Dialogical approach applied in group counselling: Case study

This study utilizes structured group counselling and a dialogical approach to develop a group counselling intervention for students beginning a computer science education. The study assesses the outcomes of group counselling from the standpoint of the development of the students’ self-observation. The research indicates that group counselling can clarify students’ self-observation and create conditions for developing agency. The outcomes were examined individually by means of dialogical sequence analysis. At the conclusion of the group counselling sessions, three attitudes toward the study of computer science were found: committed, wavering and problematic.     

A Relationship Approach to Higher Education Institution Stakeholder Management

Tertiary Education and Management - The functions of teaching and research in higher education institutions (HEIs) are being reassessed, with particular emphasis on the contribution they make to...     

A case study on project led education in engineering: students' and teachers' perceptions

This paper explores the extent to which students and teachers are able to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of a shift in the approach to teaching and learning from a traditional, teacher-centred perspective towards project- and learner-centred education. It reports on a case study aimed at exploring students' and teachers' perceptions of a project-led education course carried out at an engineering course at a Portuguese university. Data were collected through questionnaires, letters and interviews. Findings suggest, in spite of some negative experiences and final results for some of the students, a clear recognition of the benefits of a project-based approach to both the teaching staff as well as the students. Both are able to identify interdisciplinarity, high student motivation and the acquisition of soft skills as key features of project-led education.     

Power,Freedom and Resistance: Excavating the Design Jury

There can be little argument that the design jury features as a key symbolic event in the education of the architect. However, whilst the centrality of the design jury as a site for learning disciplinary skills, beliefs and values is now widely acknowledged, there continues to be considerable disagreement about what is learnt and how. While critical pedagogues argue that the design jury is a critic‐centred event that coerces students into conforming to hegemonic notions of habitus, those who promote reflective practice see it as a student‐centred event in which a critical dialogue with experts supports students' construction and reconstruction of their own habitus. This article, inspired by Michel Foucault's writings on the analytics of power, reports on the findings of a yearlong ethnographic study carried out in one British school of architecture that sought to excavate ‘what really goes on’ in the design jury.     

Motivated Attention and Reward in Parenting

Parenting has a significant and lasting impact on child development. From birth, parents must sensitively and appropriately attend to their infant’s emotional expressions and vocalizations. Accumulating evidence indicates that these infant cues of emotion attract more attention than equivalent adult cues in parents as well as non-parents. We review this evidence and suggest that infant cues hold high incentive value and elicit motivated attention (i.e., enhanced processing of motivationally relevant stimuli), which in turn promotes approach motivation and thus caregiving responses. Further, we discuss data suggesting that infant cues are salient for non-parents, with increasing motivated attention to infant cues in the transition to parenthood. This increase may depend on interactions between the dopamine reward system and the neuropeptide oxytocin. Therefore, we also explore the human and non-human data that support this association and consider potential sources of variability in motivated attention in parents.     

The reform process of Portuguese higher education institutions: from collegial to managerial governance

Tertiary Education and Management - Portuguese public higher education institutions have been undergoing a major reform process since 2007. The most noticeable changes were introduced by Law...     

Acceptable Use: Morality and Credibility Struggles in Swedish 1960s Alcohol and Illicit Drug (Ab)use Research and Policy

Minerva - This article explores morality and credibility struggles in connection to two officially sanctioned public Swedish experiments launched in the late 1960s to investigate the (ab)use of...     

Bringing the Text to Life and Into Our Lives: Jewish Education and the Arts

This article explores how arts-based learning can facilitate understandings of Jewish religious texts. Through practical examples drawn from our own research, from the worlds of dance, drama, and the visual arts in education, we demonstrate the ways in which arts can allow for the transmission of information and knowledge, as well as offer a “transformative” learning experience; a student can bring the text to life while bringing the text into his or her life. We stress the primary importance and centrality of sacred text within Jewish tradition and assert that the written text should serve in Jewish education as the starting point. The ultimate goal, however, is to enable learners' personal connection with texts. We argue that learning through the arts opens up opportunities for multiple shared interpretations of text, as well as accentuation of the “affective” dimensions of Jewish textual learning. By becoming more aware of the varied possible paths for generating learning activities, educators might choose learning strategies that enable an integration of both the cognitive and affective domains. The examples of Arts Reflective learning demonstrate possibilities for the structuring of “teaching towards transformation.”