The Critical Inquiry Imperative: Information Literacy and Critical Inquiry as Complementary Concepts in Higher Education

Sharing a variety of characteristics and theories, critical inquiry and information literacy have the potential to complement one another in a higher education setting. This article explores an initiative at the University of South Carolina Aiken to help students with their critical thinking and reasoning skills through the implementation of a new, one-credit, freshman seminar course. The class, entitled Critical Inquiry, would address three student learning outcomes, including one directed at information literacy. A case study of how the initiative was implemented is discussed.     

Academic Engagement and Achievement Among Latina/o and Non-Latina/o Adolescents

This article presents an exploratory study of the relation between academic engagement and academic achievement for Latina/o and non-Latina/o adolescents attending a predominantly low-income, Latina/o urban middle school in Southern California. A sample of 61 students (37 Latinas/os and 24 non-Latinas/os) participated in the study. The Latina/o students’ mean grade point average was lower than the non-Latina/o students’ mean grade point average. The study results revealed a significant interaction between academic engagement and grade point average for Latina/o students but not for non-Latina/o students. Findings are discussed in regard to the promotion of Latina/o adolescent achievement through increased levels of academic engagement.     

Guiding Principles for Internet Policy: A Comparison of Media Coverage in Four Western Countries

The governance of the Internet on the global level has attracted much attention. In the process the importance of the national context has gotten downplayed. We argue that understanding of the national context is a necessary complement to research on global governance for an understanding of the dynamics of Internet development. We spotlight the importance of the national context by showing that seemingly global principles have varying import and meaning in four countries—the United States, Germany, Finland, and Sweden. We do so via a qualitative content analysis of leading newspapers.     

Research Circles: Supporting the Scholarship of Junior Faculty

This article describes and assesses “Research Circles” as a mechanism for enhancing faculty collegiality and research. Recently established on our campus, these circles, composed of three to four faculty members, have had a particularly powerful effect on the new faculty members' adjustment to their tenure track positions, especially since they entered a context that might otherwise have been challenging: a new interdisciplinary upper-division campus with high expectations for teaching excellence. Based on the end-of-year evaluations, journals, and focus groups, the co-authors described themes that emerged from their participation in these circles. Circle participation not only facilitated faculty writing throughout their first year, but it also fostered the development of an interdisciplinary community which nurtured creativity and risk taking in writing. All authors are currently teaching in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (IAS) at The University of Washington, Bothell (UWB). Except for Diane Gillespie, Professor and Associate Director of IAS, all other authors are Assistant Professors in IAS. Diane Gillespie received her Ph.D. in cultural and psychological studies in education from The University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Her interests include critical pedagogy, narrative psychology, and cultural diversity. Nives Dolšak received a joint Ph.D. in public policy and political science from Indiana University. Her interests include public policy, environmental policy, and international relations. Bruce Kochis, received his Ph.D. in Slavic languages & literatures at the University of Michigan. He focuses on global human rights policy, discourse analysis, and political theory. Ron Krabill received his Ph.D. in sociology and historical studies from New School for Social Research. His interests include comparative media, politics and social movements with a special emphasis on South Africa, as well as the study of peace, conflict, social justice, and human rights. Kari Lerum received her Ph.D. in sociology from The University of Washington. Her interests include culture, organizations, sexuality, qualitative methods, and visual studies. Anne Peterson received her Ph.D. from Washington University. Her interests include urban politics and policy and the distribution of natural resources at the local level. Elizabeth Thomas received her Ph.D. in psychology from The University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign. Her interests include community-based resources for adolescent development, cultural psychology, and the social context of learning.     

Understanding oral reading fluency among adults with low literacy: dominance analysis of contributing component skills

This study extends the literature on the component skills involved in oral reading fluency. Dominance analysis was applied to assess the relative importance of seven reading-related component skills in the prediction of the oral reading fluency of 272 adult literacy learners. The best predictors of oral reading fluency when text difficulty was fixed at a single reading level was word reading efficiency. When text difficulty varied based on readers?? comprehension levels, word reading efficiency was also the best predictor with vocabulary and auditory working memory emerging as important predictors as well. Our findings suggest the merit of investigations into whether adults with low literacy may need vocabulary and auditory working memory strategy interventions to improve their reading fluency.     

Using a social justice framework to assess educational quality in Tanzanian schools

This paper uses a social justice framework to assess the educational quality of over 100 primary and secondary schools surveyed in northern Tanzania from 2009 to 2011. Significant shortages of teachers, infrastructure, and teaching resources were observed in all government schools. National test exam scores for secondary school students highlighted the growing inequities between private and public schools as a learning environment. Although Tanzania has made some progress, severely under-resourced schools and dismal exam scores raise questions about the quality of education offered. This paper calls for a radical transformation of the current curriculum, strategies, and accountability systems.     

Dispositional factors affecting motivation during learning in adult basic and secondary education programs

Research indicates that about a quarter of adult students separate from formal adult basic and secondary education (ABE/ASE) programs before completing one educational level. This retrospective study explores individual dispositional factors that affect motivation during learning, particularly students’ goals, goal-directed thinking and action based on hope theory and attendance behaviors, and self-perceptions of competency based on affective domain attributions about external and internal obstacles to learning and employment, and demographic factors. Among 274 ABE/ASE students, those learners who made an education gain in 1 year significantly differed from those who did not in only a few dispositional or demographic variables; and by educational level they significantly differed in a wide variety of dispositional and demographic variables. These findings suggest researchable questions and programmatic considerations that may lead to future innovations that improve learner persistence.     

Long-term Influences of Portfolios on Professional Development

In recent publications on the use of portfolios in professional training both their goals, application and success are reported in favourable terms. The main purposes of portfolios being put forward are: documentation of performance, monitoring growth, revealing discrepancies in development and enhancing self-responsibility. The findings, however, pertain to the introductory implementation of the portfolio instrument, most notably with (student) teachers. Not much is known about the sustained use of a portfolio as an instrument to support professional development in the long term. In this study the benefits of different forms of sustained portfolio use are focused on in particular. Use is related to the portfolio's function, which can be for both professional development and certification, and to the setting and conditions of use, which may be either mandatory or voluntary. We gauge its impact on indicators like ongoing documentation, systematic reflection, dialogue with significant others and learning for professional development. The difficulties experienced users found are discussed, as well as the gains they saw in sustained use of portfolios, which led us to conclude that portfolios are mainly used for documentation but have a high potential as mirrors of competence when issued as instruments for self-evaluation and self-assessment.     

Inclusion at risk? Push- and pull-out phenomena in inclusive school systems: the Italian and Norwegian experiences

The main objective of this article is to explore and compare research data on pull-out and push-out phenomena within inclusive school systems, discussing if and how they represent a risk for inclusion. The terms pull-out and push-out refer to situations in which some groups of students in regular schools learn in settings apart from their peers. Typically, the terms push out and pull out refer to students with disabilities or other special-education needs, but the phenomenon does not refer to these groups exclusively. Italy and Norway are among the European countries that first established inclusive school systems through laws that explicitly refer to what later was to become global inclusive education ideas. Both countries have a reputation for inclusive education and a history of addressing segregation of students with disabilities. However, in both countries, recent data have shown an increase in the removal of students with disabilities and other SEN from regular classrooms. Our aim is to describe and analyse these phenomena through national statistics and data from different independent research projects. Results indicate that, contrary to intentions, special-education-school-type solutions persist along with flexible adaptations within whole-class and group settings for all children.