A New Student Learning Focus for the Academic Library: From Geographical Proximity of the Learning Commons to Organizational Proximity within the Library

In 2015, student learning programs at the University of Saskatchewan moved organizationally to the university library. While these services resided physically in the library as part of the Learning Commons partnership, this recent change presents the library with a new focus and responsibility for broader student learning support and academic skill development. Highlighting examples of organizational integration of student learning support, this article uses a proximity perspective, suggesting that geographical proximity of services in the learning commons does not go far enough to achieve the deeper collaboration and integration necessary for holistic and integrated learning, and that organizational proximity is needed.     

Investigating Students’ Learning Through Co-designing with Technology

Involving students in the co-design of educational curricula and practices can benefit both students and teachers. Students who participate in co-design may show better learning or increased agency or engagement. In the present study, we investigated what kind of science knowledge or practices can be learned by student co-designers while engaging in co-design practices and how that learning happens with six high school students. We created a model to guide the analysis of students’ learning with technology in co-designing processes. The results revealed that students learned engineering design process even if no explicit instruction on engineering learning was given. Also, our analysis suggested that co-designing with technology enabled learning of the engineering design process and potentially furthered learning of science because it promoted knowledge integration. The results have implications for understanding and enhancing engineering design and science learning through co-designing with technology.

     

Better safe than sorry? Risk and educational research

This paper presents the argument that education and the teaching profession have been saturated by a new form of risk consciousness and risk consideration. The aim is to shed light on this issue and present a number of empirical examples and questions of interest in educational research. Furthermore, the paper presents some of the central theories regarding risk and an attempt is made to relate these theories to an epistemological framework. The article also emphasizes the problems and issues that arise from the way teachers think, experience and manage risk in their daily work, and examines how this affects their didactic intentions and, in the long run, also the pupils’ learning potential. It is the intention of the authors, in the scientific as well as in the professional discussion, to reintroduce the positive connections between teaching and risk zones, as well as between professional development and risk taking.     

Creating Connections: Using a Narrative Approach in Career Group Counseling With College Students From Diverse Cultural Backgrounds

Changes in the world of work as well as demographic shifts toward a more diverse college population and workforce require changes in the way career counseling is provided on college campuses. The authors propose using a narrative group counseling approach to serve college and university students from various cultural backgrounds. Through this approach, students develop their own career/life stories, incorporating their cultural values, family and community considerations, and life roles.     

Contextualizing instruction: Leveraging students' prior knowledge and experiences to foster understanding of middle school science

Contextualizing science instruction involves utilizing students' prior knowledge and everyday experiences as a catalyst for understanding challenging science concepts. This study of two middle school science classrooms examined how students utilized the contextualizing aspects of project‐based instruction and its relationship to their science learning. Observations of focus students' participation during instruction were described in terms of a contextualizing score for their use of the project features to support their learning. Pre/posttests were administered and students' final artifacts were collected and evaluated. The results of these assessments were compared with students' contextualizing scores, demonstrating a strong positive correlation between them. These findings provide evidence to support claims of contextualizing instruction as a means to facilitate student learning, and point toward future consideration of this instructional method in broader research studies and the design of science learning environments. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 79–100, 2008     

English language learning and education policy in Chile: can English really open doors for all?

To date, knowledge of English in Latin America has reflected existing political and economic power structures. It has remained the preserve of the elite with access to private schooling, and as such it demarcates and divides social groups by reinforcing an unequal distribution of wealth, resources, and knowledge. However, the number of people learning English as a foreign language is growing across the region. This article analyses the “English Opens Doors Programme” in Chile, which aims to improve national economic competitiveness and promote equitable access to English language learning in all publicly funded schools. The article examines this initiative within the context of Chilean education policy since 1990, thereby acknowledging the influence of different stakeholders in this process, and the tensions between education for economic growth and education for social justice in a highly segmented and marketised system.     

13‐year‐olds’ perception of bullying: definitions,reasons for victimisation and experience of adults’ response

This study formed the second wave of a longitudinal research project examining bullying from the students’ perspective. A sample of 877 Swedish 13‐year‐olds filled out a questionnaire regarding the definition of bullying, reasons for why some students are bullied and the experience of adults’ response to bullying. In their definitions, girls were more likely than boys to include the victims’ experience of bullying, whereas boys were more likely than girls to mention bullying as an imbalance of power and a set of repeated actions. Assigning responsibility for the bullying to the bully was more common among girls and bullied adolescents than among boys and non‐bullied adolescents. Furthermore, among bullied adolescents, 23% had not told anyone about the bullying and 35% had not received any help.     

A framework and checklists for evaluating online learning in higher education

A case is made in this paper for using checklists and context‐bound evaluations of online learning materials in higher education. Context‐bound evaluations complement traditional forms of evaluation of educational courseware, such as checklists. Context‐bound approaches are useful for indicating the pedagogical quality of online learning materials that may be productively used in conjunction with checklists to evaluate online learning. Edith Cowan University has developed a framework and checklists for assessing aspects of online pedagogical learning materials in higher education. These checklists, which are intended to be useful indicators of the areas where online learning materials are strong and to identify areas that may be deficient, and are a valuable screening and information gathering device to use when undertaking a context‐bound evaluation of learning materials. As such, the quality of the instructional design remains an important consideration in evaluating courseware, and such information needs to be presented in a form that is accessible and useful for educational developers and researchers. Comment and dissent is invited on the value of contextual evaluations to reinvigorate the debate over appropriate ways of evaluating online learning materials in higher education.