Attachment Predicts College Students’ Knowledge,Attitudes, and Skills for Working With Infants,Toddlers, and Families

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: Adults’ attitudes about attachment relationships are central to how they perceive and respond to children. However, little is known about how attachment styles are related to teachers’ attitudes toward and interactions with infants and toddlers. From a survey of 207 students taking early childhood (EC) courses at 4 U.S. universities, we report relations among students’ attachment styles and their (a) career goals, (b) attitudes about caring for and educating infants and young children, and (c) interaction skills for responding in developmentally supportive ways. Overall, attachment security was positively associated with career goals focused on working with younger children, knowledge about infant/toddler development, attitudes that acknowledge the importance of adult support in children’s development, and developmentally supportive interaction skills. Students who scored high on attachment fearfulness minimized the importance of adults in children’s lives, minimized the importance of the early years for later learning, and endorsed strict and controlling forms of child guidance. Practice or Policy: A conceptual mediation model linking a path from attachment to caregiving skill through knowledge and attitudes is articulated. We propose a person-centered pedagogy for infant/toddler professional preparation that provides opportunities for reflection on one’s own attachment and its effects on work with young children.     

Exploring perceived support of postgraduate medical science research students

There is still much to learn about the support required by postgraduate research students, across academic disciplines, to facilitate successful completion of a research degree. The primary aim of this study was to explore postgraduate medical science research students’ perceptions of academic and mentoring support at different stages during their degree programme. A second aim was to explore the feasibility and acceptability of peer mentoring as a strategy to enhance student support in this population. A mixed method study design was used. Students first completed an online questionnaire, which was then supplemented with focus group discussion to explore emergent findings in greater depth. The main results indicated that the nature and quality of academic supervision support have a significant influence on research student training and development. ‘Functional’ and ‘relationship development’ concepts of supervisory styles were highlighted as important aspects to perceived support in this research population. The main facilitators to enhance academic support were effective communication, project planning and timely feedback. There was a high degree of acceptability for a peer mentoring programme as a complementary approach to enhance student support. Peer mentoring psychosocial functions such as friendship, counselling and career guidance were considered potentially beneficial to enhancing student support. Students also discussed peer coaching as central to their learning and research skill development. This work is a useful starting point to explore perceptions of research student support in the target population. Further work is required to develop strategies to enhance student support in academic practice.     

Large-scale curriculum change in a system of ten indonesian medical schools — A case study of educational innovation

This article reviews the literature on educational innovation and change, and emphasises factors which are held to facilitate rapid change. The remainder of the paper presents a detailed case history o1 educational innovation in 10 Indonesian medical schools, involvingN=260 academic departments. Within a 3-year period three-quarters of these departments have developed new curricula haled on sets of explicit instructional objectives, and most of these departments now indicate they are using these sets of objectives both for their teaching and for assessing students' competence. This case history describes how this task was approached, provides a synoptic picture of the results which have been obtained: then attempts to provide an overall account o1 those factors which assisted these changes to take place. It is contended that this case history of change within a system of established medical schools clarifies selected aspects of the theoretical literature on educational innovation and diffusion, on the planning of effective programmes of staff development, and provides planners with sonic practical guidelines for programme development and evaluation.     

Facilitating agency: the change laboratory as an intervention for collaborative sustainable development in higher education

To cope with the rapidly changing higher education climate, teachers need agency to act proactively in initiating and steering changes in practice. This paper describes an academic development activity in the form of a Change Laboratory, an intervention method based on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, to facilitate agency among teachers. The results of the study indicate that transformative agency emerges when teachers are given the opportunity to analyse, envision, and redesign their practice collaboratively. This has implications for academic development, suggesting that activities facilitating discussion, analysis, and criticism of current practices are needed to support the development of agency.     

Learning and Earning: Measuring 'Rates of Return' Among Mature Graduates from Part-time Distance Courses

This paper develops a method for tracking changes in the earnings of Open University graduates and for examining the extent to which such changes differ from national trends. The preliminary findings suggest that Open University graduates do indeed achieve relative financial gains and some attempts are made to identify where these increases are most commonly found.     

Exam Scams and Classroom Flimflams: Urban Legends as an Alternative Lens for Viewing the College Classroom Experience

Campus-based urban legends have the potential to convey and construct student culture in higher education. Basic qualitative and humanistic research methods were used to collect, analyze, and interpret legends related to the academic experience of collegiate life.

The social value of anonymity on campus: a study of the decline of Yik Yak

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the social value of anonymity in online university student communities, through the presentation of research which tracked the final year of life of the social media application Yik Yak. Yik Yak was an anonymous, geosocial mobile application launched in 2013 which, at its peak in 2014, was used by around two million students in the US and UK. The research we report here is significant as a mixed method study tracing the final year of the life of this app in a large UK university between 2016 and 2017. The paper uses computational and ethnographic methods to understand what might be at stake in the loss of anonymity within university student communities in a datafied society. Countering the most common argument made against online anonymity – its association with hate speech and victimisation – the paper draws on recent conceptual work on the social value of anonymity to argue that anonymity online in this context had significant value for the communities that use it. This study of a now-lost social network constitutes a valuable portrait by which we might better understand our current predicament in relation to anonymity, its perceived value and its growing impossibility.     

Effective compiler error message enhancement for novice programming students

Programming is an essential skill that many computing students are expected to master. However, programming can be difficult to learn. Successfully interpreting compiler error messages (CEMs) is crucial for correcting errors and progressing toward success in programming. Yet these messages are often difficult to understand and pose a barrier to progress for many novices, with struggling students often exhibiting high frequencies of errors, particularly repeated errors. This paper presents a control/intervention study on the effectiveness of enhancing Java CEMs. Results show that the intervention group experienced reductions in the number of overall errors, errors per student, and several repeated error metrics. These results are important as the effectiveness of CEM enhancement has been recently debated. Further, generalizing these results should be possible at least in part, as the control group is shown to be comparable to those in several studies using Java and other languages.     

Parenting priorities and pressures: furthering understanding of ‘concerted cultivation’

This paper re-examines the purposes of a planned and intentional parenting style – ‘concerted cultivation’ – for different middle-class groups, highlighting that social class fraction, ethnicity, and also individual family disposition, guides understandings of the purposes of enrolling children in particular enrichment activities. We examine how parents and their children engage in extra-curricular activities for instrumental reasons with a view to securing skills, qualities and distinction for the future. Additionally, however, enrichment activities are understood as offering present-day values such as enjoyment, social bonding and purposeful activity. The paper also highlights that current policy and broader commercial discourses call for the increased responsibilisation and intensification of parenting, which means that ‘good’ parents are required to ‘buy into’ extra-curricular activities for their children, with concomitant implications for those whose access to activities is limited by economic circumstance.