Lifelong learning,policy and desire

Recent lifelong learning policies have been criticised for creating an illusion of freedom whilst simultaneously reducing choice. The concept of desire permits engagement with the conscious and unconscious drives that underpin individual decision‐making, which direct the life course. Utilising the ideas of Hume and Spinoza, the present article articulates the interrelated nature of desire and learning. Evidence is drawn from Learning Lives, a Teaching and Learning Research Programme‐funded research project that uses the life history method to explore themes of agency, identity and learning across the life course. Boltanski and Thevenot’s sociology of critical capacity is used as a heuristic tool that illuminates the mechanics of desire as described by eight contributors. Their stories provide a basis from which to critique policies for lifelong learning that appear limited in relation to the multiple desires that drive their life choices.     

Controlling response shift bias: the use of the retrospective pre‐test design in the evaluation of a master's programme

Traditionally the measures used to evaluate the impact of an educational programme on student outcomes and the extent to which students change is a comparison of the student's pre‐test scores with his/her post‐test scores. However, this method of evaluating change may be problematic due to the confounding factor of response shift bias when student self‐reports of change are used. Response shift bias occurs when the student's internal frame of reference of the construct being measured, for example research ability or critical thinking, changes between the pre‐test and the post‐test due to the influence of the educational programme. To control for response shift bias the retrospective pre‐test method was used to evaluate the outcomes achieved from students completing a research module at master's level. The retrospective pre‐test method differs from the traditional pre‐test–post‐test design in that both post‐test and pre‐test perceptions of respondents are collected at the same time. The findings indicated that response shift bias was evident in that the programme had significantly greater impact on outcomes than identified using the traditional pre‐test–post‐test design leading to the conclusion that students may overestimate their ability at the commencement of an educational programme. The retrospective pre‐test design is not a replacement for the traditional pre‐test–post‐test measures but may be a useful adjunct in the evaluation of the impact of educational programmes on student outcomes.     

Exploring the connection between impostor phenomenon and postgraduate students feeling academically-unprepared

ABSTRACT

Impostor phenomenon refers to an overwhelming feeling of being an intellectual fraud despite evidence to the contrary, and it affects highly capable individuals in many fields, including those in postgraduate education. This project sought to answer the following question: in what ways do postgraduate students enrolled in a large, American institution experience impostor phenomenon during their postgraduate education? Interviews and a survey showed that the majority of the participants experienced impostor phenomenon, and that many of those feelings related to the participants feeling academically-unprepared, including concerns related to reading, writing, and discussing academic work. This article explores this connection between impostor phenomenon and participants feeling like they lacked sufficient academic skill sets to succeed in their programmes. The results build a case for doing literacy work as a way to address impostor phenomenon among postgraduate students.     

Identifying dyslexia with confirmatory latent profile analysis

Confirmatory latent profile analysis (CLPA) was used with the normative sample from the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, 3rd ed. (KTEA‐3) to determine whether it was possible to identify a latent class of individuals whose scores were consistent with the academic strengths and weaknesses related to dyslexia. The CLPA identified a class of individuals consistent with dyslexia across four‐grade level groups (first–second, third–fifth, sixth–eighth, and ninth–twelfth). The results of the CLPA were applied to the KTEA‐3 clinical samples of those with known clinical diagnoses. Individuals with Specific Learning Disorder in Reading and/or Written Expression had a higher probability of being in the dyslexia latent class. The use of CLPA as a tool for learning disability diagnosis appears plausible, though much more research is needed. The strengths, limitations, and future directions for the use of CLPA in diagnosis are discussed.     

Digital Media and Disciplinarity

This article asks two related questions: Is digital media studies a discipline, and should scholars within the field desire to move toward disciplinarity? Drawing on the writings of Michel Foucualt and Pierre Bourdieu, as well as several Anglo-American cultural studies of disciplinarity, the essay argues that digital media studies has not yet constituted a truly novel scholarly discourse. Because of that, our reasons for disciplinizing—to the extent that it is possible to choose to become a discipline—would be largely strategic. Given that the field is already successfully reproducing itself, the symbolic benefits of becoming a discipline are relatively limited, and such a move would also have significant intellectual costs.     

Teacher leaders’ work with peers in a Quasi-formal teacher leadership model

Building on evolving conceptions of teacher leadership in the literature, this article argues that an integration of both positional and empowering elements of teacher leadership are the seeds of an evolved approach to teacher leadership for instructional improvement. Using data from a study of quasi-formal teacher leadership, the research examines how teacher leaders play a positive role in schools and fulfil a series of needs of teachers. However, the constraints of teacher leaders’ instructional authority limits their ability to influence the instructional practices of their peers. The findings clarify the distinction between school-level and individual-level teacher leadership.     

Western Medicine for the Masters of Damascus: Benvenutus Grapheus's Experimenta

This article examines a rediscovered work by the thirteenth-century physician Benvenutus Grapheus de Iherusalem. Surviving only in a late medieval German translation, it contains select recipes and medical procedures. The study of this compilation offers new insight into two important aspects of Benvenutus's life: It provides a more precise dating for his activities, and clarifies at least one facet of his connection to the Levant. An analysis of Benvenutus's sources, most notably the Antidotarium Nicolai but also the Circa instans, confirms the assumption of previous scholars that he had studied at the Salernitan school of medicine. This article also shows that, at least in this particular case, practitioners trained within the Arabic medical tradition did not view Western medicine as a priori inferior.