Relationships matter: some benefits,challenges and tensions associated with forming a collaborative educational researcher group

Growing recognition of the complexity of children’s lives has led to strong advocacy in education research literature for greater collaboration between researchers from different paradigms to address the ‘wicked’ problems that face contemporary children and families. There is little literature, however, exploring how collaboration works in practice. This paper, drawing on researcher reflective narrative, and using Cultural Historical Activity Theory as a heuristic framework, describes and critiques the formative stages of an educational research collaborative group of five early and one mid-career early childhood education researchers (the authors), from two universities, and with quite different epistemological and ontological understandings. It outlines, from an insider perspective, some of the outcomes, challenges and tensions associated with participating in the research group, and concludes by providing some implications for policy and considerations for those contemplating forming a collaborative group.     

Students Abroad Studying Their Own Thing

Abstract

This paper defines teacher empathy, argues that teacher empathy enhances student learning, and offers suggestions for increasing teacher empathy. Teacher empathy is the degree to which an instructor works to deeply understand students’ personal and social situations, to feel care and concern in response to students’ positive and negative emotions, and to respond compassionately without losing the focus on student learning. Teacher empathy is communicated to students through course policies as well as the instructor’s behavior toward students. To increase teacher empathy, we review non-pejorative explanations for undesirable student behavior (e.g., fear of failure), and we suggest ways in which faculty can learn about their students and can structure course policies to increase teacher empathy. Ultimately, we call for research on teacher empathy and student learning.     

Out of class communication between faculty and students: A faculty perspective

While many scholars recognize that the process of education extends beyond the formal classroom, relatively little research has focused on the role of communication in this area. This article focuses on out of class (OOC) communication between faculty and students. First, the benefits of OOC contact for students, faculty, and educational institutions; the frequency of such contact; and what is known about the roles of student and instructor sex in such contexts are explored. Then, the results of a study exploring the roles of faculty perceptions of instructor empathy, relational topoi, and instructor sex are reported. The findings indicate that these variables all relate to the amount and kinds of OOC communication that occur.     

Feeling Valued Matters: An Examination of Instructor Confirmation and Instructional Dissent

This study explored the relationship between effective instructor behavior—instructor confirmation—and a potentially negative student behavior—instructional dissent. Previous studies demonstrate that student characteristics provide a limited explanation for how students express dissent (e.g., Goodboy & Myers, 2012 Goodboy, A. K. & Myers, S. A. (2012). Brief report: Instructional dissent as an expression of students’ verbal aggressiveness and argumentativeness traits. Communication Education, 61, 448–458. doi:10.1080/03634523.2012.699635[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). Thus, scholars have begun to investigate the influence of instructor behaviors along with student characteristics to understand why students express dissent (LaBelle, Martin, & Weber, 2013 LaBelle, S., Martin, M. M. & Weber, K. (2013). Instructional dissent in the college classroom: Using the instructional beliefs model as a framework. Communication Education, 62, 169–190. doi:10.1080/03634523.2012.759243[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). This study revealed that instructor confirmation negatively related to expressive and vengeful dissent, but not rhetorical dissent. Further, the three dimensions of instructor confirmation functioned differently in accounting for variance in expressive and vengeful dissent. Future research should build towards a model of instructional dissent model that reflects the unique characteristics of the instructional context and modifiable instructor behaviors.     

Delivering LIS education into Viet Nam: A narrative of teaching,interpreting, and translating

A team of academics from RMIT School of Business Information Technology were involved in delivering LIS training to staff at Can Tho University in Viet Nam who were to work in a newly developed Learning Resource Centre (LRC). The training materials were written in English and then translated into Vietnamese. RMIT staff then delivered the training face-to-face through interpreters. This paper records a narrative of the interaction between academics, students, translators, and interpreters. This narrative examines development, limitations, and successes of cross-cultural teaching and learning and offers a commentary from the point of view of academic participants in this project, particularly about the developing relationships between academics, translators, and interpreters. Examination of the impact includes some preliminary evaluation of the nature of the teaching experience and the development of culturally inclusive strategies and material.     

Motion Pictures

Richard Bunce's Television in the Corporate Interest (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1976—price not given, but about $15.00).

Ralph M. Jennings and Veronica M. Jefferson's Television Station Employment Practices, 1975: The Status of Minorities and Women (New York: Office of Communication, United Church of Christ, 1976—price not given, but about $10.00, paper)

Horace Newcomb's Television: The Critical View (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976—$4.00, paper)

Asa Berger's The TV-Guided American (New York: Walker, 1976—$8.95)

Vincent Mosco's The Regulation of Innovations in the Broadcasting Market (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Program on Information Technologies and Public Policy, 1975—$3.00, paper)

James D. Scott's Cable Television: Strategy for Penetrating Key Urban Markets (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Graduate School of Business Administration, 1976—$5.50, paper)

R.W. Chandler's Sparks at Sea: The Experiences of a Ship's Radio Officer (North Pomfret, Vt.: David and Charles, 1973, but only recently released in the U.S.—$9.50)     

Using the Science Writing Heuristic to Improve Undergraduate Writing in Biology

Our objective was to investigate the impact of the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) on undergraduates’ ability to express logical conclusions and include appropriate evidence in formal writing assignments. Students in three laboratory sections were randomly allocated to the SWH treatment (n?=?51 students) with another three sections serving as a control (n?=?47 students). All sections received an identical formal writing assignment to report results of laboratory activities. Four blinded raters used a 6-point rating scheme to evaluate the quality of students’ writing performance. Raters’ independent scoring agreement was evaluated using Cronbach's α. Paper scores were compared using a t-test, then papers were combined into low-scoring (3.5 of 6 points) or high-scoring (>3.5 of 6 points) sets and SWH and control cohorts were compared using Pearson's chi-square test. Papers from the SWH cohort were significantly (P?=?0.02) more likely to receive a high score than those from the control cohort. Overall scores of SWH cohort papers tended to be higher (P?=?0.07) than those from the control cohort. Gains in student conceptual understanding elicited by the SWH approach improved student ability to express logical conclusions about their data and include appropriate evidence to support those conclusions in formal research reports. Extending the writing tasks of the SWH to formal writing assignments can improve the ability of undergraduates to argue effectively for their research findings.