Functioning and participation problems of students with ASD in higher education: which reasonable accommodations are effective?

Abstract

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience various functioning and participation problems in higher education, which may cause difficulties such as drop out or low grade point averages. However, it remains unclear how often and during which teaching and evaluation methods the functioning and participation problems occur and which reasonable accommodations are effective in dealing with them. These gaps in the literature are addressed in this survey-based study. In total, 43 students with ASD, 30 student counsellors and 43 students without a disability of institutions of higher education in Flanders (Belgium) participated in the study. The results show that students with ASD most frequently experience problems with verbal and non-verbal communication, are oversensitive to change and have difficulty distinguishing the gist of the syllabus from the details. Furthermore, it is shown that, on average, these problems arise mostly during classical teaching and evaluation methods. Finally, the perceived effectiveness of reasonable accommodations is dependent on the functioning and participation problem experienced by the student with ASD in higher education. In conclusion, both personal and environmental characteristics should be taken into account when selecting and implementing reasonable accommodations for these students.     

The Swedish national principal training programme: a programme in constant change

ABSTRACT

In the mid-1970s, a systematic national principal training programme was introduced in Sweden. The aim was to guarantee better-equipped principals in their mission to lead and develop schools in accordance with national steering documents. Since then, the programme has been subjected to changes, but its focus has remained the same. The three-year programme is currently directed at already-employed principals whose efforts are estimated to consume about 20% of their working time. Six universities provide the programme with content that corresponds to thirty higher-education credits. Consequently, the academy has to balance its fundamental role as a critical independent institution and its mission to provide an education that is crucial in the educational steering system. This article presents an historical overview of the programme’s development as well as the current programme’s design and challenges, and it discusses the expected future demands for change.     

Online Teacher Training in a Context of Forced Immobility: The Case of Gaza,Palestine

This article discusses an action research study that involved the design and delivery of an online training course for teachers of Arabic to speakers of other languages in the Gaza Strip (Palestine). Grounded in Freirean pedagogy, the course aimed to respond to the employment needs of university graduates by creating opportunities for online language teaching. The action research study explored the dynamics at play within the online educational environment, to evidence elements that challenged and/or facilitated effective collaboration between trainers and trainees. This article retraces and discusses the processes through which the course moved from didacticism to engaged critical pedagogy.     

The work of the teacher-educator in Australia: Reconstructing the “superhero” performer/academic in an audit culture

What is it that teacher-educators “do”? This paper draws on interview data with Deans/Heads of Schools of Education in the Australian context to explore this question by asking: How is the teacher-educator produced as a category of academic worker? Using critical approaches to discourse analysis, the paper presents two interlocked storylines woven with varying emphasis through the interviews. First, the teacher-educator is produced as a superhero researcher and teacher, elevated by the expectations of the Excellence in Research for Australia audit/surveillance tools. Second, there is a concomitant struggle to reconcile pressure to research with commitment to meeting the needs of schooling systems, and to addressing the work of the teacher-educator in ethical terms. It is suggested that teacher-educators’ work reflects a desire to legitimate various performances of teacher education within current dynamics of audit culture pressures, set against the less visible ethical project of education more broadly conceived.     

Secondary schools included: a literature review

For over a decade, inclusive discourse comprises the development of a school for all, both in primary and in secondary education. Facing long-standing barriers for effective comprehensive education, secondary schools show specific interests, strengths and needs in a school-wide movement towards inclusion. Reviewing literature of recent research in inclusion in secondary schools (2000–2012), current interests represent inclusive culture, policy and practices, although the balance between each of these dimensions is unequal. A large number of studies report on attitudes towards inclusion, followed by inclusive practice. A lower number of studies deal with policy issues. Staff attitudes towards inclusion, access to the general curriculum, peer support, self-determination strategies and collaborative practices in specific subject areas were identified as major topics of investigation. Considerable attention has also been paid to peer attitudes, self-advocacy and student grouping. While the adolescent perspective is emphasised, little room is left for parental involvement. Also, the central role of administrators and professional development of staff has been underexposed in current research on secondary inclusion.     

Managing the complexity of centres of excellence: accommodating diversity in institutional logics

This article discusses how Centres of Excellence (CoE) and the existence of several logics in these centres can contribute to the differentiation of the strategic profiles of universities. The study sees research centres as a way to organize research activities in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in order to target both excellence but also societal challenges through focused thematic research. It reveals how societal challenges and their interpretation by these centres contribute to the differentiation of the strategic profiles of universities. Studies of centres of excellence programs in Sweden and Japan reveal differences in how their mission is formulated for relevance and excellence. The results indicate that contrasting missions of HEIs are accommodated through the dual logics of these centres relating both to autonomy and industry collaboration. The study shows that long-term funding gives these centres flexibility to set the agenda and focus on their strategic core activities. In other words, a logic of autonomy guides their strategic choices of research activities over the long-run as well as collaborators. Nevertheless, these centres are also developing strategies to cope with dilemmas stemming from the excellence-relevance and evaluation templates that emerge in the nexus of their collaborative ties with industry, government and universities.

     

Parental Identity and Its Relation to Parenting and Psychological Functioning in Middle Age

Objective. This article focuses on identity as a parent in relation to parenting and psychological functioning in middle age. Design. Drawn from the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development, 162 participants (53% females) with children (age 36), represented the Finnish age-cohort born in 1959. Parental identity was assessed at ages 36, 42, and 50. Results. In both women and men, parental identity achievement increased from age 36 to 42 and remained stable to 50. The level of parental identity achievement was higher in women than in men. Achievement was typical for women and foreclosure for men. Participants’ education, occupational status, and number of offspring were not related to parental identity status. As expected, parental identity achievement was associated with authoritative (indicated by higher nurturance and parental knowledge about the child’s activities) parenting style. No significant associations emerged between parental identity foreclosure and restrictiveness as an indicator of authoritarian parenting style. The diffused men outscored others in parental stress. Achieved parental identity was related to generativity in both genders and to higher psychological and social well-being in men. Conclusions. At present, many parenting programs are targeted to young parents. This study highlighted the importance of a later parenting phase at around age 40, when for many, the children are approaching puberty. Therefore, parenting programs and support should also be designed for middle-aged parents. Specifically men may need additional support for their active consideration and engagement in the fathering role.     

Dynamik individueller Anpassungsprozesse

Sports science is predominantly understood as a theory aimed at practical application where sports performance and how it is influenced by sports training are central. The primary task of sports science is to develop technological regulations and prepare background knowledge for solving application problems in sports training. If one considers a theoretically reasoned training plan from this perspective, it is hardly possible according to the theory of sports science as it stands (Selujanov, 1999). The criticism expressed again and again is primarily orientated towards insufficient explanations and reasons for the selection of a certain training programme or the lack of reasons for selected load intensity and load duration as well as insufficient explanation for the athlete’s performance resulting from it. That means it is not possible to make exact statements about the impact of training over time, the right time for introducing it and the duration of its effect on performance. In the same way the identification of individual process models for training adaptations, i.e. combining training measures and individual performance development, are is an important research goal, both in terms of the theoretical and also the practical aspect of training (Tschiene, 1996; Tschiene, 1997). To be able to answer these questions, there are various ways of proceeding. With the goal of researching in detail basic phenomena of adjustment or effect of change in training adjustment, research in the last few years has been orientated increasingly towards time series analytical processes and antagonistic models. These processes are in a position to present or simulate the performance development of the individual as well as changes in the training. Both time series analytical processes and also antagonistic models (e. g. Performance-Potential-Model; PerPot), by an exact simulation of an individual’s training progress, allow for a prognosis of his performance development. For this both processes need differing inputs which quantify both daily training and also daily performance. The goal of this study is to represent the delayed dynamics of an individual adjustment process through time series analytical processes as well as at the same time to configure it through the PerPot-Model. This approach enables a static validation of the individual effect of the training and allows, in contrast to the classic pre-post measurements, an analysis of the intra-individual relationships and structures or more accurate analyses of the impact of training over time, the right time for introducing it and the duration of its effect on performance (Schmitz, 1989). Moreover, as part of the analysis of the present training and performance data, the prognostic quality of the process is tested and the currently differing parameters for judging the quality of the models and the prognoses associated with them are presented and discussed.     

Prior knowledge in mathematics and study success in engineering: informational value of learner data collected from a web-based pre-course

The article describes the development and evaluation of a web-based pre-course in mathematics, delivered to four cohorts of engineering students at a German university. Based on demographic, personal, and learning-related data relationships between students’ preconditions, their learning gains in the pre-course, and study success in the degree programme were analysed. The results support the existing literature in that domain-related prior knowledge and secondary school achievement play a dominant role regarding study success in engineering. The analyses also showed that the influence of cognitive predictors could only be compensated for by a strong learner engagement. At-risk students with high pre-course learning gains showed significantly better first-year performance. The number of self-tests a student attempted was positively related to pre-course learning gains and even to first-year performance, suggesting that this variable is a good indicator of student engagement.     

Balancing exploration and exploitation in listwise and pairwise online learning to rank for information retrieval

As retrieval systems become more complex, learning to rank approaches are being developed to automatically tune their parameters. Using online learning to rank, retrieval systems can learn directly from implicit feedback inferred from user interactions. In such an online setting, algorithms must obtain feedback for effective learning while simultaneously utilizing what has already been learned to produce high quality results. We formulate this challenge as an exploration–exploitation dilemma and propose two methods for addressing it. By adding mechanisms for balancing exploration and exploitation during learning, each method extends a state-of-the-art learning to rank method, one based on listwise learning and the other on pairwise learning. Using a recently developed simulation framework that allows assessment of online performance, we empirically evaluate both methods. Our results show that balancing exploration and exploitation can substantially and significantly improve the online retrieval performance of both listwise and pairwise approaches. In addition, the results demonstrate that such a balance affects the two approaches in different ways, especially when user feedback is noisy, yielding new insights relevant to making online learning to rank effective in practice.