STAFF AND ELDERLY KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES TOWARD ELDERLY SEXUALITY

This study compared staff and elderly knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to sexual expression by elderly persons in a long‐term care setting. Volunteers (N = 194) responded agree or disagree to 159 items. Significant differences were observed between the staff and elderly responses on 36 items. Areas of greatest differences involved knowledge and attitudes about consensual sex and sexual abuse, issues related to family attitudes toward remarriage and sexual expression, and age‐related changes and health problems related to sexuality. Items related to masturbation received the greatest percentage of no response. The staff had significantly higher total scores as compared to the elderly reflecting more knowledge, positive attitudes, and support for more proactive responses toward elderly sexuality. Findings have major implications for staff training in long‐term care settings.     

Principals Judge Teachers by Their Teaching

This quantitative study investigated the relationship between teacher dispositions, subject content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and reasons that school principals recommend non-renewal of probationary teachers' contracts. Principals in the Southeastern Unites States completed an e-mailed survey. Two nonparametric tests, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann Whitney U, were used to statistically analyze group responses. Principals reported that they observed most a lack of pedagogical content knowledge from ineffective teachers and they prioritized the importance of instructional skills in deciding whether to non-renew a teacher contract. Principals identified teacher integrity, dependability, and honesty as important dispositions. The studies' findings are important for universities that prepare preservice teachers and also for the planning of professional development initiatives. The study findings suggest that principals tend to view dispositions as personality characteristics rather than as teacher competencies and that teacher expertise in both subject content and pedagogy must be woven together.     

Social science doctoral students’ needs and preferences for written feedback

The purpose of this study was to investigate social science doctoral students’ preferences and needs with regard to written feedback on academic writing and to develop a written feedback categorization. In an exploratory mixed methods approach, qualitative data collected during interviews were used to form a questionnaire to collect quantitative data in two research-intensive universities. The results based on 276 doctoral students’ responses provided a clear list of feedback types needed by doctoral students, including comments addressing their main idea, argumentation, clarity, and information coverage. Their preferences varied on issues of autonomy, criticism, and ambiguity, all critical factors in the transition to independence expected during their doctoral education. The resulting written feedback categorization encompasses three aspects: function, focus, and presentation. The findings of this study have the potential to guide supervisors, feedback providers, and doctoral students as well as inform further research, including instrument development and written feedback content analyses.     

Can students within higher education learn to be resilient and,educationally speaking,does it matter?

This paper presents a critical appraisal of resilience and its associated concepts within the context of higher education. It addresses wide‐ranging definitions of resilience, encompassing endurance and adaptability, and seeks to understand how these definitions impact on the learning experiences of students. As theoretical and empirical work on resilience has burgeoned in terms of adolescent experiences of education, the rise of interest has not been matched by that in studies of adult learning, particularly within university settings. This is despite the growing importance of retention studies, which have clear and important links to how well students manage their learning ability in adversity. Realization of the potential embodied in this concept to alter for the better, together with ways of conceptualizing learning and teaching, however, will remain constrained unless teachers within higher education pay attention to the resilience narratives that individual students present, and how teaching strategies can affect their learning trajectories. The paper examines some factors that impact on students’ learning within higher education, and theorizes how teaching and assessment may be adapted to promote resilience in all its forms.     

Instructor Use of Educational Streaming Video Resources

Although a substantial majority of academic libraries now provide streaming video, the literature contains few studies which focus on how such resources are used. This article presents the results of a qualitative research study consisting of in-depth interviews with 18 instructors who use of one category of streaming video resources, educational videos, which are important because they are sold a higher price than most individuals can afford, and thus are typically only available to instructors through the library. The study's main findings are that instructors think educational streaming video resources compare favorably to commercial and non-streaming alternatives in most respects and use them whenever possible, that the primary benefit of these resources is to facilitate better use of limited class time by enabling instructors to assign videos as outside-of-class viewing, and that the library is not the primary means instructors use to discover new educational streaming video resources. Additional insights are provided into factors that academic libraries should consider when deciding which resources to invest in, which acquisition models to pursue, and what marketing strategies to employ to ensure maximum usage.