Using the PSSC Laboratory Course in the First Year of College

Summaries

English

In the physical sciences, laboratory instruction has always taken place alongside classroom instruction. Undergraduate physics education has been a mixture of theoretical and experimental instruction, where the theoretical part plays the dominant role. The freshman laboratory holds a prominent role because it is the place where the student acquires the skills and attitudes that will help him understand the advanced subjects.

The freshman laboratory is particularly important in countrieswhere the student's instruction in experimentation is practically non‐existent at the secondary‐school level. In these cases, where the freshman laboratory is the student's first exposure to experimental science, we are particularly concerned that together with learning the ‘right’ things the student should develop the ‘right’ attitudes; as the ‘right’ attitudes can encourage curiosity and motivation for lifelong learning.     

The Drama Teacher's Journey

Abstract

This article focuses on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and English as a Second Language (ESL) texts, that is texts produced in interactions between native and non‐native speakers of English. Such texts are hybrid in that they comprise a blending of ‘standard’ and ‘non‐standard'1 English forms. In these times of globalised English and the increasing prevalence of non‐native speaker models of English, research is increasingly likely to encounter ESL texts. The issue for the critical analysis of such ‘new’ texts is that CDA generally utilises ‘standard’ linguistic models for its analytical apparatus. Fairclough (2003), arguably the most widely‐recognised proponent of CDA, bases his analytical framework on Standard English. The question is whether and if so how CDA can accommodate hybrid texts, specifically those with a blend of linguistically ‘standard’ and ‘non‐standard’ forms of English. In this discussion, I consider the application of Fairclough's model of CDA to the analysis of an interview with a Thai ESL student beginning postgraduate studies in Australia. I argue that the analysis is made more effective by drawing on principles from Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research, in particular communication strategies.     

Information Technology in English in Initial Teacher Training: a survey of practice

In 1991, the United Kingdom National Council for Educational Technology commissioned a short project to investigate some current models of developing good practice in initial teacher education with special reference to language and English. The resulting booklet, ‘Information Technology in English in Initial Teacher Training: a survey of practice’ (NCET, 1992) will be reviewed in a later issue of this journal Here Andy Goodwyn, the Project's coordinator, reports on the work.     

Mapping generic skills curricula: a recommended methodology

Since the 1997 Dearing Report generic skills development has become an essential part of higher education in the UK. Generic skills programmes are, in the main, either run in parallel with existing curricula or ‘embedded’ within them. In 1993 the General Medical Council introduced student selected components (SSCs) into the UK medical curriculum with the intention of ‘embedding’ generic skills into undergraduate medical study. The SSC programme at Leeds School of Medicine was designed to develop specific generic skills in early focused projects and then allow students to practise these skills in clinical settings in later projects. In order to evaluate this programme, a methodology was devised to map the generic skills curriculum to an externally derived consensus on SSC outcomes. English's model, mapping ‘declared’, ‘delivered’ and ‘learned’ curricula, was used and a fourth, ‘assessed’ map added to check the ‘alignment’ of the curriculum through all its stages. Data for the maps were gathered from curriculum documentation, project supervisors and students using document scrutiny, questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. The methodology was run over a complete academic year for the entire programme. It proved valuable for mapping any ‘embedded’ generic skills programme to evaluate its success by collecting data from all stakeholders.     

Promoting Race Pedagogy in Higher Education: Creating an Inclusive Community

ABSTRACT

The current study reports outcomes of a professional development model intended to strengthen faculty members’ cultural competence and skills for teaching about diversity and inclusion. Creating Inclusive Communities (CIC) was developed collaboratively by faculty from across social science disciplines based on a theoretical framework emphasizing learning principles, critical consciousness, and White racial identity development. This study examined the outcomes of the model on student cultural competence based on pre-post survey analysis. Findings indicate that students perceived a benefit from course activities related to race pedagogy and showed statistically significant results in two of three courses. These findings indicate that the infusion of an inclusive model, including in courses not directly related to diversity topics, has potential benefits to students. Additionally, the impact is strengthened through a more integrated approach over the course of the semester.     

The Content of Supervision Scale

ABSTRACT

Despite being regarded as an essential element in social work education, practicums are often arranged with little consideration as to what a potential supervisor can offer a particular student. This paper reports on the developments of the Content of Supervision Scale which can be used by university fieldwork staff to measure the supervisory priorities of potential supervisors. Three distinct dimensions of supervision sessions are measured: ‘student learning,’ ‘becoming a social worker’ and ‘social work theory and practice.’ Each of these subscales have demonstrated internal consistency. By matching what supervisors can offer with students' educational needs, the potential for student learning is likely to be enhanced.     

Evaluating student satisfaction - restricting lecturer professionalism: outcomes of using the UK national student survey questionnaire for internal student evaluation of teaching

Abstract

In the neo-liberal context of a UK university, responding to student feedback in order to raise student satisfaction levels is important in improving National Student Survey (NSS) scores. This article focuses on the impact of a UK university’s new student feedback questionnaire - for individual modules - which used the NSS questions. The research draws on survey data (N?=?101) to identify lecturers’ views and three student focus groups. The outcomes raised issues relating to performativity, professionalism and ‘provision’, the latter defined as the university’s contract with each student, including the aspects that affect the student learning experience but are beyond the lecturers’ control, for example, class sizes and timetables. The results indicate that by recognising the impact of provision university managers may be better able to develop systemic improvements to student experience and (in the UK) a corresponding uplift in NSS and Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) results. The article puts forward a model linking performativity, professionalism and provision to the relationships between university managers, academics and students. This model could enrich understandings of professionalism and performativity, extend the range of issues affecting student experience in SETs and support data analysis in future research studies.     

Authentic assessment for a more inclusive history

ABSTRACT

Practitioners and theorists in higher education have explored authentic assessment as a mechanism to better connect student work to real-world practice. This article considers the possibilities for authentic assessment in teaching history as a discipline and professional field at university, considering how ‘real-world practice’ might be expanded to include the understanding and practice of inclusive or participatory history. This article explores student survey responses related to three authentic assessment tasks, designed and delivered over a three-year history curriculum. This survey was designed to understand the efficacy of authentic assessment for scaffolding historical practice at university, and to also evaluate its possibilities for helping to transform the practice of history, which in recent decades has sought, with limited success, more inclusive epistemologies and pedagogies. In this article we suggest that authentic assessment is likely to successfully connect history students to real-world activities, but that it is necessary to consider whose authenticity is at stake if the discipline of history is to succeed in its wider aims. Drawing on student comments, we conclude that authentic assessment can contribute to student becoming, but that it also helps build a similar kind of ‘becoming’ for the discipline and practice of history itself.     

‘Power to empower’: conceptions of teaching and learning in a pedagogical co-design partnership

ABSTRACT

This study is an autoethnographic reflection on power and expertise in an evolving student/staff partnership. The partnership was initiated as pedagogical co-design in the development and implementation of a peer-assisted learning programme. Through a process of critical reflection that linked our partnership experience with themes from relevant literature, we (the staff and student authors) became co-researchers of our practice. The evolution of the partnership provided a unique perspective from which to compare our experiences of power and expertise across both contexts. We characterised our pedagogical co-design partnership as a shift from the more traditional ‘power over’ model of delivery towards ‘power to empower’ where both student and staff partners had agency and voice. Key to this important transition was a shared philosophy of student-centred teaching. As the partnership transformed from co-teaching to co-researching we needed to re-negotiate power dynamics; while our different pathways had converged on a common view of student-centred learning, our research expertise remained disparate. We were able to negotiate this challenge by drawing on our existing relationship based on respect, reciprocity and responsibility, reinforcing views of partnership that value equality of opportunity and a focus on learning and process, rather than equality of contributions and outcomes.     

Connected Thinking

Tony Webster, former Director of Education in Tameside, describes the origins of the ‘connected thinking project’. He goes on to list a number of key questions that were identified in relation to ‘values education’, ‘thinking skills’, ‘emotional intelligence’ and ‘ICT’. The aims, form and contributions to a seminar which sought to identify areas for continuing work and further research are described. Several of those who contributed to the seminar have written papers for this special issue of the journal. Tony Webster concludes his paper by listing the research and other action deemed necessary to take the work forward.     

Is the classroom obsolete in the twenty-first century?

Abstract

Lefebvre’s triadic conception of spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces provides the theoretical framework of this article, which recognises a productive relationship between space and social relations. Its writing stems from a current and ongoing qualitative study of innovative teaching and learning practices in new technology-rich flexible learning spaces, characterised by large open spaces, permeable boundaries and diverse furnishings emphasising student comfort, health and flexibility. Schooling in the twenty-first century, certainly in the developed world, is required to ensure that children and school-leavers have appropriate life-long skills in preparation for participation in the twenty-first century knowledge economy. This world is characterised as complex and dynamic, deeply influenced by globalisation and the revolution in digital technology. Developing these skills calls into question ‘outmoded’ transmission models of teaching and requires teachers and school leaders to approach their work in radically new ways. Open school design encourages flexibility in learning and teaching, and allows collaborative, team teaching, with designers claiming significant educational benefits. This arrangement of multiple classes using innovatively designed, technology-enriched common space, facilitated by multiple teachers, working in collaborative teams, is far-reaching in its likely implications for community expectations and responses, relationship-building, assessment, student learning, teachers’ work and initial teacher education.     

A comparative study of perceptions of overseas consulting ‘effectiveness’ ‐Australian providers and Asian and Pacific clients

This study sought to compare the perceptions of Australian consultants, involved in a three year assignment in the South Pacific of the essential knowledge, attitudes and attributes, and skills needed for ‘effective’ consulting, with those of the client group and a third group of Asian and Pacific consumers and providers of consulting services. This latter group consisted of executive members, sub‐regional coordinators and program facilitators of the Asia South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education.

A two‐round questionnaire was employed to enable them to provide qualitative data on the knowledge, qualities and skills required of ‘effective’ consultants and then to rank order these items, and others obtained from an extensive literature search, to guide project managers and cross‐cultural trainers in the recruitment and preparation of consultants for effective outcomes. These guidelines seemed particularly urgent in the light of the 80% early return rate (premature return of consultants before project completion) at a cost of two billion dollars per annum (in the USA) and the evidence that fewer than one‐in‐three consultants receive cross‐cultural preparation before their departure and are generally recruited on the basis of strong success records at home.

The major findings that emerge are that there are statistically significant differences between the three groups as to the most important ‘competencies’ required for successful overseas consulting; that ‘cultural sensitivity’ is the most important attribute; ‘interpersonal’ and ‘teaching’ skills the most important skills, after ‘technical expertise'; that the composite ‘Mentikit’ effective consultant yielded by the literatureis quite different from that constructed from the survey responses; and that ‘home country success’ is unimportant compared with other traits and skills with major implications for culture‐general and culture‐specificcross‐cultural selection and training.     

Revising a College 101 Course for Sustained Impact: Early Outcomes

ABSTRACT

In response to strikingly low completion rates in public 2-year colleges, including for students who are well-prepared academically, most community colleges across the country offer student success courses as one approach to improving outcomes for students. Some colleges have begun to revise these courses in response to research indicating that their impact fades over time. This article examines Bronx Community College’s efforts to restructure their student success course into a First Year Seminar (FYS) that integrates college orientation activities, disciplinary content, and academic success skills. The course emphasizes student-centered pedagogies in order to encourage learning that persists beyond the semester of participation. We use mixed methods to assess the early outcomes of students in FYS courses and understand whether and why the course’s impact has the potential to be sustained. Using propensity score matching to compare 1,138 FYS participants to 1,138 similar nonparticipants, we find early evidence that the FYS approach leads to positive outcomes, including higher grade point averages (GPA) and earning more credits. Using classroom observations (N = 40), instructor interviews (N = 10), and interviews with participants (N = 27), we find that FYS appears to facilitate student-centered, contextualized, and applied learning, thereby helping students apply their FYS-related skills in future courses. This study has implications for reforming student success courses in a way that achieves long-term positive student outcomes.     

Being more human: rooting learning analytics through resistance and reconnection with the values of higher education

ABSTRACT

Universities are now compelled to attend to metrics that (re)shape our conceptualisation of the student experience. New technologies such as learning analytics (LA) promise the ability to target personalised support to profiled ‘at risk’ students through mapping large-scale historic student engagement data such as attendance, library use, and virtual learning environment activity as well as demographic information and typical student outcomes. Yet serious ethical and implementation issues remain. Data-driven labelling of students as ‘high risk’, ‘hard to reach’ or ‘vulnerable’ creates conflict between promoting personal growth and human flourishing and treating people merely as data points. This article argues that universities must resist the assumption that numbers and algorithms alone can solve the ‘problem’ of student retention and performance; rather, LA work must be underpinned by a reconnection with the agreed values relating to the purpose of higher education, including democratic engagement, recognition of diverse and individual experience, and processes of becoming. Such a reconnection, this article contends, is possible when LA work is designed and implemented in genuine collaboration and partnership with students.     

Design,implementation, and evaluation of a multi-disciplinary professional development program for research mentors

ABSTRACT

Undergraduate research experience has been shown to enhance student learning and improve persistence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Researchers studying undergraduate research experiences have largely focused on student outcomes and have seldom investigated the outcomes of graduate and postdoctoral mentors. Here, we report a non-credit, year-long mentor professional development program designed for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and research staff in STEM. Mentors attended a series of six interactive and discussion-based workshops and mentored first-year undergraduate students in independent summer research projects. We report evaluation findings for three mentor cohorts using a combination of qualitative analysis of mentoring philosophies and quantitative assessment of pre- and post-surveys about mentoring objectives and skills. Results indicate that mentors gained self-efficacy in some objectives and skills. However, many other objectives and skills remained unchanged. We explore possible explanations for the lack of more broad-scale gains across survey items and present ideas for program improvement.     

The School and the Reduction of Inequality∗

ABSTRACT

The need to develop reasoning skills in children through discussion is generally acknowledged by curriculum aims. There is, however, a lack of any definite teaching strategy to fulfil this need. Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children programme has had success in this area. As with other ‘collaborative enquiry‐based’ approaches to learning, it depends upon a teaching strategy which enhances children's self‐esteem. This seems a necessary ingredient for the development of rationality, critical awareness and autonomy in children. Inadequate teacher training is suggested as a major reason for the failure of ‘collaborative’ approaches greatly to influence educational practice. With a shift away from the ‘authority/knowledge‐based’ paradigm and the provision of effective teacher training, it is considered that our educational institutions could become more democratically organised, and we would move closer to realising the liberal ideal of developing human potential to the full.     

‘Non-traditional’ and ‘traditional’ students at a regional Finnish University: demanding customers and school pupils in need of support

ABSTRACT

This article explores university students’ constructions of the ideal student at present-day university, that emphasises student-as-consumer culture and employability rather than education as a virtue in itself. The research is based on thematic narrative accounts (n = 67) generated in a generalist field in one regional Finnish university. We apply a narrative-discursive approach to analyse how ‘traditional’ young students (n = 34) and ‘non-traditional’ mature students (n = 33) position themselves in relation to the ideal good student in a present-day university and in relation to their university studies. Moreover, we examine some of the consequences of such positionings for the students themselves. Our analysis indicates that the present-day university student is constructed in line with the ideal student of the neoliberal order and student-as-consumer culture. However, whereas mature students positioned themselves as customers and were comfortable with the demands of today’s university for self-directedness and self-responsibility, younger students positioned themselves as ‘school pupils’ and were critical about being left on their own without adequate support. The study suggests that the terms ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ make differences related to age and different kinds of student positionings visible and, thus, also possible to reconstruct the ideals and normalities of the present-day neoliberal university.     

Comparison of learning in two context-based university chemistry classes

ABSTRACT

Context-based learning (CBL) is advocated as beneficial to learners, but more needs to be understood about how different contexts used in courses influence student outcomes. Gilbert defined several models of context that appear to be used in chemistry. In one model that achieves many criteria of student meaning-making, the context is provided by ‘personal mental activity’, meaning that students engage in a role to solve a problem. The model’s predicted outcomes are that students develop and use the specialised language of chemistry, translate what they learn in the immediate context to other contexts, and empathise with the community of practice that is created. The first two of these outcomes were investigated in two large-enrolment university chemistry courses, both organised as this CBL model, in which students were introduced to kinetic molecular theory (KMT). Sample 1 students (N₁?=?105) learned KMT through whole-class kinaesthetic activity as a human model of a gas while focusing on a problem identifying substances in balloons filled with different gases. Sample 2 students (N₂?=?110) manipulated molecular dynamics simulations while focusing on the problem of reducing atmospheric CO₂. Exam answers and pre-/post-test responses, involving a new KMT context, were analysed. Students in Sample 1 demonstrated a stronger understanding of particle trajectories, while Sample 2 students developed more sophisticated mechanistic reasoning and greater fluidity of translation between contexts through increased use of chemists’ specialised language. The relationships of these outcomes to the contexts were examined in consideration of the different curriculum emphases inherent in the contexts.     

Influence of university prestige on graduate wage and job satisfaction: the case of South Korea

ABSTRACT

Obtaining a tertiary degree no longer guarantees entry to the best occupational positions in today’s labour market. Success is no longer about ‘more’ education, but about ‘better’ education for university graduates. This study aims to understand whether university prestige in Korea accounts for occupational outcomes in both monetary and non-monetary aspects, such as salaries and job satisfaction. The study particularly focuses on the way different levels of university prestige are affected by gender. The fourth wave data from the Korean Education and Employment Panel were used, providing information from the results of a panel survey of university graduates in terms of their social and academic background and job employment status. Results show that university prestige continues to matters in occupational outcomes in particular, for wage, but it is not significant for job satisfaction. The effect is more significant among male graduates than among female graduates.     

Authentic,dialogical knowledge construction: a blended and mobile teacher education programme

Background: Knowledge construction and technology have been identified as critical for an understanding of the future of teacher education. Knowledge is discovered, applied and created collaboratively from authentic starting points. Today’s new mobile and blended learning environments create increased opportunities for such processes, including learner-centred approaches, authenticity and dialogical knowledge construction. However, teaching still requires appropriate learning design and structuring. The presented study explored, and was designed and implemented, using the ‘Dialogical Authentic Netlearning Activity’ (DIANA) pedagogical model, which is seen as one of the learning designing models for existing digital, open and mobile learning environments.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges and opportunities inherent in the adoption of the DIANA model and to examine student-teachers’ reflections concerning authentic and dialogical knowledge construction. The focus is on the learning process.

Sample: Participants were 63 student-teachers who were following the study module ‘Networks in Vocational Education’ at the School of Professional Teacher Education, in Hämeenlinna, Finland.

Design and methods: This qualitative study uses a deductive content analysis to discern relationships between the data and the existing theory. The data for this study were drawn from an online questionnaire and participants’ self-reflective accounts.

Findings: The results indicate that achieving deep-oriented learning through dialogical actions is the most challenging part of using the DIANA model. Some of the students had difficulty understanding the concept of ‘authenticity’.

Conclusions: The findings of this study suggest enhancing learner-centred scaffolding and guidance, particularly at the outset of the learning process. In addition, methods that develop dialogical skills and competences ought to be integrated into teacher education as extensively as possible, in order to make collaborative work and problem-solving genuinely dialogical and equal.