Academic failure of first-year engineering and technological students in India and assessment of motivation factors – a case study

This study has been conducted to show that there is a recent trend in engineering colleges in India that students who are considered to be highly intelligent show poor academic performance during their 1st year. This article is proposed to examine the role of motivation factors such as teaching methods and learning material in the academic performance of engineering and technological students in India. A test was carried out among engineering students. A total of 200 male and female students participated in this test. A 2-group discriminator analysis was done to analyse the data. The results showed that there was a significant correlation (p = 0.000) between motivation factors and academic performance of engineering students. The higher the rating of these factors by the students, the higher their performance.     

The role of teachers’ shared values and objectives in promoting intercultural and inclusive school cultures: a case study

This article presents an analysis of teachers’ impressions of their shared objectives and values, together with their conceptions of interculturality and inclusion. The educational reality of a school in Valencia (Spain) is described, based on the exploration through semi-structured interviews. From the systematically categorized information, we obtained two dimensions that, when analyzed, enabled us to draw up lines of action or initiatives for change. We suggest actions that may be taken to transform their school culture and to guide their work towards an inclusive and intercultural model.     

Inquiry as a context-based practice – a case study of pre-service teachers’ beliefs and implementation of inquiry in context-based science teaching

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to provide an understanding of context-based inquiry teaching within a humanistic perspective on science education by studying pre-service teachers’ beliefs about inquiry and their implementations of inquiry in their context-based teaching sequences. Therefore, five pre-service teachers enrolled in a university undergraduate course called ‘Inquiry-based chemistry education II’ (5 ECTS) were involved in an empirical case study. The pre-service teachers’ implementations of inquiry were studied from their reports on self-designed context-based inquiry teaching sequences for students age 13–15, and their beliefs by interviewing them after the course. The results indicate that the most frequent aspects of inquiry, which were implemented, were that inquiry (i) includes a context, (ii) is a way to act, (iii) is a way to think, and (iv) includes source/information evaluation and argumentation. The pre-service teachers’ beliefs about inquiry were shown to reflect manifold aspects of inquiry, such as the difficulty in explaining it. However, this difficulty in encapsulating inquiry into a clear-cut definition is not necessarily an impediment to inquiry-based teaching. Furthermore, inquiry is inherently context-bound, and context-based teaching requires extra-situational knowledge from the context and not only declarative knowledge from science. This should be considered to support effective professional development.     

Mobilising for change in vocational education and training in Sweden – a case study of the ‘Technical College’ scheme

In this article, we analyse a recent industry-driven initiative in Sweden for the organisation and operation of Vocational Education and Training. In the context of a statist and school-based system for VET, this is an initiative which seems to be an example of an anomaly in the present system. The initiative is called the Technical College scheme and is a certification scheme for upper secondary school education in technology. The aim of this article is to describe and explain the establishment of the Technical College scheme in Sweden from a historical institutionalist approach. Based on this approach, the case is analysed as a process of incremental institutional change, with a focus on initiatives and strategies by different stakeholders driving the invention and implementation of the scheme, the importance of the power balances between central interests, and how the process has been shaped by institutional conditions. Our study shows how previously marginalised actors in a VET system can mobilise for change without radically changing the rules of the game. The process that we characterise can be explained by changes in the power balances between key actors, but also by changed institutional conditions that have provided windows of opportunity for new initiatives.     

Implications of automation in engineer-to-order production：a case study

In order to retain a certain level of production in Norway,suppliers to the Norwegian maritime industry need to lower their production costs.Automation is generally an effective way of achieving this in standardized high-volume,low variety production.However,manufacturing companies in the Norwegian maritime industry typically supply capital-intensive,advanced and customized products in low volumes.In this engineer-to-order production situation,manual labor is traditionally preferred over automation.Nonetheless,such companies increasingly automate parts of their production.This paper presents a case of a supplier that has chosen to automate its welding operations,the implications and determinants of this decision.     

Writing to learn writing skills – a case study

The paper describes a case study in which the main objective is to understand how engineering students can improve their writing skills, regarding spelling and syntax, when taught specifically on these issues. The methodology Writing To Learn is applied in two courses and, making use of the written texts, the students’ writing skills are assessed and evaluated. In one course, writing skills are taught and assessed and in the other they are only assessed. The comparison allows conclusions on the success of teaching writing skills, the influence of text styles and the differences between basic and advanced writing skills. It was found that writing skills were successfully taught, particularly with regard to basic writing skills. Advanced writing errors are twice as common as basic writing errors. Schematic writing styles favour a reduced number of writing errors.     

Standards and Levels — a case study

In the UK at the present time there is much discussion and debate about the evolution of the current arrangements relating to Quality Assessment. Part of this debate focuses on generic threshold standards which will be discipline based and used to ensure that graduates have the requisite levels of skills. Implicit in the full development of these standards is the inclusion of levels, used to indicate standards at intermediate stages of a student's development. To be useful and effective, these standards must be acceptable to a wide community, they must not date easily, they must not impede diversity of provision and yet they must be meaningful. This paper will address the necessary characteristics of such standards, offer the view that standards should be part of quality and demonstrate how this can be achieved. As a case study, the paper will include an outline of a set of standards for computing, and included in this will be attention to level. The ideas are based on abstraction and structure. The ideas in the paper will be seen to have wider applicability than computing.     

Ecological Impact Asessment and Ecological Monitoring of a Strategic Landfill-A case study in Hong Kong

1IntroductionInlinewiththeeconomicgrowthofHongKong,solidwastegenerationhasincreasedbytwofoldinthelastloyears.Anaverageof2oOoOtonnesofsolidwasteweredisPOsedofdailyin1993.Suchwasteisgeneratedbytheactivitiesof1.6milliondomestichouseholds,28oooocommercialandmanufacturingbusinesses,andsome44Oconstructionsitesintheterritory.Thisquantityamountstonearly3-5kgofwastedailyperheadofPOpulation(EPD,1994).Tomeetthegrowingdemandforwastedisposal,threeverylargestrategiclandfillsarebeingdevelopedinHongKong…     

Professionalism and Intensification in Teaching: a case study of ‘care’ in teachers’ work

This paper reports a research project in teachers’ work in one secondary school. It takes a labour process perspective to examine how localized notions of professionalism act to both enable and disable teachers in their struggle to exercise control over their work. For the teachers in this study an ‘ethic of care’ appears to inform their practice and relationships. Professionalism as care plays a contradictory role in these teachers’ working lives, at the same time providing the motivation, commitment and conditions that result in the intensification and control of their work.     

Response to Woods – When rewards and sanctions fail: a case study of a primary school rule‐breaker

This paper proposes a postmodernism and cultural studies influenced collorary to Cynthia Dillard's notion of "an endarkened feminist epistemology." The paper illustrates that Dillard has developed the notion principally as enabling of a project of recueillement : the articulation of a black feminist epistemology and research paradigm. What remains unaddressed in this project (albeit understandably), is the question of what difference difference makes within an endarkened epistemology. Illustrating that difference always compounds and complicates matters, the paper proceeds to draw on postmodernist and cultural studies theory to work with the ways in which race, gender, and sexual orientation interplay to produce an articulation that does not displace the notion of an endarkened feminist epistemology but rather runs parallel and acts as a corollary in the same dual project of contributing to both the "uriously belated" examination of race and racism in educational research in general, and the development of a black feminist epistemology and research paradigm in particular.     

In and out of the STEM pipeline – a longitudinal study of a misleading metaphor

ABSTRACT

The metaphor of the leaking pipeline is sometimes used to suggest that some students are lost for STEM as they advance through the educational system. This paper follows a cohort of upper-secondary school students with an interest in STEM from 18 months before their completion of upper-secondary until three years after their completion. Adopting a mixed-methods design, it follows the students' reflections and interests concerning their choice of higher education programme within and/or outside STEM. Only 22% of the students expressed the same interest during the whole period, and 56% changed between different groups of studies, e.g. between STEM and HEALTH. The students' trajectories showed that the leaking-pipeline metaphor is misleading because it suggests a linear and one-way movement, while there were students moving in as well as out of STEM trajectories. The students’ reflections showed identity issues at the level of ego identity, the personal identity and the social identity (Coté and Levine). Particular incidents in the students’ lives and in the outreach programme they were involved in sparked interests and reflections. These incidents should be considered as elements in a continuous reflection concerning who they are and where they would like to go rather than as critical moments.     

The construct of teachers’ pay satisfaction: a case study of primary and secondary schools in China

The construct of teachers’ pay satisfaction is important to the systemic appraisal of teachers’ compensation. The study aims to probe the components of teachers’ pay satisfaction and verify this construct in primary and secondary schools in China. In-depth interviews with 24 teachers were conducted to propose a construct model for teachers’ pay satisfaction. A survey of 1,218 teachers was conducted to verify the teachers’ pay satisfaction construct, including its reliability and validity, with subjects recruited from 45 primary and secondary schools in 6 cities and counties. Another survey of 364 teachers sampled from 6 provinces was used to compare the proposed two-order model with Heneman’s four-dimensional model. Teachers’ pay satisfaction comprises pay results satisfaction and pay management process satisfaction. The former includes pay level and increase, promotion and training. The latter includes teachers’ engagement, openness and transparency of pay distribution, as well as the reasonableness of distribution rules. Teachers assign greater importance to relative pay than do workers in other occupations. Chinese teachers attach great importance to pay management process satisfaction.     

Towards a hybrid conceptualisation of Chinese women primary school teachers' changing femininities – a case study of Hong Kong

In this paper, I posit a hybrid conceptualisation of women teachers' identities in the globalising and localising negotiation of gender. Drawing on Homi Bhabha's theory of hybridities, this paper argues for a fluid, hybrid and multifaceted reality of women teachers' lives in the areas of family, the husband and wife relationship, and the place of the child in the family as they engage in workplaces. The analysis draws on in‐depth interviews with 20 Chinese women primary school teachers first individually and then in groups of four or five in Hong Kong where globalisation meets with the indigenous Chinese culture. Implications for teacher education are discussed.     

Situated meaning-making of the human body: a study of elementary school children’s reasons in two different activities

In this text we compare children’s expressions in drawings to their statements during interviews, for the purpose of understanding how different situations afford children to make meaning. In specific we study how two different activities interact and afford children to make meaning differently about the human body. The analytic attention is drawn to the meaning-making the children made as they in pairs were asked to explain the body drawings that they did prior to the interviews. Meaning-making was studied by using a practical epistemology analysis, an analysis facilitating understanding of how relations are established in a developing conversation, and more generally providing understanding from a child perspective. The results indicate that several reasons are at hand for children in the two different situations; namely, social, artistic, practical, empirical and memory reasons are identified. Social reasons refer to statements belonging to the social context and items that were described as inappropriate to express. Artistic reasons were interpreted from aesthetic judgements, referring to the artistic quality of the drawing. Practical reasons were given in situations where children expressed, for example, that the space limited their opportunities to draw. Empirical reasons are built on children’s statements referring to picture items that are identified by pointing or touching their own body. Memory reasons are involved in all the situations where children explained items were previously omitted, because the body part had been temporarily forgotten. Furthermore, we suggest that children interpret situational aspects and make judgements concerning the relevance of their different reasons. By these means we hope to facilitate children’s understanding of interview questions and also to improve researchers’ understanding of children’s ability to grasp relevant details prior to their response (or participation).     

Human-material relationships in environmental and sustainability education – an empirical study of a school embroidery project

In recent discussions about the widening and opening up of anthropocentric perspectives in environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research, a recurrent issue has been what reasonably could be a subject of inquiry and an agent of knowledge. This article aims to showcase an empirical study of the relevance of human-material relationships in crafting learning processes by following an embroidery project with year 8 students in the Swedish craft subject of educational sloyd. How the human-material correspondence unfolds in the crafting learning process is analysed with the aid of Ingold’s practice of correspondence and Sørensen’s notion of participation, performance and imagination. Rather than assuming that materials contribute to certain environmental and sustainability aims, the analysis empirically demonstrates how the human-material correspondence unfolds. The analysis identifies three human-material relationships: attuning, troubling and tracing correspondence. Drawing on the findings, the human-material relevance for environmental and sustainability education and research is further discussed.     

Exploring a World of Number: a case study of the use of CD‐ROM in schools

ABSTRACT

This paper contains a case study of the use of a CD‐ROM in a Sheffield secondary school. Nine groups of students tackled a mathematical investigation presented through a video clip on the CD‐ROM The World of Number. The paper outlines three stages within the process of mathematical investigation and discusses the contribution of the CD‐ROM material to each stage of the students’ thinking. It concludes that the CD‐ROM successfully oriented students by engaging their attention and by illustrating the object of the investigation. The paper argues that The World of Number materials are most likely to be used in a self access setting even if this was not the specific intention of the designers. It discusses ways in which the materials could be made more suitable for self access work and argues that the role of the teacher is critical within self access learning. Finally, it is suggested that future CD‐ROM materials might contain a mix of expository material, games and additional resources such as text and statistical data.