Library Space Assessment: User Learning Behaviors in the Library

As an essential department at a higher education institution and an informal learning space, little is known about how academic libraries contribute to student learning on campus. The Olin Library sought to learn the role of library space in our users' learning. We surveyed users about their learning behaviors in a specific space prior to a scheduled renovation and then in the same space after. We wanted to determine how the renovation changed users' perceptions of their learning behaviors in that space.     

Scaffolding Infants’ Play Through Empowering and Individualizing Teaching Practices

Research Findings: Using a qualitative research approach, this article explores teachers’ roles as scaffolders of infants’ play and the changing nature of their individualized support for infants’ learning and development through play in an infant group care setting. Three infant teachers in a child care center were followed over 3 months. Observations, interviews, ongoing conversations, e-mails, and reflective notes were used as data sources. Findings revealed that the teachers thought deeply about their roles as supporters of infants’ play, and they made intentional choices in scaffolding infants’ play. Each teacher's ways of empowering infants in play were grounded in her views of infants as learners and were individualized to accommodate children's unique learning styles and personalities. Practice or Policy: This study provides a window into the ways in which teachers working with the youngest children can set the stage for later learning.     

Listening to our Students: Understanding the factors that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students' academic success

While the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education in Australia has doubled in recent years, the gap between their attainment and the attainment of other Australians has remained consistent. It is essential to elucidate the factors that promote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students' academic success, not in order to justify the exclusion of these students from tertiary education, but to refine and develop curriculum and management strategies which promote their academic success. This study focuses on Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander students' experiences in a diploma program offered in block mode, in order to better understand the ‘on-’ and ‘off-’ campus experiences which are related to academic success and the factors which challenge or enhance students' study. The research yields important findings related to students' motivations to enrol and their definitions of academic success; the challenges they experience in making the transition to tertiary study; the vulnerability of our students' determination to succeed; the effects of being in a program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students; and the ways in which minor challenges, if unresolved, can accumulate to interfere with students' study.     

Developing a prototype information system framework to handle pedagogical knowledge in a secondary school modern foreign languages department

This paper reports a small-scale project to develop a prototype web-based information system to support teaching and learning within the modern languages department of a comprehensive secondary school. The system was developed in close consultation with the teaching staff and the work is presented within the broader context of knowledge management systems and their potential use in an educational environment.     

Academic self-concepts in adolescence: Relations with achievement and ability grouping in schools

The effects of ability grouping in schools on students' self-concept were examined in a sample of 23 secondary schools with a range of structured ability groupings. Measures of general self-concept, academic self-concept, and achievement were collected from over 1600 students aged 14–15 years and again two years later. Students' academic self-concept, but not their general self-concept, was related to the extent of ability grouping in the school attended. Subject-specific facets of academic self-concept were not related to the number of years of ability grouping students had experienced in English, mathematics and science; however, they were related to students' position in the grouping hierarchy, with students in high-ability groups having significantly higher self-concepts in all three subjects than students in low-ability groups. Students' intentions to learn in future were more strongly affected by self-concept than by achievement.