five factors in particular were most commented on in relation to ways in which the factory was positively interconnected with the lives of the workers in the community. First, frequent reference was made to the advantages of the workplace’s proximity to their homes: No bus fare to pay, on the doorstep. I could leave the house at 25 to eight and be clocking on at a quarter to. We used to finish at 4. 40 and I’d be home by 4. 45. I could get on with my ironing before tea. I absolutely hated it the day I started, but it was so convenient – you’d finish at 4. 0 and be home at five. Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 32 Work, Employment and Society 26(1) This proximity was also helpful in coping with unforeseen domestic emergencies: We didn’t earn a lot but I had a job where I was near to home. I could cope w ith all the commitments in my private life, if my mother was taken ill [for example]. The second most commonly referred-to factor was the reliability of the company as a source of employment, with relatives able to ‘have a word’ with Personnel to secure employment for other family members.Interviewees referred to relatives made redundant several times from other manufacturing jobs before getting ‘security’ in a job at Burberry. Many had several members of their family working at the factory. It was like a family – when I started work, my mother worked there, her sister worked there, my father’s sister worked there, my own sister worked there and I had two or three cousins there. Out of the 14 houses in my street, 10 of them had Burberry workers living in them.Such was the prevalence of familial ties throughout the plant that one interviewee commented that her husband always referred to his mother by her first name when inside the factory, sayi ng that there was no point in calling her ‘Mam’ because ‘there were so many mothers and children on the shop-floor’. A number of people met their future spouses at the plant and patterns of life-time work within the factory traditionally facilitated exit and re-entry into work, following childbearing.The expectation of a job being available resulted in many women giving up work to have families, in the knowledge – accurate up to the last years – of re-employment at a later date. A third advantage for life outside work was perceived to be the factory’s predictable working hours. Almost all staff (over 95%) at Burberry were employed full-time, with the factory operating Monday to Friday, 7. 45 a. m. to 4. 40 p. m.As one respondent commented after the closure, she ‘really missed the Monday to Friday routine’ – this routine being something else that was seen to compensate for the low wage rates paid at the factory (and a routine absent from many jobs subsequently obtained, as discussed below). Fourth, many references were made to the social aspects of work, with interviewees and survey respondents using terms such as their ‘Burberry family’ and ‘one big family’, where they saw their neighbours every day.Though aspects of the work routines were reported as ‘strict’, the work atmosphere was clearly punctuated by ‘all the laughs’ they had, and the everyday chat. Comments on the latter included: Officially we were supposed to start at 7. 45 but some of us used to go in 15 minutes early for a chat before we started work. Once you’d done your number [piecework target] you could take a break and go upstairs to the toilets for a chat.As in Lupton’s study (1963: 72–3), the workers did not idealize the tensions or the work of factory life at the Burberry plant, which was hard and low paid, particularly for the majority of female workers who earned little more than the national minimum wage. Comments about their ‘Burberry family’ were made alongside derogatory remarks about Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 33 Blyton and Jenkins their former employers. Thus nostalgia for factory life was reserved for memories of events and those friendships and people that had characterized workers’ experience of employment at the plant.There were also more organized social activities such as charity fund-raising events, works trips and parties which were clearly valued (and missed) and, in combination with the informal relations between workers, had contributed significantly to the ongoing contact with others in the community. In addition to these four aspects of positive connection between work and non-work life, respondents identified two further, related attributes of their work that had relevance for life outside the factory.First, several commented on the skills they had acquired at Burberry and the positive feelings that this had given them (‘pride at being a Burberry worker’). Examples of reported skills were numerous, including the interviewees who pointed out ‘hand-sewers’ still working at the plant in 2007, and indicated their level of skill in comments such as ‘we used to prove the methods’ (‘proving a method’ involved transferring a design from planning into full production, something necessary from time to time with difficult garments, and requiring considerable expertise).Several referred to the national awards for excellence won by the factory, to the long hours they had worked beyond their contracts, and being always keen to ‘get the work out’. Closely associated with the pride in their skills, a number of respondents reported an acquired status that reflected responsibilities held within the factory which they felt had been undermined by job loss. The quest to maintain social status and social identity has been recognized in studies of redundancy among men, such as former steel workers (Harris, 1987: 36).From several ex-Burberry respondents came comments that they were shocked to find themselves treated in the job search process as ‘low skilled’ or ‘unskilled’ (as a result of generally lacking certified or accredited qualifications), with their former status within the plant often being replaced by alternative employment in junior-level service sector jobs. One interviewee, for example, who had held supervisory responsibilities at Burberry, commented that her next employer (the retail chain Argos) entrusted her with virtually no responsibility: ‘they didn’t know me or what I’d done’.In their study, Bailey et al. (2008: 50) comment on the crucial influence of the local labour market for re-employment, together with accredited skills, the need for ongoing training support and help with travelling for work. Our findings lead us to agree that the propensity to travel and retrain for work are key determinants of success in job search, and this former supervisor at Burberry was an example of what occurs when low paid, insecure, unpredictable work makes travel too costly.Though she had taken advantage of short-term training courses offered by local employment services, she was unable to gain recognition for the skills she had acquired over 40 years of factory working and had been able to obtain only two temporary jobs since factory closure. She described the consequent effects on her sense of purpose and identity and the negative physical and emotional effects of being a ‘job-seeker’ for the first time in her life in her mid-50s, as ‘devastating’ and the cause of depression.All told, our respondents (even those who said they had grown to enjoy their new employment and were earning more) expressed regret at the loss of the social factors that have been d iscussed in this section, which constituted significant compensations for the comparatively low wage rates at the Burberry plant. After closure, the legacy of years of low pay and particularly the marginalization of women’s work as ‘unskilled’ meant that Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 34Work, Employment and Society 26(1) job search was an activity that prioritized the local labour market. Once workers entered new forms of employment, however, they did so without the supporting structure of the social network and sense of identity that (for them) had defined the experience of being a Burberry worker. The changing relationship between work and life outside work: redundancy, re-employment and social isolation The vast majority of the redundant Burberry workers restricted their job search to their own locality.This choice was partly facilitated by the building of a new Wal-Mart Asda store, along with the availability of care work with the local authority. Data from the local Job Centre Plus confirmed our finding that the majority of Burberry workers prioritized proximity of alternative employment over other factors such as remaining in similar occupations or moving for alternative manufacturing opportunities elsewhere. The context of low pay made relocation financially unrealistic, even if it had been desired. In 2007 the local jobs market was dominated by part-time hours, relatively low earnings and little perceived security.These criteria fall far short of an incentive to move established households and lose the support network of family, community and friends. As well as the risk of not finding better or secure employment elsewhere, workers faced the constraints of the housing market and the low property values characteristic of deindustrialized areas, which effectively trap people in regions of high unemployment (McNulty, 1987: 42). Relocation was therefore an unrealistic option for the majority of our respondents, but this did not prevent it being proposed for consideration during the process of job search.One male interviewee recounted his first visit to a local Job Centre Plus, where he was faced with a question he found outrageous: Do you know the first thing they [Job Centre staff] said to me was, ‘Are you prepared to move? ’ Can you believe that? Why would I want to move away? I said no, I wouldn’t. This reaction was typical of the majority of our respondents. While the plant was still open but under notice of closure, Burberry provided employment consultants to help with job search and vacancies were posted on the factory notice-board.One interviewee described how she and other workers used to ‘have a laugh’ about the jobs being advertised hundreds of miles outside Rhondda, many of which were also part-time at minimum wage rates. Several interviewees commented (during the run-up to closure and in later interviews) that they regarded the posting of such jobs as not only ridiculous but also a cynical ploy to misrepresent their situation, feeling that Burberry could claim it was doing all it could to meet its responsibilities to a workplace community that could find alternative work if only it took up the opportunities the company had researched on their behalf.For workers though, not only relocation but the option of daily commuting was constrained by the precise nature of work available. The costs and difficulties of travel for variable shifts and short daily hours spread over 24 hours and five or seven days of the week were not likely to be sustainable on a low income. All these factors made relocation and travelling for work to different degrees economically impracticable. Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 35 Blyton and Jenkins Table 1.Summary of patterns of work and earnings for former Burberry workers one year after redundancy Respondents Male (n=9) Female (n=71) As % of total respondents 11% 89% Working patterns prior to factory closure, March 2007 No. and proportion employed full-time 9 (100%) 68 (94%) Working patterns following factory closure, March 2008 No. of respondents in paid work 7 46 No. and proportion employed full-time 7 (100%) 19 (41%) No. and proportion in part-time work 0 27 (59%) Proportion of respondents in paid work, 28% 23% eporting an increase in weekly earnings Proportion of respondents in paid work, 71% 56% reporting a fall in weekly earnings All (n=80) 100% 77 (95%) 53 26 (49%) 27 (51%) 24% 59% At the time of our 2008 survey, just over two-thirds of the respondents were in paid work with the remainder divided roughly equally between those who had retired and those still seeking employment. The majority of those in work were in the same job that they found on leaving Burberry, while 15 respondents had had two or more jobs since their redundancy.The areas of paid work entered by our sample were mainly in the manufacturing, home -care or retail sectors; two-thirds of respondents in paid work entered relatively low-skill service sector employment. Table 1 highlights the study’s findings on the nature of re-employment patterns. Just over half of the respondents in paid work were employed part-time, on hours ranging from six to 30 per week (and with a mean and mode of 20 hours).Most (88%) of those with part-time jobs reported that their actual hours varied week by week. Those in care work and retail jobs were especially likely to hold part-time contracts with variable hours. The care contracts, for example, typically began as (effectively) zero-hour contracts with no hours guaranteed until a training period was completed. After that, just 16 hours per week were commonly guaranteed, though workers could be asked to work as many as 30 hours in a week depending on demand.The same was true of retail work, though attaining a 30-hour week was far less common in that sector. For many, their parttime status (ra ther than their hourly rate of pay) was the principal reason why their weekly earnings were lower than they had been at Burberry. In several subsequent interviews, respondents commented that making ends meet while working part-time was only made viable by supplementary state benefits and that part-time employment dominated available opportunities rather than being a chosen option.Both from survey responses and interview comments, it was also clear that many were subject to working time patterns that not only varied from week to week but were also highly unpredictable, in terms of both timing and duration. For those on variablehours contracts, their shifts could be scheduled during the daytime, evening or weekends, and for many their forthcoming weekly schedule was known only at the latter end of the previous week. In interviews, the majority of respondents commented on the difficulties Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 6 Work, Employment and S ociety 26(1) created in their home lives by the variability and unpredictability of their new work commitments. One interviewee, for example, employed full-time as a hotel receptionist in 2008 had had her hours cut to 20 per week when interviewed in 2009, and she received just ? 120. 00 gross weekly pay. Though contractually her employer undertook to issue shift patterns and times one month in advance, in practice working patterns were given to her weekly. Shifts ran from 7 a. m to 3 p. m. , 10 a. m. to 6 p. m. , and 3 p. m. o 11 p. m. , and it was quite normal to have to undertake ‘back-to-back’ shifts finishing at 11 p. m. and starting work again at 7 a. m. She commented that the ‘worst thing’ about the job was the timing and unpredictability of the shift work: You can’t plan anything. I’ve just had to cancel a dentist’s appointment because they’ve called me in for a shift and I can’t make another appointment because I w on’t know what I’m working next week. Without her parents’ help, this interviewee commented that she could not have coped with caring for her daughter.It was family support that allowed her to achieve any sort of balance, however imperfect, between her paid and unpaid working life and the tax-credit state benefit (effectively acting as a subsidy for a low paying employer) was an essential factor allowing her to afford to travel to work and keep her employment. A further example of the negative impact of unpredictable hours concerned another respondent who now worked for the local authority (via their care work agency) and was a married mother of two children.Her employment was typical of work in this sector in that it began (in 2007) as a zero-hour contract, with actual hours of work determined wholly by demand. She received notice of her hours each weekend, for the following week. Her shifts were normally based on notional patterns of 8 a. m. to 10. 30 a. m. an d 4. 30 p. m. to 6 p. m. over a seven-day period, but she never knew exactly how many hours she would be given (or which days she would work) for the week ahead. As a new employee, in common with all new recruits, she was classed as ‘casual’ and therefore had no guaranteed hours of work.The interviewee explained that this meant that she sometimes had four hours’ work for a week, but that this could just as likely be twenty or thirty, depending on what her supervisor assigned. ‘Permanent’ status was necessary to attain guaranteed minimum income equivalent to 16 hours’ work per week. As a ‘casual’, she said that planning her income or any sort of family event was impossible; even knowing her hours one week in advance did not help as ‘they can call you, phone you, any time and ask you to come in’.And as a worker hopeful of allocation to a permanent team and reliant on the support of her line manager, this interviewee did not feel she had the scope to refuse any such request. In January 2010, she had still not been upgraded from casual status and could depend on just three hours’ work a week. Unpredictable work patterns were not the sole preserve of women workers. Men were more likely to obtain full-time work but, anecdotally, were more prone to lay-off or seasonally influenced working patterns.One of our male respondents found a seasonal, 40-hour a week job marginally above the national minimum wage rate after several months of unemployment. With no security of contract or predictability of hours, he worked entirely according to the employer’s demand. In the summer he could work as many as 65 hours a week, reducing to 20 at other periods, and was laid off altogether in Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 37 Blyton and Jenkins the coldest months.Hours of work were notified one week in advance, but were frequently subject to change on the day. He re garded placing his time completely at the employer’s disposal as essential to keep his employment. This interviewee had a history of 30 years of regular employment at Burberry and commented that his new working life was a source of anxiety for the future. Jobs with such variable and unpredictable hours have become common in sectors such as retailing (Backett-Milburn et al. , 2008; Henly et al. 2006; Lambert, 2008; Zeytinoglu et al. , 2004) and care (Henninger and Papouschek, 2008; Rubery et al. , 2005). It is also clear that further variability occurs in ‘real time’ as employees are requested at short notice to stay on, or leave early, to reflect particular work circumstances. For management, this access to variable hours offers a means of deploying labour to shadow fluctuations both in demand and available staff but for the people we were interviewing, this variability and unpredictability had many drawbacks.In particular these disadvantages included: a general uncertainty over their work schedule, making it difficult to plan activities outside work; for some, increased problems of organizing childcare and maintaining a consistent care arrangement; a disruption to domestic routines such as meal times; and a lack of stable income as earnings fluctuated with actual hours worked. In the 2008 survey, questions were also asked about changes in other areas of respondents’ non-work lives since the factory closure. Responses to a question about socializing and friendships since the closure showed a marked deterioration.Almost three in five (58%) indicated that this aspect of their life had got worse, compared to 30 per cent saying it had stayed the same and a minority reporting an improvement. In subsequent interviews, several commented that they saw friends and neighbours much less now that Burberry had closed and female interviewees remained emotional about their changed situation even two years after the closure: I miss the company †¦ I can pick the phone up and speak to people, but it’s not the same. Now, I have no social life. There are no friends passing here nd although people say they will keep in touch, they don’t. A similar picture was evident in relation to community involvement. Over two in five of the survey respondents reported a decline in their community involvement since the factory closure, compared to approximately one in seven who reported an increase (the remainder reporting no change). Both in comments on the survey and in interview comments, several references were made to having ‘less money for going out’, compared to former full-time earnings at Burberry.This was especially the case for part-time workers. Those working part-time were more likely (compared to their counterparts in full-time jobs) to indicate that both their level of friendships and community involvement had deteriorated in the time since the factory closure. From comments in interviews, it was ev ident that reduced involvement with friends and the community were issues related to the break up of the workplace community (which had acted as a conduit to wider community involvement), lack of income and the consequence of more fragmented work patterns.Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 38 Work, Employment and Society 26(1) Conclusion While other responses made by the former Burberry workers indicated that the clothing factory was far from an ideal place to work, the factory nevertheless engendered a strong sense of workplace community which in turn extended to various aspects of workers’ non-work lives. As a consequence, the workplace had a number of positive spillover effects into the non-work lives of its workforce.The frequency of interpersonal contact, access to employment for family members, the sense of pride, skill and status that the work generated and the proximity of work to home: all were seen to create a beneficial effect on the workers’ lives more generally. The way that, for many, these factors later diminished, further underlines what the workers had gained from working at Burberry. Subsequent work, much of it part-time and/or with irregular and unpredictable hours, undermined the stability of contact, interaction and social life that had prevailed hitherto.Widespread reductions in earnings exacerbated this situation with less disposable income to spend on a social life. These insights into work to non-work spillover contribute to the work-life debate in two ways. First, they underline the limitations of couching the discussion, as has been common, in terms of the negative impact of work on non-work life. It was clear among this group of workers that their former work experience at Burberry had generated various positive spillover effects, these only diminishing as they moved to other employment after the factory closed.Second, as was discussed at the head of the article, any attention tha t has been given to positive spillover from work to home has focused largely on the influence of individual work-related variables such as job satisfaction. Aspects of these individual-level factors were certainly present among the ex-Burberry workers: a sense, for example, that the status acquired through responsibilities in the factory also had meaning in the non-work community.Importantly, what the present study underlines are more group level, sociological factors positively affecting areas of non-work life: the importance, for example, of interaction among the workforce, reinforced by chat, gossip and ‘having a laugh’. Further, the way the factory represented a source of family, rather than solely individual, employment and the proximate location of the factory in the Treorchy community further reinforced a sense of community both inside and outside the factory.The study’s findings also contribute to the discussion on the extent to which parttime working can contribute to work-life balance or, put differently, the way part-time work reflects a preference for a particular balance of time between work and non-work (Hakim, 2000). Several authors (for example, Walsh, 2007; Walters, 2005; Warren, 2004) have already pointed to the shortcomings of using part-time work as an indicator of a preference and a strategy for achieving work-life balance – noting in particular that this fails to take into account the heterogeneity of part-time work and that, for ome, working part-time is not a means to achieve work-life balance but rather a source of low pay and poor-quality jobs. The present study further underlines the need for a more differentiated view of part-time working. In our sample, while many working part-time in principle had more time available for non-work activities – even when taking longer travelling times into account – this did not translate into more time for friends or community activity. On the contrary, part -time working was associated with work-life Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 9 Blyton and Jenkins impoverishment for this group more than work-life balance. For most of those on part-time contracts who had been used to working full-time, part-time work was an undesirable consequence of the kind of paid work available within the local labour market. The lower earnings that the part-time jobs generated and the variability and unpredictability of many working patterns detracted from, rather than contributed to, the quality of workers’ non-work lives. Overall, these findings signal the value of a nuanced approach in discussions around ‘work-life balance’.In focusing on the associations of work to non-work life, this article has identified the ways in which associations may be positive or negative and has indicated that the nature of those associations may vary over time and from one context to another. As a result of tracing t he subsequent employment experiences of the former garment workers in this study, it became clear that there is a continuing need for wider recognition not only of the heterogeneous nature of part-time work, but also the reasons why people are working part-time and the degree to which it is a voluntary, employeedriven choice.It was also clear that variable and unpredictable work patterns may exert a significant deleterious influence on the ability of workers successfully to organize and fully enjoy their lives outside work. Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the union representatives and former Burberry employees who participated in this research. We would also like to express our gratitude to the editor and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Note 1 The GMB describes itself as ‘Britain’s general union’.It currently represents over 600,000 workers across a range of sectors, and the National Union of Tailor and Garment Workers was merged with it in 1991. References Backett-Milburn K, Airey L, McKie L and Hogg G (2008) Family comes first or open all hours? How low paid women working in food retailing manage webs of obligation at home and work. The Sociological Review 56(3): 474–96. Bailey D, Chapain C, Mahdon M and Fauth R (2008) Life after Longbridge: Three Years on. Pathways to Re-Employment in a Restructuring Economy, Report for the Work Foundation and Birmingham Business School.Birmingham: Birmingham Business School. Blyton P and Jenkins J (2009) The end of the campaign. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association, Cardiff, 2009. Bryan J, Jones C, Munday M and Roberts A (2003) Manufacturing and Trade in Wales: Briefing Paper for the Welsh Affairs Committee, Working Paper Series No. 13, The Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS), Cardiff University , Cardiff. Cunnison S (1966) Wages and Work Allocation: A Study of Social Relations in a Garment Workshop.London: Tavistock. Eby LT, Casper WJ, Lockwood A, Bordeaux C and Brinley A (2005) Work and family research in IO/OB: content analysis and review of the literature (1980–2002). Journal of Vocational Behavior, 66(1): 124–97. Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 40 Work, Employment and Society 26(1) Gereffi G (1994) The organization of buyer-driven global commodity chains: how U. S. retailers shape overseas production networks. In: Gereffi G and Korzeniewicz M (eds) Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism. Westport, CT: Praeger, 95–122.Gerring J (2004) What is a case study and what is it good for? American Political Science Review 98(2): 341–54. Glucksmann M (2009) Formations, connections and divisions of labour. Sociology 43(5): 878–95. Grzywacz JG, Carlson DS, Kacmar KM and Wayne JH (2007) A multi-level perspe ctive on the synergies between work and family. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 80(4): 559–74. Guest DE (2002) Perspectives on the study of work-life balance. Social Science Information 41(2): 255–79. Hakim C (2000) Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory.Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harris CC (1987) Redundancy and class analysis. In: Lee RM (ed. ) Redundancy, Layoffs and Plant Closures: Their Character, Causes and Consequences. Beckenham: Croom Helm, 24–39. Henly JR, Shaefer HL and Waxman E (2006) Nonstandard work schedules: employer- and employee-driven flexibility in retail jobs. Social Service Review 80(4): 609–34. Henninger A and Papouschek U (2008) Occupation matters – blurring workforce boundaries in mobile care and the media industry. In: Warhurst C et al. (eds) Work Less, Live More?Critical Analysis of the Work-Life Boundary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 153–72. Horobin GW (1957) C ommunity and occupation in the Hull fishing industry. British Journal of Sociology 8(4): 343–56. Jones RM (2006) The Apparel Industry, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Kersley B, Alpin C, Forth J, Bryson A, Bewley H, Dix G and Oxenbridge S (2006) Inside the Workplace: Findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey. Abingdon: Routledge. Lambert S (2008) Passing the buck: labor flexibility practices that transfer risk onto hourly workers. Human Relations 61(9): 1203–27.Lupton T (1963) On the Shop-Floor: Two Studies of Workshop Organisation and Output. Oxford: Pergamon Press. McGovern P, Hill S, Mills C and White M (2007) Market, Class and Employment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McNulty D (1987) Local dimensions of closure. In: Dickson T and Judge D (eds) The Politics of Industrial Closure. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 35–69. Near JP, Rice RW and Hunt RG (1987) Job satisfaction and life satisfaction: a profile analysis. Social Indicators Research 19(4) : 383–401. Perlow LA (1999) The time famine: toward a sociology of work time. Administrative Science Quarterly 44(1): 57–81.Phizacklea A (1990) Unpacking the Fashion Industry: Gender, Racism and Class in Production. London: Routledge. Rubery J, Ward K, Grimshaw D and Beynon H (2005) Working time, industrial relations and the employment relationship. Time and Society 14(1): 89–111. Staines GL (1980) Spillover versus compensation: a review of the literature on the relationship between work and nonwork. Human Relations 33(2): 111–29. Standing G (2009) Work After Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Tunstall J (1962) The Fishermen. London: MacGibbon and Kee.Walsh J (2007) Experiencing part-time work: temporal tensions, social relations and the workfamily interface. British Journal of Industrial Relations 45(1): 155–77. Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 41 Blyton and Jenkins Walters S (2005) Making the best of a bad job? Female part-timers’ orientations and attitudes to work. Gender, Work and Organization 12(3): 193–216. Warren T (2004) Working part-time: achieving a successful ‘work-life balance? ’ The British Journal of Sociology 55(1): 99–122. Williams LJ (1998) Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics 1974–1996.London: HMSO. Winterton J and Taplin IM (1997a) Making sense of strategies for survival: clothing in high wage economies. In: Taplin IM and Winterton J (eds) Rethinking Global Production: A Comparative Analysis of Restructuring in the Clothing Industry. Aldershot: Ashgate, 189–98. Winterton J and Taplin IM (1997b) Restructuring clothing. In: Taplin IM and Winterton J (eds), Rethinking Global Production: A Comparative Analysis of Restructuring in the Clothing Industry. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1–17. Yerkes M and Visser J (2006) Women’s preferences or delineated policies?The development of p art-time work in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. In: Boulin J-Y et al. (eds) Decent Working Time: New Trends, New Issues. Geneva: International Labour Office, 235–61. Zeytinoglu IU, Lillevik W, Seaton IMB and Moruz J (2004) Part-time and casual work in retail trade: stress and other factors affecting the workplace. Relations Industrielles 59(3): 516–43. Paul Blyton is Professor of Industrial Relations and Industrial Sociology at Cardiff Business School and Research Associate in the ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University.His research interests include employee responses to organizational change, working time and work-life balance. Recent publications include The Sage Handbook of Industrial Relations, co-edited with Nicolas Bacon, Jack Fiorito and Edmund Heery (Sage, 2008); Ways of Living: Work, Community and Lifestyle Choice, co-edited with Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmal chian (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Reassessing the Employment Relationship, co-edited with Edmund Heery and Peter Turnbull (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Researching Sustainability, co-edited with Alex Franklin (Earthscan, 2011).Jean Jenkins is a lecturer in HRM at Cardiff Business School. Her research interests include labour conditions and unionization in the global garment sector, working time and union-management partnership. Recent publications include Work: Key Concepts, with Paul Blyton (Sage, 2007). Date submitted January 2010 Date accepted November 2010 Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013

The Reign Of Elizabeth I - 3344 Words

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Mental Illness And The Mentally Ill - 1913 Words

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Depression And The Card Diversion Essay - 1475 Words

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The Role of Ict in Enhancing Education in Developing Countries Free Essays

string(138) " create products that represent what they are learning\) that can change the way students interact with the content \(Windschitl, 2002\)\." Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 The Role of ICT in Enhancing Education in Developing Countries: Findings from an Evaluation of The Intel Teach Essentials Course in India, Turkey, and Chile Daniel Light Education Development Center This paper presents findings from case studies of the introduction of the Intel ® Teach Essentials Course—a professional development program focused on integrating information and communication technologies (ICT) into project-based learning—into six schools in Chile, India, and Turkey. We describe four common dimensions of change in learning environments that emerged across the countries: changes in teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes; changes in how students engage with content; changes in relationships among students, teachers, and parents; and changes in the use of ICT tools to promote students’ learning. Three of these dimensions relate to shifts in pedagogical paradigms that appear to be prerequisites to effectively using ICT to support students’ learning. We will write a custom essay sample on The Role of Ict in Enhancing Education in Developing Countries or any similar topic only for you Order Now Our findings indicate that these shifts must not just occur at the teacher level, but must take hold throughout the educational system and must accompany sustained investment in infrastructure, human resources, curricular frameworks, and assessment. Key Words: ICT, developing countries, education reform I. Introduction Understanding how technology fits into the complex realities of classrooms has been a critical factor in creating real change in schools in the industrialized nations (Cuban, 1993; Honey, McMillan Culp, Carrigg, 2000; Somekh et al. 2003), yet little is known about educational technology projects in the classrooms of the developing world. This paper examines the influence of an information and communication technologies (ICT)-focused professional development program—the Intel ® Teach Essentials Course—on classroom learning environments in six schools in Chile, India, and Turkey. Over the years, program evaluations have found that teachers across a variety of countries value their experience in the Essentials Course and report using ICT and/or making changes in their teaching practice following the program (Light, McMillan Culp, Menon, Shulman, 2006; Light, Menon, Shulman, 2007). However, the evaluations have also suggested that the ways in which teachers in different countries follow up vary, depending largely on factors in their school contexts. The research presented in this paper sought to examine more deeply the nature of the changes that schools in different contexts have made to integrate ICT and student-centered practices and how these changes affect the classroom (Light, Polin, Strother, 2009). In all three countries, we found that the educators we interviewed and observed felt they had been able to implement new ICT activities and teaching approaches with their students after the Course. We also identified a consistent set of programs and policies that, combined with the motivation and skills of educators, enabled these schools to innovate. We selected the six schools in the study (two from each country) which key local stakeholders—the training agencies, the ministries of education, and the Intel Education Managers—considered to be â€Å"good examples† of using the Essentials Course to create school-level change within their national Light 1 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 contexts. In pursuit of the ideals established by their ministries, the teachers and administrators in these schools are attempting to transform the instructional strategies and the educational tools they use. Although each country is unique and each school is at a different starting place, all are moving toward more student-centered, project-based, and ICT-rich classroom learning activities. Across the diversity of their situations, educators in each school connected the ideas and tools offered in the Essentials Course with their own needs. From our case studies of the six schools, we identified four common dimensions of changes that are emerging to support more project-based and ICT-rich activities in the classroom: changes in teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes; changes in how students engage with content; changes in relationships among students, teachers, and parents; and changes in the use of ICT tools to promote students’ learning. Three of these dimensions of change that emerged across schools are pedagogical in nature, supporting the idea that an appropriate pedagogical context is key to successful ICT integration. II. Theoretical Perspective When effectively integrated into a high-quality learning environment, researchers have demonstrated that ICT can help deepen students’ content knowledge, engage them in constructing their own knowledge, and support the development of complex thinking skills (Kozma, 2005; Kulik, 2003; Webb Cox, 2004). However, ICT alone cannot create this kind of teaching and learning environment. Teachers must know how to structure lessons, select resources, guide activities, and support this learning process; many traditionally-trained teachers are not prepared to take on these tasks. As Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) point out, to use technology effectively, the pedagogical paradigm needs to shift toward more student-centered learning. This shift is not trivial or easily accomplished, particularly in countries with teacher-centered educational traditions. The literature suggests that four broad sets of changes should accompany the integration of ICT and the move toward a constructivist model of teaching and learning. 1. Changes in teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes: The literature on education reform highlights the importance of changing teachers’ beliefs and attitudes to create long-term sustainable change (Fullan, 1993). Many studies on ICT integration find that projects fall short of expectations because the educators continue working within a traditional vision of rote learning (Gersten, Chard, Baker, 2000; Honey Moeller, 1990; Teacher Foundation, 2005). Teachers need to believe that new approaches to teaching are effective and will make a difference for their students in order for them to continue using new approaches. Teachers’ understanding and commitment are particularly important to sustain changes in areas such as project-based learning or student-centered techniques, which require core changes to a teacher’s instructional practice (Gersten et al. , 2000). 2. Changes in how students engage with content: Research in the learning sciences has established that constructivist theories of learning provide a more reliable understanding of how humans learn than previous behaviorist frameworks (Bransford et al. , 2000). Studies have identified a variety of constructivist learning strategies (e. . , students work in collaborative groups or students create products that represent what they are learning) that can change the way students interact with the content (Windschitl, 2002). You read "The Role of Ict in Enhancing Education in Developing Countries" in category "Essay examples" The introduction of ICT into schools and project-based approaches should change how students interact with th e content through new types of learning activities. 3. Changes in relationships among teachers, students, and parents: Recent studies suggest that, specifically, a supportive and cooperative relationship with the teacher can be very important Light 2 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 for learning (Marzano, 2007). Research in many different countries has found that the introduction of technology into learning environments changes teachers’ and students’ roles and relationships (Hennessy, Deaney, Ruthven, 2003; Kozma McGhee, 2003). 4. Changes in the use of ICT tools to promote students’ learning: The ICT integration in developing country classrooms is challenging (Akbaba-Altun, 2006; Comenius, 2008; Grant, Ross, Weiping, Potter, 2005; Light Rockman, 2008; Somekh et al. 2003; Vyasulu Reddi Sinha, 2003). A number of factors—such as teacher knowledge, time, access to ICT tools, and the alignment of ICT use with pedagogical goals—appear to help teachers integrate ICT and to support students’ increased use of ICT tools for learning (Light Manso, 2006; Perez et al. , 2003). III. Overview of the Three National Contexts A. India Of the three countries, India is perhaps the country that has most recently begun reforms to promote new teaching approaches and ICT. Across India’s decentralized education system, national and state leaders face big challenges in their efforts to support an education system that must reach so many students (Cheney, Ruzzi, Muralidharan, 2005; PROBE Team, 1999). Efforts to shift curricula from behaviorist approaches to learning to a constructivist approach that emphasizes the personal experiences of learners are recent (India—National Council of Educational Research and Training, 2006; Pandley, 2007). A growing number of policies support ICT integration, but one expert review (Vyasulu Sinha, 2003) found that there is still great variation in implementation of these policies and access to ICT is still limited for most students. Although there is variation by state, the duration of the standard school day is five hours, divided into 35-minute lessons. The class sizes tend to be large; the classes we visited ranged from 45 to 60 students. Indian teachers are expected to cover a lot of content, and the textbook often becomes the center of the learning process (PROBE Team, 1999; Rampal, 2002). The state curriculum varies, but in Maharashtra State, for example, the students have a very full schedule by the upper grades and study 11 compulsory subjects. B. Chile Since 1990, successive Chilean governments have pursued a consistent reform effort to modernize teaching and learning, improve and expand school infrastructure, promote student-centered curricula, institute full-day schooling, develop a national examination, invest heavily in teacher professional development, and integrate ICT into schools (Cox, 2004; Ferrer, 2004; Valenzuela, Labarrera, Rodriguez, 2008). The Chilean school day is eight hours, with the amount of time students spend in core areas (math, language, and science) twice that spent on other disciplines, and there is reserved time for students to engage in enrichment activities or project-based learning experiences. Class periods are typically 50 minutes, with two-hour classes in core content areas. Every school is required to have a Unidad Tecnica Pedagogica (UTP—the Technical Pedagogical Unit) that provides pedagogical support to improve teachers’ practice. Chile also has an ICT program, Enlaces (Links) that, by 2007, had provided hardware, software, and connectivity to 94% of schools in Chile and trained 110,000 teachers (Cancino Donoso Diaz, 2004; Chile—Ministerio de Educacion, 2008). Thus, most schools have a certain level of ICT infrastructure available in computer labs. Light 3 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 C. Turkey Turkey has been instituting educational reforms to modernize and expand its school system and align it with European Union norms since the late 1990s (Baki Gokcek, 2005). The reforms include the expansion of compulsory education, efforts to decrease class size, introduction of a new curricular approach and materials, the use of ICT, and efforts to provide teachers with professional development. Announced in 2005, the new curriculum draws upon constructivist pedagogical principles and the theory of multiple intelligences and promotes more student-centered techniques— such as individual and group work—to encourage students to explore and develop skills (Gomleksiz, 2005). As Phase 1 of the Basic Education Program, 1998–2003, the government distributed thousands of computers to schools (Akbaba-Altun, 2006), and many schools now have labs. Turkey is moving toward full-day schooling, but many schools—including the two we visited—still have two, five-hour shifts because they cannot otherwise meet their communities’ demand. The demand for schools also means that Turkey has not yet reduced class size to 30 students. Nationally, the average primary school class size is 38. 6 students (Otaran, Sayn, Guven, Gurkaynak, Satakul, 2003) but in the schools we observed classes ranged from 50 to 60 students. IV. Overview of the Essentials Course The core goal of the Essentials Course is to prepare teachers to integrate ICT across the curricula as a tool for learning and to design and implement inquiry-driven, project-based learning activities. The Essentials Course involves teachers in a process of developing a complete unit plan that utilizes a project-based approach, engages students in a variety of ICT activities, and organizes learning around an â€Å"essential question† that guides students’ inquiry and exploration of a given topic. Teachers are encouraged to designate time in their unit plans for students to use ICT to conduct research and to create a final product to share their research findings. The Essentials Course also discusses crucial factors for creating high-quality, issues in student-centered learning environments (e. g. , classroom management issues with technology), and approaches to assessing students’ technology products. During the unit plan development process, teachers expand their technical skills and prepare to implement their units back in the classroom. This is a vital feature of the Essentials Course, as it allows teachers to experience and evaluate the new teaching approaches (Guskey, 2002). In addition to Web resources, the Essentials Course uses commonly available software, primarily word processing software and presentation software, to support students in creating presentations, Web pages, brochures, reports, and newsletters. Figure 1: Core Components of the Intel Teach Essentials Course Content Linking ICT use to deeper learning Essential Questions or curricular framing questions Project-based approaches Student created products Internet resources Group work Holistic assessment strategies Structural Features 40 to 60 hour training Focus on commonly available software Teachers create a sample unit plan Teachers learn by doing Trainer is in the same school Emphasis on building communities of trained teachers Light 4 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 Intel, in collaboration with ministries of education worldwide, has offered the Essentials Course to more than 6 million teachers in 45 countries. The collaborative approach to course delivery is important. Although the core messages and goals of the program do not change, Intel works with the ministries and local educational experts to adapt Essentials Course materials to fit local needs; a local agency in each country implements the Course. In Chile, the ministry created a network of universities throughout the country that offers the Course in their regions, and the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago oversees the network. In India, the non-profit Learning Links Foundation oversees the program in the participating states. In Turkey, the Ministry of National Education (MNE) oversees the program, and trainers are based at the provincial education directorates and in larger towns. In this study, we used an instrumental case study approach (Stake, 1995) to examine how successful schools and teachers have been able to integrate ICT and new teaching strategies into their classrooms. This approach allowed us to work directly with schools that have been making changes, talk with teachers about the aspects of the Essentials Course that are useful to their practice, and develop an understanding of what teachers are actually able to do in typical schools in each country. During a two- to four-day site visit at each of the six schools, we interviewed school leaders, the Essentials Senior Trainer (ST) or Master Teacher (MT), technology-using teachers, students, and representatives of students’ parents whenever possible. As shown in Table 1, classroom observations of both typical classrooms and students engaged in the computer lab or ICT activities complemented the interviews. Table 1: Data Collected India Mumbai School Interviews Observations Focus groups Interviews Observations Focus groups Interviews Observations Focus groups Interviews Observations Focus groups Interviews Observations Focus groups Interviews Observations Focus groups 2 school leaders; 5 teachers 5 classes 14 parents; 37 students; 12 teachers 4 school leaders; 3 teachers 5 classes 3 parents; 5 students 2 school leaders; 3 teachers 4 classes 7 students 3 school leaders; 2 teachers 3 classes 5 students 2 school leaders; 8 teachers 3 classes 3 parents; 5 students 5 school leaders; 7 teachers 5 classes 5 arents; 19 students Village School Chile Santiago School Village School Turkey Ankara School Village School Light 5 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 As noted, to identify a sample of exemplary schools, we gained input from local stakeholders. We requested that the local training agency, the ministries, and the Intel Education Managers in each country comp ile a list of schools. We asked that they exclude schools with privileged access to resources, technology, or funds. Success was defined by the local stakeholders to represent what they felt would be reasonable expectations for schools and teachers in their country. From the list of schools, the research team made a final selection of two schools in each country. To carry out the fieldwork, we collaborated with local partners. In Chile, we worked with researchers from the Centro Costadigital at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, and in Turkey, we teamed with GLOKAL Research Consulting. Unfortunately, the arrangements for a local research partner in India fell through. V. Sites A. India We selected a private school in a middle-class neighborhood of Mumbai and a government school in a Gujarati village. The Mumbai school, with 2,000 students, is an English-medium private school from pre-K to Grade 10 and the village school is a Grade 1 to 8 Gujarati-medium public school with 309 students. In the Mumbai school, every classroom has a computer connected to a TV, there are two computer laboratories each with 60 computers, and there is a computer in the library. The labs have broadband Internet. The Gujarati village school has a lab with 14 computers and a computer on a wheeled table with an LCD projector. The lab is connected to the Internet through a dial-up modem. B. Chile We selected a government-subsidized private school in a lower middle class neighborhood of Santiago Chile and a small municipal school in a rural town. The private school has 2,500 students from pre-K to Grade 12, and the municipal school serves 97 students from pre-K to Grade 8. The private school has five ICT labs, some with as many as 20 computers. The municipal school has a lab with 15 computers, plus four laptops, a digital camera, a TV, a printer, two LCD projectors, and a wireless network. C. Turkey We selected two public schools that serve students from K to Grade 8. One school, in an outlying neighborhood of Ankara, serves 2,300 students. The second school, located in a small provincial capital on the Anatolian Plateau, serves 1,410 neighborhood children and has a population of female boarding students from villages in the province. The school in Ankara has one computer laboratory with 21 computers, 15 classrooms have a computer, and there are 350 Classmate PCs donated by Intel. The lab has broadband Internet and a wireless hub. The Anatolian school has three computer labs with 15 computers each, and five or six teachers also have a computer in their classrooms. The labs have wireless connectivity. VI. Findings: Three Common Themes The Essentials Course was not the only source of information or support for the new student-centered practices and ICT-based activities we observed in these schools, as all three ministries of education are engaged in reform with various changes such as new curricula, new standards, and new in-service Light 6 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 training programs. Education reform is a long and complex process that needs to be supported with multiple strategies, and our findings suggest that the Essentials Course can be one part of that puzzle. A. Changes in Teachers’ Knowledge, Beliefs, and Attitudes Because all schools in the study were considered successful, we explored what teachers had changed in their own practice. In the interviews, we asked teachers to discuss what they had learned from the Essentials Course that was useful for their classroom practice. Three themes emerged across all six schools as the teachers spoke about what they found to be valuable for their teaching: (a) their beliefs about how students learn were shifting; (b) they had a deeper understanding of new teaching strategies; and (c) they had improved their knowledge of how to use ICT as a learning tool, as well as strengthening their ICT skills. a. Teachers’ beliefs shifted to a constructivist paradigm of teaching and learning. Teachers expressed a growing belief that students can learn through exploration and discovery. The Essentials Course and, more importantly, the experience of implementing a project-based or ICT-rich learning activity appear to influence teachers’ understanding of how children learn. The interviews suggested the teachers began to value learning as different from memorization and to see that students can learn by exploring content, conducting research, and applying knowledge to real problems. For example, a Chilean history teacher remarked upon the difference from the traditional approaches of having students memorize information: â€Å"By following a question, the students acquire a lot f content through research. † In all six schools, teachers also expressed their belief that students learn more than just content with projects and Internet research. Many teachers recounted what they did â€Å"before† and â€Å"after Intel,† and their descriptions consistently included how students â€Å"learn more deeply,† â€Å"have more confidence,† and â€Å"are more motivated† by the new ways of learning. They reported that students were developing skills and attitudes such as self-assurance, curiosity, collaboration and teamwork skills, presentation skills, and organizational skills. In appreciating how effective group work had been, a teacher in Turkey reported that, â€Å"Before Intel, students did not do teamwork. [†¦] In Turkey—kids want to learn from teachers, now they have to do research on their own and can learn more deeply. Otherwise students aren’t motivated to learn. † A second Turkish teacher commented that students â€Å"were sharing ideas and thoughts with each other† and learning to â€Å"trust themselves. † B. Teachers deepened their understanding of student-centered practices. Teachers reported improving their skills with innovative teaching practices. Although some countries had more experience than others, across the board, nearly all the teachers we interviewed valued project-based approaches and reported doing projects with their students. Teachers had very clear ideas about how project-based approaches can support student learning by allowing students to explore content as they respond to a research question or problem posed by the teacher. They felt the project approaches made the content more relevant to students and required greater intellectual effort for students to find and synthesize information, which led to students learning and retaining more information. At schools in Turkey and India, principals and teachers credited the Essentials Course with helping them learn how to do projects for the first time. In Turkey, teachers told us the Course helped them better utilize the project ideas offered in their new national curricula. One school in India had been experimenting with projects prior to participation in the Essentials Course, but the teachers reported that this professional development experience gave them a solid template and a set of strategies for Light 7 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 project-based approaches. In Chile, teachers told us that the Course helped them learn about inquirydriven project-based strategies in addition to the problem-based approach supported by their ministry. While teachers from all three countries agreed that the Essentials Course supported their use of student-centered practices, each country’s context and educational goals influenced which topics were of most interest to teachers. For example, while all the teachers spoke about using group work and collaborative learning, the teachers in Turkey were very excited about the collaboration strategies presented in the Essentials Course. Turkey’s traditional approach to teaching is lecturebased and emphasizes individual student activities, and teachers reported that they did not have any previous experience with collaborative learning. Group work and collaboration are, however, part of the new Turkish curriculum and reform efforts and teachers expressed appreciation for how the two programs supported each other. The curriculum contains many group activities, and the Essentials Course offers strategies to facilitate group work, as well as follow-up support to practice these strategies with coaching from their MT. In India, teachers found the â€Å"Essential Questions† strategy to be compelling. Essential Questions (e. g. , â€Å"Why do we need others? †) are intriguing, open-ended questions that organize a project and are an effective way to encourage students to think deeply and to provide them with a meaningful context for learning (Wiggins McTighe, 2001). The Indian curriculum is very demanding and the school day is crowded, so teachers felt that they could not easily integrate project work into every class. While they could not do projects during the class period, they were, however, exploring the use of questioning strategies to push students’ critical thinking and to allow students to share their perspectives and formulate their own conceptual understandings of the content. For example, one teacher asked her students what they thought the impacts of British Colonial policies were on the farmers, and a social studies teacher asked students what they valued about their community. Teachers felt that asking for student input was a significant change. As one teacher commented, they no longer just â€Å"stand and teach,† but facilitate iscussions and encourage children to share their knowledge. The teachers we visited felt the open-ended questions and ensuing dialogue between teachers and students might be the foundation of a new relationship between teachers and students. One of the schools in Chile, which already had a lot of experience with ICT and projects, focused on the use of rubric assessments presented in the Essentials Course. The principal noted that teachers were facing increasing challenges in assessing students’ work as the school moved toward complex, technology-rich student products such as presentations and websites. Through these products, students master more than just content and teachers wanted to value all aspects of students’ learning. They considered the rubrics—designed to capture the range of skills, attitudes, and content that students develop—as a key way to address these challenges. The teachers were also using rubrics to put students more directly in control of their learning process; students know from the beginning which aspects of the content teachers will evaluate. C. Teachers improved their ICT knowledge and skills. Teachers reported that they had developed the skills needed to initiate or increase the use of ICT with students. Most of the teachers in India and Turkey reported little ICT experience before Essentials, whereas most Chilean teachers had previous trainings and experience using ICT. Regardless of their experience with ICT, all teachers we interviewed who took the Essentials Course reported they increased their knowledge of how to use ICT as an educational tool. For teachers with no prior experience, the Course helped them acquire basic skills. However, all of the teachers commented on Light 8 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 how the Course helped them see ICT as a pedagogical tool. The strategy of having teachers design a model unit of their own choice appears to allow teachers to work on skills and areas that are new and challenging for them. VII. Changes in How Students Engage with Content The introduction of ICT into schools and the use of project-based approaches and Internet research have changed how students interact with the content in a number of ways. In the site visits, teachers and students spoke about three types of new learning activities that would, according to the literature, contribute to a constructivist learning environment: (a) learning through projects; (b) conducting Internet research; and (c) connecting school content to students’ lives (Windschitl, 2002). A. Project-based work gave students a chance to collaborate, use multiple resources, and direct their own learning. In all the schools, student projects were fundamental to bringing student-centered instructional strategies into the classrooms. The Essentials-trained teachers we interviewed spoke of doing projects with their students. Despite variations among project designs, a few core features emerged. In almost every site, projects gave students chances to work collaboratively and challenged them to take on new roles and responsibilities; students worked in groups and often had to coordinate efforts to complete the projects. Also, all of the projects described included research and culminated in a final product that required students to synthesize and share what they learned. For example, in the Gujarati village, the students did a project about water use and irrigation. They visited local experts, surveyed the community, collected data, and researched solutions. As a result of the students’ examination of drip irrigation, and their proposal of how farmers could use this new strategy, the village converted to drip irrigation. Again, the teachers in India could not fit the project into the class time, so students did a lot of the work before and after school. The municipal school in Chile did a multi-grade project on insects in which the younger grades collected bugs and wrote reports and the older grades helped them create a website. B. Independent Internet research gave students autonomy and a chance to develop and share their own perspectives. Internet research was a constant theme in these schools. Teachers, students, and parents all spoke about having students do Internet research for homework and as part of the projects. Teachers often asked students to bring in additional information on topics in the textbook (e. . , in a Turkish project students researched systems of the human body). Or, teachers asked students to research additional topics or themes (e. g. , after a lesson on farmers under the British Empire, a history teacher in India asked students to research the condition of Indian farmers today). C. Connecting school content to students’ lives made learning more meaningful to students. We found that many of the projec ts teachers designed connected students’ school work to their home life and the community more broadly. In a very simple sense, the increased use of practices such as open-ended questions and group work allowed students to share the perspectives and knowledge they bring from home. For example, a teacher in India asked her students what they had eaten for breakfast and then used this as the start of a nutrition lesson, and a Turkish teacher had his first grade students discuss how an animated story related to their own families and lives. Light 9 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 Yet many of the project topics also engaged students in examining real-world issues or concerns that gave them an opportunity to connect â€Å"school learning† with the real world and allowed them to develop their own opinions and perspectives about the issues. For example, the Indian village that did the irrigation project mentioned above also did projects on clean water and public health. Other projects were less ambitious, but still meaningful, such as the Chilean school where students collected stories and images from the community to publish in a booklet for their families. Our interviews ith parents in the Indian and Turkish sites also supported the perception that students were becoming a source of new information for their families. Parents credited their children’s increased use of Internet research with providing them with current information to which they would not otherwise have had access. Students are generally more excited by information they find themsel ves than the contents of a textbook, and parents reported that their children were rushing home, eager to share what they had discovered. VIII. Changes in Relationships among Teachers, Students, and Parents In keeping with the new activities and roles for students, the teachers and students in the schools we visited reported that they were transforming how they interact. The changes in teaching practices in these schools are part of a broader change in relationships within the school and between the school and the community. The educators and students described changes in the ways they collaborate with each other that grew out of the new teaching practices (e. g. , project-based approaches, open-ended questions), integrating ICT into the schools (e. g. Internet research or presentations), or both. We noticed that teachers, students, and parents reported changes in three sets of relationships: (a) among the students; (b) between students and teachers; and (c) between the school, the parents, and sometimes the community. A. Projects and ICT activities fostered collaborative relationships among students. Many of the teachers and parents interviewed said that students were developing a rang e of social and interpersonal skills that they attributed to the projects and the new roles that students were taking on. As noted, students in every school were taking on new responsibilities as they worked on projects—leading teams, conducting research, writing reports, debating with peers, and making presentations to peers, teachers, and parents. A Chilean fifth grade teacher explained how her students were developing the skills and maturity to work as a team, even across grade levels, because of the collaborative techniques she learned in the Essentials Course. Some of the parents also commented on their children’s maturity and responsibility. A Turkish father noticed a change in his daughter’s attitudes since doing the â€Å"Intel projects. † He observed that before teachers participated in the Essentials Course, his daughter did not share her things with anyone. After her teachers participated in the Course, his daughter began to share more with friends and she enjoyed working in teams. The father also said that, as a result of her involvement in projects and team work, his daughter completed her school assignments independently at home and no longer asked him for help. B. New teaching strategies allowed teachers to develop more collaborative and interactive relationships with their students. The teachers reported that, as their teaching practices changed, their relationships with their students also became more open and supportive. Teachers began to allow more intellectual discussions between themselves and their students, and students were more willing to approach teachers and share concerns and opinions. The teachers and parents in Mumbai were, perhaps, the most eloquent. One group of teachers commented that, as children, they had been afraid of their teachers and they Light 10 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 were happy that their students no longer â€Å"fear the teacher† but gladly ask questions and give opinions. The students we interviewed echoed these sentiments. A group of high school students from the school in Santiago, Chile explained that a good teacher is one who encourages students to disagree when they have a well-reasoned argument. A student from Mumbai shared a similar perspective: â€Å"I like that whenever I do a report I can include my own critical opinion—it is not just cut and paste. And I can learn many things outside of the textbook. † C. Innovating with projects and ICT strengthened the relationships between the school, parents, and the community. The parents we interviewed were excited by the introduction of community-focused projects and student research, and they expressed pride in what the schools were doing for their children with technology. A group of parents in India praised their school â€Å"because of the new technology, [the school] is innovative. They have very high performance, but it is not just academics-oriented. † In the four public schools we visited, parents and the community had also initiated efforts to bring additional ICT resources to the schools by donating equipment or paying for improved Internet connections. However, the parents also remarked on the new teaching practices and what these changes mean for their children. All of the parents we interviewed commented on how the school was developing the whole child since the project work was supporting teamwork, independence, and self–confidence. Parents in India and Turkey highlighted their children’s growing confidence and independence to do research or make public presentations, and they also noted the caring relationships between students and teachers. IX. Changes in the Use of ICT Tools to Promote Students’ Learning A core aim of the Essentials Course and a central objective for the ministries in Chile, Turkey, and India is to encourage the use of ICT as a learning aid for students. Although the administrators and teachers we interviewed in all six schools told us they wished they could do more, to the extent permitted by resources, space, and time, students were using ICT for learning activities. PowerPoint presentations and Internet research were, by far, the most common ICT tools that students used. All six schools promoted student use of ICT, but each adopted different strategies to realize its goals. In Turkey and India, with short school days and tight schedules, the teachers had to strategically make time—either by working outside of class, or rationing access—for students to complete their ICT projects. For example, the teachers at the Anatolian school in Turkey told us that they meet as a team each semester to decide which classes will do long-term projects to ensure every student gets a chance each year. The Chilean teachers had more flexibility to schedule lab time during school hours, although they also did afterschool activities. Perhaps the clearest change is that, in all six schools, teachers gave students Internet research activities for homework. For instance, a math teacher in India assigned students to calculate average rainfall in different parts of the world using online databases, and a Chilean history teacher had students analyze online photos for life conditions in 1900s Chile. X. Conclusion This paper presents the findings from our fieldwork that describe the nature of the changes taking place in the classrooms in these six schools as they integrate ICT activities. Since the governments point to these schools as positive examples, their experiences can help contribute to an understanding Light 11 Journal of Education for International Development 4:2 December 2009 of the process of integrating ICT into the schools of developing countries. While some educators we observed are more skilled than others, and some changes in practice are just emerging, all six schools are making changes beyond just the use of new tools. They are developing: new beliefs about learning and new practices, new ways to engage with content, changing relationships, and new ICT tools for learning. That three of the four common dimensions of change are pedagogical shifts, and that they are changes in pedagogy that are supported by the ICT, illustrate the paradigm shift required for effective ICT integration (Bransford et al. , 1999; Hepp et al. , 2004). These findings illustrate the complex sets of changes that have to occur for ICT to be deeply and meaningfully used to support student learning. This would explain why technology integration is so difficult to achieve but also points the way forward. Our findings suggest that necessary changes are much broader than just the introduction of a new tool or one new ractice. Instead, change begins by deeply reshaping life in the classrooms—from educators’ beliefs about learning to the relationships that make up the school community. In each context, the teachers found points of engagement between the model of ICT use and teaching in the Essentials Course and the possibilities and limits of their context. For Indian teac hers, it was most feasible to integrate aspects of the teaching model (i. e. , open-ended questions) into their classroom and the ICT into after-class time. In Turkey, schools brought ICT activities into scheduled lab time and group work into their class activities. And, Chilean teachers used holistic assessment strategies and inquiry-based projects in class because their school day provides a block of time for projects. But, the responsibility for change cannot rest solely on the shoulders of the teachers; bringing about these changes is a long-term, incremental process. Effective reform requires sustained investment and support along multiple dimensions of the educational system, including physical and technical infrastructure, human resources, curricular frameworks, standards, and assessment. 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