Lifelong learning among older professionals: How competence strategies and perceptions of professional learning affect pastors’ participation

One of the challenges of keeping older employees up to date and ensuring their continued involvement in the workplace is to provide them with relevant learning opportunities. This article aims to understand the usefulness of the concept of LLL for a group of older employees (50+). This is done using interviews and a document study on the Church of Norway (CofN) to understand how the concept of LLL is interpreted and acted upon by employers and older pastors. We assume that changes occurring outside the Church provoke the need for new knowledge and new ways of working. We ask how these older professionals perceive their learning opportunities and try to ascertain how the concept of LLL is helping them to tackle the ongoing changes. The article adds to the research on the interplay between competence strategies of employers and attitudes of older employees in a well‐established profession. Results of our study show that new strategies open up for greater participation. However, older pastors’ greatest motivation for learning seems to be their ordination vows, which include a commitment to continued learning through personal studies. This influences the kind of activities in which they participate, their expectations concerning the recognition of their learning and their views on the Church as a learning organisation. We conclude that older pastors do benefit from LLL initiatives in the workplace, but they also benefit from belonging to a profession with a conscious commitment to learning.     

Fostering self-efficacy and self-regulation in higher education: a matter of autonomy support or academic motivation?

ABSTRACT

By implementing student-centred learning environments, higher education institutions aim to foster student self-efficacy and self-regulation. Previous research that focuses on how students perceive these learning environments usually does not take the differential impact of students’ study motivation into account. However, the type of motivation might influence how students perceive their learning environment. To this end, this study investigates the relationship between students’ perceived autonomy support in student-centred learning environments and self-regulation and self-efficacy by taking study motivation into account. The results indicate that autonomy-supportive teacher behaviour enhances self-efficacy for students who are autonomously motivated. Amotivated students might need other than autonomy-supportive teacher behaviour to develop self-efficacy. Self-regulation seems to play a less distinct role. Overall, when examining the effects of autonomy-supportive teaching in higher education, the quality and quantity of students’ motivation has a role to play, an aspect which is important to consider in future research and practice.     

Supporting university content specialists in providing effective professional development: the educative role of evaluation

Evaluation of professional development (PD) has traditionally been composed of summative and formative feedback, and has focused on assessing the extent to which the PD impacts participating teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and practices. This study establishes an additional purpose for PD evaluation – as educative opportunities for professional developers, particularly for PD providers who are university-level content specialists (e.g. scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, engineers). Through analysis of data collected as state-wide evaluators for one US Midwest state’s Improving Teacher Quality Grant PD programs, and utilizing an analysis methodology which we term ‘recommendation traces,’ we examine formative evaluation recommendations that we made to four different PD projects over three years. Findings from this study shed light on how content specialists who work in PD projects can learn about effective PD through project evaluation efforts.     

Marginalized Youth, Delinquency, and Education: The Need for Critical-Interpretive Research

There is a lack of critical, interpretive research on marginalized youths' schooling experiences. There is a significant need for research that furthers theoretical and empirical understanding of how these youths experience school. I posit that a specific type of critical, interpretive research is required in order to understand and improve the educational experiences of marginalized youths. This paper argues that the vast majority of current delinquency and education research, while providing important and useful information, is limited by its adherence to the positivist paradigm and quantitative methods. I suggest that researchers must critically investigate schooling objectives and processes to explore how the educational system may be implicated in reproducing marginalized youths' academic failure and delinquency. Such critical research would investigate how the substantive content and processes of schools correspond with students' everyday lives and values. Such an approach will enable us to learn how to make better schools that serve marginalized youths and create more effective learning environments.     

What Is Needed,What Is Valued: Trans Students’ Perspectives on Trans-Inclusive Policies and Practices in Higher Education

ABSTRACT

This mixed-methods study of 507 trans and gender-nonconforming students (75% undergraduate, 25% graduate) aimed to understand (a) what institutional factors are associated with the presence of more trans-inclusive policies/supports, (b) what trans-inclusive policies/supports are viewed as important by different groups of trans students, and (c) how the presence of such policies/supports is related to trans students’ sense of belonging on campus and their perception of campus climate. Results indicated that religiously affiliated institutions and two-year institutions tend to lag behind in their inclusivity of trans students. Gender-inclusive restrooms, nondiscrimination policies that are inclusive of gender identity, and the ability to change one’s name on campus records without legal name change were among the supports that students valued most. Students articulated many concrete suggestions for institutions seeking to be more inclusive of their trans students. The known presence of trans-inclusive policies/supports was related to a greater sense of belonging and more positive perceptions of campus climate. These findings provide consultants and practitioners with guidance in identifying and promoting systems-level changes needed to support trans students.     

Relationships among rapid digit naming, phonological processing, motor automaticity, and speech perception in poor, average, and good readers and spellers

In this article, we explore the relationship between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and other cognitive processes among below-average, average, and above-average readers and spellers. Nonsense word reading, phonological awareness, RAN, automaticity of balance, speech perception, and verbal short-term and working memory were measured. Factor analysis revealed a 3-component structure. The first component included phonological processing tasks, RAN, and motor balance. The second component included verbal short-term and working memory tasks. Speech perception loaded strongly as a third component, associated negatively with RAN. The phonological processing tests correlated most strongly with reading ability and uniquely discriminated average from below- and above-average readers in terms of word reading, reading comprehension, and spelling. On word reading, comprehension, and spelling, RAN discriminated only the below-average group from the average performers. Verbal memory, as assessed by word list recall, additionally discriminated the below-average group from the average group on spelling performance. Motor balance and speech perception did not discriminate average from above- or below-average performers. In regression analyses, phonological processing measures predicted word reading and comprehension, and both phonological processing and RAN predicted spelling.     

Asking students their opinions of the learning environment: an empirical analysis of elementary classroom climate

There is currently a lack of research into classroom climate as perceived by the students themselves. This article presents a new classroom climate evaluation instrument which is designed to gauge student perceptions of their own level of engagement in academic activities, their relationships with peers, and the level of support they feel from their teachers. The Classroom Climate Index was pilot tested with a group of 105 elementary students aged 8–12. The pilot data were factor analysed, and the instrument was refined accordingly. Following the pilot test, the refined instrument was next administered to a larger sample of 2340 elementary students. Data from the comprehensive study were subjected to factor and reliability analyses, the results of which support the use of the Classroom Climate Index in measuring student engagement, supportive teacher behaviour, and collegial support from the student perspective.     

A Best Practice Modular Design of a Hybrid Course Delivery Structure for an Executive Education Program

This article highlights a best practice approach that showcases the highly successful deployment of a hybrid course delivery structure for an Operations core course in an Executive MBA Program. A key design element of the approach was the modular design of both the course itself and the learning materials. While other hybrid deployments may stress the importance of modular design, our deployment demonstrates how content can be easily mixed and matched into shorter courses on select topics. In particular, through the migration of select content online and the use of face‐to‐face class time for discussion and active‐learning experiences, we were able to dramatically reduce face‐to‐face student seat time, positively increase the student experience, and facilitate dramatic improvement in student academic achievement.