The relationship between engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning and students’ course experiences

While there has been a good deal of discussion about the scholarship of teaching and learning, and models have been developed to understand its scope, the effects on students’ learning of academics engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning are unclear. In the context of initiatives to develop the scholarship of teaching and learning in a large research‐intensive university in Australia, this paper discusses the relationship between faculty performance on a set of scholarly accomplishments in relation to teaching and learning from 2002 to 2004, and changes in students’ course experiences from 2001 to 2005. The paper provides evidence of the relationship between the scholarship of teaching and learning and students’ course experiences and demonstrates the effectiveness of institutional strategies to encourage the scholarship of teaching and learning.     

A Counselling Framework for Caribbean Children and Families Who Have Experienced Migratory Separation and Reunion

This paper presents research findings on childrens’ responses to migratory separation and later reunion in Caribbean families and the needs of these families when parents migrate and leave their children behind. Implications of this type of separation on children, parents and surrogate caregivers are discussed. The challenges that counsellors in both the ‘sending’ and host countries face working with this population are also examined and suggestions made for psychosocial intervention and guidelines for counselling in both societies. The need for culturally competent counsellors to work with the growing population of immigrants in North America and Europe is indicated.     

Developing a comprehensive model of risk and protective factors that can predict spelling at age seven: findings from a community sample of Victorian children

The paper reports on a study designed to develop a risk model that can best predict single-word spelling in seven-year-old children when they were aged 4 and 5. Test measures, personal characteristics and environmental influences were all considered as variables from a community sample of 971 children. Strong concurrent correlations were found between single-word spelling and single-word reading while expressive language and, to a lesser extent, receptive language were less strongly correlated. Predictors of single-word spelling at ages 4 and 5 were dominated by child-related factors such as letter knowledge, a history of speech impairment and expressive language along with maternal word reading ability. Based on the strength of the predictive factors identified at both age 4 and 5, our results provide initial support for using a targeted model for screening pre-schoolers at risk of not mastering spelling in a timely manner.     

A conceptual change approach to staff development: A model for programme design

With the rapid expansion in tertiary education in the past decade, coupled with the rising emphasis on accountability, teaching quality has become an important issue in higher education worldwide. The increasing emphasis on quality has placed new demands on staff development, in particular to find promising models and methodologies that will guide development approaches. The paper describes an innovative approach to staff development that was synthesized from four theories about conceptual change or change in general. This conceptual change approach is based on the hypothesis that changing teachers' conceptions of teaching towards more elaborated levels will bring about improvement in their teaching practices. A short course derived from this model is outlined.     

What is meant by ‘support’ in higher education? Towards a model of academic and welfare support

This paper focuses on academic and welfare support for students in higher education, and specifically what makes that support effective. It draws on data from a research project which aimed to explore networks of support for disabled and non‐disabled students. Part of the research focused on the nature and sources of support that were identified as important by students, as well as the kinds of support that were available within the higher education institution (HEI). What emerged as of particular interest was the question, ‘What do we mean by support?’ Drawing mainly on the voices and experiences of the students, perceptions of support were explored and the effects of support on the students’ experience of higher education were considered. Through a focus on more generic support structures as well as support which was specific to individual (disabled) students, the research aimed to understand ‘support’ and its importance from the student perspective.     

Childhood adversity, educational trajectories, and self-reported health in later life among U.S. women and men at the turn of the century

A major objective of current life course research is to specify the processes linking early childhood conditions to subsequent life course statuses that span educational, occupational, familial, and health domains across the life span. This study confronts at least two persistent challenges to the rigorous specification of the relationships among these variables. The first is that the point-in-time measurement of education as “years of schooling” masks considerable heterogeneity in the timing and curricular tracks of schooling and obscures our understanding of how and when education matters for life-course inequality. The second challenge involves interdependencies between aspects of life-course inequality, including educational achievement and health. The intertwining of these variables across the life course, and their usual conceptualization and measurement, limit the interpretation of their relationship and its generalizability across studies. We use data from three waves of the National Survey of Families and Households between 1987–1988 and 2001–2002 to explore trajectories of self-reported health, applying latent class cluster analysis (finite mixture models) to deal directly with these measurement and specification issues. Generally, we find mediating effects of education in mid- to late-life health demonstrating the pivotal role of education in life course processes. Women’s childhood backgrounds are more heterogeneous and temporally complex educational careers affect their self-assessed health more than men’s. Late degrees are linked to poor health trajectories among women, but not men. Also, marital history, number of births and health behaviors are associated in expected ways with women’s and men’s health trajectories at midlife.