A Systemic Approach to Sustainable Environmental Education

Efforts to introduce environmental education can be viewed as a process of educational change. This paper questions whether efforts to introduce environmental education in the last 10‐20 years have given lasting and widespread results (are sustainable) and suggests that this work could be made more sustainable by following a systemic approach to changing the institutional framework for environmental education. Such an approach would focus on placing responsibility for environmental education with the educational authorities; curriculum revision; competence; building and development of networks of intersectoral cooperation with institutions outside the school. The environmental education strategy developed by the Norwegian Education Ministry is presented and discussed as an example of a systemic approach.     

Classroom contextual effects of race on children's peer nominations

Black children generally receive poorer sociometric nominations compared with Whites. This effect is not fully understood because Black children rarely hold a classroom majority and teachers' race is rarely investigated. Research from a person-environment perspective suggests that the effects of children's race depend on the racial composition of the classroom and society's racial attitudes. Sociometric nominations were obtained from 1,268 5th graders, between 9 and 11 years old (53% Black), across 57 classrooms (3-95% Black students). Half of the teachers were Black. The results indicated that ratings of Black children were more influenced by the racial context of classrooms than were ratings of White children. The implications of this study are discussed in relation to group dynamics and racial discrimination.     

Web tutorials: bibliographic instruction in a new medium

Libraries are adding electronic resources of all kinds at an increasing pace to provide service to users outside the library and around the world. To meet this new demand, libraries are turning more and more to the use of online tutorials as a valuable means of providing instruction on how to access and use important resources. This article describes the Health Sciences Library and Biocommunications Center's work and experiences while creating tutorials, the ideas used, and ways the work was evaluated.     

Ecological influences on teachers’ well-being and “fitness”

The complex and ever-changing nature of teachers’ work challenges their well-being. Teacher well-being and “fitness” includes versatility, mental strength, and commitment to promote effective teaching and learning. In framing this notion, we seek to understand the ecological influences impacting on teacher well-being and “fitness” in the twenty-first century. Drawing on the ecological theory of Bronfenbrenner, this interpretive qualitative study explored the perceptions of pre-service teachers in relation to their teacher well-being and “fitness.” Data were collected from a teacher well-being survey completed by 120 final-year undergraduate pre-service teachers. The survey shed light on themes at four levels: the microsystem (individual and collective capacities); mesosystem (interrelationships between contexts); exosystem (organisational); and macrosystem (societal and legislative influences), compounded by the influence of time at the chronosystem level. These ecological influences were perceived to impact on teacher well-being and ability to be “fit” for sustained performance.     

Concept of Care,Caring Expectations,and Caring Frustrations of the Elderly Suffering from Chronic Illness

While it is true that elderly concepts of care and caring expectations have been ascertained in previous literatures, little is known about how the elderly population views caring frustrations—particularly that of the Filipino elderly. This study purports to surface the lebenswelt of healthcare expectations and frustrations based on the repondents’ concept of care. A three-part instrument consisting of robotfoto, picture prompts, and unstructured interviews was used to elicit pertinent data. Through the use of dendrogram, field texts were phenomenologically reduced to emerge conceptual clusters. On the whole, this study yielded interesting conceptualizations which include the Clock of Care, the Clock of Caring Expectations and the Clock of Caring Frustrations. The emerged meanings in this study create a picture of care as a driving force in the progression of care expectations and frustrations. This eidetic background enables healthcare providers to offer care that is both timely and relevant to their client's subjective illness experience.     

Assessing IT Educational Pathways that Support Rural Broadband: Strategies for Aligning IT Curricula,Policy, and Employer Needs

ABSTRACT

In this National Science Foundation Advanced Technician Education program (NSF ATE) project, we aimed to explore factors that would strengthen the rural IT employee workforce and improve educational support related to broadband, telecommunications, and networks in rural settings. Using multiple methods to triangulate rural IT program curricula content with employers’ perceptions and new professionals’ on-the-job experiences, we gained an understanding of common general and technical competencies, perceived rural IT technician workforce readiness, and strategies to bring educational experiences in alignment with professional performance. We also offer findings concerning alignment of technician pathways and recommendations for how to transfer identified competencies to other similar rural markets, along with examples of extensions of this work for exploring and assessing IT pathways.