‘Power to empower’: conceptions of teaching and learning in a pedagogical co-design partnership

ABSTRACT

This study is an autoethnographic reflection on power and expertise in an evolving student/staff partnership. The partnership was initiated as pedagogical co-design in the development and implementation of a peer-assisted learning programme. Through a process of critical reflection that linked our partnership experience with themes from relevant literature, we (the staff and student authors) became co-researchers of our practice. The evolution of the partnership provided a unique perspective from which to compare our experiences of power and expertise across both contexts. We characterised our pedagogical co-design partnership as a shift from the more traditional ‘power over’ model of delivery towards ‘power to empower’ where both student and staff partners had agency and voice. Key to this important transition was a shared philosophy of student-centred teaching. As the partnership transformed from co-teaching to co-researching we needed to re-negotiate power dynamics; while our different pathways had converged on a common view of student-centred learning, our research expertise remained disparate. We were able to negotiate this challenge by drawing on our existing relationship based on respect, reciprocity and responsibility, reinforcing views of partnership that value equality of opportunity and a focus on learning and process, rather than equality of contributions and outcomes.     

Market orientation: a key to survival and competitive advantage in Ghana’s private universities

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study was to assess the role of market orientation (MO), mediated by job satisfaction (JS) and its effect on market performance (MP) in Ghana’s private universities. A sample of 205 senior staff of 15 private universities was selected to participate in the study, using a convenience sampling method. Partial Least Squares (PLS) of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to test the relationships in the study. The results found a significant positive relationship between MO and MP on one hand; Job satisfaction (JS) and MP on the other. Finally, the study found that JS mediates the relationship between MO and MP. The study provides a useful guide to marketing strategy especially the implementation of MO to enhance performance in Ghana’s private universities. The study has practical application to private universities seeking to compete favourably in a competitive environment.     

Constructing Rotating Item Pools for Constrained Adaptive Testing

Preventing items in adaptive testing from being over- or underexposed is one of the main problems in computerized adaptive testing. Though the problem of overexposed items can be solved using a probabilistic item-exposure control method, such methods are unable to deal with the problem of underexposed items. Using a system of rotating item pools, on the other hand, is a method that potentially solves both problems. In this method, a master pool is divided into (possibly overlapping) smaller item pools, which are required to have similar distributions of content and statistical attributes. These pools are rotated among the testing sites to realize desirable exposure rates for the items. A test assembly model, motivated by Gulliksen's matched random subtests method, was explored to help solve the problem of dividing a master pool into a set of smaller pools. Different methods to solve the model are proposed. An item pool from the Law School Admission Test was used to evaluate the performances of computerized adaptive tests from systems of rotating item pools constructed using these methods.