University students’ perceptions of a holistic care course through cooperative learning: implications for instructors and researchers

The benefits of cooperative learning have been advocated in a wide range of educational contexts in higher education. There is, however, rare information on the contributions of holistic education courses on college students. Using grounded theory methods, this preliminary study was to explore participants’ perceptions of a holistic care course through cooperative learning. The results indicated that five primary categories including learning environment construction, multiple learning processes, cognitive change, solitary learning and transfer, and personal growth emerged as prominent and consistent themes. Moreover, positive and negative feelings about the learning experience, a greater understanding of holistic knowledge, and an enlargement of the experiences of connecting to others were also found. Finally, a pattern of university students’ construction of holistic knowledge was developed, and several research questions were generated. Future implications for research and practice on the holistic curriculum and cooperative learning in higher education were also suggested.     

A review and new framework for instructional design practice variation research

This article reviews practice variation in the field of instructional design. First, it compares instructional designer practice as reported or observed in several classic research studies. This analysis is framed by the standards established by the International Board for Training, Performance, and Instruction competencies for planning and analysis, design and development, implementation, and management. Although no certain causal linkages exist, we briefly review some of the reasons posited in the literature to explain instructional design practice variation (lack of time and resources, control in decision making, the designer's perception of a task, underlying philosophical beliefs, and designer expertise). Limitations of the literature base are explored, followed by a proposal for an alternative view of instructional design practice variation and recommendations.     

Estimating teacher effectiveness from two-year changes in students’ test scores

Using a dataset covering over 10,000 Australian school teachers and over 90,000 pupils, I estimate how effective teachers are in raising students’ test scores. Since the exams are biennial, it is necessary to take account of the teacher's work in the intervening year. Even adjusting for measurement error, the teacher fixed effects are widely dispersed, and there is a strong positive correlation between a teacher's gains in literacy and numeracy. Teacher fixed effects show a significant association with some, though not all, observable teacher characteristics. Experience has the strongest impact, particularly in the early years of a teacher's career. Female teachers do better at teaching literacy. Teachers with a master's degree or some other form of further qualification do not appear to achieve significantly larger test score gains. Overall, teacher characteristics found in the departmental payroll database explain only a small fraction of the variance in teacher performance.     

Systematic Marketing Facilitates Optimal Customer Service: The Marketing Audit of a Rural Public Library System

This article presents a case study of a marketing audit of the Lee County Library System, a rural public library system located in southwest Georgia. Marketing audits are an underutilized but needed tool for public libraries. In this audit, the library system’s mission, goals, environments, community and employee demographics, and a strengths/weakness/opportunities/threats (SWOT) analysis were evaluated, resulting in several recommendations. These recommendations include a new mission statement, regular SWOT analyses, and potential market segments for targeted library services. Through this case study, the complexities, challenges, and opportunities unique to rural public libraries can be understood.     

Building a Foundation for Collection Management Decisions

Salisbury University and the University of Maryland, College Park, both undertook projects to evaluate the effectiveness of EBSCO Information Service’s EBSCONET® Usage Consolidation product and the usefulness of the extracted data for collection development decisions. The goals of implementation were to centralize the collection and analysis of e-resource usage data and to allow collection management librarians easy access to usage and cost per use data to aid in their decision making. The presenters discussed how staff at each institution populated Usage Consolidation and presented usage reports to collection managers; how collection managers responded to the data; and how they used the data to inform collection management decisions.     

The role and functionality of emotions in feedback at university: a qualitative study

This paper reports on a qualitative study exploring the role and functionality of emotions in feedback. In-depth interview data from students and lecturers at an Australian university are analysed using cognitive appraisal and prototype theory. Results suggest that students experience a range of positive and negative emotions in feedback contexts which function to address both achievement and relational concerns. Practical implications are identified.     

INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL CONFERENCE ISSUE

This paper explores the process through which a group of preservice early childhood/early childhood special education students examined their own beliefs about quality teaching and learning within the context of multiple practicum experiences in diverse settings. Students' reflections and actions are illuminated through a careful individual and cross-case analysis of field-based journals.

For these students, different instructional contexts provoked distinct questions. With increased experiences in early childhood settings, participants became more comfortable with the uncomfortable, considered that there are multiple ways to teach and learn, and realized that their own understandings of quality teaching must be informed by the children they teach. They also learned the process of using critical reflection to refine and adapt teaching practices to meet the needs of young learners continuously.

Findings from this study provide a window into the complex and individualized nature of new early childhood teachers' learning processes. By analyzing their journals, we were able to examine how these experiences move new teachers toward understanding concepts that are central to quality performance.     

Kindling fires: examining the potential for cumulative learning in a Journalism curriculum

This study investigated context-dependency of learning as an indicator for students' potential to continue learning after graduation. We used Maton's theoretical concepts of ‘cumulative’ and ‘segmented’ learning, and ‘semantic gravity’, to look for context-independent learning in students' assessments in a Journalism curriculum. We postulated whether the curriculum constrained or enabled cumulative learning. Students' responses to assessments were coded by their degree of context-dependency, or semantic gravity. We found that, firstly, students are overly successful in producing context-dependent answers but struggle to deliver context-independent responses. Secondly, students were not effective when they used higher level knowledge principles without the foundation of lower level ones. Lastly, the marking criteria were encouraging markers to reward context-dependent answers over context-independent ones. This study has implications for educators interested in curriculum design that enables cumulative learning in discipline specific contexts.     

More than a place to teach: exploring the perceptions of the roles and responsibilities of mentor teachers

The purpose of this study was to shed light on mentor teachers’ perceptions of their roles and responsibilities and to contrast their understandings with a normative view of mentoring (Goldsberry, 1998 Goldsberry, L.F. 1998. “Teacher involvement in supervision”. In Handbook of research on school supervision, Edited by: Firth, G.R. and Pajak, E.F. 428–462. New York: Macmillan.  [Google Scholar]; Hawkey, 1997 Hawkey, K. 1997. Roles, responsibilities, and relationships in mentoring: A literature review and agenda for research. Journal of Teacher Education, 48: 325–335. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We hypothesized that the mentor teachers’ perceptions would likely differ from established conceptions of this construct, a difference that has significant implications for mentor preparation and university collaboration. Participants, 264 teachers who were serving as mentors to pre‐service teachers, were asked open‐ended questions designed to allow the mentors to describe the ways in which they envisioned their role. Follow‐up telephone interviews were conducted with 34 randomly selected mentor teachers to further determine the relative value they placed on different aspects of mentoring. The results of this research confirm that mentoring is a complex construct and that the perceptions held by mentors may be influenced by the kinds and quality of mentoring experiences they have had. Implications for the appropriate selection, preparation, and support of mentor teachers are discussed.     

Reconceptualise a dynamic framework of the learning constructs in higher education

This paper reconceptualised the interrelated learning constructs in higher education based on the Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). The university students' learning experience before, during and post the Emergency Online Learning (EOL) was investigated to explore the dynamic changes among the learning constructs in higher education. A case study of a Chinese university was conducted, and one hundred and ninety-three university students participated in the questionnaire. The data collected from this empirical research identify different hierarchical constructs of the conceptualised learning environment and reconceptualise the period of system reformation influenced by the EOL. The key findings include the identifications of the attractors and repellors framed by the DST and the impact on the changes in the learning constructs. The results of this paper contribute to further understanding of the university constructs' changes to better plan and support students' active learning in higher education.