Raising the Next Generation

Amy Morris Homans had a vision that graduates of the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics and Wellesley College would make physical education a well-respected profession. The professional preparation received by her students equipped them to be educators, administrators, and future leaders of physical education. The purpose of this essay is to examine the socialization process that doctoral students in kinesiology experience as they prepare for their roles as future faculty in higher education. New faculty members quickly discover that they must be more productive than their predecessors, and they must possess broader talents to meet the societal expectations placed on university faculty. Three simultaneous socialization processes will be discussed: the role of the graduate student, the roles and way of life of faculty in higher education, and into the discipline. How can doctoral faculty better prepare future faculty to meet the expectations of the tenure and promotion process? Strategies by which the doctoral experience may be reformed to improve doctoral socialization are provided.     

Grounding participatory action research in rural Colombia: a demonstration study on youth financial inclusion

ABSTRACT

Since the new millennium, the issue of financial inclusion of young people has increasingly gained recognition, especially in relation to those living in deprived circumstances. Financial inclusion can be promoted through education that specifically aims for the strengthening of young persons’ financial capabilities. In 2013, a participatory action research project was started in a rural region of Colombia to improve the research capacity of a local university through the development and implementation of a demonstration project on the financial inclusion of young people. University teachers, students and employees of a financial cooperative were trained in conducting qualitative methods with a specific aim of being responsive to the life stories of their interviewees. This paper shares the experiences from an international team of educational scholars who aim for the democratisation of research capacity and the dissemination of localised knowledge. This is done by working closely together with stakeholders and ultimately giving a voice to youth employed in the informal economy as they are usually the ones being most deprived from access to financial services.     

Learning intercultural communication through group work oriented to the world beyond the classroom

Competence in intercultural communication has become a necessity for functioning effectively in our increasingly globalised and multicultural society. This study reports the use of a group project to enhance students’ learning of intercultural communication. Participants were from a large undergraduate class in an Australian university. The aim of the course is to encourage students to develop knowledge of intercultural communication by orienting themselves to the world beyond the classroom, and by learning from each other’s experiences and perspectives. In a group project assignment, students used the knowledge and skills gained in class to resolve practical problems that they encountered in intercultural interactions outside the classroom. This paper focused on students’ experience of working in groups, and links between this experience and performance on the group project. Our study confirms previous research that demonstrates active engagement in group work can enhance learning outcomes. It also goes further in showing that groups that more highly rated their learning of intercultural communication through the group work experience obtained higher grades on the project.     

Patients' perspectives on the role of prepared childbirth education in decision making regarding elective labor induction

The purpose of our study was to explore reasons why nulliparous women chose to have an elective labor induction and to identify the influence of prepared childbirth classes on their decision. The study included 1,349 nulliparous women at term who participated in a survey regarding their choices for childbirth, their attendance at prepared childbirth classes, and their experience with labor and birth. Sixty-three percent of women who attended childbirth classes and did not have elective induction reported that classes provided helpful information to assist in their decision-making process. Study results suggest attendance at prepared childbirth classes can be an effective source of information regarding elective labor induction and influential in women's decisions regarding whether or not to have elective labor induction. Women perceive prepared childbirth classes positively and find the information provided valuable.     

University students’ perceptions of a holistic care course through cooperative learning: implications for instructors and researchers

The benefits of cooperative learning have been advocated in a wide range of educational contexts in higher education. There is, however, rare information on the contributions of holistic education courses on college students. Using grounded theory methods, this preliminary study was to explore participants’ perceptions of a holistic care course through cooperative learning. The results indicated that five primary categories including learning environment construction, multiple learning processes, cognitive change, solitary learning and transfer, and personal growth emerged as prominent and consistent themes. Moreover, positive and negative feelings about the learning experience, a greater understanding of holistic knowledge, and an enlargement of the experiences of connecting to others were also found. Finally, a pattern of university students’ construction of holistic knowledge was developed, and several research questions were generated. Future implications for research and practice on the holistic curriculum and cooperative learning in higher education were also suggested.     

Perception of conflict in university students. The importance of initial training / La percepción del conflicto en alumnos universitarios. La importancia de la formación inicial

This article analyses the perception of conflict held by students in the Faculty of Education at the three campuses of the University of Granada, and evaluates the different notions held by those who have received specific training in this subject and those who have not during their initial training process. An ad hoc questionnaire has been developed, with an empirical-analytical study and Ex Post Facto correlational design. The sample covers 1,281 subjects. The results indicate a negative perception and conceptualization, poor realization of the educational guides on subjects that include competences related to the theme of Conflict and/or the Culture of Peace, and the influence of previous experiences.     

Linguistic profiles of dyslexic and good readers

Linguistic profiles of 60 boys with average intelligence were examined at kindergarten, grade 2, and grade 4. The subjects were 7 dyslexic, 7 mildly dyslexic, 30 average, and 16 good readers, defined in terms of the discrepancy between standardized reading and intelligence scores. Across the three ages, reader groups did not differ in language comprehension, but did differ in confrontation and rapid automatized naming (RAN), three syntactic measures, and verbal memory. Group strengths and weaknesses were, with few exceptions apparent in kindergarten and maintained throughout. The kindergarten tasks which most effectively predicted reading group membership at grade 4 were giving letter sounds, and rapid naming; these predicted 4th grade reading group at close to 100 percent accuracy. The study, together with a further comparison of average and high IQ good readers, provides an interesting contrast between the role of RAN and Confrontation naming in reading. This work was supported in part by NIHCD grants RO1HD18761 to F. H. Duffy, RO1HD18654 to H. Als, and the Mental Retardation Grant P30HD18655 to C. F. Barlow.     

Advocating for the Rights of the Child Through Family–School Collaboration

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2014 as the premier international human rights treaty focused on childhood rights and protections. In this article, we briefly review the 41 substantive principles embodied in the 54 Articles of the Convention and stress the need for educators, and specifically school psychologists, to work in concert with families to promote these premises through effective collaborative partnerships. Finally, we review examples of how the themes and positive ideology of the Convention can be enhanced through family–school collaboration infused into schooling practices within a multitiered service delivery framework to meet the learning and development best interests of the child.