A three-decade comparison of college faculty characteristics,satisfactions, activities,and attitudes

Information about personal background, professional activities, job satisfactions and dissatisfactions, and career appraisal was gathered by means of a questionnaire administered to a 25 percent random sample, stratified by rank, of full-time faculty in Minnesota's accredited, nontheological colleges and universities. Results of the survey are compared to results of earlier surveys in 1956 and 1968 using the same instrument with similar samples. Preliminary analysis suggests that the professoriate has remained relatively unchanged across the two and a half decades of the surveys, that the educational level of the faculties has risen sharply over the years, that Minnesota college teachers find their careers satisfying, and that most of them would make the same career selection again if given the opportunity.Presented at the Twenty-First Annual Forum of The Association for Institutional Research, Minneapolis, May 1981.     

Inclusive educational practices in Kenya: Evidencing practice of itinerant teachers who work with children with visual impairment in local mainstream schools

This article presents a findings from an investigation of the work of 38 specialist itinerant teachers (ITs) supporting the educational inclusion of children with visual impairment in Kenya. The research was designed around a participatory action research framework involving in-country researchers and participants (teachers) working in collaboration with researchers in the United Kingdom. Following an introductory training workshop, participants kept research journals over a 2-month period in which they recorded details of their itinerant duties (including the processes and content of their visits). Findings provide information about local practices of ITs support for children with visual impairment in mainstream schools and raise broader questions about the barriers to learning and development facing children with disabilities in mainstream schools in Kenya and other developing countries.     

Leadership development programs for minorities: An evaluation

This is a study of four leadership development programs for minorities to determine whether such programs are more effective when operated by a minority-group-controlled agency or a majority-group-controlled agency, when consisting of internships only or internships and an educational component, when operated as an internship and educational program by an educational institution or by a free-standing voluntary association. The most effective program is one that has an educational component and an internship and is offered by a college or university. An unanticipated finding is the significance of a placement service for minorities who complete such programs.     

Rigor and reproducibility instruction in academic medical libraries

Background:Concerns over scientific reproducibility have grown in recent years, leading the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to require researchers to address these issues in research grant applications. Starting in 2020, training grants were required to provide a plan for educating trainees in rigor and reproducibility. Academic medical centers have responded with different solutions to fill this educational need. As experienced instructors with expertise in topics relating to reproducibility, librarians can play a prominent role in providing trainings, classes, and events to educate investigators and trainees, and bolstering reproducibility in their communities.Case Presentations:This special report summarizes efforts at five institutions to provide education in reproducibility to biomedical and life sciences researchers. Our goal is to expand awareness of the range of approaches in providing reproducibility services in libraries.Conclusions:Reproducibility education by medical librarians can take many forms. These specific programs in reproducibility education build upon libraries'' existing collaborations, with funder mandates providing a major impetus. Collaborator needs shaped the exact type of educational or other reproducibility support and combined with each library''s strengths to yield a diversity of offerings based on capacity and interest. As demand for and complexity of reproducibility education increases due to new institutional and funder mandates, reproducibility education will merit special attention.     

Learning and Teaching Climate Science: The Perils of Consensus Knowledge Using Agnotology

Agnotology has been defined in a variety of ways including “the study of ignorance and its cultural production” and “the study of how and why ignorance or misunderstanding exists.” More recently, however, it has been posited that agnotology should be used in the teaching of climate change science. But rather than use agnotology to enhance an understanding of the complicated nature of the complex Earth’s climate, the particular aim is to dispel alternative viewpoints to the so-called consensus science. One-sided presentations of controversial topics have little place in the classroom as they serve only to stifle debate and do not further knowledge and enhance critical thinking. Students must understand not just what is known and why it is known to be true but also what remains unknown and where the limitations on scientific understanding lie. Fact recitation coupled with demonizing any position or person who disagrees with a singularly-derived conclusion has no place in education. Instead, all sides must be covered in highly debatable and important topics such as climate change, because authoritarian science never will have all the answers to such complex problems.     

Doing More With Less: How a Library Expanded Its Oral History Collection

This article highlights a successful collaborative project between the Toledo–Lucas County Library System, a university professor, and a local production company in order to expand the library's African American oral history collection. The project, made possible from a state technology grant, also resulted in the production of 20 television-quality DVDs and lesson guides. In addition to describing how we expanded the library's local African American history collection, we discuss how the project required a new collaborative culture. We also describe the unintended discovery of the evolving role and required skill sets of the librarian in the new collaboration relationship. The knowledge we gained helps us to fill a gap in our understanding about how to establish specialty collections as well as the required emergent role of the librarian.