Infusing Mentoring and Technology within Graduate Courses: Reflections in practice

This article provides an overview of relevant connections that can be used to strengthen an instructor's mentoring abilities, specifically those connections between adult development, technological interaction elements, use of course management software, and corresponding mentoring practices. From a context supported by literature within adult development and computer-mediated communication, the authors examined a series of courses at a large university and how mentoring and instruction were infused. In this article, mentoring refers to a collective process that guides and facilitates a learner's educational growth. The unique nature of adult learners and their educational needs emphasises the need for a facilitative rather than a didactic approach in technology-supported courses. Various facets of interactions and the concept of transactional distance provide an additional framework from which to examine professional practice. The authors recommend further refinement and development of the mentoring practices that infuse emerging technologies and facilitate the teaching and learning process.     

Reducing Task-related Variance in Performance Assessment Using Concept Maps

Task-related variance causes scores from performance assessments not to be generalizable and thus inappropriate for high stakes use. It is possible that task-related variance is due, in part, to students’ inability to transfer their knowledge consistently from one assessment task to another. Therefore, concept-mapping, a cognitive tool, might be useful to aid this transfer. This study examines the effects of concept maps on the task-related variance components of Political Science performance assessments. On three quizzes, some students used concept maps while writing two essays, while other students did not. The task variance components remained unchanged across groups, but the person main effect components increased and the task-by-person interaction components decreased for those using concept maps. Also, the scores from the concept mapping groups had higher generalizability coefficients than for those who did not use a concept map.     

The Aesthetics of the Internet in St. Petersburg: Why Metaphor Matters

This article proposes that the metaphors with which people imagine the Internet are more central to its political constitution than might at first be supposed. Instead of focusing on discourses of whether the Internet is a progressive force, a capitalist or anticapitalist space, digital commons or artifact of controlled interests, this article shows that metaphors of social relations themselves frame the politicization of the Internet. The way social actors are conceptualized in turn informs the senses in which a technology could be considered an object of political constitution, and the senses in which policy is a relevant mode of social engagement. An ethnographic account of uses of the Internet in St. Petersburg, Russia is presented with a view to framing Western metaphors of sociality.     

Connect,build, develop: Forming effective liaison strategies through peer mentoring and partnership

Many studies show that e-book awareness and usage is growing. Using vendor-supplied usage statistics for business and economics e-books, the authors sought to determine if a few titles accounted for a large percentage of usage. If proven, the authors hoped to be able to develop collections strategies to maximize e-book usage. Focusing on three providers, SpringerLink, NetLibrary, and eBrary, results showed that annually, a small number of titles accounted for a large percentage of usage. However, over the collection's lifetime, a higher percentage of titles were used. A small collection of Patron Driven Acquisition eAudio books were also examined.     

The golden lady: the storied life of a multilingual teacher and author of supplemental reading materials in a marginalized South African language

Personal narratives can be powerful venues for understanding human experiences. In this paper, we tell the story of Lutanyani, a Black South African multilingual teacher and author of supplemental reading materials in a marginalized South African language. Through various word images, we convey the role of language, in particular written language, in Lutanyani’s life. For Lutanyani, writing serves as ‘a healing process’ in two ways: (1) as a linguistically empowering venue that affirms and shifts his linguistic identity from outsider to insider, and (2) as a backward‐ and forward‐looking means to reconcile his past and reconstruct a message of hope for intermediate‐grade students throughout South Africa. This study has implications for classroom practices in the USA as well as development work in international settings.     

“All of Her Changes Have Made Me Think About My Changes”: Fan Readings of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Alice Series

This essay follows the insights of reader response theory to examine how readers of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Alice McKinley series negotiate textual meaning and construct particular identities in relation to the series’ controversial content. Ranking second on the American Library Association’s top one hundred list of banned and challenged books for 2000–2009, and criticized by conservative groups and feminist scholars alike, the Alice series may be understood as belonging to a widely-denigrated genre of relational reading material largely consumed by girls. The study analyzes over 2 years of reader posts to the Offical Alice Blog, the major fan website to the series, to argue that reading Alice is a means by which fans shape their social and cultural identities in sometimes contradictory ways. While Alice fans display an uncritical adoption of some traditional beliefs around gender and sexuality in their reading of the series, their discussion simultaneously reveals how their recognition of the series as transgressive and liberating in its presentation of matters related to female adolescent identity enables readers to construct particular identities for themselves as readers, teens, and young women that are formed in opposition to some conservative and traditional ideologies. Moreover, in their engagement with the series’ progressive sexual politics fans move closer to claiming agency as sexual subjects.     

Education research Australia: a changing ecology of knowledge and practice

Processes of national research assessment, such as Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) are a type of audit technology that confronts and steers established institutional identities and traditions. This nexus between policy and practice drives boundary work that diffracts prevailing policy logics, organisational practices, and habits of mind. We use this notion of ‘boundary work’ as an analytical lens for understanding the nature and effects of ERA in the Australian educational research space. This paper explains the methodology that informed the AARE–ACDE research reported in Strategic Capacity Building for Australian Educational Research. It documents the policy logic of ERA and the way it cuts across the established ecology of educational research, revealing social and symbolic work that is remaking the boundaries of educational research. We report on the historical trajectory of Australian educational research, the way ERA codes research outputs, and how educational researchers are repositioning in this shifting research space. We argue that there are specific loci of boundary work where capacity building in Australian educational research can make a difference to future educational knowledge building.     

Who is conducting educational research in Australia and how can their work be supported?

Educational research has long been the subject of lively and agitated debate, not least because of its diversity. Ranging in scope from academic development and broad-scale policy research through to student engagement and discipline-specific research, it includes methods of traditional academic inquiry and investigations and also less traditional modes of research. However, the topography of Australian educational research and the characteristics of the people who undertake this complex body of work are currently unclear. This paper explores some of the complexities of the Australian research community, drawing on the findings of a national online survey of academics who identified as researching in the field of education from within and outside education schools and faculties. The survey attracted 504 responses from 38 of Australia’s 39 universities, and just over two-thirds of respondents were located in a school or faculty of education. We draw on the results to answer the questions of who is undertaking educational research and who how they might be supported. We utilise a conceptual model that ‘segments’ the educational research workforce represented by the survey respondents, and we conclude by indicating strategies that might be utilised to address research barriers indicated by educational researchers.