Managing the Research University: Clark Kerr and the University of California

In the 1950s and 1960s, Clark Kerr led the University of California's Berkeley campus, and then the University of California as a whole. Throughout these years, he developed a system of managerial strategies. This paper shows how Kerr's administrative views drew upon his background in industrial relations, his liberal theories of pluralistic industrial change, and contemporary understandings of American business organization.     

Are Nondenominational Colleges More Liberal Than Denominational Colleges?: A Comparison of Faculty Religious Identity,Beliefs, Attitudes,and Actions

Throughout American history, scholars called Christian higher education by other names. They used terms such as “denominational,” “sectarian,” “church-related,” “church-sponsored,” “church-based,” and “church-affiliated” higher education to describe Christian higher education. What these terms failed to include, however, were the increasing number of nondenominational institutions that began to emerge in the nineteenth century.

In The Dying of the Light, James Burtchaell (1998 Burtchaell, J. T. (1998). The dying of the light: The disengagement of colleges &; universities from their Christian churches. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. [Google Scholar]) did include these institutions in his argument. He suggested that nondenominational colleges and universities had the same weakness as denominational institutions that abandoned their church connections. In fact, compared to institutions that kept their church ties, in Burtchaell’s eyes, they appeared to be weaker institutions since they lacked direct denominational support.

Apart from Burtchaell’s one historical case study, very little empirical literature exists that supports this argument. This study explores this claim empirically, and compares faculty attitudes, theological beliefs, and religious behaviors at denominational and nondenominational institutions that are part of the Council for Christian Colleges &; Universities (CCCU). Respondents included 1,999 full-time faculty from 49 CCCU institutions. Contrary to what certain scholars claim, results demonstrated that faculty at nondenominational institutions did not significantly differ in their theological beliefs from their denominational counterparts. Further empirical research is needed to understand the reasons for this outcome, although we offer some possible hypotheses.     

A blended learning curriculum for training peer researchers to conduct community-based participatory research

Peer researchers (PRs) are research team members who share traits (e.g. gender, age, sexual orientation, diagnosis, income, housing situation, etc.) with study participants. Participatory methods and some fields (e.g. HIV/AIDS) expect PRs to be equitably involved in a project. Moreover, in Canada, there is a current impetus to include ‘the patient’ in health research. PRs often join a project without any formal research training, yet they are frequently tasked with suggesting appropriate language, recruiting participants, conducting interviews, administering surveys, analyzing data, and presenting findings. While there is literature on PR hiring, ethical considerations of PR engagement, and PR experiences, the methods of training PRs remain underreported. A blended learning curriculum (i.e. combination of webinars, didactic in-person presentation, filmed simulation, etc.), informed by the principles of action learning and the concept of reciprocity, has shown preliminary effectiveness in training PRs across two studies. This paper will present the curriculum, alongside exploratory evaluation results (n?=?7), with details on how the curriculum changed from one study to the next and how reciprocity between academic and peer researchers led to stronger collaborations.     

A review of human competence in educational research: Levels of K- 12, College, Adult, and Business Education

The purpose of this study is to review the main perspectives or issues dealt with in the research on considered to be key competences, in order to develop a fuller understanding of how human competence functions. As a result of this review, two themes considered as having important implications for the actual practices can be identified: that there exists an holistic nature with different aspects of a given competence and that influences of a contextual and cultural nature are factors which affect the operation of human competence. By incorporating four characteristics and three domains of competence with the review conducted in this study, we began to appreciate what the research on human characteristics related to key competences has achieved and what is needed for future research.     

Professional Characteristics and Teacher Professionalism of Secondary School Teachers

Questionnaire responses from 338 secondary school teachers were analysed to relate teachers' professional characteristics (comprising teaching experience, professional development, and academic and professional qualifications) to teacher professionalism, defined in terms of the two dimensions, teaching competence and commitment to teaching. The Professional Development and Teacher Professionalism Instrument (PDTPI) was devised to measure professional development and teacher professionalism. Inferential statistical techniques employed in the study showed that the variable, teaching experience, was not related to teacher professionalism. Professional development, on the other hand, was found to be an important variable, with the mean teacher professionalism scores between the “high” and “low” professional development groups being significantly different. The study also found that academic qualification was not related to teacher professionalism. However, teachers who had higher professional qualifications were found to possess a higher degree of teacher professionalism.     

Discrete-time nonlinear observer design with general criteria

A class of discrete-time nonlinear system and measurement equations having incrementally conic nonlinearities and finite energy disturbances is considered. A linear matrix inequality-based design approach is presented, which guarantees the satisfaction of a variety of performance criteria ranging from simple estimation error boundedness to dissipativity. Some simulation examples are included to illustrate and provide support to the proposed design methodology.     

Creative Risk‐Taking: Developing Strategies for First Year University Students in the Creative Industries

This article reports on the findings of a study investigating creative risktaking behaviours of the commencing university students enrolled in three units across three disciplines: Interactive and Visual Design, Fashion Design, and Film, Screen and Animation. The study employs an action research methodology in order to help students develop confidence and competence in creative risk‐taking. Upon analysis from relevant literature three key provisions for the study are proposed, being: P1 An open and playful learning environment that encourages sharing and challenging multiple perspectives; P2 An adequate period of time for students to develop and revise creative concepts; and P3 Opportunities to assess their own performance in developing creative risk‐taking capacities. The study draws on the students’ written self‐reflections to identify the key challenges and opportunities in encouraging creative risk‐taking among first year students, which are challenges of collaboration; creative resilience and self‐efficacy; and balancing creativity with technical competency. The article suggests several ways that educators can encourage students to take creative risks within higher education in preparation for careers in the creative industries.     

Hierarchical document categorization with k-NN and concept-based thesauri

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm, which incorporates the relationships of concept-based thesauri into the document categorization using the k-NN classifier (k-NN). k-NN is one of the most popular document categorization methods because it shows relatively good performance in spite of its simplicity. However, it significantly degrades precision when ambiguity arises, i.e., when there exist more than one candidate category to which a document can be assigned. To remedy the drawback, we employ concept-based thesauri in the categorization. Employing the thesaurus entails structuring categories into hierarchies, since their structure needs to be conformed to that of the thesaurus for capturing relationships between categories. By referencing various relationships in the thesaurus corresponding to the structured categories, k-NN can be prominently improved, removing the ambiguity. In this paper, we first perform the document categorization by using k-NN and then employ the relationships to reduce the ambiguity. Experimental results show that this method improves the precision of k-NN up to 13.86% without compromising its recall.