Journal articles on the topic 'Interstate teachers'

The Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Model Core Teaching Standards and Learning Progressions for Teachers 1.0, developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO, 2013) in the United States, provide a set of expectations for essential knowledge, critical disposition, and performance needed for high-quality teaching. In this article, there are two parts. Part I addresses issues found in a current mandatory policy—edTPA. Part II explores how teacher educators can use the national teacher education standards to create a learning community where the voices of preservice teachers, teacher educators, and school personnel are equally valued.

The interviews and discussions which are the main focus of this paper were conducted with five experienced teachers involved with Aboriginal education in remote rural schools in the Northern Territory – the minimum experience being five continuous years and the most being 15 years. Although the teachers have had greater experience working in the southern regions of the Northern Territory, many have experience in the Top End, interstate or overseas experience in indigenous and special education. As all ofthe teachers are stationed in the Northern Territory and all are currently teaching or supporting teachers in remote Aboriginal schools, the discussions regarding Aboriginal teacher training specifically concerned courses offered by Batchelor College and predominantly by the Remote Access Teacher Education Course (RATE).

Teaching is lifelong learning. Turning on all the time, new and old teachers, beginners or professionals will still grapple with how to improve many aspects of teaching, each year demanded to show more improvement. Every idea considers continuing professional development throughout your career. This article examines the following questions: 1. How to start assessing a teacher's professional skills? 2. Do teachers need to understand the standards used by others to assess their professional skills? 3. What model is used to describe the teacher's journey from 'beginner' to 'expert'? 4. How do expert teachers assess themselves and how do they overcome and adapt to change? 5. How can teachers collaborate to make structured observations of their work, as required by the assessment requirements? The results of the discussion concluded: 1) The complexity of assessment that binds teachers and schools continues to increase because assessment is used for various purposes in different contexts; 2) Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) was formed to create "compatible with institutions" standards that can be reviewed by professional organizations and state institutions as a basis for licensing beginner teachers. The InTASC standard (Miller, 1992) is written as 10 principles, which are then further explained in terms of teacher knowledge, disposition, and performance; 3) There are many different theories describing the journey of preparation for beginner teachers to become professionals, this requires time, effort, and support and finally changes follow the predictable stages of development; 4) Teachers with high levels of expertise can observe and adapt their own actions. To do this, they must be in harmony with the feelings and behavior of children and pay attention to what children do and say, rather than focusing primarily on themselves, otherwise they do not equate judgment with testing. they take into account test scores, but their judgments are transient and are based on a much broader bank of evidence, specifically that progress over absolute scores and children's knowledge and context; 5) Teachers rarely can be authentic and accurate participant observers because of the inherent differences in their roles, but student / teacher collaborators have a unique perspective on insiders and outsiders, colleagues and observers, class members involved and critical collaborators

Teacher quality is now the focus of unprecedented policy analysis. To achieve its goals, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires a “highly qualified teacher” in all classrooms. The concern with teacher quality has been driven by a growing recognition, fueled by accumulating research evidence, of how critical teachers are to student learning. To acquire and retain high-quality teachers in our Nation’s classrooms will require substantial policy change at many levels. There exists longstanding precedent and strong justification for Washington to create a major education manpower program. Qualified teachers are a critical national resource that requires federal investment and cross-state coordination as well as other state and local action. NCLB provides a standard for equitable access to teacher quality that is both reasonable and feasible. Achieving this goal will require a new vision of the teacher labor market and the framing of a national teacher supply policy. States and local districts have vital roles to play in ensuring a supply of highly qualified teachers; however, they must be supported by appropriate national programs. These programs should be modeled on U.S. medical manpower efforts, which have long supplied doctors to high- need communities and eased shortages in specific health fields. We argue that teacher supply policy should attract well-prepared teachers to districts that sorely need them while relieving shortages in fields like special education, math and the physical sciences. We study the mal-distribution of teachers and examine its causes. We describe examples of both states and local school districts that have fashioned successful strategies for strengthening their teaching forces. Unfortunately, highly successful state and local program to meet the demand for qualified teachers are the exception rather than the rule. They stand out amid widespread use of under-prepared teachers and untrained aides, mainly for disadvantaged children in schools that suffer from poor working conditions, inadequate pay and high teacher turnover. The federal government has a critical role to play in enhancing the supply of qualified teachers targeted to high-need fields and locations, improving retention of qualified teachers, especially in hard-to-staff schools, and in creating a national labor market by removing interstate barriers to mobility.

While it is generally understood that defined benefit pension systems concentrate benefits on career teachers and impose costs on mobile teachers, there has been very little analysis of the magnitude of these effects. The authors develop a measure of implicit redistribution of pension wealth among teachers at varying ages of separation. Compared with a neutral system, we find that often about half of an entering cohort's net pension wealth is redistributed to teachers who separate in their fifties from those who separate earlier, and we also identify some variation across six state systems. This implies large costs for interstate mobility. We estimate that teachers who split a thirty-year career between two pension plans often lose over half their net pension wealth compared with teachers who complete a career in a single system. Plan options that permit purchases of service years mitigate few or none of these losses. It is difficult to explain these patterns of costs and benefits on efficiency grounds. More likely explanations include the relative influence of senior versus junior educators in interest group politics and a coordination problem between states.

Taking into account interstate and national requirements, an analysis of the significance was carried out and trends in the preparation of teachers for professional activity in the context of the digitalization of education were identified. It is noted that the ongoing scientific research affects various areas of training future teachers, however, they mainly consider certain aspects of professional training of teachers. Among the promising directions for the development of the process of training teachers are identified: the development of methodological concepts, strategic national projects and programs for the training of teachers, taking into account the prospects for economic development, digitalization of society and the education system; the transition to understanding the digitalization of professional pedagogical education as a process that includes the formation of future teachers’ personal readiness for professional activity in the context of the digitalization of society and education; provision of the process of training pedagogical personnel with hardware, network and software resources adequate to the needs; reducing the level of academic load on teachers who train teachers; improving the quality of professional pedagogical education based on personalization and targeting; ensuring the parity of interests of commercial organizations, state and public institutions, personal interests of future teachers; purposeful formation of future teachers’ competence in the design and modernization of educational space based on IR technologies; formation of professional competence among future teachers in the field of ensuring the protection of children and youth in the information space.

Abstract This exploratory study examined the frequency and content of text-based interactions between special education mentors (n=22) and mentees (n=50) within the Electronic Mentoring for Student Success Program (eMSS). Perceived outcomes of participants, based on an open ended survey question, were also analyzed. The Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Continuum (InTASC) Model Core Standards (2011) were used to qualitatively code the conversations between novice teachers and their mentors. Support for all standards was found with learning environments (n=850), professional learning and ethical practices (n=878), and leadership and collaboration (n=906) being the most common topics of discussion. However, several standards (i.e. assessment and content knowledge) were difficult to code because demonstration is required which cannot be observed in an asynchronous site. Frequency of interactions revealed a surprising result that mentors posted (n=675) twice as often as mentees (n=322). Mentees reported perceived outcomes in three main areas: collaboration, pedagogical knowledge, and emotional support.

The idea of providing additional assistance and support to international students is being widely popularized in the global scientific community. This is due to the fact that the number of these students is constantly increasing and they have to encounter numerous problems. There are three main areas of international students’ assistance: didactic assistance focused on the learning process; psychological assistance as the prevention and solution of psychological and emotional problems; sociocultural assistance dealing with adaptation to new environment. This article presents the results of the study directed by the following research questions: whether university teachers are involved in assisting international students, what strategies they prioritize, and what categories of teachers are more focused on providing assistance. The group survey covering 24.2% of teachers of the Interstate Educational Institution of Higher Education “Belarusian-Russian University” resulted in the following conclusions. 1. Most of university teachers are aware of international students’ problems and provide them with additional assistance and support. 2. Teachers with little pedagogical experience, female respondents, and teachers without a scientific degree are more actively involved in assisting international students. 3. The most popular strategies of didactic assistance were explaining details of students’ self-directed work, using lecture presentations and encouraging participation in individual consultations. 4. In order to psychologically support international students, teachers strive to tolerate their speech errors, help them in speaking and create a positive atmosphere in the class. 5. Within the framework of sociocultural assistance, teachers may give students the opportunity to present their homeland, encourage intercultural communication in seminars and workshops, and speak about the country of study.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine resource allocation under the centrally sponsored scheme Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and its impact on development of elementary education in India. First, the author describes the current educational disparity across states in terms of state funding. Second, the author shows that interstate disparities in education resources have more to do with capacity of states to finance elementary education. For this, the author examines funding mechanism under SSA, focusing on principles of adequacy and absorptive rates. Third, the author analyzes the impact of additional funding on the progress of elementary education across states. Fourth, the author demonstrates how funding under SSA reinforces rather than reduces interstate disparity in school funding. Finally, the author concludes with certain policy implications for reforming federal transfers in Right to Education (RTE)-SSA, which can easily be extended to Rashtria Madhya Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) to be more responsive to educational inadequacy, effort and capacity across states. Design/methodology/approach – The author uses box plots for illustrating interstate disparity across various indicators on financing and growth of elementary education. Box plots are good at portraying extreme values and illustrate differences between distributions. Because the thrust of the paper is examining difference in distribution across and within states, box plots appropriately portray the distribution of both. Further, coefficient of variation is estimated in education funding and its impact variables. Findings – Interstate disparity in additional to the funding of SSA through discretionary transfers is examined by looking at two principles of inter-governmental transfers, viz., adequacy and absorptive rates. In a way, it appears that the educationally backward states getting the highest shares and also as per the requirement of the child population, but not necessarily so in terms of their relative proportions of enrolment, schools and teachers. Yet another revelation is that actual absorptive rates are much less than apparent absorptive rates. Unambiguously, additional resources coming from the Center for Development of Education can have a positive influence only after states have achieved a certain threshold level of absorptive capacities. As evidenced, fiscal disability is not compensated by transfers via SSA, as matching shares are uniform across states. Research limitations/implications – One significant limitations of the study is its use of administrative data. Often, administrative data from developing countries especially on social sector like education report inflated figures. The study uses primarily such but published secondary data sources. Practical implications – Finally, the author suggests certain policy implications for reforming federal role in the current RTE-SSA, which can easily be extended to RMSA, a CSS in secondary education, to be more responsive to state effort and capacity. Social implications – Though SSA attempts to address regional imbalance, the accumulated initial advantage of better-off states with uniform norms under SSA funding widens the interstate disparity rather than reduce it. It is, hence, mandated to look at building capacities and enable states for a level-playing field. Originality/value – It adds value to existing studies in two ways: rarely studies examine SSA expenditures and its impact on development and financing of elementary education, and examine a question on horizontal equalization mechanism whether additional allocation under SSA induce or reduce interstate disparity.

This study explored whether differences in teacher candidate dispositions exist between Chinese and American students, while continuing validation of the updated Beliefs About Teaching Scale (BATS2). BATS2 incorporated the Rasch model of item response theory on Thurstone dichotomous items to measure commitment to the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium Standards (InTASC) along the levels of the Bloom/Krathwohl affective taxonomy. This research is a unique combination of theories and practice – standards-based items, affective taxonomy, and modern measurement theory. Differential group function (DGF), applied in a mixed methods design, confirmed national differences, indicating differential commitment to standards and items. For standards and items that showed a difference in the two groups, literature and cultural context supporting those differences was identified to frame the qualitative portion of this study. For example, US teachers were more averse to assessment, clearly the result of the focus on standardized testing that is so resented in the US; the Chinese were less compelled to master content, which is less imperative in early childhood programs (the sample in this study). Results can be used in considering training needs and making instructional design more likely to be impactful for US institutions training Chinese natives and for Chinese institutions updating programs based on international input.

This article applies theoretical and empirical insights on diffusion to a contemporary, important, and striking case in point: the groundswell of state legislation on and implementation of charter schools over the past decade. Drawing from several data sources and using event-history analyses, competing risks, and random-effects negative binomial regression, the analyses examine how interstate dynamics and intrastate attributes affect the adoption of legislation on and the creation of charter schools within states. The findings reveal a strong mimetic tendency among adjacent states to adopt charter school legislation and regional similarities in the creation of charter schools. Internal attributes of states, such as competition between the private and public school sectors, the relative strength of teachers' unions, the presence of racial competition, urbanization, and political party dominance likewise play a role, depending on whether the analytic focus is on the adoption of legislation or the implementation of policy. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of the results for understanding the forces underlying innovation and change in educational policy.

<div class="buynow"><a title="Back issue of Monthly Review, June 2015 (Volume 67, Number 2)" href="http://monthlyreview.org/back-issues/mr-067-02-2015-06/">buy this issue</a></div>In two <em>Monthly Review</em> special issues, "<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.14452/MR-063-03-2011-07" target="_blank"><span class="hyperlink">Education Under Fire: The U.S. Corporate Attack on Students, Teachers, and Schools</span></a>" (July-August 2011) and "<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.14452/MR-065-02-2013-06" target="_blank"><span class="hyperlink">Public School Teachers Fighting Back</span></a>" (June 2013), we sounded an alarm regarding the rapid restructuring and privatization of U.S. K&ndash;12 public schools. In terms of the scale of nationwide restructuring, the corporate takeover of education is unprecedented in modern U.S. history. The closest comparison we can come up with is the destruction of the street car systems across the United States and the building of the interstate highway system&mdash;in which freeways went right through cities for the first time, often in the face of neighborhood and community resistance. With respect to K&ndash;12 education, unimaginable amounts of private funds have gone into pressuring and corrupting government at every level, while the control mechanisms of the new educational system are increasingly left in private, not public, hands. The Common Core Standards and related high-stakes tests are at the center of this new system, and are the product of private corporate groups outside the direct reach of government.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-2" title="Vol. 67, No. 2: June 2015" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

This research aimed at raising the students’ modality competence with the implementation of a teaching model which was called as Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) model that covering ten standards. It was expected that this research could give numerous contribution in teaching English, particularly in teaching English Modality where the problem found was that the students got difficulty in using modal verbs regarding both tense and aspect in which consequently would affect the communicative competence of the students. In the form of Research and Development, this research was carried by means of implementing validated instrument and 10 modules in the small and large scale assessments that involving 50 students in the small scale assessment and 80 students in the large-scale assessment. Standard 1-2 dealt with the students’ need and diversity of learning while standard 3-7 dealt with various instructions teaching the content knowledge regarding the use of English modality. Furthermore, standard 8-10 dealt with summative assessment, reflection, and professional development. Eventually, it is found that the level of learning of the students raise supported by the data that 94% of the level of learning can be achieved by the students while it was only 6% of the modality expressions cannot be used properly. It can be noted that this teaching model can assist the students in achieving the modality competence by having a very well-sequenced procedures of teaching in which this teaching model starts from considering the prior knowledge, the need, and the students’ diversity before creating further instructions regarding the content knowledge where the modality competence is the main goal to achieve.

In April, 2002, a 19 year-old pupil ran amok in a high school in Erfurt, killing several teachers and fellow pupils. The young man was reported to have played computer games, in particular games known as “ego-shooter,” quite excessively. These tragic events fueled the plans of the German government and the Federal states to reform the law for the protection of children and young persons. The legislative machinery issued new legislation at a rather impressive pace. Only one year after the tragedy in Erfurt, on 1 April 2003, two major legal documents entered into force: the Jugendschutzgesetz (JuSchG – Juvenile Protection Act) of the Federal government and the Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (JMStV – Agreement of the German Federal States regarding the Protection of Human Dignity and Juveniles in Radio and Televised Media). This complicated two-fold structure stems from the federal nature of the German state where the competence to legislate is divided between the Federal Government and the individual Laender (Federal States). The latter, in order to achieve uniformity among themselves and reaching the breadth of the Germany territory, must cooperate and legislate in the form of an interstate agreement. The JuSchG regulates mainly the protection of juveniles in the public and limits the distribution of items, which have been determined to be dangerous, like printed material, videos, DVDs or CD-Roms. In contrast thereto the JMStV pertains to the protection of juveniles in the radio broadcasting industry and in the so called “Telemedia,” in particular the internet. In the following, we will give a short overview of the developments wrought by these new laws.

The author gives an overview on the history of a quarter of a century of the youngest foreign workshop of Hungarian studies, namely, Department of Hungarian Language and Literature of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Zagreb. The education on Hungarian studies started in Zagreb in 1944 and was precedented. At the University of Zagreb the Hungarian Language Department was functioning as early as the second half of the 19th century. Form 1904 to 1918, for almost one and a half century at the same place Hungarian language and literature was educated with the direction of professor Dr. Kázmér Greska. After the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy the representatives of the Croatian National Council radically put out professor Greska from the university and closed down the department. It was impossible to reorganize it in Yugoslavia between the two world wars. A new possibility came only after the independence of Croatia in 1994. The work in the department restarted on the basis of an interstate contract under the leadership of professor Dr. Milka Jauk-Pinhak and with the partnership of visiting teachers from Hungary. Today, under the management of Orsolya Žagar-Szentesi, 25-30 students start their studies at the department in each year. The function of the special college of translation of poetic works is outstanding. The department in 2002 celebrated the 900 years jubilee of the coronation of Kálmán Könyves as Croatian king with the representative volume of essays entitled Croato-Hungarica. The department was introduced in the „Hungarian issue” of the journal Književna smotra, the Zagreb journal of world literature in 2014 on the 20th jubilee of the department. Their latest publication is With heart and Soul/ Dušom i srcem Hungarian-Croatian Somatic Phraseology/ Mađarsko-hrvatski rječnik somatskih frazema (2018).

This research deals with the diversity of learning as part the development of Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC Standards) teaching model in teaching Modality. Regarding the use of modalities in English as foreign language for students in Indonesia,it cannot be denied that to most of the students particularly where this research is being carried out, the students awareness of the of modalality limits up to the use of those modal verbs in text ignoring the context. In other words, the ignorance of cultural use occurs in which in contrast, language use must take tense and aspect into consideration. By that reason, the need of teaching modalities further is the main concern as the aim of this research. 80 students of the English Department of IKIP Mataram were involved as the subject of the research where formative assessment were found by applying “learning style” topic. It was implemented b means of preparing the questionnaire consisting of 1-10 with three-color-box (a,b,c) in which the students were asked to color the box with question mark inside where eventually it was found that the students’ diversity can be seen from their hobbies which they use as their learning styles. Most of students love to do sport exercise, watch movie, listening to the music, travelling, reading novel, and singing. Besides, it is also found that students are different in their learning style where some students prefer to learn by discussing, in peer, move around, learn in quite, or even to some of them, any situation things that can distract theirconcentration. In short, it can be concluded that the students are categorized as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners.

My way” is to find Mathematics Virtually everywhere and to bring it into the classroom. “The highway” refers to a recent discovery made while on a twelve-hour automobile trip. A road atlas contains a rich source of examples of mathematics in use all around us: the interstate highway system (see fig. 1). A valuable mathematical, as well as geographical, experience can be extracted from a short instructional unit based on these roadway patterns.

Using the three-year microdata sample of the American Community Survey for 2009 to 2011, we compute public school teacher salaries for comparison across US states. Teacher salaries are adjusted for state differences in teacher characteristics, cost of living, federal tax rates, household amenity attractiveness, and location within the metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan portions of the states. We find high persistence in the state rankings of nominal public school teacher salaries across time. Yet, we also find that the rankings significantly shift with the adjustments, suggesting they are necessary for meaningful comparisons of public teacher salaries across states. The differences in teacher pay across states also greatly narrow with the adjustments. Finally, this is the first study to show and test that teacher salary comparisons across states should be based on a comparison of public school teacher salaries with nonteacher college graduates in the states, adjusted for differences in personal characteristics and effective federal tax rates.

Teacher unions have been demonized by their critics and canonized by their advocates for years, but the actual relationship between teacher unions and educational performance has received very little empirical scrutiny. In this article, Lala Carr Steelman, Brian Powell, and Robert Carini examine the question, "Do teacher unions hinder educational performance?" Focusing on two of the best-known standardized tests, the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and the American College Test (ACT), the authors examine whether interstate variation in standardized test performance is negatively linked to interstate variation in teacher unions. They find a significant and positive relationship: that is, the presence of teacher unions appears to be linked to stronger state performance on these exams. These findings challenge the position that teacher unions depress student academic performance, and in so doing invite further empirical scholarship on this topic from a range of academic disciplines.

One of the significant factors affecting the condition of the students’ visual apparatus is an illumination level in the premises of educational organizations. Electromagnetic radiation arising from computers also has an essential influence on a state of health. Taking into account the urgency of this problem, an analysis of illumination indices and EM radiation was made in audiences of higher educational institutions of various profiles (Ufa, the Republic of Bashkortostan). The total number of illumination measurements was 3528. The measurement methods met the requirements of the interstate standard. According to the results of the illumination indices estimation in the studied universities, a significant deviation from the regulated norms was revealed: in 71.5% of the measurements the index was below the norm. It should be noted that indices differed significantly depending on the type of educational organization. The best situation is in the “Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation,” where only 13.3% of the measurements are inconsistent with the normative indices. Pulsation coefficient also was determined. It turned out that 88.8% of the measurements do not correspond to the norm. The analysis of illumination measurements in computer classes was carried out. Only one-fifth of them in the computer table working area in the of the document placement corresponded to SanPin. An anonymous questionnaire was also organized for students from four leading universities in Ufa, the Republic of Bashkortostan. According to respondents’ answers, out of seven students, one was revealed to be suffering from myopia. On the basis of “Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology in the Republic of Bashkortostan”, a study of non-ionizing radiation from video terminals located in computer classes was made. 1145 measurements were made in 20 buildings of four universities studied. It was found out that the intensity of the electrostatic field did not meet the requirements of SanPiN in 5.7% of the measurements. Hygienic assessment of the environment of educational organizations of various profiles revealed a number of significant deviations from the regulated norms. The obtained results testify to the need to monitor the illumination and EMR indices both from the administration of higher education institutions and from teachers. Based on the results of the study, recommendations were prepared for the management of higher educational institutions in Ufa.

This research describes a simple way to generate an interstate cost-of-living index from market basket data collected at the standard metropolitan statistical area (SMSA) level. Models were developed for each of four regions to explain differences in the cost of living among more than 180 SMSAs. The regression coefficients were then used as weights and combined with comparable state level data to establish a state cost-of-living index. Finally, the state cost-of-living index values were normalized so that 100 represents the national average for all states weighted by their population. In the concluding section, the 1988–1989 average teacher salary for each state is divided by the interstate cost-of-living index to calculate an adjusted average salary.

At the origin of the International Law Department were such eminent scientists, diplomats and teachers as V.N. Durdenevsky, S.B. Krylov and F.I. Kozhevnikov. International law studies in USSR and Russia during the second half of the XX century was largely shaped by the lawyers of MGIMO. They had a large influence on the education in the international law in the whole USSR, and since 1990s in Russia and other CIS countries. The prominence of the research of MGIMO international lawyers was due to the close connections with the international practice, involving international negotiations in the United Nations and other international fora, diplomatic conferences and international scientific conferences. This experience is represented in the MGIMO handbooks on international law, which are still in demand. The Faculty of International Law at MGIMO consists of seven departments: Department of International Law, Department of Private International and Comparative Law; Department of European Law; Department of Comparative Constitutional Law; Department of Administrative and Financial Law; Department of Criminal Law, Department Criminal Procedure and Criminalistics. Many Russian lawyers famous at home and abroad work at the Faculty, contributing to domestic and international law studies. In 1947 the Academy of Sciences of the USSR published "International Law" textbook which was the first textbook on the subject in USSR. S.B. Krylov and V.N. Durdenevsky were the authors and editors of the textbook. First generations of MGIMO students studied international law according to this textbook. All subsequent books on international law, published in the USSR, were based on the approach to the teaching of international law, developed in the textbook by S.B. Krylov and V.N. Durdenevsky. The first textbook of international law with the stamp of MGIMO, edited by F.I. Kozhevnikov, was published in 1964. This textbook later went through five editions in 1966, 1972, 1981, 1987. In 1994 the International Law Department together with the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs prepared new textbook, reflecting the development of international law in the 1960-1990s. In 2000 "International Law" textbook appeared, which was prepared exceptionally by the Department of International Law at MGIMO. In 2005 "European international law" textbook was published. It became the first textbook in Russian Law studies dedicated to the international legal aspects of interstate cooperation in Europe. Quarterly magazine "Moscow Journal of International Law" has made significant contribution to the development of the MGIMO international law school. Y.M. Kolosov, who is the Honored Scientist of Russia and professor of international law, was the founder of the magazine. He has been its editor in chief up to present.

Introduction. The pandemic caused by the spread and the necessary transition to e-learning as well as using distance educational technologies has actualized the problem of the professional competence of a school and college teacher. One of the particular issues of the above-mentioned problem is the juridical competence of a teacher in the context of a rapid digital transformation of the educational space. The purpose of the article is the theoretical understanding of the digital transformation of the juridical competence of a teacher in the context of digital overcoming of the educational consequences of the pandemic. The article actualizes the conceptual collisions of digital competence, as well as the core of the juridical competence of a teacher who has to get over with professional problems in the context of the development of digital transformation. Research methodology and methods. An analysis of the researchers works devoted to of the digital transformation of the educational system, instructive-methodological and state educational documents showed the need to review the content of the juridical, as a component of the professional, competence of a teacher in solving everyday professional tasks in the context of digital transformation. The article gives a local analysis of modern educational legislation and interstate legal acts regulating the common spots between digitalization in education and the professional competence of a teacher. Research results. As a result of the research, there was a thesis formulated about the systemic links of digital and juridical competence of a teacher. Conclusion. The part of the research devoted to the professional competence of a teacher contains a conclusion according to which the digital transformation of the professional competence of a teacher does not only consist of the methods and actions in information and communication sphere, digital environment, but also affects the key components of professional competence, including the juridical one.

Introduction. The pandemic caused by the spread and the necessary transition to e-learning as well as using distance educational technologies has actualized the problem of the professional competence of a school and college teacher. One of the particular issues of the above-mentioned problem is the juridical competence of a teacher in the context of a rapid digital transformation of the educational space. The purpose of the article is the theoretical understanding of the digital transformation of the juridical competence of a teacher in the context of digital overcoming of the educational consequences of the pandemic. The article actualizes the conceptual collisions of digital competence, as well as the core of the juridical competence of a teacher who has to get over with professional problems in the context of the development of digital transformation. Research methodology and methods. An analysis of the researchers works devoted to of the digital transformation of the educational system, instructive-methodological and state educational documents showed the need to review the content of the juridical, as a component of the professional, competence of a teacher in solving everyday professional tasks in the context of digital transformation. The article gives a local analysis of modern educational legislation and interstate legal acts regulating the common spots between digitalization in education and the professional competence of a teacher. Research results. As a result of the research, there was a thesis formulated about the systemic links of digital and juridical competence of a teacher. Conclusion. The part of the research devoted to the professional competence of a teacher contains a conclusion according to which the digital transformation of the professional competence of a teacher does not only consist of the methods and actions in information and communication sphere, digital environment, but also affects the key components of professional competence, including the juridical one.

The article discusses the methods of knowledge management for E/U-Learning systems, which will provide the opportunities for the construction of a unified all-pervasive electronic educational environment. Authors analyze the development of a new phase of e-learning (E-Learning 3.0) in which will play an important role distributed computer systems, cloud computing, mobile personal devices and wireless networks, artificial intelligence and virtual reality tools. Today, there is a fundamental scientific problem of creating a unified interstate intellectual environment for e-education services. This environment should include heterogeneous forms of knowledge representation, interstate standards and forms of learning, international faculty and student teams. The article suggests a possible knowledge management methods and the approach to the construction of an all-pervading intellectual environment for e-learning services. The proposed approach is based on the integration of multiple technologies, such as: service-oriented design, engineering of DSPL (Dynamic Software Product Lines), wireless telecommunications, interaction of intelligent e-learning agents. Structural basis of this approach is interconnected pair of intelligent software agents: student’s and teacher’s software agents. These agents are able to adapt itself: to the current level of student’s knowledge; to the available software, hardware and network equipment; to the current demands of the environment (e.g. labor markets); to the modern educational standards. As a basis of software agents self-adaptation is a mathematical variability model, including the three basic features hierarchy: educational content, interface, software and technical support. Application of such variability model does not require recompilation of the source code (to make changes in the agents properties) and allows to organize a continuous process of e-learning and significantly increase the life cycle of the entire system of distance learning. Moreover, the authors propose a service-oriented scheme for knowledge flows management. The article will be useful for experts in e-learning, developers of service-oriented systems and for managers in the field of socio-economic systems.

The article discusses the problems of the modern textbooks and teaching aids on pedagogy, where the solution of management problems is the content of the chapter, which is often called “Management of educational systems”. Then authors define, that in scientific papers devoted to the problems of pedagogical management, the view of his specific object and subject is substantiated. So, it is considered that pedagogical management as a science of management of educational systems and processes is a branch of pedagogy, the subject of which is the organization of management in the field of education and in educational institutions. The structure of pedagogical management includes the following levels: a. management of the teaching staff; b. teacher activity management; c. student activity management. The authors believe that in pedagogical management there are two levels of management: the head of the educational institution and the teacher. The activity of the head is aimed at creating conditions for the effective functioning and development of the entire educational system of the institution; the task of the teacher-manager is the organization of educational work with the aim of developing cognitive activity and the formation of the student's personality. According to the authors, project management is among the “young” and most demanded areas of scientific knowledge and practice. Development of it over the past 50–60 years has gone from its understanding as a technological scheme for organizing work on the implementation of individual projects to the idea of project management as a methodology for system changes, which carried out in organizations, firms, corporations, territorial entities, across the country and interstate associations. The article also reviewed the most diverse areas of scientific knowledge. It is the project culture. We think that it is institutionally manifested in project activities, although it does not boil down to it. All of the above gives grounds for identifying historical and cultural sources of project management as a person’s ability, an independent type of professional activity and, finally, a cultural phenomenon. The authors think that in modern management concepts, there are two types of management - process (management of recurring activities in fundamentally unchanged external conditions) and project management (change management of the managed system). The latter is precisely the subject of research in the field of scientific knowledge and practice, called “project management” and the subject of one of the branches of management science - project management. In conclusion, the authors define the methodological foundations of project management in pedagogical management are system-activity, process, and resource approaches, which, being internally consistent, set the fundamental methodological orientation of research in the considered field of scientific pedagogical knowledge.

The non-philosophical conceptualisation of the self, and I am expanding the category to include the other forms of theoretical-methodological exit from philosophy’s sufficiency as its principle, thus also Marx, psychoanalysis, and linguistics, does not reduce the radical dyad of physicality/automaton to one of its constituents. It is determined by the radical dyad as its identity in the last instance and it is determined by the materiality or the real of the last instance. The real is that of the dyad, of its internal unilaterality and the interstice at the center of it. We have called this reality of selfhood the non-human: the interstice is insurmountable; the physical and the automaton are one under the identity in the last instance but a unification does not take place. It is the physical, the animal and nature, it is materiality of “use value” and the real production that needs to be delivered from exploitation, not the “workers” only, especially because many of the global labor force are bereft of the status (of workers). And the need to do so is not only moral but also political in the sense of political economy: capitalism is based on a flawed phantasm that the universe of pure value is self-sufficient on a sustainable basis, based on an abstracted materiality as endlessly mutable resource. A political economy detached from the material is untenable. Author(s): Katerina Kolozova Title (English): Marxism without Philosophy and Its Feminist Implications: The Problem of Subjectivity Centered Socialist Projects Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 40-46 Page Count: 7 Citation (English): Katerina Kolozova, “Marxism without Philosophy and Its Feminist Implications: The Problem of Subjectivity Centered Socialist Projects,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 40-46. Author Biography Katerina Kolozova, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Dr. Katerina Kolozova is senior researcher and full professor at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje. At the Institute, she teaches policy studies, political philosophy and gender studies. She is also a professor of philosophy of law at the doctoral school of the University American College, Skopje. At the Faculty of Media and Communication, Belgrade, she teaches contemporary political philosophy. She was a visiting scholar at the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkley in 2009, under the peer supervision of Prof. Judith Butler. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the New Centre for Research and Practice – Seattle, WA. Kolozova is the first co-director and founder of the Regional Network for Gender and Women’s Studies in Southeast Europe (2004). Her most recent monograph is Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals: A Non-Marxist Critique of Capital, Philosophy and Patriarchy published by Bloomsbury Academic, UK in 2019, whereas Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy, published by Columbia University Press, NY in 2014, remains her most cited book

Boarding school is a major educational option for many students (e.g., students living in remote areas, or whose parents are working interstate or overseas, etc.). This study explored the motivation, engagement, and achievement of boarding and day students who are educated in the same classrooms and receive the same syllabus and instruction from the same teachers (thus a powerful research design to enable unique comparisons). Among 2,803 students (boarding n = 481; day n = 2,322) from 6 Australian high schools and controlling for background attributes and personality, we found predominant parity between boarding and day students in their motivation, engagement, and achievement. We also found that classroom-average motivation, engagement, and achievement was not significantly affected by the number of boarders (relative to day students) in the classroom. In addition, the effects of boarding were generally not moderated by students’ background or personality attributes. We conclude that boarders have academic opportunities and outcomes that are comparable to their day student counterparts. Implications for students, teachers, and parents are discussed.

Starting with a famously popular case of literary genesis, which is the rewriting of the theatre play English Without a Teacher in the new variant of The Bald Soprano, this paper aims at analysing the complex relationship between textual objects of literary pretension and the literary space. The paper’s assumed perspective derives from the pragmatics of literary discourse (cf. Maingueneau, 2007), while at the same time it is concerned with analysing the processual features of literary phenomena. It seems that these features can only be analysed in relation to the metamorphoses of the social and cultural imaginary. Emphasizing these relational features of the notion of literature across history and also emphasizing the capacity of literature to remain in a process of continual metamorphosis while being in close contact with the textual objects which seek to challenge its stability, and at the same time, emphasizing the status of literature as ‘discursive interstice’ or as ‘self-constituting discourse’, the paper sets out to show the fact that textual objects which aim at transgressing the ‘literary space’ are in fact the signals released from the pressure history and the cultural metamorphoses it has generated exercises on the literary phenomenon. This pressure seems to have offered literature a transgressive dimension.

The authors of the article draw attention to the problem of the humanization of higher education, emphasize the special role of the teacher in working with students with disabilities, the specifics of inclusive education in the university and the importance of interagency partnership in this field.

IntroductionThis article addresses the experience of designing and conducting life-writing workshops for a group of clients with severe mental illness; the aim of this pilot study was to begin to determine whether such writing about the self can aid in individual ‘recovery’, as that term is understood by contemporary health professionals. A considerable amount has been written about the potential of creative writing in mental health therapy; the authors of this article provide a brief summary of that literature, then of the concept of ‘recovery’ in a psychology and arts therapy context. There follows a first-hand account by one of the authors of being an arts therapy workshop facilitator in the role of a creative practitioner. This occurred in consultation with, and monitored by, experienced mental health professionals. Life-Writing as ‘Therapeutic’ Life-story or life-writing can be understood in this context as involving more than disclosure or oral expression of a subject’s ‘story’ as in psycho-therapy – life-story is understood as a written, structured narrative. In 2001, Wright and Chung published a review of the literature in which they claimed that writing therapy had been “restimulated by the development of narrative approaches” (278). Pennebaker argues that “catharsis or the venting of emotions” without “cognitive processing” has little therapeutic value and people need to “build a coherent narrative that explains some past experience” in order to benefit from writing” (Pennebaker, Telling Stories 10–11). It is claimed in the Clinical Psychology Review that life-writing has the therapeutic benefits of, for example, “striking physical health and behaviour change” (Esterling et al. 84). The reasons are still unclear, but it is possible that the cognitive and linguistic processing of problematic life-events through narrative writing may help the subject assimilate such problems (Alschuler 113–17). As Pennebaker and Seagal argue in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, the life-writing processallows one to organise and remember events in a coherent fashion while integrating thoughts and feelings ... This gives individuals a sense of predictability and control over their lives. Once an experience has structure and meaning, it would follow that the emotional effects of that experience are more manageable. (1243)It would seem reasonable to suggest that life-writing which constructs a positive recovery narrative can have a positive therapeutic effect, providing a sense of agency, connectedness and creativity, in a similar, integrating manner. Humans typically see their lives as stories. Paul Eakin stresses the link between narrative and identity in both this internal life-story and in outwardly constructed autobiography:narrative is not merely a literary form but a mode of phenomenological and cognitive self-experience, while self – the self of autobiographical discourse - does not necessarily precede its constitution in narrative. (Making Selves 100)So both a self-in-time and a socially viable identity may depend on such narrative. The term ‘dysnarrativia’ has been coined to describe the documented inability to construct self-narrative by those suffering amnesia, autism, severe child abuse or brain damage. The lack of ability to achieve narrative construction seems to be correlated with identity disorders (Eakin, Fictions in Autobiography 124). (For an overview of the current literature on creative and life-writing as therapy see Murphy & Neilsen). What is of particular relevance to university creative writing practitioners/teachers is that there is evidence, for example from Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman and creative writing academic Vicki Linder, that life-narratives are more therapeutically effective if guided to be written according to fundamental ‘effective writing’ aesthetic conventions – such as having a regard to coherent structure in the narrative, the avoidance of cliché, practising the ‘demonstrate don’t state’ dictum, and writing in one’s own voice, for example. Defining ‘Recovery’There remains debate as to the meaning of recovery in the context of mental health service delivery, but there is agreement that recovery entails significantly more than symptom remission or functional improvement (Liberman & Kopelowicz). In a National Consensus Statement, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) unit of the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2005 described recovery (in general terms) as being achieved by the enabling of a person with a mental illness to live meaningfully in a chosen community, while also attempting to realize individual potential. ‘Recovery’ as a central concept behind rehabilitation can be understood both as objective recovery – that is, in terms of noting a reduction in objective indicators of illness and disability (such as rates of hospital usage or unemployment) and a greater degree of social functioning – and also as subjective recovery. Subjective recovery can be ascertained by listening closely to what clients themselves have said about their own experiences. It has been pointed out (King, Lloyd & Meehan 2) that there is not always a correspondence between objective indicators of recovery and the subjective, lived experience of recovery. The experience of mental illness is not just one of symptoms and disability but equally importantly one of major challenge to sense of self. Equally, recovery from mental illness is experienced not just in terms of symptoms and disability but also as a recovery of sense of self … Recovery of sense of self and recovery with respect to symptoms and disability may not correspond. (King, Lloyd & Meehan; see also Davidson & Strauss)Symptoms of disability can persist, but a person can have a much stronger sense of self or empowerment – that is still recovery. Illness dislocates the sense of self as part of a community and of a self with skills and abilities. Restoring this sense of empowerment is an aim of arts therapy. To put it another way, recovery is a complex process by which a client with a mental illness develops a sense of identity and agency as a citizen, as distinct from identification with illness and disability and passivity as a ‘patient’. The creative arts have gone well beyond being seen as a diversion for the mentally ill. In a comprehensive UK study of creative arts projects for clients with mental illness, Helen Spandler et al. discovered strong evidence that participation in creative activity promoted a sense of purpose and meaning, and assisted in “rediscovering or rebuilding an identity within and beyond that of someone with mental health difficulties” (795). Recovery is aided by people being motivated to achieve self-confidence through mastery and competence; by learning and achieving goals. Clearly this is where arts therapy could be expected or hoped to be effective. The aim of the pilot study was not to measure ‘creativity’, but whether involvement in what is commonly understood as a creative process (life-writing) can have flow-on benefits in terms of the illness of the workshop participant. The psychologists involved, though more familiar with visual arts therapy (reasonably well-established in Australia – in 2006, the ANZAT began publishing the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Therapy), thought creative writing could also be valuable. Preparation for and Delivery of the Workshops I was acutely aware that I had no formal training in delivering a program to clients with mental health illness. I was counselled during several meetings with experienced psychologists and a social worker that the participants in the three workshops over two weeks would largely be people who had degrees of difficulty in living independently, and could well have perceptual problems, could misjudge signals from outside and inside the group, and be on medication that could affect their degree of engagement. Some clients could have impaired concentration and cognition, and a deficit in volition. Participants needed to be free to leave and rejoin the workshops during the afternoon sessions. Attendance might well fall as the workshops progressed. Full ethical clearance was attained though the University of Queensland medical faculty (after detailed description of the content and conduct of the proposed workshops) and consent forms prepared for participants. My original workshop ‘kit’ to be distributed to participants underwent some significant changes as I was counselled and prepared for the workshops. The major adjustment to my usual choice of material and approach was made in view of the advice that recounting traumatic events can have a negative effect on some patients – at least in the short term. For the sake of both the individuals and the group as a whole this was to be avoided. I changed my initial emphasis on encouraging participants to recount their traumatic experiences in a cathartic way (as suggested by the narrative psychology literature), to encouraging them to recount positive narratives from their lives – narratives of ‘recovery’ – as I explain in more detail below. I was also counselled that clients with mental health problems might dwell on retelling their story – their case history – rather than reflecting upon it or using their creative and imaginative ability to shape a life-story that was not a catalogue of their medical history. Some participants did demonstrate a desire to retell their medical history or narrative – including a recurring theme of the difficulty in gaining continuity with one trusted medical professional. I gently guided these participants back to fashioning a different and more creative narrative, with elements of scene creation, description and so on, by my first listening intently to and acknowledging their medical narrative for a few minutes and then suggesting we try to move beyond that. This simple strategy was largely successful; several participants commented explicitly that they were tired of having to retell their medical history to each new health professional they encountered in the hospital system, for example. My principal uncertainty was whether I should conduct the workshops at the same level of complexity that I had in the past with groups of university students or community groups. While in both of those cohorts there will often be some participants with mental health issues, for the most part this possibility does not affect the level or kind of content of material discussed in workshops. However, within this pilot group all had been diagnosed with moderate to severe mental illness, mostly schizophrenia, but also bipolar disorder and acute depression and anxiety disorders. The fact that my credentials were only as a published writer and teacher of creative writing, not as a health professional, was also a strong concern to me. But the clients readily accepted me as someone who knew the difficulty of writing well and getting published. I stressed to them that my primary aim was to teach effective creative writing as an end in itself. That it might be beneficial in health terms was secondary. It was a health professional who introduced me and briefly outlined the research aims of the workshop – including some attempt to measure qualitatively any possible benefits. It was my impression that the participants did not have a diminished sense of my usefulness because I was not a health professional. Their focus was on having the opportunity to practice creative writing and/or participate in a creative group activity. As mentioned above, I had prepared a workshop ‘kit’ for the participants of 15 pages. It contained the usual guidelines for effective writing – extracts from professional writers’ published work (including an extract from my own published work – a matter of equity, since they were allowing me to read their work), and a number of writing exercises (using description, concrete and abstract words, narrative point of view, writing in scenes, show don’t tell). The kit contained extracts from memoirs by Hugh Lunn and Bill Bryson, as well as a descriptive passage from Charles Dickens. An extract from Inga Clendinnen’s 2006 account in Agamemnon’s Kiss: selected essays of her positive interaction with fellow cancer patients (a narrative with the underlying theme of recovery) was also valuable for the participants. I stressed to the group that this material was very similar to that used with beginning writers among university students. I described the importance of life-writing as follows: Life-writing is simply telling a story from your life and perhaps musing or commenting on it at the same time. When you write a short account of something chosen from your life, you are making a pattern, using your memory, using your powers of description – you are being creative. You are being a story-teller. And story-telling is one very important thing that makes us humans different from all other animals – and it is a way in which we find a lot of meaning in our lives.My central advice in the kit was: “Just try to be as honest as you can – and to remember as well as you can … being honest and direct is both the best and the easiest way to write memoir”. The only major difference between my approach with these clients and that with a university class was in the selection of possible topics offered. In keeping with the advice of the psychologists who were experts in the theory of ‘recovery’, the topics were predominantly positive, though one or two topics gave the opportunity to recount and/or explore a negative experience if the participant wanted to do so: A time when I was able to help another personA time when I realised what really mattered in lifeA time when I overcame a major difficultyA time when I felt part of a group or teamA time when I knew what I wanted to do with my lifeA time when someone recognised a talent or quality of mineA time I did something that I was proud of A time when I learned something important to meA memorable time when I lived in a certain house or suburbA story that begins: “Looking back, I now understand that …”The group expressed satisfaction with these topics, though they had the usual writing students’ difficulty in choosing the one that best suited them. In the first two workshops we worked our way through the kit; in the third workshop, two weeks later, each participant read their own work to the group and received feedback from their peers and me. The feedback was encouraged to be positive and constructive, and the group spontaneously adopted a positive reinforcement approach, applauding each piece of writing. Workshop DynamicsThe venue for the workshops was a suburban house in the Logan area of Brisbane used as a drop-in centre for those with mental illness, and the majority of the participants would be familiar with it. It had a large, breezy deck on which a round-table configuration of seating was arranged. This veranda-type setting was sheltered enough to enable all to be heard easily and formal enough to emphasise a learning event was taking place; but it was also open enough to encourage a relaxed atmosphere. The week before the first workshop I visited the house to have lunch with a number of the participants. This gave me a sense of some of the participants’ personalities and degree of engagement, the way they related to each other, and in turn enabled them to begin to have some familiarity with me and ask questions. As a novice at working with this kind of client, I found this experience extremely valuable, especially as it suggested that a relatively high degree of communication and cognition would be possible, and it reduced the anxiety I had about pitching the workshops at an appropriate level. In the course of the first workshop, the most initially sceptical workshop participant ended up being the most engaged contributor. A highly intelligent woman, she felt it would be too upsetting to write about negative events, but ultimately wrote a very effective piece about the empowerment she gained from caring for a stray cat and locating the owner. Her narrative also expressed her realisation that the pet was partly a replacement for spending time with her son, who lived interstate. Another strong participant previously had written a book-length narrative of her years of misdiagnoses and trauma in the hospital system before coming under the care of her present health professionals. The participant who had the least literacy skills was accepted by the group as an equal and after a while contributed enthusiastically. Though he refused to sign the consent form at the outset, he asked to do so at the close of the first afternoon. The workshop was comprised of clients from two health provider organisations; at first the two groups tended to speak with those they already knew (as in any such situation in the broader community), but by the third workshop a sense of larger group identity was being manifested in their comments, as they spoke of what ‘the group’ would like in the future – such as their work being published in some form. It was clear that, as in a university setting, part of the beneficial effect of the workshops came from group and face to face interaction. It would be more difficult to have this dimension of benefit achieved via a web-based version of the workshops, though a chat room scenario would presumably go some way towards establishing a group feeling. Web-based delivery would certainly suit participants who lacked mobility or who lived in the regions. Clearly the Internet is a vital social networking tool, and an Internet-based version of the workshops could well be attempted in the future. My own previous experience of community digital storytelling workshops (Neilsen, Digital Storytelling as Life-writing) suggests that a high degree of technical proficiency can not be expected across such a cohort; but with adequate technical support, a program (the usual short, self-written script, recorded voice-over and still images scanned from the participants’ photo albums, etc) could make digital storytelling a further dimension of therapeutic life-writing for clients with mental illness. One of the most useful teaching techniques in a class room setting is the judicious use of humour – to create a sense of sharing a perspective, and simply to make material more entertaining. I tested the waters at the outset by referring to the mental health worker sitting in the background, and declaring (with some comic exaggeration) my concern that if I didn’t run the workshop well he would report adversely on me. There was general laughter and this expression of my vulnerability seemed to defuse anxiety on the part of some participants. As the workshop progressed I found I could use both humorous extracts of life-writing and ad hoc comic comments (never at the expense of a participant) as freely as in a university class. Participants made some droll comments in the overall context of encouraging one another in their contributions, both oral and written. Only one participant exhibited some temporary distress during one of the workshops. I was allowing another participant the freedom to digress from the main topic and the participant beside me displayed agitation and sharply demanded we get back to the point. I apologised and acknowledged I had not stayed as focused as I should and returned to the topic. I suspect I had a fortunate first experience of such arts therapy workshops – and that this was largely due to the voluntary nature of the study and that most of the participants brought a prior positive experience of the workshop scenario, and prior interest in creative writing, to the workshops. Outcomes A significantly positive outcome was that only one of the nine participants missed a session (through ill-health) and none left during workshops. The workshops tended to proceed longer than the three hours allotted on each occasion. Post-workshop interviews were conducted by a psychologist with the participants. Detailed data is not available yet – but there was a clear indication by almost all participants that they felt the workshops were beneficial and that they would like to participate in further workshops. All but one agreed to have their life-writing included in a newsletter produced by one of the sponsors of the workshops. The positive reception of the workshops by the participants has encouraged planning to be undertaken for a wide-ranging longitudinal study by means of a significant number of workshops in both life-writing and visual arts in more than one city, conducted by a team of health professionals and creative practitioners – this time with sophisticated measurement instruments to gauge the effectiveness of art therapy in aiding ‘recovery’. Small as the workshop group was, the pilot study seems to validate previous research in the UK and US as we have summarised above. The indications are that significant elements of recovery (in particular, feelings of enhanced agency and creativity), can be achieved by life-writing workshops that are guided by creative practitioners; and that it is the process of narrative construction within life-writing that engages with or enhances a sense of self and identity. NoteWe are indebted, in making the summary of the concept of ‘recovery’ in health science terms, to work in progress by the following research team: Robert King, Tom O'Brien and Claire Edwards (School of Medicine, University of Queensland), Margot Schofield and Patricia Fenner (School of Public Health, Latrobe University). We are also grateful for the generous assistance of both this group and Seiji Humphries from the Richmond Queensland Fellowship, in providing preparation for the workshops. ReferencesAlschuler, Mari. “Lifestories – Biography and Autobiography as Healing Tools for Adults with Mental Illness.” Journal of Poetry Therapy 11.2 (1997): 113–17.Davidson, Larry and John Strauss. “Sense of Self in Recovery from Severe Mental Illness.” British Journal of Medical Psychology 65 (1992): 31–45.Eakin, Paul. Fictions in Autobiography: Studies of the Art of Self-Invention. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985.———. How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1999.Esterling, B.A., L. L’Abate., E.J. Murray, and J.W. Pennebaker. “Empirical Foundations for Writing in Prevention and Psychotherapy: Mental and Physical Health Outcomes.” Clinical Psychology Review 19.1 (1999): 79–96.Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books, 1992.King, Robert, Chris Lloyd, and Tom Meehan. Handbook of Psychosocial Rehabilitation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.Liberman, Robert, and Alex Kopelowicz. “Recovery from Schizophrenia: A Criterion-Based Definition.” In Ralph, R., and P. Corrigan (eds). Recovery in Mental Illness: Broadening Our Understanding of Wellness. Washington, DC: APA, 2005.Linder, Vicki. “The Tale of two Bethanies: Trauma in the Creative Writing Classroom.” New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing 1.1 (2004): 6–14Murphy, Ffion, and Philip Neilsen. “Recuperating Writers – and Writing: The Potential of Writing Therapy.” TEXT 12.1 (Apr. 2008). ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/murphy_neilsen.htm›.Neilsen, Philip. “Digital Storytelling as Life-Writing: Self-Construction, Therapeutic Effect, Textual Analysis Leading to an Enabling ‘Aesthetic’ for the Community Voice.” ‹http://www.speculation2005.qut.edu.au/papers/Neilsen.pdf›.Pennebaker, James W., and Janel D. Seagal. “Forming a Story: The Health Benefits of Narrative.” Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55.10 (1999): 1243–54.Pennebaker, James W. “Telling Stories: The Health Benefits of Narrative.” Literature and Medicine 19.1 (2000): 3–18.Spandler, H., J. Secker, L. Kent, S. Hacking, and J. Shenton. “Catching Life: The Contribution of Arts Initiatives to ‘Recovery’ Approaches in Mental Health.” Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 14.8 (2007): 791–799.Wright, Jeannie, and Man Cheung Chung. “Mastery or Mystery? Therapeutic Writing: A Review of the Literature.” British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 29.3 (2001): 277–91.