‘Empty signifiers’ and ‘dreamy ideals’: perceptions of the ‘international university’ among higher education students and staff at a British university

This paper reports on a mixed-methods case study investigating how higher education staff and students understand, experience and envision the ‘international university’. As it is becoming clear that international student mobility is not in itself a panacea for universities seeking to internationalise, ‘internationalisation at home’ and ‘global citizenship’ are increasingly permeating university policy documents and mission statements. However, little is known about how students and staff on the ground perceive and experience these concepts. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected at one British university through focus groups (N = 19) and through an online survey (n = 148). Findings revealed a conventional mobility-focused understanding of the international university among students and staff, and a great deal of cynicism as regards ‘internationalisation at home’ and ‘global citizenship’. We discuss implications for practice and a research agenda.     

The crowd in mind and crowded minds: an experimental investigation of crowding effects on students’ views regarding tuition fees in Germany

In higher education, just amounts of tuition fees are often a topic of heated debate among different groups such as students, university teachers, administrative staff, and policymakers. We investigated whether unpleasant situations that students often experience at university due to social crowding can affect students’ views on the justified amount of tuition fees at universities. We report two experiments on whether conditions that lead to experienced crowding in higher education can affect how students cognitively deal with a given topic. Experiment 1 (N = 80) showed that the mere cognitive activation of crowdedness in text stories about situations related to student activities influenced prospective students’ estimates of what are justified university tuition fees. In Experiment 2 (N = 72), student participants wrote an essay on tuition fees in a small versus large room in groups of three versus six persons. Here, results showed that students together with relatively many others in a small room estimated higher tuition fees to be justified than participants in all other experimental conditions. We discuss the implications of the present findings for the configuration of classes in higher education.     

Innovation in postgraduate teaching: mixed methods to enhance learning and learning about learning

Growing pressure to restructure and reform tertiary education is encouraging university academics to use innovative practices that assist students to develop ‘employable’ skills. The hybrid approach described in this paper stimulated students to be self‐directed adult learners who maximized their learning of content and skills by means of problem‐based learning and action research strategies. The lecturer also operated as a reflective practitioner and role model by using an action research approach. This paper demonstrates the value of student empowerment, communication and leadership in autonomous learning groups. It outlines methods by which academic teaching staff can build continuous improvement into a university unit’s curriculum design and processes. These can be powerful additions to lecturers’ teaching strategies and to students’ learning experiences.     

Investigating Students’ Ideas About Buoyancy and the Influence of Haptic Feedback

While haptics (simulated touch) represents a potential breakthrough technology for science teaching and learning, there is relatively little research into its differential impact in the context of teaching and learning. This paper describes the testing of a haptically enhanced simulation (HES) for learning about buoyancy. Despite a lifetime of everyday experiences, a scientifically sound explanation of buoyancy remains difficult to construct for many. It requires the integration of domain-specific knowledge regarding density, fluid, force, gravity, mass, weight, and buoyancy. Prior studies suggest that novices often focus on only one dimension of the sinking and floating phenomenon. Our HES was designed to promote the integration of the subconcepts of density and buoyant forces and stresses the relationship between the object itself and the surrounding fluid. The study employed a randomized pretest–posttest control group research design and a suite of measures including an open-ended prompt and objective content questions to provide insights into the influence of haptic feedback on undergraduate students’ thinking about buoyancy. A convenience sample (n = 40) was drawn from a university’s population of undergraduate elementary education majors. Two groups were formed from haptic feedback (n = 22) and no haptic feedback (n = 18). Through content analysis, discernible differences were seen in the posttest explanations sinking and floating across treatment groups. Learners that experienced the haptic feedback made more frequent use of “haptically grounded” terms (e.g., mass, gravity, buoyant force, pushing), leading us to begin to build a local theory of language-mediated haptic cognition.     

Discourse Analysis as a Tool for Promoting the ‘Critical Literate’ VET Teacher

The paper deals with the concept of ‘Critical Literacy’ in the context of VET teacher education. It focuses on the question of whether and how critical literacy can be developed drawing on elements of discourse research. This is illustrated by means of a higher educational setting, dealing with business administration textbook usage and research. The impact of our learning and teaching setting is illustrated via an empirical longitudinal study (three-phase pre-post design) of students doing a master’s degree in business education at an Austrian university. Data were initially collected directly before and after the university seminar using a semi-standardised questionnaire (n = 54). In order to obtain an insight into the sustainable impact of our discourse analysis course on students’ thought and actions, in the third phase of data collection, eight participants, who in the meantime had four months experience in VET schools as student teachers (120 h) were invited to a qualitative interview. The paper encompasses a theoretical discussion on the concept of critical literacy, applies it to the target group VET teacher students and shows empirical evidence on pros and cons of discourse analytical course design aiming at the critical literate teacher.     

Students’ participation in peer-to-peer communication supported by social media

Social media (SM) support new approaches to learning that rely on voluntary, peer-to-peer communication using devices and software provided and managed by students rather than on institutional course management systems. We present one case of such an approach with first-year university students (n = 86) in Thailand using SM for asking and answering questions between peers in a face-to-face computer-programming course. Encouraging students to ask questions about course content can result in improved performance. In general, understanding how students participate and what drives them to participate can provide insights into how universities and instructors can be socially ready. Students used SM during 10 weeks of an 18-week course. Each of four sections selected one form of SM as follows: Facebook [n = 33], Instagram [n = 21], Twitter [n = 21], and Line [n = 11]. The mixed-methods case study involved quantitative measures of how students participated and quantitative and qualitative measures of students’ perceptions of what drives or discourages their participation. Results revealed patterns in participation as follows: participation and motivation; passive and active participation; participation and sample size; participation and type of SM and; participation and student demographics. Implications for practice relate to the value of instructors’ understanding of the social incentives for student participation such as social recognition, gratification of needs and convenience. Implications for research focus on the value of investigating new forms of participation available to read-only participants and ‘lurkers’ using features of SM such as ‘liking’ and sharing.     

Teaching Weight-Gravity and Gravitation in Middle School

This study deals with the school instruction of the concept of weight. The historical review reveals the major steps in changing weight definition reflecting the epistemological changes in physics. The latest change drawing on the operation of weighing has been not widely copied into physics education. We compared the older instruction based on the gravitational definition of weight with the newer one based on the operational definition. The experimental teaching was applied in two versions, simpler and extended. The study examined the impact of this instruction on the middle school students in regular teaching environment. The experiment involved three groups (N = 486) of 14-year-old students (ninth grade). The assessment drew on a written questionnaire and personal interviews. The elicited schemes of conceptual knowledge allowed to evaluate the impact on students’ pertinent knowledge. The advantage of the new teaching manifested itself in the significant decrease of the well-known misconceptions such as “space causes weightlessness,” “weight is an unchanged property of the body considered,” and “heavier objects fall faster”. The twofold advantage—epistemological and conceptual—of the operational definition of weight supports the correspondent curricular changes of its adoption.     

Mentoring teachers in systematic phonics instruction: effectiveness of an intensive year-long program for kindergarten through 3rd grade teachers and their students

Teaching systematic phonics effectively to beginning readers requires specialized knowledge and training which many primary grade teachers lack. The current study examined effects of a year-long mentoring program to improve teachers’ knowledge and effectiveness in teaching phonics and the extent that it improved students’ achievement in reading and spelling. Teachers in urban, lower SES schools completed a 45 h course followed by 90 h of in-school training. Mentors (N = 29) worked with kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade teachers (N = 69) twice a week for 30 weeks during the year. Each visit included a 45 min prep period plus 45 min of modeling and feedback in the classroom. Mentors taught teachers how to provide systematic phonics instruction to their students (N = 1,336). Monthly ratings by mentors revealed that teachers improved their phonics teaching skills with many reaching the highest ratings by May. Teachers who were non-native speakers of English took a bit longer to learn the English sound system for letters, mainly because they lacked sufficient knowledge of English sounds and had to learn them. Given the increasing diversity of the teacher work force, future research is needed to study this difficulty, its solution, and impact on students. Teachers’ agreement with principles of phonics instruction remained strong or increased from fall to spring. Students’ reading and spelling skills showed large gains during the year and far exceeded effect sizes from comparable data sources. Students met grade-level expectations at the end of kindergarten and first grade but fell short in second and third grades. General education students outperformed bilingual/ELL and special needs students although all subgroups made large gains. Findings reveal the effectiveness of an intensive mentoring model of professional development applied to a subject that is difficult to teach and to a student population known for lower reading achievement. Findings point to the need for better pre-service teacher preparation coupled with appropriate curricula and PD from districts in order to improve students’ reading achievement.     

How competency‐based training locks the working class out of powerful knowledge: a modified Bernsteinian analysis

This paper argues that competency‐based training in vocational education and training in Australia is one mechanism through which the working class is denied access to powerful knowledge represented by the academic disciplines. The paper presents a modified Bernsteinian analysis to argue that vocational education and training students need access to disciplinary knowledge using Bernstein’s argument that abstract, conceptual knowledge is the means societies use to think ‘the unthinkable’ and ‘the not‐yet‐thought’. I supplement Bernstein’s social argument for democratic access to the disciplines with an epistemic argument that draws on the philosophy of critical realism.     

Features of an Emerging Practice and Professional Development in a Science Teacher Team Collaboration with a Researcher Team

This study concerns teaching and learning development in science through collaboration between science teachers and researchers. At the core was the ambition to integrate research outcomes of science education—here ‘didactic models’—with teaching practice, aligned with professional development. The phase where the collaboration moves from initial establishment towards a stable practice is investigated. The study aims to identifying features of formation and exploring consequences for the character of contact between research and teaching. Specific questions are “What may be identified as actions and arrangements impacting the quality and continuation of the emerging practice?” and “What and in what ways may support teacher growth?” The analysis draws on practice architectures as a theoretical framework and specifically investigates the initial meetings as a practice-node for a new practice, empirically drawing on documented reflections on science teaching, primarily from meetings and communication. The results take the form of an analytical-narrative account of meetings that focused planning, enactment and reflection on teaching regarding the human body. We identify enabling actions such as collaborative work with concrete material from the classroom and arrangements such as the regular meetings and that the collaborative group had a core of shared competence—in science teaching and learning. Constraining were actions such as introducing research results with weak connection to practical action in the school practice and arrangements such as differences between school and university practice architectures and the general ‘oppression’ of teachers’ classroom practice. The discussion includes reflections on researchers’ roles and on a research and practice base for school development.     

‘Hot’, ‘cold’ and ‘warm’ information and higher education decision-making

This paper draws on the notions of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ knowledge in analysing the responses of students to the relevance of different information and sources of such information in university choice. Analysis of questionnaire and focus group data from prospective and first-year undergraduate students provides evidence that many students put most credence on ‘hot’ knowledge, from persons in their social grapevine. However, this is supplemented by ‘warm’ knowledge from fleeting acquaintances at university open days. University provided knowledge is often distrusted. We discuss the implications of this given the recent government emphasis in England on the role of information provision in helping students to make informed decisions, including the relevance to the ‘fair access’ agenda.     

The nineteen eightees: Prelude to curricular reform

Abstract

The massification of higher education in Australia since the early 1990s has foregrounded issues of access and participation for a range of ‘non‐traditional’ students. Such issues can unsettle academics’ normative assumptions of the learning behaviours of the traditional, ‘ideal’, university student and highlight normative beliefs and practices about teaching and learning. This can be seen most acutely in regard to the increasing numbers of students with disabilities, especially students with ‘hidden’ disabilities such as psychiatric disabilities and learning disabilities. The impacts of these disabilities go to the very core of the business of the academy: cognition, intellectual ability and academic success. Using Smith's (1999) notion of ‘cultural cartography’, this article takes a sociocultural approach to investigate and give voice to the responses of a small number of students with a ‘learning difficulty’ at a regional university about problematic aspects of their teaching and learning experiences. This demonstrated that the after‐effects of access and equity admission polices can play out in deeply personal ways for individual students when normative, behaviourist notions of ability and achievement continue to prevail within higher education environments. Although non‐traditional students are now permitted to enter the academy, this occurs at some personal cost to their feelings of belonging and self‐esteem, and can result in students taking on deficit or helpless positions within the academy.     

How do primary pre‐service teachers in a regional Australian university plan for teaching,learning and acting in environmentally responsible ways?

Integrated unit plans with an environmental focus can provide opportunities for school students to develop critical thinking skills, and to act in responsible ways – that is, to develop ‘action competence’. In this study, environmentally focused integrated unit plans, developed and implemented by final year pre‐service teachers at an Australian regional university, were analysed to determine the extent to which they contained concepts that promoted action competence. Results here suggest that more work could be done in the area of pre‐service education to prepare teachers for teaching, learning and acting responsibly in relation to complex environmental issues. In particular, there could be more emphasis on developing integrated unit plans that empower school students and promote critical thinking, democratic processes and action‐oriented knowledge.     

Elitism and Meritocracy in UK Universities: the UK Needs Investment in its Labour Force

This article summarises previous academic research into university education, distinguishing between arguments for and against improving access. Several views are summarised, including structural‐functionalism, which claims that powerful social groups maintain their status and income, and human capital theory, which focuses on employee productivity. Almost all viewpoints discussed in this article support meritocracy. UK universities differ in their openness to people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Many universities, referred to here as ‘inclusive’, deserve credit for encouraging disadvantaged people to become students; in contrast, ‘exclusive’ universities tend to have fewer disadvantaged students than expected. There are barriers facing disadvantaged students, including unequal access to universities, which can at least partly be explained by private schools for rich pupils and financial burdens at university causing some students to take paid work (reducing time available for study). The UK spends less per student on universities than the world average and less than half as much as some European countries. The UK Government could increase university funding, concentrating on universities that are most inclusive and that tend to have the largest problems in affording sufficient staff and teaching facilities. This investment would give long‐term benefits to the UK economy.     

‘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.     

Effects of 3D Printing Project-based Learning on Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Science Attitudes,Science Content Knowledge,and Anxiety About Teaching Science

3D printing technology is a powerful educational tool that can promote integrative STEM education by connecting engineering, technology, and applications of science concepts. Yet, research on the integration of 3D printing technology in formal educational contexts is extremely limited. This study engaged preservice elementary teachers (N?=?42) in a 3D Printing Science Project that modeled a science experiment in the elementary classroom on why things float or sink using 3D printed boats. The goal was to explore how collaborative 3D printing inquiry-based learning experiences affected preservice teachers’ science teaching self-efficacy beliefs, anxiety toward teaching science, interest in science, perceived competence in K-3 technology and engineering science standards, and science content knowledge. The 3D printing project intervention significantly decreased participants’ science teaching anxiety and improved their science teaching efficacy, science interest, and perceived competence in K-3 technological and engineering design science standards. Moreover, an analysis of students’ project reflections and boat designs provided an insight into their collaborative 3D modeling design experiences. The study makes a contribution to the scarce body of knowledge on how teacher preparation programs can utilize 3D printing technology as a means of preparing prospective teachers to implement the recently adopted engineering and technology standards in K-12 science education.     

Foster Watson: 1860–1929

ABSTRACT

Michael Young’s work is central to debates about knowledge and the school curriculum. In recent years he has renounced his early argument that school subjects represent the ‘knowledge of the powerful’, arguing instead that access and equality for all students are dependent on ensuring that all get access to ‘powerful knowledge’. This paper provides an interpretation of Young’s work.     

Do 2nd and 3rd grade teachers’ linguistic knowledge and instructional practices predict spelling gains in weaker spellers?

The relationship between 2nd and 3rd grade teachers’ linguistic knowledge and spelling instructional practices and their students’ spelling gains from fall to spring was examined. Second grade (N = 16) and 3rd grade (N = 16) teachers were administered an instructional practices survey and a linguistic knowledge test. Total scores on the two instruments were not significantly related (r = 0.20), indicating two different constructs. Students (N = 331 2nd graders, N = 305 3rd graders) completed a 40 item spelling dictation test in the fall and spring. HLM analyses were conducted on subsamples of weaker spellers (Ns = 226 2nd graders and 50 3rd graders) who spelled fewer than 20 words correctly on the pretest. Limiting the sample to weaker spellers eliminated ceiling effects on pre- to posttest gains. Results revealed that 2nd grade teachers’ linguistic knowledge of phonemic units in words, their teaching of spelling strategies, the time they spent in weekly spelling instruction, and the greater the number of weaker spellers in their classrooms, were significant predictors of weaker spellers’ improvement in spelling. For 3rd grade teachers, HLM analyses were not significant perhaps due to lack of power. However, 3rd grade teachers’ phonemic knowledge was significantly correlated with weaker spellers’ gain scores. Results while correlational provide tentative support for the conclusion that teachers who are more knowledgeable about phonemes in words and who utilize more effective, research based spelling instruction are more successful in teaching spelling to weaker spellers.     

University student perspectives on institutional non-disclosure of disability and learning challenges: reasons for staying invisible

ABSTRACT

Students with disabilities (SWD) in Australian higher education need to disclose to their institution to access a range of ‘reasonable adjustments’ to support their learning. Nationally, 5.8% of the university population disclose their disability to their institution. It is suspected that there is a much larger population of students who choose non-disclosure, and therefore decide not to access support. Very little is known about the reasons for non-disclosure as this group represents a hidden population in higher education. The research reported here is based on a survey of undergraduate students in one regional Australian university where disability was reframed as ‘learning challenge’. This identified the institutionally non-disclosed group. This research identified that there were sound reasons for non-disclosure, students continually weigh up potential disclosure during their study, and students have difficulty with the disclosure process. We conclude that institutions need to understand that they have an invisible group of non-disclosing SWD in their student populations and that, to meet their learning challenges, universities need to support changes to policies, procedures and curriculum design.