Benefits to University Students Through Volunteering in a Health Context: A New Model

Individual interviews explored 50 British University students’ accounts of sustained volunteering within health settings and a model was developed using grounded theory. Phase one – ‘Getting involved’ – outlines ‘motives and catalysts’ for students starting to volunteer wherein altruistic motives of compassion for others are juxtaposed with perceptions of enhanced employability. Phase two – ‘Maintaining commitment’ – includes three components (‘Making connections’, ‘Developing resilience’ and ‘Keeping the balance’), which represent important aspects of continuing volunteering participation. Phase three – ‘Reaping the rewards’ – focuses on the benefits of volunteering including self-development. Our findings have implications for the training and support of student volunteers.     

‘Being a Member of a Club makes me feel special!’ Children’s Responses to a Community Literacy Project.

This article presents the findings of a preliminary small‐scale evaluation of one aspect of the Read It Project, a community literacy project initiated and managed by Leeds Education 2000. It focuses on the reading attitudes and behaviour of children who attended Read It Clubs in 1998/9, based on survey data collected from sixty‐one participating children. It is clear children enjoyed the Read It Clubs they attended, valued the experience and believed they gained from it.     

Yes,Classroom Sales Training Can Enhance Performance

Organizations today face competitive conditions unlike those experienced in the past. Managers and team leaders must learn ways to get the highest level of performance from a team of people, work with a variety of individuals diverse projects, communicate with a wide audience clearly and effectively, and be able to provide performance feedback and elevate performance levels for people they hardly know. While few will argue that learning in organizations is critical to meeting these challenges, an increasing number of decision-makers are raising questions about the value of classroom training. The questions are especially difficult to address in sales training where results are observable (i.e., sales) but difficult to trace to performance events and interventions. The current study was conducted to address two questions: 1) Is it possible to link sales production to participation in classroom sales training? 2) If so, what are the elements of the training that seem to be most useful in enhancing employee performance and sales performance?     

On the Origins of SLE Research,Questions, Outstanding,and Other Research Traditions

This brief article discusses important topics not addressed elsewhere in this special issue of EER. First, by documenting the true origins of significant life experiences (SLE) research, it corrects certain misinformation appearing in recent years. It goes on to raise some questions about past research techniques and interpretation of results. It concludes by recommending certain authors and titles from other research traditions, which could inform future SLE investigations.     

Book reviews

International Review of Education -     

A Three-Dimensional Print Model of the Pterygopalatine Fossa Significantly Enhances the Learning Experience

The pterygopalatine fossa (PPF) is a bilateral space deep within the skull that serves as a major neurovascular junction. However, its small volume and poor accessibility make it a difficult space to comprehend using two-dimensional illustrations and cadaveric dissections. A three-dimensional (3D) printed model of the PPF was developed as a visual and kinesthetic learning tool for completely visualizing the fossa, its boundaries, its communicating channels, and its neurovascular structures. The model was evaluated by analyzing student performance on pre- and post-quizzes and a student satisfaction survey based on the five-point Likert scale. The first cohort comprised of 88 students who had never before studied the PPF. The second cohort consisted of 30 students who were previously taught the PPF. Each cohort was randomly divided into a control group who were provided with a half skull and an intervention group that were provided with the 3D printed model. The intervention group performed significantly better on the post-quiz as compared to the control group in cohort I (P = 0.001); while not significant, it also improved learning in cohort II students (P = 0.124). Satisfaction surveys indicated that the intervention group found the 3D printed model to be significantly more useful (P < 0.05) as compared to the half skull used by the control group. Importantly, the effect sizes for cohorts I and II (0.504 and 0.581, respectively) validated the statistical results. Together, this study highlights the importance of 3D printed models as teaching tools in anatomy education.     

The ethical sensations of im-mediacy: Embodiment and multiple literacies in animal rights activists’ learning with media technologies

In this paper, I consider a social movement for animal rights as a site of learning about a particular form of ethics. I use a multiliteracies framework, which emphasizes critical consumption and creation across a range of media forms, to consider how learning unfolds using a different kind of medium: the affective body. Activists in this study learned to read the signs of their embodied encounters with nonhuman animals as a privileged mode for understanding their ethical truth. Then they used other forms of digital mediation to produce and spread the feelings of being present with animals for others. I discuss social media memes and virtual reality as two examples. I employ the term “im-mediacy” to emphasize both the affects of feeling present and the sense-making involved in mediation and its ideologies. This approach considers affect and semiosis as mutually constitutive processes in learning. The findings also suggest the need to consider the affects produced in learning environments that bring bodies in proximity to one another, or that use technology to mediate feelings of proximity, as well as what I describe as embodied literacies for sensing the needs of others and responding with care.