Developing Professional Services Staff to Enhance The Student Experience

This article outlines how cultural change was achieved for enhancing the student experience. The engagement and development of staff and a model of partnership is presented that delivered new services and developments. The change is disclosed from a staff development perspective including an examination of differentiation and what makes a good facilitator. The relevance of the facilitator's own continuing professional development is considered before reflecting on the authors’ delivery of a conference workshop in the north west of England to promote the techniques. It is hoped that the reader will critique the approach and embrace elements for their own practice.     

Rhetoric and realities of London 2012 Olympic education and participation ‘legacies’: voices from the core and periphery

A legacy emphasis was one of the fundamental pillars of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The notion of an Olympic legacy was predicated on assumptions that the event's value would not purely derive from the sporting spectacle, but rather from the ‘success’ of enduring effects met out in London and across the country. For physical education students and practitioners, Olympic legacy agendas translated into persistent pressure to increase inspiration, engagement, participation and performance in the subject, sport and physical activity. Responding to this context, and cognizant of significant disciplinary scholarship, this paper reports initial data from the first phase of a longitudinal study involving Key Stage Three (students aged 11–13) cohorts in two comparable United Kingdom schools: the first an inner-city (core) London school adjacent to the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London (n = 150); the second a (peripheral) school in the Midlands (n = 198). The research involved the use of themed questionnaires focusing on self-reported attitudes towards the Olympic Games and experiences of physical education, sport and physical activity. Students from both schools demonstrated a wide variety of attitudes towards physical education and sport; yet, minor variances emerged regarding extreme enthusiasm levels. Both cohorts also expressed considerably mixed feelings towards the impending Olympic Games. Strong and variable responses were also reported regarding inspiration levels, ticketing acquisition and engagement levels. Consequently, this investigation can be read within the broader context of legacy debates and aligns well with physical educationalists' ongoing discomfort regarding legacy imperatives being enforced upon the discipline and its practitioners. Our work reiterates a shared disciplinary scepticism that while an Olympic Games may temporarily affect young peoples' affectations for sport (and maybe physical education and physical activity), it may not provide the best, or most appropriate, mechanism for sustained attitudinal and/or social changes en masse.     

Pedagogic democracy versus pedagogic supremacy: migrant academics’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the underexplored area of othering of migrant academics within their teaching context. Nine personal narratives of migrant academics’ teaching were analysed qualitatively for indications of pedagogical othering. Migrant academics indicated the need to align their own pedagogic values and practices with that of their host institutions they work in as they felt their own values and practices were considered less desirable. We argue, from a Gramsci’s hegemonic perspective, that the pedagogic adaptation by migrant academics aimed at improving student learning is not problematic in itself, but more problematic is the inequality of opportunity for migrant academics to contribute to pedagogical decisions which can meaningfully influence the departmental culture. Lack of pedagogic democracy where the ‘home’ academic environment has a monopoly of knowledge and a hegemonic position regarding learning and teaching can compromise the student-learning experience by limiting articulation of alternative pedagogical perspectives by the migrant international academics.     

Resource use and academic performance among first year psychology students

Multiple questionnaires completed over the semester by 514 students enrolled in a first year psychology course reveal that no single pattern of reliance on print, online, or in-person resources guarantees a high mark. Analyses of the reported and measured frequency of use of various resources correlated against students’, performance on both individual assessments and their final marks suggests that students employ a range of strategies in their use of class resources. They tend to rely on their textbooks, Web-based lecture notes, and online quizzes, but their final marks are more strongly determined by their university entrance scores than by their resource use strategy, their sex, or whether or not English is their first language. The data suggest that students adapt their learning strategies to the resources available, with an apparent emphasis on learning what will be assessed rather than exploring for understanding. Importantly, the results argue that investment in development of educational technologies – and students’, use of educational technologies – must be informed by empirical data concerning its impact on the efficiency and quality of learning.