Women,Research Performance and Work Context

This article presents findings from a qualitative study focused on the conditions that support high research productivity in women. Interviewees were all active researchers and many were national or international leaders in their respective fields. While personal factors such as motivation, focus, and good scholarly habits were identified as influencing their research success, interviewees also placed significant emphasis on aspects of their workplace culture and practice (teaching and research connections, degrees of flexibility, work–family interface) that they felt were equally important in determining their options and opportunities for conducting research. This suggests that universities concerned with enhancing the research performance of staff need to recognize—and respond to—how workplace dynamics and culture shape individual research participation.     

Schematising activities in early childhood education

The purpose of this study was to determine the importance of introducing schematising to children in early childhood and to determine whether schematising can be taught to children. This was done using a longitudinal, quantitative study with a quasi-experimental design (N = 133). In this study, the use of schematising was taught to an experimental group of children to determine if it is possible to realise significantly improved results in schematising tasks for an experimental group in comparison to a control group of children who were not taught schematising. Pupils in the experimental group demonstrated significantly better results on schematising, which cannot be explained by maturation. In our future research, we will investigate the mathematical performances of these experimental and control groups in the next grade of the primary school curriculum.     

Research and evaluation in sexuality education: an allegorical exploration of complexities and possibilities

Defining ‘success’ in sexuality education solely in terms of quantitative outcome measures is woefully inadequate. All too often, such measures presuppose and perpetuate a narrow and overly instrumental view of sexuality and education. Research and evaluation favouring quantitative measures of effectiveness tend to amplify short‐term results and mediocre ends at the expense of more substantive insight into the complexities and nuances of human action and good practice. The paper begins with a true story involving a teenager and high‐risk behaviours. This story serves as a basis for an allegorical exploration of programme development, goals and vision. The allegory offers a context for thinking about the importance of research and evaluation methods that focus on expressive action, agency and symbolic metaphorical thinking as opposed to measurable behaviours and linear logical thinking.     

Teacher educators working on their own professional development: goals,activities and outcomes of a project for the professional development of teacher educators

This article reports on the professional development of teacher educators within the context of a national project, ‘Professional Quality of Teacher Educators,’ where a professional standard and a standards‐based procedure of (self‐)assessment and professional development have been created and effectively implemented. This project offered a unique opportunity to analyze the goals, activities and outcomes of the process of professional development of teacher educators in a situation in which this development is promoted by the professional group as a whole. In our research, we used 25 completed portfolio's made by teacher educators participating in the standards‐based procedure of (self‐)assessment and professional development. We found that teacher educators, participating in this procedure, prefer the development of their knowledge and skills over the development of their attitudes and beliefs. For their professional development, the teacher educators experiment with new activities within the work‐situation and interact with colleagues within their professional community, more than that they study theory or reflect on their work. The participating teacher educators experience a positive impact at the personal level (change in cognition and behavior). More than one‐third of them share outcomes with others. Above, they report a more positive self‐esteem and more enthusiasm for teacher education. This article may motivate other countries or institutions to invest in the professional development of teacher educators. Further research is necessary on the essence of the professional qualities of teacher educators and the relation of their professional development with student learning.     

A Profile of Giving Patterns and Donor Behavior at a Suburban Community College

Community colleges have become increasingly reliant on diversifying their revenue sources, and turning to private fund raising has become a common strategy for many of them. Although fund raising has been a common practice in higher education since its inception, it has only emerged in the two-year college sector in the past several decades. The current study sought to identify donors at a case study, suburban community college, specifically exploring giving patterns over time and testing the conceptual framework of a pyramid of giving that overlays institutional involvement and commitment with giving levels. Major infrastructure inconsistencies prevented much of the framework testing, but data were capable of creating an initial donor and giving profile for a typical community college. This profile demonstrated that board members and employees were the most loyal and consistent in making contributions, but that these gifts often were stable over time and did not increase to become major gifts. Also, private business and industry gifts were often given at the same level as individual gifts, perhaps illustrating the responsiveness and cooperation between community colleges and the local workforce.     

2008 Community College Futures Assembly Focus: Change Or Die—Keys to Enacting Change in the Community College

The Community College Futures Assembly has served as a national, independent policy thinktank since 1995. Its purpose is to articulate the critical issues facing American community colleges and recognize innovative programs. Convening annually in January in Orlando, Florida, the Assembly offers a learning environment where tough questions are raised, critical issues are discussed, and policy implications are vetted. The focus for the 2008 Community College Futures Assembly was change, a theme taken from the book, Change or Die. This special focus issue of the Community College Journal of Research and Practice highlights the best practices of 30 Bellwether trend-setting institutions.     

INFLUENCE OF ASCRIBED AND ACHIEVED SOCIAL STATUSES,VALUES, AND REWARDS ON JOB SATISFACTION AMONG COMMUNITY COLLEGE FACULTY

Research on job satisfaction among community college faculty has been largely atheoretical. The present study examined the contribution of four sets of factors to explaining faculty job satisfaction in the community college. According to Kalleberg's (1977) theory of job satisfaction, employee's affective reactions to their jobs are largely determined by ascribed social statuses, achieved social statuses, job values, and job rewards. A random sample was drawn of 371 full‐time faculty from a multi‐campus community college district located in a metropolitan area in the Southwest. Nonresponses and partial responses resulted in an effective sample size of 261. A correlation analysis revealed that institutional age and physical safety job value were significantly, inversely related to job satisfaction and that all job rewards were significantly, positively related to job satisfaction. A simultaneous multiple regression analysis indicated that institutional age was a significant, inverse predictor of job satisfaction and that chronological age, and the good supervision and work itself job rewards were significant, positive predictors of job satisfaction. Of the variation in job satisfaction scores accounted for by all predictors, approximately 5% may be attributed to ascribed and achieved social statuses and to job values, and 48% to job rewards. For faculty in the district we surveyed, the keys to promoting job satisfaction would be to enhance the satisfying aspects of the work itself and good supervision. Programs which afford faculty who are less than satisfied with their jobs opportunities to be “origins” rather than “pawns” may be beneficial.     

The Growth of Phonological Awareness by Children With Reading Disabilities: A Result of Semantic Knowledge or Knowledge of Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences?

According to the Lexical Restructuring Model (Metsala & Walley, 1998 Metsala, J. L. and Walley, A. C. 1998. “Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representation: Precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading ability”. In Word recognition in beginning literacy, Edited by: Metsala, J. L. and Ehri, L. C. 89–120. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.  [Google Scholar]), children move from holistic representations of words, to syllabic representations, and finally to phonemic representations through a restructuring process driven by their developing lexical base. In contrast, the psycholinguistic grain size theory put forth by Ziegler and Goswami (2005) Ziegler, J. C. and Goswami, U. 2005. Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory.. Psychological Bulletin, 131: 3–29. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] suggests that the awareness of individual phonemes is not possible without direct literacy instruction. The purpose of this study was to examine whether semantic knowledge and/or knowledge of grapheme/phoneme correspondences influenced the acquisition of word-blending skills by a sample of children with a reading disability. Participants were 211 second-grade and third-grade students from public elementary schools who were assigned to a reading intervention. Hierarchical Linear Modeling techniques were used to model individual growth curves of word-blending skills. Overall, findings support the psycholinguistic grain size theory of reading and suggest that instruction in the relationship between orthographic patterns and their corresponding sounds is necessary for the development of phonological awareness.     

The Impact of Gatekeeper Training for Suicide Prevention on University Resident Assistants

Resident assistants (RAs) can serve as important suicide prevention gatekeepers. The purpose of the study was to determine if training improved RAs’ crisis communications skills and suicide‐related knowledge and to determine if the knowledge elements predicted crisis communications skills. New RAs showed significant improvement in all areas from pretest to posttest, whereas returning RAs showed no significant increase in any of the areas. None of the knowledge areas predicted communications skills for either group.