Narrating experiences of sexism in higher education: a critical feminist autoethnography to make meaning of the past,challenge the status quo and consider the future

Increasingly, the third-level sector across the world has acknowledged a hopeless track record of promoting and retaining competent women in leadership roles. However, change, in terms of women’s contribution and participation, has been minimal at least, or gradual at the most optimistic. In this paper, a woman with more than two decades experience as a full-time academic in the field of higher education relates her sense of loss and purposelessness when attempts to reach for a higher level position were consistently unsuccessful. Using autoethnography she relates her experiences of sexism in higher education, and the ways in which sexism turns into oppression through silencing. She proposes how her experiences point to the need for change, and she indicates that training to reduce gender bias has been proven to improve feelings of workplace fit for participants who collaborate with people who have addressed their gender bias.     

The Bioinformatics Program at Washington University's Bernard Becker Medical Library: making it happen

The need for a Bioinformatics Program became apparent after repeated requests from researchers for bioinformatics resources and the University's announcement of BioMed 21, a 300 million dollars biomedical science initiative to bring "new knowledge of the human genetic blueprint to the patient's bedside and change how illnesses are understood, diagnosed, and successfully treated." A Bioinformatics Specialist with a strong background in the fields of Molecular Biology and Biostatistics was hired. Program development started in 2003. Initially, three core courses were developed: Sequence Similarity Search, Genetic Variation, and Human Genome Resources. Each of these courses was offered twice per semester. Additionally, partnerships were established within the University Medical School Community (e.g., the Genome Sequencing Center) to license and teach Spotfire's DecisionSite for Functional Genomics, a software package used to analyze microarray data. From March to May 2005, seven Spotfire classes were taught. Each Spotfire class consisted of seven hours of classroom work. Also, in-depth consultations were scheduled with faculty and researchers to address their specific needs. These consultations led to requests for other software packages to purchase and manage, including Lasergene and CSD (Cambridge Crystal Structure Database). Efforts to reach outside of the University Community were made through the development of a Bioinformatics Web site.     

Do published search filters to identify diagnostic test accuracy studies perform adequately?

OBJECTIVES: To assess the performance of published search filters in finding diagnostic test accuracy studies. METHODS: Diagnostic test accuracy search filters were identified by searching medline, our own files and by requesting unpublished filters from colleagues. We applied the filters to a case study review of diagnostic test accuracy studies for urinary tract infections (UTI) in young children. The included studies with records in medline formed the gold standard. The performance of the filters in finding those gold standard records was assessed. RESULTS: We identified twenty-three diagnostic test accuracy search filters for use with medline. The case study systematic review of UTI included 179 studies of diagnostic test accuracy, of which 160 were available in medline. The filters showed a wide range of sensitivities (range: 20.6% to 86.9%) and precision (range: 1% to 9.4%). CONCLUSIONS: Our results broadly support those reported in two other studies. The search filters tested do not offer an adequate trade-off between sensitivity and precision to be used to identify studies for systematic reviews. However, there are methods available to explore whether search filters are viable based on an objective statistical analysis of the text and indexing used in records.     

e-Authentication for online assessment: A mixed-method study

Authenticating the students’ identity and authenticity of their work is increasingly important to reduce academic malpractices and for quality assurance purposes in Education. There is a growing body of research about technological innovations to combat cheating and plagiarism. However, the literature is very limited on the impact of e-authentication systems across distinctive end-users because it is not a widespread practice at the moment. A considerable gap is to understand whether the use of e-authentication systems would increase trust on e-assessment, and to extend, whether students’ acceptance would vary across gender, age and previous experiences. This study aims to shed light on this area by examining the attitudes and experiences of 328 students who used an authentication system known as adaptive trust-based e-assessment system for learning (TeSLA). Evidence from mixed-method analysis suggests a broadly positive acceptance of these e-authentication technologies by distance education students. However, significant differences in the students’ responses indicated, for instance, that men were less concerned about providing personal data than women; middle-aged participants were more aware of the nuances of cheating and plagiarism; while younger students were more likely to reject e-authentication, considerably due to data privacy and security and students with disabilities due to concerns about their special needs.     

Franchisees in crisis: using action learning to self-organise

The present article describes the use of action learning by a group of 30 franchisees to organise themselves and work through a period of upheaval and uncertainty when their parent company faced liquidation. Written from the perspective of one of the franchisees who found herself adopting action learning principles to facilitate the group, it describes the value of this way of organising until a point where the context became both clearer and more time-pressured, for which the group adopted a project management approach to organising.     

Schooling effects on preschoolers’ self-regulation, early literacy, and language growth

The present study examined the influence of schooling during children's first and second years of preschool for children who experienced different amounts of preschool (i.e., one or two years), but who were essentially the same chronological age. Children (n = 76) were tested in the fall and spring of the school year using measures of self-regulation, decoding, letter knowledge, and vocabulary. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), preschool was not associated with children's development of self-regulation in either year. For decoding and letter knowledge, children finishing their second year of preschool had higher scores, although both groups of children grew similarly during the school year. Thus, our results suggest that the first and second years of preschool are both systematically associated with decoding and letter knowledge gains, and the effects are cumulative (two years predicted greater gains overall than did one year of preschool). Finally, children's chronological age, and not whether they experienced one versus two years of preschool, predicted children's vocabulary and self-regulation outcomes. Implications for preschool curricula and instruction are discussed, including the increasing emphasis on literacy learning prior to kindergarten entry and the need to address self-regulation development along with academic learning.     

24‐Month‐Old Children With Larger Oral Vocabularies Display Greater Academic and Behavioral Functioning at Kindergarten Entry

Data were analyzed from a population‐based, longitudinal sample of 8,650 U.S. children to (a) identify factors associated with or predictive of oral vocabulary size at 24 months of age and (b) evaluate whether oral vocabulary size is uniquely predictive of academic and behavioral functioning at kindergarten entry. Children from higher socioeconomic status households, females, and those experiencing higher quality parenting had larger oral vocabularies. Children born with very low birth weight or from households where the mother had health problems had smaller oral vocabularies. Even after extensive covariate adjustment, 24‐month‐old children with larger oral vocabularies displayed greater reading and mathematics achievement, increased behavioral self‐regulation, and fewer externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors at kindergarten entry.     

Amateurism and autodidactism: a modest proposal?

Around the globe a great emphasis has been placed upon improving public service delivery by reforming and enhancing professionalism. The impact and significance of the associated changes have been much debated with a focus on issues of de- and re-professionalisation, and demarcations of expertise and work. Professionals and professionalism remain the central focus while service users and non-professionals still tend to be positioned as ‘other’: their roles tending to be taken into account, but as additional rather than essential to service provision. By contrast, this article sets out a modest proposal to consider the relational configurations of actors involved in public services drawing upon certain dynamics of amateurism. This article suggests that the dynamics of doing something ‘for the love of it’, supported by the ‘passion to learn’ of autodidactism, provide the basis for rethinking some of the assumptions made and issues faced when addressing the challenges of the public services. Drawing upon historical and contemporary illustrations of the contributions of amateurism to professional practice, this article argues for the need to explore possibilities beyond existing binary of professional–amateur.