How do children who understand mixed emotion represent them in freehand drawings of themselves and others?

This research is the first to assess children’s representation of mixed emotion using a freehand drawing task. Two hundred and forty-one 5–11-year olds completed a drawing and a colour preference task. Children heard a condition appropriate vignette about themselves or a protagonist designed to evoke mixed emotion, and were asked to draw the self or the protagonist experiencing neutral, happy and sad affect. Children who reported mixed emotions after the story also drew themselves or the protagonist experiencing mixed emotion. For mixed emotion, children used red, green and blue more in drawings of the protagonist, and yellow more in drawings of the self. Interestingly, strategies for mixed emotion drawings were similar to those used for happy drawings; more specifically, in drawings of the self, children were particularly more likely to use smiles (for happy and sad drawings) and fewer frowns. Findings are discussed in relation to self-presentational behaviour.     

The role of hybrid learning spaces in enhancing higher education students’ employability

Graduate employment rates and self-reported employability are increasingly a feature of higher education funding measures. However, graduate outcomes do not denote the whole learning experience of the student nor is the student experience reducible to a single statistic. This paper discusses a design-centric approach to employability development which was enacted within a hybrid learning space. The study engaged 52 final-year speech pathology students, their lecturer, the lead researcher and a career practitioner (advisor) at an Australian university. Students first created personalized employability profiles using an established online self-reflection tool. The online tool produced a personalized report and enabled students to access developmental resources relating to employability and student success. The project team used anonymized student data to transform a previously generic “careers” workshop into a targeted workshop in which students explored individual and cohort findings and participated in developmental activities informed by the data. The initiative’s contribution to learning space research is in its composition as a hybrid learning space in which educators and students engaged as learners and developers of their online learning spaces, and educators collaborated to analyze student data and inform learning and teaching enhancements within the same study period. It is anticipated that the data from subsequent years will inform the curricular review, particularly if subsequent student cohorts express similar concerns. Implications for higher education policy and practice are discussed.