Welcome to the WJETT blog
What is WJETT?
The WJETT blog or Warwick Journal of Education - Transforming Teaching blog is designed to encourage staff and students to disseminate good practice and to engage with their peers on academic cultural critique or areas of research that they find interesting. With the increased focus on ‘teachers as researchers’ in the sector, many qualified teachers are expected to publish the outcomes of any action research projects they undertake. The WJETT blog can be the first step on your journey towards publishing and enables you to experience publishing and reviewing in a friendly and supportive environment.
You will need to scroll down the page below the tags to see the posts.
ALT23 – 30 years of Leading People, Digital and Culture
I attended day two of the three day event and delivered a presentation called 'Transforming and enhancing teacher education.' This fitted under the conference track of 'Leading people in a time of complexity,' and considered how individuals and teams had driven change to solve complex and difficult problems.
At the end of Warwick's Phase II Strategy Renewal Process, my department (CTE) established six strategic priorities to enable it to extend its portfolio and expertise. It gained Academic Resource Committee funding for a year-long Project that focussed on developing its digital distinctiveness and increasing and disseminating its wider educational impact regionally, nationally, and internationally. I discussed my work on the Project and the range of roles that I adopted (using different hats as a metaphor for this) to enable me to manage the Project and discussed some of the challenges that I had faced.
I reflected upon how I had taken the role of a critical friend for the part of the Project that focussed on Mentoring. I described how I had had to reconcile my role as Project Lead and my involvement with Project Board with the critical friend role. By stepping up and accepting the multi-faceted nature of complex project work, I was able to make what could be seen as a conflict of interest by some, work for both me and the Mentoring team.
For the Digital Communities of Practice part of the Project, I reflected upon some of the challenges of co-leading and how I had refined my persuasion skills to better represent my views.
For the Reusable Learning Objects part of the Project I reflected upon how much more autonomy I had as lead for this work and how much easier this made the work. I also talked about needing to step back and focus on planning and development rather than completing everything myself - delegation, delegation, delegation!
For the Student Experience and Quality Assurance part of the Project, I once again reflected on my role as a critical friend and discussed some of the challenges that this work entailed. I also considered how my negotiation and communication skills had improved, as well as my assertiveness and active listening skills.
This link shows a post from X (formerly Twitter) by one of the conference conveners: https://twitter.com/Realtimeedu/status/1699406711159697573Link opens in a new window which was lovely to receive!
Writing guidance
Can I write about anything in my blog post?
Yes pretty much. Academic cultural critique (Thomson and Mewburn, 2013) is always a good source of content for academic blogs. This can include (but is not limited to) comments and reflections on funding; higher education policy or academic life. You might also want to consider blogging about:
- Academic practice (Saper, 2006)
- Information and/or self-help advice
- Technical, teaching and careers advice
- Your research or practice
- How you’ve undertaken research
- The impact of research on your practice
- An area of research/practice that interests you
- Your teaching experiences/reflections
How long can my blog post be?
Each individual blog post should be no longer than 500 words. Long blocks of text are sometimes hard for readers to digest. Break up your content into shorter paragraphs, bullet points and lists whenever possible. Also include a list of keywords or tags as this makes it easier for Google to find your work.
Do I need to use citations?
No, this is a reflective piece so it does not need to include citations (but you obviously can include them if they are relevant).
Can I include links or images?
We would encourage you to include links to any articles that you have considered whilst writing your blog post. We also welcome the use of images (as long as you have permission to use them) as they can often help to illustrate a point and obviously will not be included in the word limit. Please remember this is a public site so if you want to include images of your students in your classes then you will need permission to do this.
What is the process for submitting a piece of work?
Your blog post should be emailed to A.Ball.1@warwick.ac.uk. Once the submission has been reviewed it will either be uploaded at the beginning of the next available week or sent back to you for editing if it requires amendments. You should then send the amended work to me once again and I will then upload it.