Supporting Faculty Grassroots Leadership

Various factors are making faculty leadership challenging including the rise in part-time and non-tenure-track faculty, the increasing pressure to publish and teach more courses and adopt new technologies and pedagogies, increasing standards for tenure and promotion, ascension of academic capitalism, and heavy service roles for women and people of color. This article focuses on describing actions taken by institutional agents and aspects of campus environments which are supportive of grassroots faculty leadership. While there are many conditions which inhibit faculty leadership (i.e., part-time and contingent faculty trends, rising publication standards, etc.), our study demonstrated certain campus conditions or characteristics can overcome the forces of change including counting leadership as service, creating campus networks, addressing dysfunctional department dynamics, fostering role models, supporting faculty who question or challenge decisions, ensuring flexibility and autonomy, and altering contingent faculty contracts to include service and leadership.

MOOCs to university: a consumer goal and marketing perspective

In this paper we apply consumer goal theories to an educational context by examining how completion of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) may motivate enrolment in a university course. We contend that individuals who finish a MOOC are more likely to establish a new goal intention for university than those who do not finish. This new goal intention is likely to be prompted by the individual’s satisfaction with their MOOC experience as well as a sense of discontent in not having fulfilled their broader educational goals. For those who do set a new goal for university study, we contend that the institute hosting the MOOC is likely to form part of the consideration set used by individuals to narrow down their choice of tertiary provider. Moreover, we argue that this same host institute is likely to be chosen from the consideration set where the MOOC experience is a satisfying one and where a strong link can be established between the pedagogical and delivery approaches used in both the MOOC and university settings. This research has implications for how tertiary institutes create and use MOOCs, and offers insights into how providers can more effectively market higher education courses to those progressing through a MOOC pathway.     

在美国作为一个研究领域的高等教育:历史、学位项目与知识基础

在探索高等教育作为一个研究生阶段的新的学术领域在美国的崛起方面,本文提出了四个相关的主题。首先,本文追溯了高等教育作为一种学位项目的起源和程序化的发展,以及高等教育的课程发展和专业化的演变。第二,通过高等教育研究领域在研究型学位(Ph.D和M.A.)和专业学位(Ed.D.和M.Ed)的发展历史,本文指出在整个20世纪,教育学院都在力求区别对待这两种学位类型,而且努力证明这些学位类型各有其存在的原因和不同的要求。第三,高等教育研究领域的崛起逐步形成了一种知识基础,它反映了与大学历史和传统、大学管理与治理、大学课程、学生和公共政策研究领域相关的正在增长的研究生产力。与许多其他学科和专业领域一样,这种正在发展中的知识基础发轫于致力于高等教育研究的学术期刊、丛书、专著以及期刊文章。第四,在高等教育研究中心和学位项目国际化的背景下,本文对美国、欧洲、加拿大和中国正在演化中的高等教育的多学科领域提供了一个粗略的描述。     

Mindfulness Interventions for College Students with ADHD: A Multiple Single Case Research Design

A multiple single case research design (SCRD) was used to examine two mindfulness interventions (MBSR and Vipassana meditation). Impacted symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), psychological distress, mindfulness, and treatment satisfaction in college students were examined via single subject and group analyses. Results indicated that 57% of the seven-person sample evidenced decreases in ADHD symptoms, 72% decreased in distress, 72% increased on the trait measure of mindfulness, and treatment satisfaction was high. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.     

Educators’ understanding of young children’s typical and problematic sexual behaviour and their training in this area

As part of a wider study, this paper reports on Australian educators’ understanding of children’s typical and problematic sexual behaviour and their source of training in this area. A sample of 107 educators from government, independent and Catholic primary schools, preschools and care organisations across Australia answered an online questionnaire regarding their understanding of and experiences with children’s problematic sexual behaviours and their management strategies. The majority of educators were able to identify children’s age-appropriate typical sexual behaviour and some elements of problematic sexual behaviour; however, individual knowledge was not extensive. Approximately 35% (n = 35) of educators said they had not been trained in identifying and responding to children’s problematic sexual behaviour. Of those who said they had received training, the majority (82%, n = 53) described having participated in a compulsory course on reporting suspected abuse to government (a mandated reporting course). Ninety per cent (n = 89) of educators reported that courses specific to children’s problematic sexual behaviours should be offered. This suggests that mandated reporting courses do not offer in-depth training specific to problematic sexual behaviour. Implications for professional development are discussed.     

Analysis of the finite element method : by Gilbert Strang and George J. Fix. 306 pages,diagrams, 6×9 in., Prentice-Hall,Englewood Cliffs,N.J., 1973. Price, $16.00.

Prior work by this author has shown how the voltage step response of an initially quiescent RC line can be concisely expressed in terms of a set of higher transcendental functions. For convenience, the latter were defined in termsof integrals of elliptic theta functions and are termed “diffusion functions”. These same diffusion functions are also found to be useful in expressing closed-form solutions for the voltage response of distributed RC lines with a non-quiescent and discontinuous initial potential distribution. Results herein provide functional expressions for this voltage response with either open-circuited or short-circuited terminations. A variety of solution plots show how the responses change for different positions of the discontinuity. Also, plots of the diffusion functions are supplied showing their behavior over one complete cycle and more information on their symmetry properties is provided than was included in the initial paper.     

Future Trends and Possibilities for Creating More Gender Equitable Community Colleges

A review of the articles in this issue highlights how gender as a lens, construct, and identity shapes each current issue within the community college. Using the articles in this issue as a basis, this final article provides a series of recommendations for researchers and practitioners who are interested in identifying causes, methods, and practices for creating more democratic and pluralistic environments.