Meeting the Demands of the Workplace: Science Students and Written Skills

Over the last 15 years, surveys in a range of English-speaking countries, from North America and the United Kingdom, to New Zealand and Australia, have consistently shown that employers rank oral and written communication skills as highly as or more highly than any technical or quantitative skills. However, in New Zealand there has been very little research into determining exactly what is meant by the “written communication skills” employers state they desire. A further issue in this research to date has been a lack of differentiation between employers—no study has specifically targeted the requirements of employers of science graduates. This article reports the findings of ongoing research into the expectations of science students and of employers of science graduates, and centers around several key questions:

• What do New Zealand employers of science graduates specifically want in terms of their new hires' writing skills?
• How can information gained from employers of science graduates be used to motivate science students to take seriously the need to develop their writing skills?
• How can writing programs be evaluated and developed to help science students acquire communication skills that are important for their future learning and for their employment and promotion prospects?

Findings are compared with the findings of the 2004 National Commission on Writing's survey of American businesses.

     

The acquisition of notions of qualitative speed: The importance of spatial and temporal alignment

An understanding of kinematics is predicated upon the ability to understand preliminary notions of movement and speed. This study investigated the order of acquisition of intuitive notions of qualitative speed. The results indicated that an array of prerequisite, equivalent, and independent relationships existed among the tasks administered. The levels of difficulty implied within the hierarchy formed confirmed the evolution of reasoning for notions of qualitative speed found by Piaget. The findings also indicated that the concepts investigated were interrelated and separable into distinct categories based upon spatial and temporal aspects of the motion. The alignment or nonalignment of objects, either spatially or temporally, provide an indication of the difficulty of the task presented and explain the order of acquisition of notions of qualitative speed.     

Is Multipotentiality a Problem or Not? A New Look at the Data

Multipotentiality is widely cited as a characteristic of the most gifted individuals. It refers to their ability and interest to pursue various activities and goals especially as related to leisure and career choice. Multipotentiality appears beneficial, but can also lead to problems in career decision-making. Evidence for such problems, however, is contradictory and often anecdotal. This research, a follow-up study to Rysiew, Shore and Carson (1984), through the examination of longitudinal empirical data, sought to ascertain the outcomes of multipotentiality and to examine its effects on career decision-making. The sample comprised 180 participants (110 males and 70 females), which is 73% of 1984 sample. The average verbal IQ (Otis & Lennon, 1969) was 124.5. Results show that multipotentiality seemed not problematic, and evidence for career indecision was lacking. As for moderating variables, participants' considered experiences to be beneficial.     

Education and symbolic violence in contemporary Turkey

This article examines the perceptions of education in Turkey, which refer to a nebulous package of formal education and a cultured stance. Guided by the literature on symbolic violence, we argue that underprivileged groups misrecognize arbitrary hierarchies by considering them just and inevitable. Elite tastes have been internalized by other groups in a particular historical context of education and culture. We investigate the historical roots of this seemingly ahistorical constellation of power relations around education and then consider the implications for the neoliberal period. Then, we contextualize the responses to symbolic violence. Subordinate groups complicate the effects of symbolic violence by exhibiting diverse responses that range from outright submission to implicitly questioning cultural and moral boundaries, creating class and ethnic others in the process. This occurs by constructing cultural and moral boundaries, especially targeting the ‘vulgar’ culture of celebrities and Kurds.     

Teacher collaboration: good for some,not so good for others

This paper examines the outcomes of four Australian schools' efforts to promote greater collaboration between teachers in each school. Teachers' responses to questions about the nature and extent of collaboration they experienced at school revealed that teaming arrangements were in place in the four schools studied. Collaborative ways of working helped most teachers feel better about themselves and their work, and provided them with opportunities to learn from each other. However, a minority of teachers were negative about the new teaming arrangements claiming that the changes had led to an increase in their workloads, a loss of professional autonomy, and the emergence of damaging competition between teams for resources, recognition and power. The paper concludes with a call for further micropolitical work that problematises apparently self evident ‘goods’ like teacher collaboration.     

按收入比例还款型学生贷款在发展中国家和转型国家的适用性

随着一些国家提出的将部分高等教育成本从政府转移到学生及其父母身上政策的实施 ,学生贷款方案的可适用性成为一个重要的问题。按收入比例还款型学生贷款 ,在理论上是受到人们欢迎的 ,并应用于澳大利亚、新西兰、瑞典、英国和南非的学生贷款实践。然而 ,对发展中国家、对那些正在从国家全面控制的经济“转型”为日益私有化的经济的国家来说 ,按收入比例还款型学生贷款的适用性存在着一些特定的问题。本文详细讨论了这些问题 ,并提出像澳大利亚的“高等教育贡献计划”这样的学生贷款方案的可适用和不可适用的条件     

Professional ethics education for future teachers: A narrative review of the scholarly writings

This article provides a narrative review of the scholarly writings on professional ethics education for future teachers. Against the background of a widespread belief among scholars working in this area that longstanding and sustained research and reflection on the ethics of teaching have had little impact on the teacher education curriculum, the article takes stock of the field by synthesizing viewpoints on key aspects of teaching ethics to teacher candidates—the role ethics plays in teacher education, the primary objectives of ethics education for teachers, recommended teaching and learning strategies, and challenges to introducing ethics curriculum—and maps out how opinions on these matters have evolved over the three decades since the initial publication of Strike and Soltis’ seminal book, The Ethics of Teaching. In light of the review’s results, the article identifies critical deficits in this literature and proposes a set of recommendations for future inquiry.     

Implementing Outcomes Assessment in an Academic Affairs Support Unit

While outcomes assessment has become a focus for institutions of higher education, assessment in academic support units remain sparse. Traditionally, assessment has been comprised of one-time student satisfaction surveys and/or supervisor evaluations tied specifically to job criteria. Although informative, these methods fail to account for or measure specific student learning outcomes completed by students via their interaction with faculty and staff. This article presents the development and implementation of a program of outcomes assessment at a 4-year public university in the northeast. Results indicate that students come to college with varying expectations of the role of academic advisors and range on a continuum of academic and social preparation to meet the demands of higher education. A majority of students are meeting the stated learning outcomes. Feedback from this assessment model is being used to improve the quality of services provided to successive cohorts of students at this institution.     

Schooling in a Multiracial Society: contrasting perspectives of primary and secondary teachers in training

Following an analysis of current responses to the ideologies of multicultural and anti‐racist education, the findings of a survey of student teachers’ perceptions of the role of the school in a multiracial society are presented. The survey suggests that prospective primary teachers may be more amenable towards contemporary policy initiatives in this sphere than their secondary colleagues. To account for this finding, reference is made to differences between the two groups in terms of occupational socialisation, identity and role. The implications of the study for initial teacher training institutions are discussed in the context of recommendations made in the Swann Report (1985).