Teaching ‘community engagement’ in engineering education for international development: Integration of an interdisciplinary social work curriculum

This article reviews the literature on challenges faced by engineering faculty in educating their students on community-engaged, sustainable technical solutions in developing countries. We review a number of approaches to increasing teaching modules on social and community components of international development education, from adding capstone courses and educational track seminars to integrating content from other disciplines, particularly the social sciences. After summarising recent pedagogical strategies to increase content on community-focused development, we present a case study of how one engineering programme incorporates social work students and faculty to infuse strategies for community engagement in designing and implementing student-led global engineering development projects. We outline how this interdisciplinary pedagogical approach teaches students from the two disciplines to work together in addressing power balances, economic and social issues and overall sustainability of international development projects.     

Perceptions of Retirement Affect Career Commitment: The Mediating Role of Retirement System Satisfaction for Two Teacher Age Groups

This study investigated a sample of California elementary, intermediate, and high school employed teachers (N = 247) to assess the effects of retirement perceptions on career commitment among teachers who are in different age groupings. Using path analysis, the influence of five retirement perceptions variables was examined: concerns about retirement benefits, understanding of the retirement system, perceived need for system change, control over the retirement plan, and satisfaction with current salary. The results indicated that the pattern of results differed for younger and older teachers. For the younger (age 21–45) group, concerns about retirement benefits (such as losing or reducing benefits through geographic mobility) and control over the retirement plan had significant, large, and direct effects on career commitment. For the older (age 46+) group, retirement variables had a significant effect on career commitment via the mediator of satisfaction with the retirement system. Given these findings, for younger teachers, strategies might focus on providing greater control over the retirement plan, such as in offering choice in how their retirement monies are invested. Older teachers need to feel safe about retirement in the sense of being satisfied with the system and its benefits to commit to their jobs.     

Talking Together,Learning Together: The Story of English PGCE Student Teachers’ Adventures in Classics

This article reports on the first two phases of a project to promote the classics through English at Key Stage 3, a scion of the Cambridge Schools Classics Project. We discuss the primary importance of speaking and listening in the English classroom both for the individual and the collective, and reflect on the power and importance of using classic tales in English as a means of promoting good-quality oracy. We comment on the precarious position of both oracy and story in the 2014 national curriculum. We report on the impact of a project during which student teachers were introduced to classical oral storytelling and encouraged to use it in their teaching. Findings suggest that the student teachers recognised oracy and storytelling as fundamental to their developing pedagogy and that they saw the need to promote oracy.     

Required Collaborative Work in Online Courses: A Predictive Modeling Approach

This article describes a predictive model that assesses whether a student will have greater perceived learning in group assignments or in individual work. The model produces correct classifications 87.5% of the time. The research is notable in that it is the first in the education literature to adopt a predictive modeling methodology using data collected via a designed experiment. All subjects experienced both a collaborative and an individual assignment, thus mitigating uncontrolled external factors in the measurement of differences in perceived learning. The exploratory nature of the work prompted the use of Partial Least Squares Regression for estimation. The work serves as an illustration of how predictive modeling might enlighten those in educational and academic settings.     

Examining the Legacy of Urban Catholic Schooling in the U.S.: A Systematic Literature Review

The Urban Review - Research conducted in the twentieth century found urban Catholic schools in the U.S. had a legacy of providing high quality educational opportunities for low-income students and...     

The “Gift” of Time: Documenting Faculty Decisions to Stop the Tenure Clock During a Pandemic

Innovative Higher Education - Anticipating the deleterious effects of pandemic mitigation protocols on faculty’s research and creative work, many universities introduced mechanisms for...     

Changes in children’s anger,sadness, and persistence across blocked goals: Implications for self-regulation

The current study took a person-centered approach to examine the heterogeneity of changes in children’s emotions and persistence during a goal-blocking task and examined how different profiles of emotions and persistence related to children’s self-regulation. Children’s anger, sadness, and persistence were rated in a goal-blocking task in toddlerhood (T1; N = 140, 72 boys, M_age = 2.67 years, 90.7% White) and preschool (T2). Children’s self-regulation, specifically sustained attention and engagement, was assessed at T1, T2, and early school-age (T3) from 2005 to 2012. Growth mixture modeling revealed two classes of children at T1 and three classes at T2 with different patterns of anger, sadness, and persistence. Children’s classification at T2, but not T1, significantly predicted their sustained attention and engagement both concurrently and longitudinally.     

Evidence of efficacy of the Integrated Literacy Study Group professional learning program to enhance reading instruction for students with emotional and behavioral disorders

This article reports on a pilot study of the Integrated Literacy Study Group, a digitally delivered professional learning intervention to prepare elementary school teachers to provide evidence-based reading instruction and behavioral strategies to students with or are at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders. Using broadcast methods, we recruited 72 teachers across five states in the western United States to participate in the randomized controlled trial. Intervention teachers, relative to controls, made significant gains in self-efficacy and use of the reading and behavioral strategies learned in the professional learning program. Students with or at risk of emotional and behavioral disorders served by participating teachers made significant improvements in academic competence and engagement. Teacher professional learning can improve teacher knowledge of evidence-based reading and behavioral strategies for students with (or at risk for) emotional and behavioral disorders, teacher self-efficacy, and teacher practice, with positive impacts on student early literacy and academic competence.     

Field and laboratory measurements of softball player swing speed and bat performance

The swing speed of the bat is one of the most important factors affecting the hit-ball speed. Most field studies tend to focus on measuring ball speed, which is easier to measure and quantify than bat speed. For this reason, relatively little data exist describing bat motion in field conditions. The following describes a relatively large swing speed field study involving bats of the same model with nearly constant weight and varying inertia. The study was conducted using right-handed batters on a regulation outdoor field with a live pitcher. Swing speed was measured by tracking markers on the bat with two high-speed video cameras so that the bat markers could be traced in three-dimensional space. The ball motion was tracked using the same high-speed video cameras and a three-dimensional Doppler radar system. Bat swing speed was observed to be proportional to the batter skill level and the normalised swing speed increased with decreasing bat inertia. The bat centre of rotation during impact was close to the knob of the bat. The bats were tested under controlled laboratory conditions using a standardised performance test. The field and laboratory results showed good agreement including the hit-ball speed and the subtle effect of bat inertia on the maximum performance location. The vibrational response of the bats was considered using modal analysis. The maximum performance location was correlated with the node of the first vibrational mode.