Strengthening Clinical Preparation: The Holy Grail of Teacher Education

Efforts to improve teacher education have recently focused in on the importance of well-supervised clinical practice as a critical element of effective preparation. This article outlines the challenges to creating productive clinical experiences for prospective teachers, and identifies strategies that have been found successful in confronting these challenges. These include the development of professional development school relationships that strengthen practice in partner schools and the use of teacher performance assessments that focus attention on pulling together practical skills and providing feedback to candidates and programs.     

Middle leadership roles in universities: Holy Grail or poisoned chalice

Middle leadership roles in higher education have been identified as important for institutional effectiveness yet fraught with tensions, and those in middle leadership roles often feel unprepared and unsupported. This study of the responsibilities, skills and competencies, and support required for heads of school in a New Zealand university, drew on a survey and interviews with heads and focus groups or interviews with a range of stakeholders. The research found that while heads found satisfaction in their role, they also faced challenges associated with people management, workload and impact on their research careers. There was widespread agreement among stakeholders about the capabilities needed for the role and an awareness of the barriers to effectiveness. Suggestions for making the role more appealing include reducing workload, providing learning and development programs, clarifying the balance of professional and personal competencies required, and encouraging the distribution of leadership.     

The Symbolic Significance of Holy Grail in The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown’s best-seller, The Da Vinci Code is a classical union of thriller and intelligence, and he has a good command of the knowledge on cryptology, mathematics, religion, culture and art. In addition, he organized his work fully with a large amount of information the public concerned and well-arranged them into the wonderful story.The protagonists of the book, Robert Langdon, the symbologist from Harvard and Sophie Neveu, the decode expert (The curator’s granddaughter) have to solve the complicated secret by gradually investigating the strange codes and meet a series of dangerous situations. They find that what they’re looking for may be a shocking secret while they solve the codes progressively during the fierce struggle with the mystery manipulator. The secret is the Holy Grail, which the Church tends to hide forever because it will destroy the faith.Therefore, this thesis will analyze the symbolic significance of Holy Grail in the book and the arguments on it against the author’s viewpoint by observing related religious figures, religious phenomenon and religious organizations.     

A Quest for the Holy Grail in the New Millennium: In Search of a Unified Theory of Cognitive Development

Our reply emphasizes the benefits of cooperation between researchers in developing a comprehensive model of cognitive development that considers the constraints of human brain structures and the interplay of general laws of development and individual differences in developmental pathways within the context of social and cultural environments.     

In search of Saraswati: The ambivalence of the Indian academic

College teachers in India are the focus of this article. Working conditions, attitudes, and their organizational milieu are surveyed. Data for this article are provided by a case study of the University of Bombay. The ambivalent role of the college teacher as an individual with an inadequate income, declining social status, and yet the pretensions of professionalism is a theme of this article. The Indian teaching community has been called on to function in a rapidly expanding higher education system but with inadequate resources. This situation has led to declining standards of education in general, and in a demoralization of the academic community in particular. A tradition of bureaucratic involvement in academic affairs and only a limited amount of academic freedom have further retarded the growth of a profession and effective teaching community.This article is based on a paper given at the 30th International Congress of Human Sciences in Asia and North Africa in Mexico City, August 3–8, 1976. I am indebted to Dr. Suma Chitnis, Dr. Sheila McVey, and A. B. Shah for their comments on an earlier draft. Saraswati is the Hindu goddess of knowledge.     

Elusive prey: John Ogbu and the search for a grand theory of academic disengagement

John Ogbu’s work on ‘minority education’ has spawned a number of interesting and useful debates in the US. Having been both an early admirer and critic of Ogbu’s work, I reviewed his work in an Anthropology and Education Quarterly article . The present article reflects upon Ogbu’s work and upon my scholarly engagement with that corpus over the years. I discuss Ogbu’s Shaker Heights study , and offer some reasons why Ogbu is often misread as a deficit theorist. The article closes with an assessment of how Ogbu’s theory and ethnographic practice evolved in what turned out to be his last major piece of work published before his passing.     

Attributional retraining and elaborative learning: Improving academic development through writing-based interventions

Attributional retraining (AR) is a motivational intervention that consistently produces improved performance by encouraging controllable failure attributions. Research suggests that cognitively engaging AR methods are ideal for high-elaborating students, whereas affect-oriented techniques are better for low-elaborating students. College students' (N = 749) elaborative learning was assessed in the first semester, after which students were assigned to one of three writing-based AR conditions (No AR, Cognitive AR, Affective AR). Academic performance (course grades, GPA), motivation, attributions, and emotions were assessed in the second semester. AR by elaboration (low/high) 3 × 2 ANCOVAs showed optimal results for high elaborators following cognitive AR, and for low elaborators following affective AR. Performance improvements for the former were mediated by improved cognitions (expectations), and for the latter were mediated by increased positive affect.     

The anatomy of agency: Improving academic performance in first-year university students

The transition from secondary to tertiary education can be challenging, as students must adapt to independent learning. For students in the allied health and nursing disciplines, this transition may coincide with compulsory first-year courses in anatomy, which are traditionally difficult to master. Students' agency—their capacity to make intentional choices to alter the path of their learning—may play a role in their successful completion of first-year anatomy courses. This study aimed to develop a measure for agency and to determine whether agency is associated with academic achievement. First-year students (n = 131) completed open-ended questions measuring each aspect of agency. Student responses were quantified using rubrics and then combined to create an overall agency score. Three factors of agency were determined: action, metacognition, and self-efficacy. Students with higher agency scores were significantly more likely to have higher academic achievement in anatomy compared to students with lower agency scores. The relationship between agency and academic achievement was strongest for action. These results suggest that encouraging students to be active participants in their learning may help them to achieve at university.     

Group outcome: The relationship between group learning outcome,attributional style,academic achievement,and self-concept

Six classes of grade seven students (N = 181) participated in field research which explored the consequences of group outcome (successful, unsuccessful) for individuals learning mathematics cooperatively using Student Teams-Achievement Divisions. In addition, we explored the effects of within-class prior mathematics achievement (low, low-medium, high-medium, high) as well as attributional style (learned-helpless, mastery-oriented). The dependent variables were mathematics achievement, causal attributions, and self-concept. There were two interactions: Group Outcome × Attributional Style on achievement, and Within-Class Prior Mathematics Achievement × Group Outcome on achievement and self-concept. Learned-helpless students from unsuccessful groups learned significantly less than learned-helpless students from successful groups. Low prior achievement students from unsuccessful groups learned significantly less than low prior achievers from successful groups. In contrast, there was no significant relationship between group outcome and individual post-test achievement for mastery-oriented students or for students high in prior within-class achievement.     

Reconceptualising academic work as professional practice: implications for academic development

Despite increasing research and scholarship in the area of academic development in recent years, it remains an under-theorised field of endeavour. The paper proposes that academic developers take a view on what constitutes academic work and see it as a form of professional practice. It discusses the features of practice theory that illuminate professional practice and identifies three foci for the application of these ideas within academic development: practice development, fostering learning-conducive work and deliberately locating activity within practice. It also suggests that academic development be viewed as a practice and points to features within its own traditions on which to build.     

Improving academic outcomes in poor urban schools through nature-based learning

This paper presents results from the evaluation of the Nurture thru Nature (NtN) programme, a natural science and environmental education intervention designed to help elementary school children from disadvantaged backgrounds increase their knowledge of science and strengthen overall academic performance. Using an experimental design the pilot NtN programme in New Brunswick, NJ was assessed in one elementary school for a period of four years. The evaluation revealed that NtN students (n = 18) consistently outperformed a group of controls (n = 34) in mathematics and science with the differences in science reaching statistical significance. The paper discusses the active learning philosophy that motivates NtN teaching, the programme components that operationalise this philosophy, and a natural history paradigm from which this philosophy derives.     

文学的《圣经》和文化

《圣经》并不单单是一部宗教著作，更是一部经典的文学著作，但是我们对其关注还未达到与其文学地位相当的程度。从中国文学的视角可发现《圣经》对中外文学的影响。     

丙崽:中国式的“圣愚”

丙崽与俄国文化中的圣愚有许多相似之处,是一个中国式的"圣愚".但与圣愚相比,丙崽代表着中国文化的劣根性.以韩少功为代表的中国作家在国民性问题上过于悲观,体现的是一种深层次上的民族不认同感.     

Population education: the search for a definition

There is need for a comprehensive and acceptable definition of the term "population education." Several definitions which have been suggested are summarized. Each definition reflects the concerns of the nation doing the defining or the interests and needs of the individual researcher or organization proposing the definition. Value judgments are embedded in most of the definitions. Researchers and population educators must examine the several possible approaches to population education and adapt their program to the needs and goals of the country or society involved.