Academic boredom and the perceived course experiences of final year Education Studies students at university

This work explores the relationships between academic boredom and the perceived course experiences of 179 final-year Education Studies students attending a single university in England. Adopting a mixed-methods design, with data collection employing a combination of questionnaires and individual research interviews, findings suggest that all participants exhibited some measurable disposition towards academic boredom, with traditional lectures and work leading to the completion of assignments the main sites and triggers for the actual onset of academic boredom itself. Amid overwhelmingly encouraging responses from course expectations to course demands, reflecting the successful promotion of deep ways of working, as well as a clear sense of satisfaction with their teaching and learning environment overall, cluster analysis reveals the presence of five structurally related groups of students with profiles which help identify those typically more engaged and effective learners from others. Path analysis reveals a series of complex inter-connections, with academic boredom emerging as a strong predictor of surface approaches and organised effort as well as contributing indirectly towards degree outcome as a whole. The implications for boredom mitigation are considered.     

Academic boredom,approaches to learning and the final-year degree outcomes of undergraduate students

Academic boredom is a largely negative and disabling achievement-related emotion. In this mixed-methods exploration of 224 students attending a single university in England, academic boredom was found to arise at the point of course delivery, while studying at other times and during the completion of assignments for assessment. Quantitative data from the recently adapted Boredom Proneness Scale for use across the UK higher education sector (the BPS-UKHE) and the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST), enriched with qualitative data from 10 semi-structured research interviews, indicate that those with a higher propensity towards academic boredom than others displayed the deep, strategic and surface profiles of ‘less effective learners’. This was reflected in their interest in ideas, their ability to organise resources and manage time, what they had to memorise or do to ‘get by’, their achievement motivation and their sense of purpose. As part of a greater evolving network of other contributing factors, this translated into lower final degree marks and fewer ‘good’ degree awards. Recommendations surrounding boredom mitigation and approaches to learning are suggested which warrant serious consideration. The work presented here makes an important contribution to a surprisingly neglected field of UK higher education research and the student engagement agenda.     

A comparison of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities with preschool children

The purpose of the present study was to determine the degree to which performance on the McCarthy Scaies of Children's Abilities correlated with performance on the Stanford-Binet for a group of preschoolers. The sample consisted of 44 children ranging in age from 3–11 to 5–4. It was found that the General Cognitive Index scores of the McCarthy Scales correlated well with the Stanford-Binet IQ scores, r^xy = .90. However, 40 of the 44 subjects scored higher on the Stanford-Binet than on the McCarthy Scales.     

Kids Don't Like Wearing the Same Jeans as their Mums and Dads: so whose ‘life’ should be in significant life experiences research?

In this article I respond to the special issue of Environmental Education Research (EER) by problematising significant life experiences research from the perspective of research and commentaries on intergenerational differences, environment‐related research with youth, and the silences in significant life experiences (SLE) research on gender, race and class. I argue that the youth of today are very different from older generations, so the achievement of the goals of environmental education through the extension of significant life experiences for older generations to the youth of today is a questionable activity. If our goal is the achievement of environmentally literate youth through environmental education, and, if we are going to use significant life experience research at all, then we need to be investigating the experiences which have been significant to youth at the end of the 20th century, not the experiences of those who were youths decades ago.     

好好先生

打电话和卢宁军联系采访的时候,他先说,网上都有,你去找吧。我说我们需要报道一下您本人,老卢听罢爽快地说,“那你来郑州吧,我给你一天时间,然后再和我老婆、女儿以及我的朋友聊聊。”