From teaching from the heart to teaching with a heart: Segmenting filipino college students’ views of their teachers’ caring behavior and their orientations as cared-for individuals

Caring, as a universal human phenomenon, should permeate elementary, secondary and tertiary level instruction. The practice of teaching, especially at the tertiary level, is not only substantial and procedural but relational as well. To teach with a heart is the essence that makes teaching a form of caring. When teaching is viewed as a form of caring, teachers become relational geniuses in their own right. This study is an attempt to segment Filipino college students’ views (n=1000) of their teachers’ caring behavior and their orientations as cared-for individuals. The identified clusters of teacher roles that indicate caring behavior imply that acts of teaching become acts of caring depending on how the teachers, theefficient cause of education, perform their ordinary tasks in the context ofextraordinariness. Such extraordinariness spells out a big difference in the way teachers practice the so-calledsingle loop caring or caring visibility anddouble- loop caring or caring presence. The former refers to teaching from the heart while the latter pertains to teaching with a heart. Interestingly, the extent to which teachers’ caring behavior is felt and experienced by the students positively shapes their orientations as cared-for individuals.     

The use and value of Bernstein’s work in studying (in)equalities in undergraduate social science education

This paper illustrates how critical use of Basil Bernstein's theory illuminates the mechanisms by which university knowledge, curriculum and pedagogy both reproduce and interrupt social inequalities. To this end, empirical examples are selected from the findings of the ESRC-funded project ‘Pedagogic Quality and Inequality in University First Degrees' (RES-062-23-1438, November 2008–January 2012). The project investigated sociology-related social science degrees in four social science departments in universities in different positions in influential UK higher education league tables. A Bernsteinian lens throws fresh light on how university education might contribute to a more egalitarian society.     

Will Undergraduate Students Play Games to Learn How to Conduct Library Research?

This exploratory study examines whether undergraduate students will play games to learn how to conduct library research. Results indicate that students will play games that are an integral component of the course curriculum and enable them to accomplish overall course goals at the same time they learn about library research.     

Feedback mechanisms in learning virtual community settings

This paper introduces a set of services for the creation of on-line surveys, questionnaires, exams and self-assessment tests within a virtual community system used in e-learning settings. The system, called ＂Online Communities＂, is a dynamic web application used as platform for blended learning activities by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Trento. The functionalities added to the platform are contextualized into virtual communities, where activities take place. This allows us to create, submit and analyze questionnaires within and/or outside the boundaries of a community. Furthermore, the system allows to manage libraries of queries organized by the teacher/administrator of the community according to topics and levels of difficulty, in order to produce tests and generate self-assessment sessions on behalf of students. The addition of a questionnaire/ poll/self-assessment tool to a virtual community system can add a lot of interesting features, mainly using the inheritance mechanism implemented among different hierarchically-connected communities. This paper will present these functionalities and highlight one of these services, precisely the one dedicated to self-assessment. In the system, self-assessment tests have indeed a double nature： （1） They are useful to students for checking their own level of preparation; and （2） They are useful to lecturers as an indicator of the level of preparation reached by the students. In order to encourage the use of the system within the whole educational process, and not to limit the real use of the service to the period of the final exams only, the possibility has been foreseen for each participant to share his/her own test results, comparing them with the other members of the community, and even offering real ＂challenges＂, thus transforming passive and ＂solitary＂ learning into something much more stimulating and ＂social＂.     

Adolescents' satisfaction with school experiences: Relationships with demographics,attachment relationships,and school engagement behavior

This study investigated the relationships among demographics, parent and peer attachment, school satisfaction, and student engagement behavior in a 1‐year longitudinal study of secondary‐school students. Statistically significant cross‐sectional differences in school satisfaction were observed, based on grade, but not on race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Level of school satisfaction did not moderate the relationships between parent and peer satisfaction and negative student engagement behaviors at Time 2 (controlling for Time 1). School satisfaction did account for significant incremental variance across all levels of parent and peer attachment relationships, although predicting a larger proportion of variance for withdrawal behavior than for resistance/aggression behavior. Adolescents' appraisals of their school satisfaction appear to be an independent predictor of their school engagement behaviors, regardless of the quality of their parent or peer attachment relationships. Limitations of the study as well as implications for future research and educational practice are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

EXPLORING FEAR: ROUSSEAU,DEWEY, AND FREIRE ON FEAR AND LEARNING

Fear is not the first feature of educational experience associated with the best‐known progressive educational theorists—Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey, and Paolo Freire. But each of these important thinkers did, in fact, have something substantive to say about how fear functions in the processes of learning and growth. Andrea English and Barbara Stengel juxtapose the ideas of these thinkers in this essay for three purposes: (1) to demonstrate that there is a progressive tradition that accounts for negative emotion in learning; (2) to explore doubt, discomfort, and difficulty as pedagogically useful, with links to fear as both a prompt for and an impediment to growth; and (3) to suggest that teachers take negative affect into account in their pedagogical practice. In doing so, English and Stengel join with contemporary theorists in and out of education to recognize that affect cannot be left out of social theory and that understanding the play of emotion is an integral part of creating truly educational contexts and experiences. The authors' focus here is on fear in processes of learning.     

Leading Developmental Peer Observation of Teaching in Higher Education: Perspectives from Australia and England

Whilst peer observation of teaching is well established as a practice that can enhance teaching quality, the challenge to fully embed this practice in universities remains unresolved. This article analyses the perspectives of 18 university leaders (nine Australian and nine English) drawn from a range of school-based leaders to senior leaders of learning and teaching. Our study indicates that some of the challenges associated with leading such schemes can be mitigated through approaches to educational leadership that enact a respectful and collegiate ethos. This we suggest can support developmental academic engagement in peer observation for positive and lasting change.     

Throwing performance in water polo is related to in-water shoulder proprioception

ABSTRACT

Water polo players require a high level of upper-extremity strength, flexibility and coordination to achieve a peak level of throwing performance. Increased levels of shoulder proprioceptive acuity, strength and range of motion (ROM) have been previously associated with higher sporting performance. A coach-rating scale, used to quantify an athlete’s kicking proficiency in soccer; was adapted in the current study to measure each coach’s subjective expert opinion regarding athletes’ throwing mechanics, velocity, and accuracy. To examine this hypothesis shoulder proprioception acuity of 18 water polo players was measured both in-water and on-land using an AMEDA apparatus and correlated with coach-rated throwing performance and clinical measures of shoulder strength and ROM. There was a moderate positive correlation between the in-water and the on-land proprioception acuity (r = 0.47, p < 0.05). The in-water score showing a strong positive correlation with coach rated throwing mechanics (r = 0.68, p < 0.05) and velocity (r = 0.75, p = 0.02), suggesting that superior proprioception acuity contributed to fast, mechanically-efficient throwing. These findings support the notion that in-water proprioceptive acuity is an important determinant of the throwing performance achieved by water polo athletes and its measurement may be a valuable adjunct to current athlete screening.