Overcoming MSW Students' Reluctance to Engage in Research

Social work students are typically reluctant to engage in research. The research partnership model takes a service-learning approach, allowing students to work with data from a community agency and resulting in a final paper with all the sections of an empirical journal article. Use of this model in teaching social work research enhances student motivation, learning, and skills through hands-on activities within an authentic context, and by using group support with individual accountability, structured and incremental learning opportunities, and teaching from a strengths-based perspective.     

The Development of Experimentation and Evidence Evaluation Skills at Preschool Age

Researchers taking a domain-general approach to the development of scientific reasoning long thought that the ability to engage in scientific reasoning did not develop until adolescence. However, more recent studies have shown that preschool children already have a basic ability to evaluate evidence and a basic understanding of experimentation. Data providing insights into when exactly in the preschool years significant gains in these abilities occur are scarce. Drawing on a sample of 138 preschool children, this longitudinal study therefore examined how children's ability to evaluate evidence and their understanding of experimentation develop between the ages of four and six. Findings showed that the ability to evaluate evidence was already well developed at age four and increased steadily and significantly over time as long as the pattern of covariation was perfect. In the case of imperfect covariation, the proportion of correct answers was low over the period of observation, but showed a significant increase between the ages of four and five. If the data did not allow relationship between variables to be inferred, the proportion of correct answers was low, with a significant increase between the ages of five and six. The children's understanding of experimentation increased significantly between the ages of five and six. The implications of these findings for age-appropriate science programs in preschool are discussed.     

A Survey and Empirical Study of Virtual Reference Service in Academic Libraries

Virtual Reference Services (VRS) have high user satisfaction. The main problem is its low usage. We surveyed 100 academic library web sites to understand how VRS are presented. We then conducted a usability study to further test an active VRS model regarding its effectiveness.     

English elsewhere: Glocalization,assessment and ethics

This paper explores standardized English curriculum practice in a globalizing world. It uses one particular site of formative/summative assessment to show how colonial and modernist trajectories are carried in these times. The argument is that an ethical evaluative practice would allow for local hybridizations. To represent and theorize from a locally-situated account of cultural globalization, a consideration of teaching and assessment of English (in Norway) deals with homogenizing effects. Thus, the paper considers how Englishes elsewhere might vary within given contexts of difference and today's complex immigrations and diasporas. This would call for a reflexive reshaping of the evaluation of English in non-Anglo locations. Specifically, it would request that local differences be recognized by teachers and examiners as concrete manifestations of new forms of globalization or glocalization. In these ways, students and teachers would act more as agents of globalization than as its objects.     

The Veteran's View

Jeanette Pellegrin shares the touching stories of some of the many student‐veterans she has served and provides a list of recommendations for those of us who share her commitment to this special population of students.     

An empirical analysis of an alternative configuration of the Academic Motivation Scale

The purpose of this study was to examine an alternative configuration of the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS), a psychometric instrument used as a measure of academic motivation in various academic environments. The analyses utilised data from a convenience sample of 2354 business students, broken into two random subsamples of 1177 cases. Exploratory factor analysis of the 28 AMS scale items was conducted on the estimation sample. The results indicated good model fit for a four-factor configuration consisting of amotivation, external regulation, identified regulation, and intrinsic motivation as indicated by factor loadings, as well as internal consistency and reliability statistics.

Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the holdout sample to independently assess the construct validity and internal consistency of the item loadings on the reconfigured scale. Results indicated good model fit for the four-factor configuration and a significant loss of fit for competing three- and one-factor models. The uncovered factor structure advances our understanding of how the items on this scale cluster into theoretically meaningful constructs. This knowledge may be utilised in research designed to further assess the impact of motivational states on educational outcomes such as academic performance, absenteeism, dropout rates, etc.     

Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable: a narrative account of becoming an academic developer

This article uses a narrative retelling of my journey to academic development to offer a new insight into induction initiatives: alongside a critical commitment to student learning, new academic developers need to build an informed and scholarly ‘idea of the university’. As universities renew focus on teaching and learning, student retention, and success, there is a corollary increase in new academic developers. Newcomers need a full picture of the field; induction that focuses on the narrow institutional context and aspects of best practice is unlikely to fully prepare new academic developers for tensions they may encounter.