Factors of success: building and sustaining teaching professional development opportunities for doctoral students and postdocs

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the key issues and elements to consider in developing and sustaining teaching development programs for doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars in connection to a large multi-institutional, higher education reform network. Based on interviews with 47 participants at eight member institutions and the central administration of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), we found five major components: campus culture, the program’s organizational placement, program leadership, program logistics, and the benefits acquired from adopting and adapting network ideas, knowledge, and resources.     

New understandings of communities and ourselves: community-based participatory research with Alaska Native and Lower 48 youth

In the summer of 2014, students from universities in the contiguous United States (Lower 48) and Inupiat youth from Alaska carried out a pilot project as participants/co-researchers in a process called Intergenerational Dialog, Exchange, and Action (IDEA). This action-oriented, community-based, and participatory research method was first developed in 2008, as a platform for structuring dialog between adults, Elders and youth within a community, and for extending resonant ideas emerging from these discussions through Photovoice and digital storytelling amongst youth participants. This pilot study was designed to investigate the feasibility and potential of university students from the Lower 48 and Indigenous youth from Alaska to carry out the IDEA process together as co-researchers. The results of the pilot suggest that it is both possible and meaningful for IDEA to be conducted by a team of youth co-researchers. We found that participation in IDEA expanded the perspectives of youth co-researchers from both Alaska and the Lower 48 in parallel, yet different ways. Exploring the strengths of older community members, being exposed to different ways of living and being, and having opportunities to reflect on and build narratives around these ideas, allowed all the co-researchers to develop a new understanding of their own communities and their roles and responsibilities within them. This paper shares youth co-researcher reflections of the process and the ways in which the process prompted these new perspectives about themselves, their respective communities and their roles within them.     

The Impacts of Course Restructuring on Student Performance

Analysis of student performance in a Geography degree course over a ten year period, as part of a larger study of student performance in large classes, revealed a five year cycle of change in student performance and in the ability of the course to cope with large classes. The cycle exactly matched the introduction of new degree programmes with performance taking four years to recover to the levels eventually achieved with the previous course design. It is concluded that radical change in course design can initially reduce performance and that stability for several years may be necessary to achieve the potential of a new course.     

English language learning difficulty of korean students in a Philippine Multidisciplinary University

This qualitative study analyzed the English language learning difficulties of 13 purposively chosen Korean students relative to their sociolinguistic competence, motivation in using the English language, and cultural factors. Interview responses were transcribed, categorized and thematised according to saliency, meaning and homogeneity. The findings of the study disclosed that, on the whole, while the subjects never had the opportunity to use the English language in Korea, they use it almost everywhere in the Philippines. Their difficulties exist both in daily conversation and in the academic setting. Such difficulties are attributable to both the subjects’ and the Filipinos’ different entry points in the learning and use of English. Despite cultural barriers in communication, however, the Koreans studying in the Philippines are instrumentally motivated to learn the English language.     

What can evidence-use in practice learn from evidence-use in policy?

Abstract

Background: This paper approaches evidence-informed practice from the perspective of evidence-informed policy-making. Using the findings of a recent study of evidence-use by educational policy-makers to raise questions about evidence-use by educational practitioners, it seeks to explore what such a study might tell us about how to understand and improve evidence-use by educational practitioners.

Purpose: The paper aims, therefore, to identify potential connections, shared insights and common issues between evidence-use in policy and evidence-use in practice. It does this by focusing on two specific areas: the nature of the evidence (i.e. what evidence is used) and the nature of the use (i.e. how evidence is used). The paper outlines what was found about each of these aspects of evidence-use in policy, and then considers what questions and issues these findings might raise for evidence-use in educational practice.

Sample: The empirical study on which this paper is based was an in-depth study of the use of evidence within educational policy development in Australia. It focused on the development of three specific education policies within one Australian state education department and involved interviews with 25 policy-makers who were actively involved in the development of these policies.

Design and methods: The policy-based study involved the following data collection processes: (i) in-depth semi-structured interviews with 25 policy-makers who were involved in the development of the selected policies; (ii) documentary analysis of policy documents, background research reports and other relevant papers relating to the selected policies; (iii) unstructured observation (where possible) of meetings and events connected with the development of the selected policies; and (iv) feedback from 40 wider policy staff who took part in a verification workshop to discuss the project’s emerging findings.

Findings: Drawing on the findings from the original policy study, two areas of potential connection to evidence-use in practice are explored. First, in relation to ‘varieties of evidence and uses’, the negotiation of diverse evidence types and the potential for using evidence in multiple and varied ways appear to be features of evidence-use that are common to educational policy-makers as well as educational practitioners. Secondly, in relation to ‘narrowness of evidence sources’, there is potential for both policy-makers and practitioners to use a narrow (rather than broad) selection of evidence, due to a tendency to work with certain evidence types as a starting point (e.g. performance data) and a tendency to draw on certain evidence sources more frequently (e.g. well-known, familiar research sources).

Conclusions: This paper emphasises: (i) the need for more integrated (or joined-up) understandings of evidence-use across contexts of practice and contexts of policy; (ii) the importance of continued efforts to understand and represent evidence-use more effectively within educational practices; and (iii) the value of paying careful attention to the quality and qualities of evidence-use within and across the different settings of educational practice and policy.     

The Development of Selective Copying: Children's Learning From an Expert Versus Their Mother

This study tested the prediction that, with age, children should rely less on familiarity and more on expertise in their selective social learning. Experiment 1 (N = 50) found that 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds copied the technique their mother used to extract a prize from a novel puzzle box, in preference to both a stranger and an established expert. This bias occurred despite children acknowledging the expert model's superior capability. Experiment 2 (N = 50) demonstrated a shift in 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds toward copying the expert. Children aged 9–10 years did not copy according to a model bias. The findings of a follow‐up study (N = 30) confirmed that, instead, they prioritized their own—partially flawed—causal understanding of the puzzle box.     

Debugging during block-based programming

In this study, we investigated the debugging process that early childhood preservice teachers used during block-based programing. Its purpose was to provide insights into how to prepare early childhood teachers to integrate computer science into instruction. This study reports the types of errors that early childhood preservice teachers commonly made and how they debugged the errors. Findings are discussed in relation to research and practice that could benefit from debugging instruction. This study provides directions for future computer science education research that aims to prepare teachers for programming, computational thinking, and STEM education. Though this study used robotics as a programming context, findings on early childhood preservice teachers’ debugging processes could be applicable to other contexts involving block-based programming.     

The Influence of Cognitive Complexity,Empathy, and Mindfulness on Person-Centered Message Evaluations

More than 30 years of research shows that highly person-centered (PC) supportive messages that validate and acknowledge the feelings of others are consistently viewed as more beneficial than less PC-based messages. There are, however, differences in how well people can distinguish high and low PC messages. We argue that the combined influence of motivational factors (i.e., empathy) and cognitive factors (i.e., cognitive complexity, mindfulness) significantly impacts how people process and evaluate support messages that vary in PC. Participants (n = 331) completed a survey, and structural equation modeling analyses revealed that both cognitive complexity and empathy predicted the extent to which people are able to differentiate more and less PC messages. Interestingly and in line with past research, mindfulness directly predicted empathy but not cognitive complexity.