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Blended learning models can help teachers leverage the power of technology to customize student learning and differentiate instruction for students at varying achievement levels. Research on the effectiveness of blended learning in K-12 education has largely relied on case studies, and findings suggest differences in achievement outcomes based on content areas and grade levels. This paper reports findings from a quantitative comparative study conducted to investigate the effects of blended learning, specifically using the station rotation model, on the math achievement of 413 6th grade students. Scores on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), as well as the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) were used. Student groups were selected based on teacher responses on a survey in which they were asked to identify what portion of their class was spent on blended learning practices and on face-to-face teaching. A t-test was conducted to determine the differences in the scores of students taught in traditional fully face-to-face classrooms and those taught in blended learning classrooms. Findings showed that students instructed through blended learning scored higher on the MAP assessment (M = 11.12, SD = 7.88) than students in a fully face-to-face environment (M = 8.84, SD = 7.40), t(411) = 3.02, p < 0.01. On the other hand, students instructed in a face-to-face setting scored higher on STAAR (M = 29.96, SD = 11.84) than those in blended learning settings (M = 26.75, SD = 11.06), t(411) = -2.85, p < 0.01. Blended learning was more effective in facilitating growth in math learning as compared to meeting grade level criteria. These findings indicate that schools can benefit from implementing blended learning particularly for students who are behind academically and need additional academic growth in one school year.

The landscape of surgical training is changing. The anticipated increase in the numbers of surgical trainees and the shift to competency-based surgical training places pressures on an already stretched health service. With these pressures in mind, we explored trainers' and trainees' experiences of surgical training in a less traditional rotation, an outer metropolitan hospital. We considered practice-based learning theories to make meaning of surgical training in this setting, in particular Actor-network theory. We adopted a qualitative approach and purposively sampled surgical trainers and trainees to participate in individual interviews and focus groups respectively. Transcripts were made and thematically analysed. Institutional human research ethics approval was obtained. Four surgical trainers and fourteen trainees participated. Almost without exception, participants' report training needs to be well met. Emergent inter-related themes were: learning as social activity; learning and programmatic factors; learning and physical infrastructure; and, learning and organizational structure. This outer metropolitan hospital is suited to the provision of surgical training with the current rotational system for trainees. The setting offers experiences that enable consolidation of learning providing a rich and varied overall surgical training program. Although relational elements of learning were paramount they occurred within a complex environment. Actor-network theory was used to give meaning to emergent themes acknowledging that "actors" (both people and objects) and their interactions combine to influence training quality, shifting the focus of responsibility for learning away from individuals to the complex interactions in which they work and learn.

The Australian government has transformed the national biosecurity framework by shifting from a quarantine to a shared responsibility approach. This reflects a move from centralised to network‐based governance. While network governance enables the development of private and public networks needed to enact a shared responsibility approach, it can sit in tension with this approach, which requires the sharing of risk and legitimacy across an array of non‐government actors. Further, little is known about how the beliefs and values of individuals involved in biosecurity decision‐making influence whether or how a shared responsibility approach is enacted. We use an institutional logics framework to investigate these issues and found that despite risk‐shifting and scale and efficiency logics underpinning a shared responsibility approach, a bureaucracy logic has remained dominant. While a dominant bureaucracy logic can enable a shared responsibility approach by providing clear guidelines around biosecurity compliance, it can also create barriers by creating ambiguity, or increasing reliance of actors on government in the event of a biosecurity outbreak. It can also reflect shadows of hierarchy in which governments moving to network‐based governance are either not ready to share power or seek to retain authority over the direction of their policy intention. Points for practitioners: Enacting a shared responsibility approach is subject to an array of challenges. However, little is known about how the beliefs and values of individuals involved in biosecurity decision‐making influence whether or how a shared responsibility approach is enacted.Problems can arise with implementation of a shared responsibility approach particularly related to the different and conflicting ways in which decision makers can interpret and understand a policy intention.Despite efforts from public and private partners to work together, a shared responsibility approach is dominated by a bureaucracy logic. This can provide clear guidelines for actors around compliance but can also create further dependence on government in the event of a biosecurity outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: International efforts to prevent the spread of biological threats to agro‐food production are increasingly being devolved from national governments to farming industries and farmers. Previous research has highlighted the farm‐level and institutional challenges in engaging farmers in biosecurity. However, little is known sociologically about what farmers already know and do to manage disease risk, and specifically how they practice biosecurity. This article addresses this issue through the application of theoretical work on the choreography of care. Drawing from a qualitative study of biosecurity in the Australian beef industry, we argue that farmers’ localised practices of caring for their herd health and farm are crucial in making biosecurity workable. These practices take two key forms: skilled craftwork, through which farmers construct and hold together different objects and elements of care; and fluid engineering, which involves efforts to construct barriers for separating on‐farm practices of care from perceived off‐farm disease risks. In engaging in these care practices, farmers make an important contribution to national livestock biosecurity principles and practices. We argue that greater recognition of localised practices of biosecure care may provide the basis for engaging farmers more effectively in a devolved form of biosecurity governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent debates, the relevance of traditional objectivist organization development ( OD) approaches has been questioned in terms of their appropriateness for contemporary organizations. A new OD has emerged wherein change is viewed as a socially constructed process and where there are multiple rather than singular authentic possibilities. We explore these possibilities by drawing on employees' discussions of how they manage conflicting interpretations of organizational change. Using the example of emotional labour, we compare traditional and new OD approaches in terms of how they view authenticity and then discuss posthumanist analysis, in which authenticity (or lack thereof) is no longer of focal concern. In particular, under traditional OD, where authenticity can be 'discovered', the need to negotiate multiplicity and to downplay 'negative' responses is a problem to be addressed. Under new OD such multiplicity becomes data for dialogue and discussion of future potentials. In contrast, a posthumanist analysis, while relational, neither reframes nor tempers authenticity but decentres the very notion of autonomy on which authenticity is based. The social constructionism of new OD is recast and implications for theory and intervention are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intersection of the concepts of discrimination and bullying has generally been under researched. The little research that is available, however, suggests that there may be three possible relationships between these phenomena: first, that bullying and discrimination are caused by identical factors; second, that bullying is a subset of discriminatory behaviour amt third, that they are distinctly different. In this paper we analyse data drawn from interviews with men and women working in three industries: manufacturing, retail and hospitality all of whom report some adverse experience of bullying/discriminatory, behaviour. We interpret these interview data as indicating that there are many common determinants of bullying and discrimination, including difference, power and organisational characteristics. Further, the consequences of these two forms of negative behaviour are similar. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future research and calls for common theoretical explanations for these two forms of undesirable behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an alternative lens for examining organizational deviance within the specific context of change, by drawing upon an interactionist approach. We focus specifically on labeling theory and argue that definitions of deviance can be constructed through social interaction regardless of the behaviour in which individuals engage. This study differs from current literature by shifting emphasis away from acts of norm-breaking and on to the social circumstances in which individuals might define others, or come to be defined, as deviant. The application of labeling theory can advance understanding of how individuals, within the context of organizational change, might come to be defined as deviant without changing their behaviour or engaging in specific norm violations. This approach also enables researches to contribute to discussions surrounding the construction of organizational norms and explore whether these are developed and enforced by those in powerful positions on the basis of their own values and morals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]