Trauma and Dissociation: Predictors of Loneliness in Students at an Urban University

Loneliness is often seen in college students as they leave established support networks and family. Loneliness is also associated with negative mental health outcomes, including depression and decreased life satisfaction. The authors explored relationships between trauma, dissociation, and loneliness, and assessed the predictive ability of trauma and dissociation on feelings of loneliness. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that trauma experience and dissociation significantly predicted loneliness in the current sample (n = 429). Implications for counseling are discussed.     

Computer Simulations Improve University Instructional Laboratories

Laboratory classes are commonplace and essential in biology departments but can sometimes be cumbersome, unreliable, and a drain on time and resources. As university intakes increase, pressure on budgets and staff time can often lead to reduction in practical class provision. Frequently, the ability to use laboratory equipment, mix solutions, and manipulate test animals are essential learning outcomes, and “wet” laboratory classes are thus appropriate. In others, however, interpretation and manipulation of the data are the primary learning outcomes, and here, computer-based simulations can provide a cheaper, easier, and less time- and labor-intensive alternative. We report the evaluation of two computer-based simulations of practical exercises: the first in chromosome analysis, the second in bioinformatics. Simulations can provide significant time savings to students (by a factor of four in our first case study) without affecting learning, as measured by performance in assessment. Moreover, under certain circumstances, performance can be improved by the use of simulations (by 7% in our second case study). We concluded that the introduction of these simulations can significantly enhance student learning where consideration of the learning outcomes indicates that it might be appropriate. In addition, they can offer significant benefits to teaching staff.     

Reviews

In the UK policy context, skills, education and learning are seen as a universal solution to a vast array of economic and social problems. In challenging this view, this paper argues that those educationalists calling for progressive reforms to the education system need to acknowledge the reality of the contemporary workplace and the institutional context of UK capitalism. When it comes to the question of how the UK might move towards a more inclusive high skills society, no matter where we start to look - be it the economy or a highly class-divided English education system - it all seems to add up badly. In challenging the current policy agenda, educationalists will need to insist that progressive educational reform cannot be separated from the struggle for broader political, social and economic change.     

Seen,Unseen or Overlooked? How can Visual Perception Develop through a Multimodal Enquiry?

This article outlines an exploration into the development of visual perception through analysing the process of taking photographs of the mundane as small‐scale research. A preoccupation with social construction of the visual lies at the heart of the investigation by correlating the perceptive process to Mitchell's (2002) counter thesis for visual study and Sontag's (1979) analysis of the function of photography in society. Why visual perception is a fundamental human activity is considered and so positioned as a vital component of art education. Pedagogical implications for teaching visual perception and expertise to others are subsequently revealed, including the appropriate selection of media to construct and communicate meaning through an exploration of subject‐matter, and the need to consider symbiotic processes which enable the construction and refinement of perception and meaning for maker and audience. How this contributes to a debate about the purpose of an art education is tentatively examined in the light of current educational policy and ideology.     

Lifelong education and the workplace: a critical analysis

This paper contains an analysis of policy formulations which underlie the work of the ‘Leeds Adult Learners at Work’ project (1991‐93). The overall aim of the project was to assess the contribution that broadly based Employee Development training schemes organized through the workplace can make towards achieving the internationally recognized goal of ‘lifelong learning’. The paper follows Ball (1990) in seeing policy as a contested arena in which different actors struggle to impose their views. This involves an analysis of competing discourses. However, the discourse interfaces with a socio‐economic system in which individual adults find their day‐today lives increasingly constrained. First, an analysis is made of the economic context of education and training policy in terms of the international division of labour, the apparently contradictory processes of deskilling and reskilling, and mass unemployment. A critical analysis follows of the rhetoric which identifies education and training as a panacea for economic crisis, extending into the field of adult education and training for employed people some of the insights gained by policy analysts in the school and further education arenas. It is argued that there are indeed a number of significant interventions in the field (e.g. by educational institutions, employers, trades unions, TECs) but that there is a distinct lack of overarching policy direction. It is concluded that there is a need to develop a policy discourse which locates paid work as an important arena in which lifelong learning can be developed, while recognizing the complex divisions of labour within society and the learning needs of people largely excluded from paid work.     

The Norwegian competence reform and the limits of lifelong learning

Today, ‘lifelong learning for all’ figures prominently within the education and training policies of governments throughout the developed world and is presented as a powerful solution to a wide range of economic and social challenges. Norway is often regarded as a country that has perhaps made more progress towards this ideal than many others. Norway invests considerable resources in its education system and has already achieved a highly educated population by international standards. Its experience may be instructive therefore of the problems that more advanced countries confront in attempting to further progress the lifelong learning agenda even under relatively favourable conditions. Drawing upon a range of secondary material and interviews conducted with key stakeholders, this paper explores the main achievements, problems and challenges that Norway has faced in attempting to implement a recent reform of adult and continuing education and training, entitled the Competence Reform. To date, the reform would seem to have had only a relatively limited impact especially with regard to low‐qualified workers in sectors with poor training records and relatively high concentrations of ‘learning‐deprived’ jobs. In reflecting upon this experience, Norwegian policy makers appear to be reaching the end of a cycle of policy and academic thinking concerned mainly with boosting the supply of skills through the education system and are now embarking upon a new and challenging agenda aimed at increasing the utilisation and development of skills within the workplace.     

The Scottish school history curriculum and issues of national identity

ABSTRACT

The Scottish curriculum operates through broad guidelines that allow a good deal of freedom to shape the curriculum. This article reports the findings of an investigation into the attitudes towards, and knowledge of Scottish history of 16‐year‐old pupils in Scottish schools. The pupils’ responses to questions about aspects of Scotland's past revealed a very large degree of ignorance about important people, events, circumstances and dates as well as a number of misconceptions about major historical aspects. The content of the school history curriculum has an important part to play in the development of a sense of national identity. The findings are discussed at a time when there is a resurgent sense of national identity, with the people in Scotland recently voting in a referendum for the setting up of a Scottish parliament. The minimal place history occupies in the curriculum may partly explain the lack of pupils’ knowledge. There is a lack of detailed evidence on this issue, both within Scotland and from other nations. A major debate about what matters in Scotland's past is needed, for Scotland has avoided establishing a prescribed history curriculum: a well‐informed teaching profession has to make critical decisions about what to include.