Tangrams: a simple visual tool for communicating the complexities of professionalism

Professionalism is vital for high quality healthcare and fundamental to health profession education. It is however complex, hard to define and can be challenging to teach, learn about and assess. We describe the development and use of an innovative visual tool, using a tangram analogy, to introduce and explore core professionalism concepts, which are often troublesome for both learners and educators. These include the hidden curriculum, capability, professional identity and the difference between unprofessionalism and high professional standards. Understanding these concepts can help individuals to see professionalism differently, encourage faculty to design professionalism programmes which focus on professional excellence, support assessors to feel more confident in identifying and addressing underperformance and facilitate learners to appreciate the complexity and uncertainty inherent in professionalism and to become more alert to the hidden curriculum and its potential impact. We have used the tangram model to educate for professionalism in multiple contexts with learners and educators. Participants regularly report that it leads to a deeper understanding and important new insights around professionalism and helps them identify ways of changing their practice. We believe this approach has relevance across the health professions and suggest ways it could be further developed to explore wider professionalism issues such as reflective practice, resilience and teamworking.

The Not So Obvious Impact of COVID 19: The Hidden “Curriculum”

The last two years of the Covid 19 pandemic has certainly brought on and inculcated a variety of changes, new practices, innovative approaches and altered mindsets. Some of these were intended, planned and incorporated into pathways and practices. There were many lessons and new experiences. Without our complete realization, there were also many less obvious lessons: the hidden curriculum. This refers to the unwritten, unspoken, unplanned and less obvious values, behaviour and norms practised or experienced during the pandemic. The hidden curriculum is conveyed and communicated without our direct awareness and intent. The hidden curriculum will certainly contribute towards healthcare staff resilience, handling of stressors, decisions on utilization of resources and patient care. Not to be forgotten, it will also impact how they develop friendships, partnerships, collaborations, negotiate their self-development and strengthen their sense of purpose and challenge assumptions. In this paper, the author, who worked at the frontline during the pandemic shares some of her views on the new healthcare landscape, mindset changes, technology adoption, psychological safety and the meaning of ‘staying home’. They represent her views, coloured by her experiences as an emergency physician, a medical educator, academic medicine practitioner and researcher.

Gender and Sexuality in Physical Education and Health Curricula in Japan

This comparative study of gender messages in Japanese textbooks reveals a pattern of underlying sex discrimination as well as efforts at reform. There is a “hidden curriculum”—the presence of powerful, hegemonic messages that reinforce dominant social structural values of a gender binary—shaping the learning environment and sustaining structural inequalities. An effort to address the hidden curriculum of gender and sexuality biases in Japanese textbooks was published in 2020 through the National Elementary School Health textbooks and curriculum. This study analyzes existing gender messages permeating the explicit and hidden curriculum and reform efforts, employing mixed methods of content analysis and ethnographic observations.

IMPLEMENTASI KURIKULUM TERSEMBUNYI (HIDDEN CURRICULUM) DALAM PEMBENTUKAN KARAKTER MELALUI PEMBELAJARAN DARING PADA MASA PANDEMI COVID-19

Sejak merebaknya Covid-19, pemerintah melalui Kemendikbud mengeluarkan SE No. 36962/MPK.A/HK/2020 yang memutuskan untuk memindahkan proses pembelajaran tatap muka menjadi pembelajaran secara daring yang diberlakukan di seluruh tingkatan satuan pendidikan. Namun masa pandemi covid-19 ini, pembelajaran daring menjadi persoalan kompleks karena guru secara fisik tidak bisa langsung interaktif dengan peserta didik, sehingga guru dituntut mencari bentuk pembelajaran daring untuk melaksanakan kurikulum formalnya dan sekaligus mengimplementasikan kurikulum tersembunyi tanpa mengurangi perannya dalam membangun karakter peserta didik. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dengan metode deskriptif dan teknik pengumpulan data menggunakan teknik wawancara, observasi dan dokumentasi. Analisis data dilakukan terhadap implementasi kurikulum tersembunyi melalui pembelajaran daring pada tahap kegiatan pendahuluan pembelajaran, kegiatan inti pembelajaran, dan kegiatan penutup pembelajaran. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian, pembentukan karakter dalam pembelajaran daring pada kegiatan pendahuluan pembelajaran, para guru SDN Mugarsari telah menanamkan nilai-nilai karakter religius, disiplin, sopan, peduli sosial, dan partisipatif. Pada kegiatan inti pembelajaran, guru telah menanamkan nilai-nilai karakter mandiri, kerjasama, peduli lingkungan, dan percaya diri. Sedangkan pada kegiatan penutup pembelajaran, guru telah menanamkan nilai-nilai karakter berfikir kritis, jujur, tanggung jawab, dan religius

Remarkable Report Cards

This chapter argues that abiders have an academic advantage in secondary school. This advantage stems from a synergy between schooling and religion: both institutions strive to maintain social order. Because religion and schooling promote the same ideals, the types of children who thrive in one institution are also likely to thrive in the other. To make this case, the chapter examines how Protestantism has shaped the current form of schooling and explains the importance of the “hidden curriculum”—the rules, routines, and regulations. Children raised with religious restraint are stellar at navigating the hidden curriculum. Abiders’ God-centered self-concept leads them to be deeply cooperative and conscientious. They do what is asked of them, they are kind to their peers, and they are self-disciplined. In return, they reap tangible academic rewards: they earn better grades. This is referred to as the “abider advantage.”

“If your institution refuses to provide what you need, create it yourself”: Feminist praxis on #AcademicTwitter

Previous research has demonstrated the impact that Twitter can have for promoting and discussing a feminist agenda. Given the gendered neoliberalism that exists within academia, tweets under the hashtag “#AcademicTwitter” may also be an important space for feminist praxis. Yet, to our knowledge, there is no empirical work analysing the function of “Academic Twitter” from a distinctly feminist perspective. Thus, we asked “How is Academic Twitter used for feminist praxis?”. We conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of 596 tweets containing the hashtag #AcademicTwitter. This generated four themes showing how Academic Twitter can be a valuable site for feminist praxis, by enabling academics to “give testimony to academia”, “access the hidden curriculum”, and engage in both “academic kindness” and “resistance and advocacy”. Despite these benefits, we also observed a tension between Academic Twitter as a site for feminist practice yet also as potentially complicit in promoting the competitiveness and overwork that pervades academia. We recommend that future feminist research interrogates the ways in which more diverse forms of feminist praxis, including more negative experiences, are negotiated on Academic Twitter.

Silencing and institutional racism in settler-colonial education

<p>Twenty years ago, Charles Mills argued that a Racial Contract underwrites and guides the social contract and assigns political, economic, and social privileges based on race. This thesis argues that a settler manifestation of the Racial Contract operates through processes and structures of silencing in the New Zealand education system. Silencing is a racial discourse aligned with state ideologies about biculturalism that supports ignorance and denial of the structuring force of colonisation. Within schools, a state narrative of biculturalism advances the notion of harmonious settler-colonial race relations by marginalising or denying violent colonial histories and their consequences in the present. Silencing in the education system is examined through the lived experiences of Māori teachers of English language as they teach New Zealand literature in secondary school classrooms. Interviews with nineteen teachers and observations of four teachers' classroom practices (with follow up interviews from the teachers and some of their students) reveal that everyday classroom interactions perpetuate silencing through a hidden curriculum. This hidden curriculum appeals to settler sensibilities by: drawing on teaching pedagogies that soften or mute historical harm, validating “lovely” knowledge about Māori society and assessment approaches that privilege settler-colonial imperatives. This thesis identifies that harmonious notions of biculturalism circulate through the spatial and temporal dimensions of secondary schools because epistemological structures (policy, curriculum, and pedagogy) silence the meanings and effects of colonisation. In this way, a Settler Contract operates to sustain institutional racism in the New Zealand education system and white supremacy in settler-colonial societies.</p>