Indigenization and University Governance: Reflections from the Transition to Yukon University

Tertiary Education and Management - While literature on university governance in Canada has identified key challenges that need to be addressed, it largely overlooks calls for change towards...     

Faculty Liaisons: an embedded approach for enriching teaching and learning in higher education

This paper explores the experiences of a group of academic developers who support educational development work as Faculty Liaisons at a large, research-intensive university. These academic developers inhabit complex ‘third spaces’, providing support through an embedded partnership relationship that requires lateral movement across functional and organizational boundaries to create new professional spaces, knowledge, and relationships. The authors utilize narrative inquiry and auto-ethnographic approaches to present an interpretive qualitative analysis of their experiences supporting Faculty and University projects across complex and evolving organizational boundaries. From this analysis, they highlight key roles and responsibilities associated with their blended context and identify challenges that academic developers who occupy third spaces within academic organizations face as they negotiate competing interests, identities, and requirements associated with the diverse range of their projects and the blended experience of working in scholarly and administrative, central- and Faculty-based roles. The lessons they have learned from these experiences will be of particular interest to academic developers who are experiencing the flux of change within higher education settings that are impacting teaching and learning practices both for faculty in the classroom and for those across the institution who support them.     

Individual differences in achievement goals: A longitudinal study of cognitive, emotional, and achievement outcomes

Within achievement goal theory debate remains regarding the adaptiveness of certain combinations of goals. Assuming a multiple-goals perspective, we used cluster analysis to classify 1002 undergraduate students according to their mastery and performance-approach goals. Four clusters emerged, representing different goal combinations: high mastery/performance (i.e., multiple goals), dominant mastery, dominant performance, and low mastery/performance (i.e., low motivation). In a longitudinal analysis over one academic year, the clusters were compared on cognitive appraisals (expected achievement, perceived success), achievement-related emotions (enjoyment, boredom, anxiety), and objective measures of academic achievement (final grade in Introductory Psychology, GPA). The low-motivation cluster demonstrated the least adaptive profile across all outcomes. The multiple-goals, mastery, and performance clusters showed equivalent levels of achievement; however, students in the performance cluster were more psychologically and emotionally vulnerable than the multiple-goals and mastery clusters. Our discussion focuses on the immediate and potentially long-term implications of specific goal combinations for students and educators, with particular attention to understanding the cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities of students in the performance cluster which appear despite satisfactory achievement levels.     

Peers'' Perceptions of the Consequences That Victimized Children Provide Aggressors

Fourth- through seventh-grade children (mean age 11.5 years) estimated the likelihood that various consequences would occur following hypothetical acts of aggression toward victimized and nonvictimized classmates. Children also indicated how much they would care if the consequences were to occur. When contemplating aggression toward victimized classmates, children were more likely to expect tangible rewards, more likely to expect signs of victim suffering, and less likely to expect retaliation than when considering aggression against nonvictimized classmates. Also, when considering aggression toward victimized classmates, children cared more about securing tangible rewards but were less disturbed by the thought of hurting their victims or by the thought of their victims retaliating than when imagining aggression toward nonvictimized classmates. The foregoing pattern was stronger for boys than for girls. Implications for theories of aggression and for intervention with aggressive and victimized children are discussed.     

How Do Teachers Use Comics to Promote Engagement,Equity, and Diversity in Science Classrooms?

Research in Science Education - Equitable learning opportunities are critical to the goals of science education. However, major curriculum standards are vague on how to achieve equity goals, and...     

Ideas: A system for international data exchange and access for science

An operational prototype inhomogeneous distributed database system has been built to provide homogeneous access for researchers and managers of science policy to data on research projects held in three countries. The architecture is sufficiently general not only to accommodate additional countries and databases on research projects, but also to provide a general framework for other international collaborative projects aimed at the provision of information. The design exhibits an optimal compromise between sufficient data to satisfy a retrieval request and the minimal data for transmission to maintain the database.     

Is the Poor Performance of Self‐Worth Protective Students Linked with Social Comparison Goals?

Students motivated to protect self‐worth perform poorly in situations that threaten to reveal low ability while performing well in situations that involve little threat to self‐worth. One factor contributing to their poor performance is thought to be their orientation towards social comparison goals (goals that have to do with vindicating their ability relative to others rather than pursuing mastery). In the present study, 96 undergraduate students who were either high or low in self‐worth protection were exposed to either success or failure feedback and subsequently primed to pursue either social comparison or mastery goals. For students high in self‐worth protection, the negative effects of either failure or social comparison goal priming is sufficient to give rise to poor performance. However, only when success is combined with mastery goal priming is a positive achievement outcome evident. The requirements of best practice approaches to encouraging students to adopt mastery‐orientated behaviours are discussed.     

Effects of Academic Discipline and Teaching Goals in Predicting Grading Beliefs Among Undergraduate Teaching Faculty

Prior research reveals that differential grading patterns exist among the academic disciplines. One explanation may lie in discipline-related differences in teaching goals and beliefs about the meaning grades should convey. This study examined the effects of academic discipline and teaching goals on grading beliefs. A national sample (n = 442) of undergraduate teaching faculty provided responded to a survey measuring the importance of various teaching goals and orientations toward norm-referenced or criterion-referenced grading (Frame of Reference), and beliefs about using grades to sort and select students on the basis of achievement (Gatekeeping). Both teaching goals and academic discipline were significantly related to gatekeeping beliefs, but not to beliefs about frames of reference for grading. Higher gatekeeping scores were associated with faculty in the paradigmatic fields and those who emphasized analytic skills and time management. Lower gatekeeping scores were associated with the preparadigmatic disciplines and teaching goals of synthesis and integration and developing respect for others. Faculty who identified their primary teaching role as subject matter oriented were more gatekeeping than those who identified themselves primarily as being student/personal development oriented.