Faculty training: an unavoidable requirement for approaching more inclusive university classrooms

Adequate policies for faculty training in diversity continue to be pending on the agendas of many universities. This paper presents the recommendations of 44 university students with disabilities not only for adequate faculty training, but also on informing them on both matters of the disability itself and how to respond to the needs derived from it. The data analyzed come from research funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competiveness ‘University Barriers and Aids Identified by Students with Disabilities’, which has been underway since 2011. A biographical-narrative methodology was used. The university life histories of the students were compiled by making use of in-depth interviews, lifelines and photographs. The conclusions of the study discuss the main results along with other previous studies, and recommendations are made so universities can provide training plans leading to inclusive education and learning.     

Relevance of the SFU ReviewSP-NEG corpus annotated with the scope of negation for supervised polarity classification in Spanish

Up to now, negation is a challenging problem in the context of Sentiment Analysis. The study of negation implies the correct identification of negation markers, the scope and the interpretation of how negation affects the words that are within it, that is, whether it modifies their meaning or not and if so, whether it reverses, reduces or increments their polarity value. In addition, if we are interested in managing reviews in languages other than English, the issue becomes even more problematic due to the lack of resources. The present work shows the validity of the SFU Review_SP-NEG corpus, which we annotated at negation level, for training supervised polarity classification systems in Spanish. The assessment has involved the comparison of different supervised models. The results achieved show the validity of the corpus and allow us to state that the annotation of how negation affects the words that are within its scope is important. Therefore, we propose to add a new phase to tackle negation in polarity classification systems (phase iii): i) identification of negation cues, ii) determination of the scope of negation, iii) identification of how negation affects the words that are within its scope, and iv) polarity classification taking into account negation.     

The Cost of the Veil: Visual Communication Impacts of Hijab on News Judgments

Using disposition theory as a framework, this 2 (headscarf vs. no headscarf) by 2 (US citizen vs. refugee) experiment sought to elucidate the impact of visual and verbal cues in mediated messages on conclusions drawn from a television news package about a woman accused of consorting with a known terrorist group in the US, in terms of parochial empathy for and perceived innocence of the woman. Parochial empathy measures the difference between ingroup and outgroup empathy; higher levels indicate ingroup empathy is greater than outgroup empathy, meaning the individual’s empathy is very narrow in scope or “parochial.” Political identity was a measured independent variable. The data supported a model in which political identity was a significant moderator of the headscarf’s effect on parochial empathy, and that parochial empathy mediated the relationship between the manipulated and measured predictor variables on perceived innocence. Details of the relationships among variables are reported and the implications for theory and journalism practice are discussed.     

A critical evaluation of the usefulness of a coding scheme to categorise levels of reflective thinking

The use of reflective learning journals to encourage higher order learning outcomes is a growing area in higher education research and practice. However, without a unified and clear definition of reflection, identifying and assessing reflection is problematic for educators. In an attempt to address this issue, in 1999 Kember and colleagues devised a coding scheme based on the work of Mezirow, to identify and assess levels of reflective thinking in students' written journals. We evaluated the usefulness of this coding scheme in a business education context. Findings revealed that the scheme was useful in identifying categories of reflective thinking. Inter‐coder agreement was 0.802 which is satisfactory. On average, 65% of the journal content was coded as non‐reflection and 35% as reflection. A further outcome of the research was to refine the coding scheme and to provide suggestions for its application in teaching practice.     

What do Pre-Service Teachers See as Their Roles in Promoting Positive Social Environments? “I see Myself as a Facilitator of Acceptance”

Teacher educators describe a developmental process they use for preparing pre-service teachers to support preschool-age children with and without disabilities in becoming socially competent. Social competence is crucial in developing the “whole” child and may actually foster other areas of development. Using qualitative data gathered from multiple classes over several years, the authors explain ways they guide future teachers in learning how to provide positive social environments. They describe their observations of changes in students’ beliefs about their roles and responsibilities, which appear to be influenced by the guided experiences they have provided. Activities implemented in early childhood and early childhood special education courses are shared, as well as student work samples that illustrate developing awareness and understanding.     

Every Voice Matters: The Importance of Advocacy

Over the years parents, professionals, and politicians have come together to advocate on behalf of children’s rights. Advocacy can occur individually, collectively, or a combination of both. Although some advocacy efforts are more successful than others, it is the process of the advocacy and voices behind it that matter most. In this guest editorial, the history of two major advocacy organizations and ideas for becoming an advocate are discussed.     

Developing citizen leaders through action learning

This is an account of a programme utilizing the application of action learning to the development of capacities of citizens. The Citizen Leadership for Democratic Governance is designed to equip citizens with the skills to get involved and handle the difficult tasks of governance in their communities in South Africa. After a history of apartheid there is recognition of the need to equip citizens to more effectively respond to the challenges of creating and sustaining democracy. The programme has proven to be highly successful in achieving the aims. The programme design involved an emphasis on reflection, experimental learning, problem solving and action through learning sets.     

Learning and living pedagogies of the home: The mestiza consciousness of Chicana students

This article focuses on how Chicana college students draw from what they learn in their homes and how living a mestiza consciousness may be one way by which they have navigated their way around educational obstacles and into college. More specifically, Delgado Bernal draws on the work of Anzaldua (1987) to define the concept of a mestiza consciousness as the way a student balances, negotiates, and draws from her biculturalism, bilingualism, commitment to communities, and spiritualities in relationship to her education. Using this concept, Delgado Bernal offer a unique way to understand and analyze Chicana's educational experiences. Her analysis of life history and focus-group interviews indicates that the communication, practices, and learning that occur in the home and community - pedagogies of the home - often serve as a cultural knowledge base that helps students survive and succeed within an educational system that often excludes and silences them.