The American science pipeline: sustaining innovation in a time of economic crisis

Significant limitations have emerged in America's science training pipeline, including inaccessibility, inflexibility, financial limitations, and lack of diversity. We present three effective programs that collectively address these challenges. The programs are grounded in rigorous science and integrate through diverse disciplines across undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students, and resonate with the broader community. We discuss these models in the context of current economic constraints on higher education and the urgent need for our institutions to recruit and retain diverse student populations and sustain the successful American record in scientific education and innovation.     

Towards a clearer understanding of student disadvantage in higher education: problematising deficit thinking

The increased diversity in the student body resulting from massification poses particular challenges to higher education. This article engages the uncritical use of the ‘disadvantage’ discourse and its effect on pedagogy. It explores some of the challenges of coping with student diversity, with particular reference to the South African context. Students enter higher education institutions with a variety of educational backgrounds, not all of which are considered to be sufficient preparation for the demands of higher education. The dominant thinking in higher education attempts to understand student difficulty by framing students and their families of origin as lacking some of the academic and cultural resources necessary to succeed in what is presumed to be a fair and open society. This constitutes a deficit thinking model: it focuses on inadequacies of students and aims to ‘fix’ this problem. In the process the impact of structural issues is often ignored or minimised. Employing a deficit mindset to frame student difficulties perpetuates stereotypes, alienates students from higher education and disregards the role of higher education in perpetuating the barriers to student success. In the process, universities replicate the educational stratification of societies. This article suggests that we need to find more suitable responses to diversity in the student body. These require a change in our way of thinking: we need thoughtfully to consider the readiness of higher education institutions to respond to students and to cultivate the will to learn in students. We need to find ways to research the full texture of the student experience and to value the pre-higher education contexts from which students come. In addition, the notion of ‘at risk’ students could be helpful and the original sense of the concept needs to be reclaimed.     

When Race and Class Both Matter: The Relationship between Socioeconomic Diversity, Racial Diversity, and Student Reports of Cross–Class Interaction

This paper delves into a facet of socioeconomic diversity relatively unaddressed in the literature: student reports of cross–class interaction (“reported CCI”). Previous research has found that student interaction across social class is a significant predictor of cross–racial interaction, but it is unknown whether the actual socioeconomic heterogeneity of a student body is significantly related to reported CCI. We use hierarchical linear modeling to identify predictors of reported CCI in the 2003 Freshman/2007 College Student Survey from the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute. In the final model, students who attended more socioeconomically diverse institutions and more racially diverse institutions reported higher levels of CCI. Findings suggest that reported CCI is linked to the actual socioeconomic heterogeneity of a student body. Measures of racial diversity (percent of students of color and diversity engagement), both at the institutional and student level, also predicted reported CCI. Thus, reported CCI is likely influenced by the racial diversity of a student body and other aspects of the campus racial climate, in addition to socioeconomic diversity. Implications for campus climate, diversity, and equity research are discussed.     

Diversity and Difference in the Online Environment

ABSTRACT

The online environment challenges social work educators in their approach to developing students’ cultural awareness and culturally competent skills. To develop student competencies, it is important for accredited social work programs to consider both their explicit and implicit curricula. Although research has focused on the influence of multicultural classrooms and engaging diverse students, scant literature has been focused on teaching about diversity and difference in the online environment. This article hopes to fill this gap in knowledge by providing recommendations for social work programs to consider as they look to teach diversity and difference in the online environment.     

Fostering multicultural appreciation in pre-service teachers through multicultural curricular transformation

Schools today represent students from diverse racial, linguistic, and other cultural backgrounds. Teacher-preparation institutions have the responsibility of providing prospective teachers with the skills necessary to meet the intellectual, social, and personal needs of these diverse learners. This article examines the rationale for a multicultural curricular transformation in Teacher Education programs. The author maintains that contrary to the single-subject approach that obtains in many institutions, pedagogical approaches should be re-conceptualized to embrace diverse perceptions in content, methods and assessment tools across all disciplines. The leadership in teacher training institutions also has the responsibility of creating positive environments where multicultural initiatives can thrive. Such transformative approaches will foster multicultural appreciation in pre-service teachers and provide them with the competences necessary to effectively meet the challenges of the changing school demographics.     

Service Strategies for Higher Educational Institutions Based on Student Segmentation

Over the last decade, higher education institutions in the U.S. have faced increased competition and expenditures coupled with declines in financial support. Furthermore, they often have been forced to cater to the needs of an increasingly diverse group of students and must design service strategies based on the unique needs of each group. This paper advocates the use of target marketing principles to effectively and efficiently allocate resources among the various groups. Student registration data from a large, urban, public university, which is routinely available at little cost, is used to identify five student segments. These segments include traditional students, non-traditional students, a sizable international student segment, a graduating segment, and a group of transferees. The unique needs of each segment are identified and appropriate service strategies are formulated for each segment. The diversity of the segments establish the utility of using target marketing principles for designing service strategies and the viability of using registration database for such a purpose.     

A National Survey of Community College Baccalaureate Institutions

This study utilized original survey data and a national sample of community college baccalaureate (CCB) institutions to examine how offering baccalaureate programs impacts these colleges and the students they serve. An increasing number of these colleges plan to offer their baccalaureate programs online, and programs in technology are projected to experience the greatest growth. The data suggest that student needs, and not institutional revenue or prestige, are the primary motivation for offering bachelor's degrees. The challenges experienced when establishing the CCB programs were more likely to come from external than internal factors. Collectively, thousands of students have already graduated from these programs. Results from this study can be used by policymakers and college administrators to make data-driven decisions regarding baccalaureate programming at the community college.     

Outcomes Assessment and Accreditation in US Engineering Formation

American higher education is characterized by enormous program and quality diversity among the 3842 institutions (1998 data) with two- or four-year programs (of which 319 institutions have one or more engineering programs). Sharp distinctions emerge along several axes: funding (private vs public), size (hundreds to tens of thousands of students) and mission (research vs teaching). Recently the accreditation organizations for universities broadly and for engineering specifically have addressed this diversity by moving to outcomes-based assessments. Rather than judging student performance in terms of classes passed, institutions must (1) define their distinctive mission, (2) design a curriculum to help students achieve these goals, (3) assess student learning outcomes according to both institutional and professional criteria, and (4) create a culture of continuous improvement to belter align steps (1) and (2). Adoption of similar procedures may help European engineering institutions to measure programs across boundaries and to foster ‘trans-national recognition’.     

Creating culturally responsive environments: ethnic minority teachers' constructs of cultural diversity in Hong Kong secondary schools

One of the challenges facing Hong Kong schools is the growing cultural diversity of the student population that is a result of the growing number of ethnic minority students in the schools. This study uses semi-structured interviews with 12 American, Canadian, Indian, Nepalese and Pakistani teachers working in three secondary schools in the public sector to examine how school teachers are handling this challenge. The study uses these interviews to establish a model for the creation of culturally responsive environments that may help to improve the academic performance and promote the personal growth of students in Hong Kong's secondary schools. Five aspects of cultural responsiveness are identified: conceptualising cosmopolitanism, raising sensitivity to “minor acts of racism”, managing the diverse learning needs of students, promoting a deep understanding of cultural values and helping students deal with the challenges of trilingualism. This study argues that ethnic minority teachers are engaged in a continuing cross-cultural process through which they make sense of the cultural diversity of students and re-learn their own beliefs and practices. The implications for the creation of a culturally responsive environment are also presented.     

Academically Supporting STEM Students From a Distance Through Videoconferencing: Lessons Learned

Student demand for distance learning, changing student demographics, and low retention compel institutions of higher education to develop alternative forms of academic support that can effectively serve the increasingly diverse needs of students. Videoconferencing provides institutions with the capacity to provide interactive real - time academic support that can successfully accommodate these needs. This article discusses the technical, pedagogical, staffing, training, and marketing factors that were important in the development and management of an online academic support program delivered synchronously through videoconferencing to students in high-risk Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses. The factors emerged from a mixed-method study that showed the efficacy of the online academic support program and identified influences that affected student adoption of academic support through videoconferencing.     

Student-generated content: an approach to harnessing the power of diversity in higher education

Internationally, classes in higher education institutions are becoming larger and more diverse. Support for ‘non-traditional’ students has often taken the form of additional remedial classes offered outside the main curriculum, which has met with limited success. Sociocultural theories of learning argue that the potential clash between the sociocultural context of disciplinary knowledge and the very different home contexts of many non-traditional students needs to be acknowledged. One way to achieve this is to use student-generated content, which allows teachers to bring student experiences and voices into the community of practice and acknowledges the importance of their prior experiences in knowledge production. Building on such sociocultural approaches to teaching and learning, this paper focuses on the use of student-generated podcasts as a means to harness the diversity of student experiences in a large (nearly 600 students) first-year Economics class at a South African University.     

We've got minorities,yes we do: visual representations of racial and ethnic diversity in college recruitment materials

Colleges and universities have expanded their use of the internet and social media in marketing strategies, but the direct mailing of admissions brochures continues to be at the heart of recruitment efforts. Because admissions brochures often serve as a potential student's introduction to the campus, they are carefully crafted to provide a specific impression of the institution. This study examined one aspect of the marketing of colleges by examining the portrayal of racial and ethnic diversity. Through a content analysis of over 10,000 photographs from 165 four-year institutions in the US, the accuracy of the photographic portrayal of diversity in recruitment materials was assessed. Findings indicate that the majority of institutions provided images of diversity to prospective students in 2011 that were significantly different than the actual student body. Furthermore, diversity was typically symbolized by portraying African American students at higher rates rather than presenting a more representative student body.     

CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF CANDIDATES' DIVERSITY COMPETENCE: RIGOROUS AND SYSTEMATIC ASSESSMENT OF CANDIDATES' EFFICACY TO TEACH DIVERSE STUDENT POPULATIONS

The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES, 2010) continues to report substantial underachievement of diverse student populations in the nation's schools. After decades of focus on diversity and multicultural education, with integrating field and clinical practice, candidates continue to graduate without adequate knowledge, skills and dispositions to teach diverse students. The National Council of Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) requires teacher education programs to engage in assessment practices that examine candidates' competence to teach diverse students and to inform the unit. In this article the authors discuss the need to triangulate the results of performance-based assessment and to systematically examine the growth of candidates' competence to teach every student. They propose a rigorous and systematic unit (i.e., teacher education program unit) assessment practice, using reliable and valid instruments to measure candidates' efficacy to teach diverse students, which will provide effective data for teacher education programs to become proactive to improve programs.     

Reflective Teaching in the Early Years: A Case for Mentoring Diverse Educators

Student diversity in classrooms is on the rise and with it, a need for teachers who recognize the needs of diverse student populations. Teacher retention is a national crisis, with teachers of color at especially high risk for leaving the teaching profession early. This case study describes a collaborative mentoring approach used by a primary grades Latina teacher and two university professors. This approach focused on reflective discussion of classroom events and addressed the challenges of teaching for understanding in an age of accountability and changing demographics. Findings indicate that the beginning teacher’s enthusiasm combined with the expertise of teacher educators benefited the teacher, the students, other teachers in the school, and the participating university professors. Implications of this case study point towards the need to mentor diverse educators in the early years.     

Students with special needs and 1:1 computing: a teacher's perspective

To better understand the growing trend of 1:1 learning, researchers conducted an evaluation of a laptop initiative in 18 North Carolina high schools. The goal of the study was to provide information about the value of the initiative to enhance student learning, as well as to identify challenges to the successful implementation of 1:1 programs, strategies for meeting those challenges, and services and supports needed to enable successful programs throughout the state. This paper focuses on ways in which the initiative enhanced the learning experiences of students with disabilities in areas such as communication, reading ability, assessment, organisation and confidence. Data sources include teacher, student and administrator focus groups, which enable scholars to gain an array of insight regarding technology initiatives and students with special needs. Implications for educators and administrators are discussed.     

Social Justice Practices on Gender,Race, and Environment Within a School in Granada

In this article we discuss the experience of the Institute Ilíberis, a public high school in a small town in Granada, Spain, that has been engaged in innovative ways of teaching. Located in Atarfe, one of the few rural Spanish municipalities with expanding, rather than shrinking demographics, in the last 2 decades the Institute Ilíberis has experienced the challenges of educating for democracy with an increasing diverse student body. This article focuses on the innovative and committed response of the entire school to address these challenges. By looking at the programs that the school prioritized in the articulation of this response, our article attempts to highlight an unorthodox Spanish school that has been successful in educating all of their students, respecting their ethnic and religious values while encouraging the students to do the same with their peers.     

Satisfaction with Higher Education: critical data for student development

Higher education is a mainstay in the development and support of the economic, social and cultural development of the global society. Throughout history, academic institutions have sought to respond to the demands of endlessly changing and evolving environmental conditions. However, in the 21st century, a number of significant factors are changing the higher education landscape and challenging higher education institutions (HEIs) to interpret the vital needs of contemporary society to stimulate and enhance student development. Student development is an all-embracing concept that involves research focusing on students from recruitment to placement. Assuming that meeting student needs and stimulating and enhancing their development are crucial challenges for higher education institutions worldwide, the article focuses on a national study in Portugal designed to measure students’ expectations and satisfaction with their experience. On the basis of a nationwide survey, it examines these in the various types of higher education institutions in Portugal.     

Cultural Humility in Physical Education Teacher Education: A Missing Piece in Developing a New Generation of Socially Just Physical Education Teachers

ABSTRACT

The increased pluralism in today’s United States society, including our public school student population, has called for physical education teacher education (PETE) programs to train teachers who can respond to the educational needs of students from diverse backgrounds. However, concerns have been raised with educator preparation programs’ ability to prepare teachers to address diversity in our schools. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to discuss the movement toward teaching for social justice in PETE with focus on preparing teachers for cultural diversity; this includes special attention to cultural humility as a missing component in physical education teacher preparation. We discuss the current state of diversity in PETE, leading to a discussion of social justice as a theme in teaching and teacher education in physical education. Next, we detail the underpinnings of social justice pedagogies in physical education and the need for infusing cultural humility in PETE.     

Religious education and social literacy: the ‘white elephant’ of Australian public education

As a result of globalisation, the boundaries that once limited the trade of ideas and culture have largely dissolved. In Australia, the fruits of intercultural exchange have largely been enjoyed, yet this expansion of Australian interaction with diverse Others has posed a perceived threat to some. This parallel expansion and contraction of cultural engagement demonstrates the need for Australia to represent diversity more adequately as a part of our society. A central point of tension in this discussion is religion. This paper reports on a study that explored the question: Why is it so hard to talk about religion in public classrooms? This narrative inquiry attempts to unpack some of the challenges facing Australian educators at present. This study brings out the conflicting priorities and pressures of the secular system against student needs and puts forward an argument for the development of social literacy education that addresses education about religion in Victorian public schools.