The Mentoring Relationship as a Complex Adaptive System: Finding a Model for Our Experience

Mentoring theory and practice has evolved significantly during the past 40 years. Early mentoring models were characterized by the top-down flow of information and benefits to the protégé. This framework was reconceptualized as a reciprocal model when scholars realized mentoring was a mutually beneficial process. Recently, in response to rapidly changing organizational and social environments, scholars have explored other models of mentoring such as developmental networks. However, as we, the authors, reflect on our own experience of an informal mentoring process in an academic context we find existing models inadequately describe our experience. The model that best fits our story is a complex adaptive systems (CAS) perspective of the mentoring relationship, and we offer this lens to reconfigure current models.     

Managing Information Technology in a University: three principles to guide organisational design

Information technology (IT) presents universities with new challenges and opportunities. Unfortunately, the way IT is managed in some schools prevents it from reaching its full potential. This paper identifies three principles that can help guide IT management. First, universities should consider the role of IT when formulating strategic plans. Second, IT management should be integrated, enhancing the institution's ability to recognise economies of scale and opportunities for technical substitution. Third, users in functional areas should be directly involved in the management of their own information.     

Callous-unemotional interpersonal style in DSM-V: what does this mean for the UK SEBD population?

The definition of conduct disorder in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSMV) includes a new ‘limited prosocial emotions’ specifier, designed to assist in the identification of those with more severe and persistent difficulties and the better targeting of interventions. This study set out to investigate its relevance to pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) in the United Kingdom who might meet the criteria for a diagnosis of conduct disorder (CD). Limited prosocial emotions were assessed using a measure of callous-unemotional (CU) interpersonal style, and their relationship with social behaviour, social status and self-concept was investigated among children aged 8–11 years with identified SEBD (N = 54) using teacher, peer and self-report measures. Findings demonstrated that higher scores on the specifier were associated with more severe problems in all but one of the domains investigated. Higher CU scores were positively associated with teacher and peer-assessed antisocial behaviour and with social rejection. The association between CU scores and social acceptance by peers was negative. However, associations between CU scores and self-perceptions, including social self-perception, were small and non-significant. Thus, despite being socially rejected and rated more negatively by peers than children with low CU levels, the social self-concept of children with elevated CU levels was not lower. Implications for assessment and the differentiation of interventions are considered.     

Translanguaging: developing its conceptualisation and contextualisation

Following from Lewis, Jones, and Baker (this issue), this article analyses the relationship between the new concept of “translanguaging” particularly in the classroom context and more historic terms such as code-switching and translation, indicating differences in (socio)linguistic and ideological understandings as well as in classroom processes. The article considers the pedagogic nature of translanguaging in terms of language proficiency of children, developmental use in emergent bilinguals, variations in input and output, relationship to the subject/discipline curriculum, deepening learning through language development, cognitive development, and content understanding, and the role of children, including Deaf children, and in the use of translanguaging in educational activity. The conceptualisation of translanguaging is also shown to be ideological.     

Overshadowing and associability change: Examining the contribution of differential stimulus exposure

In two appetitive conditioning experiments with rats, we investigated the mechanisms responsible for demonstrations of the superior associability of overshadowed conditioned stimuli (CSs) relative to control CSs. In Experiment 1, we investigated whether previous demonstrations were a consequence of differences in the relationship between the CSs and the unconditioned stimulus (US) or of differences in the conditions of exposure to the CSs. Rats received trials with X, Y, and an AB compound, but no delivery of the US (X–, Y–, AB–). A subsequent AY–, AX+, BY + test discrimination revealed that the AY/BY component of the discrimination was solved more readily than the AY/AX component—suggesting the contribution of an exposure effect. In Experiment 2, we better equated the conditions of exposure between A and Y by using AB+, XY+, X– training in Stage 1. In Stage 2, instrumental responses were rewarded during an AY compound. A final test revealed that Y took better control of instrumental responding than did A. The results of these experiments are discussed in terms of classical and contemporary theories of learning and attention.     

The horizontal and vertical fragmentation of academic work and the challenge for academic governance and leadership

Academic work has become increasingly fragmented. The horizontal fragmentation of the profession into disciplinary tribes has been accompanied by the increasing participation of student affairs and educational development professionals located outside the academic units but are actively engaged in academic work, such as supporting teaching and student learning. An increasing vertical fragmentation of academic work has recently occurred within academic units with the increasing employment of contract university teachers and research assistants. In Canada, horizontal and vertical fragmentations have occurred while universities and strong faculty unions have protected the “traditional” tenure-stream professoriate. Drawing on recent research, the author argues that these Canadian full-time faculties have high levels of job satisfaction and are well-remunerated, productive scholars. Maintaining the status and the supportive working conditions of the full-time, tenure-stream professoriate has largely been accomplished through labor cost efficiencies created by the increasing use of part-time, contractual university teachers, now frequently represented by labor unions that are distinct from their full-time peers. This article discusses the challenges for academic governance and leadership associated with this increasing fragmentation of academic work in the context of the “global” university.     

A dialectical analysis of a social justice process: International collaboration in South Africa

This paper presents a case study of an international team collaboration between US and South African conflict specialists and educators implementing a Community Peace and Safety Network in four communities in the Gauteng province of South Africa. The project, funded by the United States Information Agency, was a social justice initiative that provided mediation training for school and community centers to aid them in accomplishing constructive conflict management and social change. Following an overview of the project goals, stages, and accomplishments, Smith and Berg's theory of paradoxes in groups is used to analyze the negotiated relationships in the international team and the mutual influence of group tensions and community impact throughout the 18‐month project period. Discussion includes implications for dialectical analyses of groups and for social justice scholars.     

Recasting the American Dream and American Politics: Barack Obama's Keynote Address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention

This essay draws upon the work of Northrop Frye to show that stories enacting the American Dream contain elements associated with romance, and briefly traces how Ronald Reagan and conservatives utilized the romance of the American Dream to the point that many Americans associated it exclusively with conservatism. The essay then details how Barack Obama, in his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address, recast the American dream from a conservative to a liberal story.     

Testing the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation through confirmatory factor analysis

The purpose of this study was to provide empirical evidence to confirm the theoretical factor structure of the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation that was developed to help instructors understand how current motivation research can be applied to instruction. We hypothesised the MUSIC model as a hierarchical five-factor correlated model and compared its fit to alternative models. Our research question was: Is a hierarchical five-factor correlated model a valid representation of the MUSIC model? The study included 1228 undergraduate students from three different types of university courses. We measured the constructs associated with the main components of the MUSIC model: empowerment, usefulness, success, interest and caring. Results of the confirmatory factor analyses provided strong evidence that the hierarchical five-factor correlated model was a valid representation of the MUSIC model. Thus, the MUSIC model consists of components that are theoretically and empirically correlated, yet distinct.