The Data Science Opportunity: Crafting a Holistic Strategy

The rise of data-driven research and discovery may be one of the greatest strategic opportunities to confront academic libraries in a generation. The argument advanced in this article is that the data science opportunity is about data curation AND data analysis. Thus the development of a holistic data science strategy ought to include both elements. Up until now, academic libraries have largely responded to the data science opportunity from a curatorial and archiving perspective. However, this is beginning to change. The case for crafting a holistic data science strategy is presented in six parts in this article. In part one, a broad overview of the data science opportunity is presented, followed by a definition of data analysis and data curation in part two. The traditional academic library response (curation) and a reframing of it to include data analysis are then presented in two separate parts. And finally, part five reports findings from a recent survey conducted at the University of Florida (UF) which indicates robust demand for training in analytical tools and technologies. The article concludes with some thoughts on the challenges of offering data analysis services, using the UF experience to highlight key issues.     

Exploring the challenge of developing student teacher data literacy

Abstract

A number of trends are converging to drive the need for more informed teacher data use. These include advocacy for formative assessment and the need for teachers to account for student learning. In this context, assessment literacy and data literacy have emerged as a focus in research and professional development. Problematically, research signals that developing assessment/data literacy is challenging with evidence that teachers may not have mastered relevant aspects of mathematics and statistics. This paper reports lecturer, student teacher and school leader views of the role and requirements of data literacy using data from a larger study into how to foster student teacher mathematical thinking for the breadth of teacher professional work. Data were generated via interviews, surveys and document analysis. Findings suggest a concern and opportunity to develop assessment/data literacy as this calls on mathematical and statistical understanding.     

How does mobility shape parental strategies – a case of the Israeli global middle class and their ‘immobile’ peers in Tel Aviv

We examined the parental strategies of global middle class (GMC) parents currently living in Israel, and compared these to their local middle class (LMC) peers. Both groups of parents were focused on securing advantages for their children through education choices and practices of cultivation. The central difference between these two groups of middle class parents was the ways in which ‘mobile-mindedness’ was conceived of, and in turn shaped the future aspirations they held for their children. A second critical finding was that this group of GMC actively fostered strong relations to belonging to their ‘home’ nation, challenging the suggestion of rootless nomads found in the literature. We argue that the GMCs in our sample think locally in each place they settle in order to secure the educational advantage, but act globally with respect to their children’s prospective futures. Meanwhile, the LMCs think globally in terms of cultivating forms of capital to secure advantages for their children, but do so with a locally-informed frame of reference for their imagined futures. These conceptual insights into the lived narratives of the GMC have implications for the ways we come to understand this emerging middle class fraction, and should shape further research in this area.     

‘What I thought university would be like … ’ close reading as collaborative performance

ABSTRACT

This article develops an account of an extracurricular reading group convened in a small theatre/performance department, consisting of postgraduate and honours students. The origins of the group in a formal seminar/class are discussed, including a shift in syllabus design based upon breadth of reading/content to one based upon depth, taking up the practice of reading as a core classroom activity. This activity is understood as a technē: an aided bringing forth of disclosure, revealing reading to be a constructive, temporal, embodied labour, rather than a cognitive function, involving simply the decoding or retrieval of meaning from written language. Drawing upon the reflections of participants in the reading group, the article documents the rich outcomes of such a practice, arguing that, notwithstanding the apparent costliness of such a model of pedagogy for university classes, the benefits are palpable, and worth arguing for.     

Understanding the Link Between Noncognitive Attributes and College Retention

The attention to students’ noncognitive attributes has recently flourished within academic research and public discourse. This paper adds to the literature by examining the interrelationships among several key noncognitive attributes as well as exploring direct and indirect relationships between noncognitive attributes and second-year retention. Within a multi-institutional sample of 10,622 students, academic self-efficacy, academic grit, self-discipline, and time management all load onto a single noncognitive factor with strong inter-item correlations and internal reliability. Moreover, structural equation modeling analyses indicate a sizable and positive indirect effect of noncognitive attributes on college retention, which is mediated by social adjustment, institutional commitment, and college grade point average.

     

The concept of teaching: a reappraisal

This paper examines the concept of ‘teaching’ in early education and childcare and argues that the activity of teaching, broadly defined, concerns all adults who work in this area and occurs in all phases of the educational system. Bronfenbrenner's (1979 Bronfenbrenner U 1979 The ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press)  [Google Scholar]) ecological perspective on human development is applied to conceptualise teaching as (1) adults' attempts to extend children's current phenomenological perspectives of the world; and (2) as being based on adults' ability to capture children's momentum towards learning. The implications of current terms such as ‘practitioner’, and the ways in which ‘teaching’ in early childhood education has been conceptualised, are also discussed.     

Records management practices in ecumenical tertiary institutions: the Trinity Theological Seminary in focus

The study aimed at examining the records management practices at the Trinity Theological Seminary in Ghana and was underpinned by the life cycle concept. The researchers drew qualitative inferences from interviews, complementing personal observations, with 25 purposively sampled staff. The study revealed the creation, maintenance and use of records to support administrative and decision-making processes. Problems hampering effective records management included non-existent records management policy, inadequate staff training and erratic power supply. Among the recommendations proposed to overcome these setbacks were: formulating a written policy statement for managing records, providing staff with formal training and installing a standby generator.     

Issues in Selection for Vocational Education: some lessons from the Queensland experience

Selection for tertiary education is an increasingly problematic issue wherever supply exceeds demand. Intense competition for places in Australian tertiary institutions has led to the development of state centralised selection systems. In Queensland, selection is managed for tertiary institutions by the Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre (QTAC). The system is explained and the benefits and consequences of recent incorporation of technical and further education (TAFE) diplomas into the system analysed. Implications for other education systems facing similar selection pressures are discussed.     

The influence of college students' epistemological style on selected problem-solving processes

Given the paucity of data supporting college students' epistemological style as an educationally relevant construct, we examined the degree to which individual differences in this style were predictive of various cognitive processing activities adopted to several problem-solving tasks. Twenty-two college subjects from each of three different epistemological groups—dualistic, multiplistic, and relativistic—were randomly selected to complete both a syllogism and Ink Blot problem-solving task. The results showed that the three epistemological groups reliably differed in how they mentally organized the ink blot stimuli, but not the syllogism problems. The findings are discussed as supporting the notion that the epistemology construct is an educationally salient source of individual differences, especially when performance tasks are ambiguous and ill-defined.     

Finding Pure Submodels for Improved Differentiation of Bifactor and Second-Order Models

Several studies have indicated that bifactor models fit a broad range of psychometric data better than alternative multidimensional models such as second-order models (e.g., Carnivez, 2016; Gignac, 2016; Rodriguez, Reise, & Haviland, 2016). Murray and Johnson (2013) and Gignac (2016) argued that this phenomenon is partially due to unmodeled complexities (e.g., unmodeled cross-factor loadings) that induce a bias in standard statistical measures that favors bifactor models over second-order models. We extend the Murray and Johnson simulation studies to show how the ability to distinguish second-order and bifactor models diminishes as the amount of unmodeled complexity increases. By using theorems about rank constraints on the covariance matrix to find submodels of measurement models that have less unmodeled complexity, we are able to reduce the statistical bias in favor of bifactor models; this allows researchers to reliably distinguish between bifactor and second-order models.