Co-creation in higher education: towards a conceptual model

Students have begun to show interest in adopting active and participatory roles that allow them to interact and work collaboratively with educators. One important aspect of students as partners is a process known as value co-creation. Value co-creation is the process of students’ feedback, opinions, and other resources such as their intellectual capabilities and personalities, integrated alongside institutional resources, which can offer mutual value to both students and institutions. This paper presents the first conceptual model of value co-creation in higher education using a lens of co-creation cultivated through business and marketing literature. The model includes key components of value co-creation, co-production, and value-in-use as well as links to the anticipated benefits of value co-creation. The model can be used to inform and guide practice for the faculty and administration within higher education as well as to broaden the foundation of value co-creation literature.     

Beyond Generic Mentoring: Helping trainee teachers to teach primary science

Support material to assist primary teacher mentors to help trainee teachers improve their medium-term and individual lesson plans, as well as their science lessons, was developed. This support material comprised checklists that focused on science, rather than generic teaching, illustrated by examples of trainee teachers' work, with a commentary. The trial of the material involved 64 teacher mentors and 26 trainee teachers. Trainees' practice in science was found to have improved in subsequent unmentored lessons, but good practice was not transferred to other subjects. Teachers also reported that their own practice improved and indicated that the material would be valuable in science in-service training with their colleagues.     

Welcoming Talk

This article explores some strategies for helping four year olds to develop oral language competence. Elizabeth Coates reflects on her attempts to meet the language needs of reception children by providing tasks for them which offer them ways of sharing talk with her and with each other.     

Working on a dream: educational returns from off-campus paid work

Helping students develop the employability skills and professional capabilities they will need to transition into graduate roles is one of the most important mandates for university study. With this context in mind, this paper analyses the nature and implications of Australian university students’ participation in paid work during study. The paper looks at the incidence with which students participate in paid work, and follows this with an analysis of the influence such participation has on academic engagement and outcomes. There are disjuncts, the data shows, between student activity and the support received from institutions. It is suggested that institutions need to embrace students’ off-campus paid work. The findings shed light on practices that institutions can use to support students’ participation and outcomes.     

Taiwanese science and life technology curriculum standards and earth systems education

This research examines whether UK primary teachers are aware of the potential of highly able young 'scientists' and whether they differentiate their teaching accordingly. The support that the National Curriculum gives to highly able children is also examined. A questionnaire was chosen for initial data collection, followed by a semi-structured interview with teachers who sent children to master classes. Analysis would indicate that teachers recognize that children who are scientifically highly able have the capacity to use higher order thinking to perform all aspects of science investigations. There does, however, seem to be a mismatch between theory and practice. The data from the questionnaires suggest that teachers do use a variety of methods to differentiate their science teaching. There was, however, no correlation between teachers' opinions related to scientifically able children's investigative skills and the associated methods of differentiating their teaching. The interview data reinforced this further as many able children had been given limited experience of science investigations in mixed ability groups.