Re-engineering the curriculum for the 21st century

Engineering lies at the interface between science on the one hand and society on the other. It is concerned with the systematic application of scientific and mathematical principles towards practical ends for the benefit of people. Traditionally the emphasis in engineering education has been on the scientific side, with students given a thorough grounding in the basic scientific and mathematical principles underpinning their discipline. However, the constraints on engineering problem-solving today are increasingly not technical, but rather lie on the societal and human side of engineering practice. These changes require new approaches within the curriculum and by promoting active learning and encouraging students to experiment and be more creative, eLearning is one of an important number of strategies for achieving the paradigm shift that is required.     

Supporting business students’ transition into higher education: the case of marketing downloads

This paper discusses a student-centred learning and teaching approach, ‘Marketing Downloads’, designed to support students in transition into Higher Education. The move from secondary to tertiary education can be stressful for students and it impacts on their academic performance, their social life and general sense of well-being. Marketing Downloads was designed with transition in mind and involves students initiating their own research to demonstrate the link between theory and real-world business practice, presenting their work and instigating a debate. Evaluation of data from five focus groups suggests that the social nature, the secure environment, the student-centred aspect and the links with the outside world help students understand the difference between secondary and tertiary education and ultimately contribute to a smooth transition. Recommendations for learning and teaching initiatives focus on these four aspects: a safe classroom environment, social networks, student-centred exercises and creating links to the outside world.     

Preparing Ed.D. Students to Conduct Group Dissertations

In this article we present an overview of a recently launched cohort-based Ed.D. program that prepares participants to conduct group dissertations. The program, a hybrid model of online learning activities and monthly face-to-face class sessions, is delivered through a partnership between a university’s college of education and the administrative office of a statewide system of community and technical colleges. Discussion begins with a review of the pedagogical rationale that informed program design and instructional practices, followed by a presentation of key program elements tracing the development of the cohort through an innovative, collaborative dissertation process still in progress.     

Legal fetishism and the contradictions of the GATS

This paper locates the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) within the broader ideological transformation of ‘services’ from fundamentally social relations that are embedded within communities to commercialised commodities traded within an international market place. It is written from the standpoint of someone actively engaged in the current campaign against the GATS as a social activist, trade unionist, media commentator, NGO lobbyist, adviser to indigenous Maori and international campaigner and as an academic who teaches and writes on international economic law and New Zealand's neoliberal revolution. [1] It seeks to explain the ways in which the normative dimension of the Agreement works to silence those whose conceptualisation of services falls outside the marketised paradigm. The aim is to delegitimate the strategy of those who avoid meaningful dialogue by retreating inside the text and to identify more clearly the barriers and opportunities that the Agreement itself presents to effective critical engagement.     

Towards a collaborative methodology: An ethnography of widening educational participation

This paper examines my attempts to develop a collaborative methodology, and critically considers the limitations and possibilities of this approach. It draws on a small-scale ethnography of widening educational participation undertaken for my doctoral degree. I worked with a group of access students in a UK further education college to develop the methods and methodology, to identify research questions and key areas of focus and, to a lesser extent, to analyse the data. Post/structural analytical tools enabled co-participants to deconstruct hegemonic neo-liberal discourses of widening participation. Feminist theory enabled the refashioning of radical discourses that are concerned with destabilising unequal relations of power in research and in education. In the paper I consider issues of power, research relationships, author-ity, reflexivity and ethics in collaborative methodology.     

Motor Skill Performance by Low SES Preschool and Typically Developing Children on the PDMS-2

The purpose of this study was to compare the motor skill performance of preschool children from low socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds to their age matched typically developing peers using the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales-2 (PDMS-2). Sixty-eight children (34 low SES and 34 typically developing; ages 3–5) performed the PDMS-2. Standard scores from each subtest (i.e., stationary, locomotion, object manipulation, grasping, and visual-motor integration) and three quotient scores were calculated for the children identified as low SES and typically developing children. A MANOVA was used to analyze the PDMS-2 standard score and quotient score differences between the children identified as low SES and the typically developing children. All preschool children identified as low SES scored at average or lower on total motor quotient scores. Specifically, 88.2 % of children identified as low SES were classified as average, and 11.8 % of children were in the below average performance category. The MANOVA analysis showed that children identified as low SES scored significantly lower than the typically developing children on the visual-motor integration subtest, F(1,64) = 7.232, p = .009; locomotion subtest, F(1,64) = 11.449, p = .001; and TMQ, F(1,64) = 4.732, p = .033. Children identified as low SES were significantly delayed in both fine and gross motor skill areas when compared to their typically developing age and gender matched peers. Researchers are recommended to provide comprehensive assessments for preschool children and to include motor tasks when designing early intervention programs.     

Understanding The Impact of an Apprenticeship-Based Scientific Research Program on High School Students’ Understanding of Scientific Inquiry

The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of an apprenticeship program on high school students’ understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry. Data related to seventeen students’ understanding of science and scientific inquiry were collected through open-ended questionnaires. Findings suggest that although engagement in authentic scientific research helped the participants to develop competency in experimentation methods it had limited impact on participants’ learning of the implicit aspects of scientific inquiry and NOS. Discussion focuses on the importance of making the implicit assumptions of science explicit to the students in such authentic scientific inquiry settings through structured curriculum.