Application of hands-on simulation games to improve classroom experience

While many construction companies claim substantial productivity and profit gains when applying lean construction principles, it remains a challenge to teach these principles in a classroom. Lean construction emphasises collaborative processes and integrated delivery practices. Consequently, new teaching methods that nurture such values should form the basis of lean construction education. One of the proposed methods is ‘hands-on team simulation games’ which can be employed to replicate various real-life processes, projects, or systems for the purpose of teaching, analysing, and understanding. This study aims at assessing this simulation games and understanding their impact on students’ learning and satisfaction. Surveys and tests are administered to assess changes in student’s perception of their learning styles and their understanding of key lean construction concepts. Results show a positive student reaction to hands-on simulation games, provide pedagogical insights, and highlight suggestions for improvement.     

Workplace Faculty Friendships and Work-Family Culture

Although various work-family policies are available to faculty members, many underuse these policies due to concerns about negative career consequences. Therefore, we believe it is important to develop an academic work culture that is more supportive of work-family needs. Using network data gathered from faculty members at a Midwestern university, this study investigated the relationship between friendship connections with colleagues and perceived work-family supportiveness in the department. It also explored the role of parental status in the relationship for men and women. Results show that faculty with larger friendship networks have more positive perceptions of work-family culture compared to faculty with smaller friendship networks, for all faculty except women without children.     

Why Does Classroom-Level Victimization Moderate the Association Between Victimization and Depressive Symptoms? The “Healthy Context Paradox” and Two Explanations

The present longitudinal study examined how and why classroom-level victimization moderates the prospective association between peer victimization and depressive symptoms with 2,643 third- and fourth-graders (M_age = 10.01 years) in China. Multilevel modeling revealed that peer victimization was more strongly associated with increasing depressive symptoms in classrooms with lower classroom-level victimization. Moreover, two mechanisms were identified to explain the moderating effect of classroom-level victimization. First, low classroom-level victimization reduced victimized children’s received friendship nominations from peers, thereby leading to increases in depressive affect. Second, low classroom-level victimization affected victimized children’s depressive symptoms through damage to their social self-concept. These findings provide support for the “healthy context paradox” in the Chinese culture, and highlight the mechanisms of this phenomenon.     

Pathway to success: using students’ insights and perspectives to improve retention and success for university students from low socioeconomic (LSE) backgrounds

In an increasingly complex landscape of diversification and massification, universities are grappling with challenges of student attrition. This paper presents findings from a project investigating how students from low socio-economic backgrounds at a regional Australian university perceive challenges and supports associated with retention and success. Twenty-seven students received intensive one-to-one support from a Faculty-embedded ‘academic advisor’, and reflected on this support, their overall student experience, and strategies to enhance student success. Students identified a range of challenges that they experienced across an academic year (personal circumstances, lack of preparedness for university study, timely access to support, course/programme difficulties) and what worked well for them (academic advisor, University support services, growing confidence in self as competent student, peer support). A range of strategies for enhancing student success were identified by students, namely consistency across teaching design and delivery, transparency of delivery modes, mandatory orientation, access to a dedicated academic advisor, and increased peer connectedness. The applicability and viability of the proposed strategies within current higher education settings are explored.     

Teacher-chameleons: the glue in the alignment of teacher practices and learning in policy

This article investigates how learning outcomes, a concept inspired by an Anglo-Saxon curriculum approach, are expressed in policy documents, with an emphasis on expectations articulated to teachers. Developments in education policy for the last two decades reflect a widespread expansion of learning outcome orientation in curricula and assessment in most of the modern world. These developments have led to changes in how education is governed and practised, and this makes it necessary to form critical concepts to understand how curricula are formed and functioned today. The research questions of the study are: How is learning outcome-oriented policy defined in key policy documents and what are the implications of these policies for the teaching profession? The topic is investigated through a document content analysis of key policy documents. A complex picture of teachers emerges in which they are to be both controlled and autonomous. The study also identifies a strong belief in ‘alignment between teachers’ competences and practices and students’ life opportunities. The findings indicate that the policies move back and forth between different parameters for describing teachers and teaching, and as such, teachers must be able to adapt as chameleons in the context of each policy.     

Attributions and discipline history as predictors of child abuse potential and future discipline practices

OBJECTIVES: We attempted to identify factors that can be applied in primary and secondary prevention programs and expand the understanding of why those who were not abused may engage in abusive behavior. The purpose of this research was to explore how young adults' attributions of whether they deserved their childhood discipline, as well as their abuse history, relate to physical child abuse potential and their discipline plans for their future children. METHOD: A sample of 140 non-parent college students were asked to report on their discipline history, perceptions of that discipline, child abuse potential, and expected discipline practices. An age range of 18-20 was targeted for multiple reasons, including the suitability of these young adults for primary and secondary prevention programs. RESULTS: Analyses revealed that both physical child abuse potential and future discipline practices were independently predicted by respondents' belief that they deserved their discipline in conjunction with the harshness of their childhood discipline. DISCUSSION: These results suggest that the attributions of self-blame held by young adults about their discipline experiences are significant for increasing physical abuse potential regardless of whether the individual reports a history of abuse.     

What's Wrong with the 'Golden Rule'? Conundrums of Conducting Ethical Research in Cyberspace

Three key values for ethical cyberspace research practices are evident in recent discussions: (1) protect the subjects from harm as a result of the research fieldwork and the research practices; (2) produce good social science research; and (3) do not unnecessarily perturb the phenomena studied. Much of the argumentation aims to negotiate the ethical conflicts that often emerge between these goals. Bakhtin argues that one can only strive for a bottom-up ethical wisdom built upon concrete examples, and disputes the possibility that rigid top-down application of universal rules constitutes ethical action. His perspective has key implications for ethical research practices. I illustrate this perspective at work through my recent fieldwork and writing practices in a virtual community. Research ethics for cyberspace are like research ethics for any other site. They should be situated, dialogic agreements that develop over time between researchers and the participants of the research study. It is unlikely that such research ethics can be abstractly codified, because there will often be differences between research sites, the situations of participants, and researcher goals. Researchers can, however, develop ethical wisdom that comes from experience with many configurations of research in cyberspace, and report on the conditions that grounded their ethical choices, and the results that emerged from their work in the site. These results will often be improved by feedback from participants about their experiences with the fieldwork and the effects of publication.     

Which Lessons Are Learned? Best Practices and World Bank Rural Telecommunications Policy

The World Bank has been the largest multilateral source of rural telecommunications financing in developing countries since the mid-1960s. This article analyzes World Bank-sponsored studies of rural telecommunications initiatives in Chile, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Malaysia to identify which lessons the bank draws from them and recommends for other countries. The World Bank's preference for a “best practice” approach in its research leads it to attribute successes and failures to a narrow scope of factors that tend to agree with its economic policy priorities. Instead, rural telecommunications practices should be analyzed within their broader socio-institutional and cultural contexts in order to enable cross-situational applications, and a broad array of stakeholders should be involved in shaping the lessons learned.     

What’s in a Name? A Critical Literacy and Functional Linguistic Analysis of Immigrant Acculturation in Contemporary Picture Books

This article investigates how immigrant children’s acculturation experiences are characterized through the symbolic literary feature of name in children’s literature and how the language of the text functions to communicate these messages. We draw on the theoretical frameworks of Critical Literacy (CL) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to inform our analysis, showcasing how the connection and interrelation of these theories maximizes the potential for meaning-making. Texts were examined to reveal dominant themes around acculturation communicated through the use of protagonists’ names and trends in the language used to construct young readers’ understandings. Findings indicate that the construct of a name is a key theme in the literature used to forge a cultural identity for immigrant children, generate cultural conflict, and stimulate others’ judgment.     

The Early Construction of Spatial Attention: Culture,Space, and Gesture in Parent–Child Interactions

American and Israeli toddler–caregiver dyads (mean age of toddler = 26 months) were presented with naturalistic tasks in which they must watch a short video (N = 97) or concoct a visual story together (N = 66). English‐speaking American caregivers were more likely to use left to right spatial structuring than right to left, especially for well‐ordered letters and numbers. Hebrew‐speaking Israeli parents were more likely than Americans to use right to left spatial structuring, especially for letters. When constructing a pictorial narrative for their children, Americans were more likely to place pictures from left to right than Israelis. These spatial structure biases exhibited by caregivers are a potential route for the development of spatial biases in early childhood, before children have developed automatic reading and writing habits.