Inarticulate Transfer: Do Community College Students Understand Articulation Agreements?

Only 25% of community college students transfer to a 4-year institution within 5 years, and only 17% earn a bachelor’s degree within 6 years of transferring (Jenkins &; Fink, 2015). In response, community colleges have partnered with 4-year institutions to draft articulation agreements, outlining transfer policies and procedures for specific academic programs (Montague, 2012). However, no extant research has examined whether these articulation agreements are readable by community college students. This study examines 100 articulation agreements between 2- and 4-year institutions to answer the question: do community college students understand articulation agreements? Findings indicate that 93% of articulation agreements are unreadable by community college students of average reading ability, with 69% of articulation agreements written at or above a 16th-grade reading level. Implications for practitioners and future research are addressed.     

A Meta-Analytical Review of Students’ Out-of-Class Communication and Learning Effects

A random-effects meta-analysis (N = 7,113) was conducted examining the relationships between students’ out-of-class communication (OCC) and learning outcomes. The findings revealed positive summary effects for OCC on affective learning (k = 7, N = 1478, r = 0.321, p < 0.001) and perceived cognitive learning (k = 11, N = 5635, r = 0.261, p < 0.001). Several moderators were identified, indicating the association between OCC and cognitive learning varied systematically because of the measurement instruments used to operationalize OCC and learning and because of interdisciplinary treatments of the constructs. Recommendations are made for future researchers including the need for a theoretical explanation of the OCC-learning relationship.     

Generic gold standard or contextualised public good? Teaching excellence awards in post-colonial South Africa

ABSTRACT

Teaching Excellence Awards have raised the profile of teaching as a scholarly project. There are however a number of questions about what constitutes teaching excellence and how ‘excellence’ is understood in current higher education. In a post-colonial South Africa, where significant injustices permeate our society, we question whether excellence can be understood in a generic manner. Furthermore, we argue that as universities are a public good, teaching excellence needs to explicitly attend to the ways in which universities contribute to broad goals of transformation and inclusivity. We analysed data from the national Teaching Excellence Awards and 13 South African universities’ awards to interrogate the discourses that underpin ‘excellence’ in this context of social inequality. We found that while the awards have gone some way to enhancing the position of teaching in institutions, ‘excellence’ was largely articulated in fairly generic ways which failed to take into account the enablements and constraints of the discipline and the institution. Furthermore, the guidelines and criteria privilege a decontextualised notion of excellence that seeks a ‘gold standard’ and validates performativity, rather than a contextualised response to the needs of the students.     

A Systematic Review of Function‐Based Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities

Students with learning disabilities (LD) experience pervasive academic deficits requiring extensive academic intervention; however, they may also engage in problem behaviors that adversely affect teaching and learning, thus lessening the potential impact of specialized instruction and supports. The learning deficits of students with LD are prevalent in the extant research, but behavioral needs appear to receive less attention. The authors report the results of a systematic review investigating the evidence‐base for function‐based interventions for students with LD using the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) criteria for evaluating single‐case studies. Fourteen studies with 17 participants met inclusion criteria, with the majority occurring in elementary settings. Although interventions tended to be effective, few included maintenance and generalization measures. Because of the small number of studies (n = 4) that met WWC design and effectiveness standards, the authors conclude that function‐based interventions, although promising, cannot currently be considered an evidence‐based practice for students with LD. Implications for practice, areas for future research, and study limitations are reported.     

El papel del adulto en el lenguaje del niño

RESUMEN

El lenguaje, por sus raíces biológicas, forma parte de la herencia específica de nuestra especie y es común a todos los humanos; por sus raíces culturales divide en nación o en comunidad geográfica. El niño pequeño tiene un sistema de interacción con el mundo—con las personas, los objetos, los acontecimientos y las relaciones—antes de saber hablar, y el lenguaje se expresará primero a través de estas interacciones no verbales; si el niño está «envuelto» por el lenguaje, lo adquirirá sin esfuerzo, pero la forma de adquirirlo—que el lenguaje sea un instrumento de expresión precisa y de imaginación o, simplemente, un medio que le permita intercambios a nivel biológico y social—dependerá del entorno lingüístico en un momento dado. Es precisamente ahí donde los programas de educación preescolar deben intervenir. Se citan dos estudios para demostrar que el mejor método es considerar al niño como factor activo del lenguaje y se presentan las dos partes del diálogo niño-adulto para explicar cómo el niño mismo puede controlar y programar el diálogo.     

Academic Journal Publishing

This paper summarizes the presentations made at the “Academic Journal Publishing” session of the 2007 NASIG conference. The session was conducted by four publishers from a variety of academic publishing companies who made presentations (specifically tailored to a librarian audience) which provided a broad stroke overview of their industry and how they go about the process of publishing and distributing academic journals in the 21st century. Through each of their presentations they spoke to the questions of “what they do, how they do it, and why they do it.” Topics covered included the launch and acquisition of journals, the peer review process, the tools and services supplied to authors and editors, the production processes employed, special legal and copyright issues, marketing and distribution strategies, and usage.     

Association of group learning with mathematics achievement and mathematics attitude among eighth-grade students in the US

This study examined a large, nationally-representative sample of eighth-grade students in the US to assess how the frequency of group learning activity in mathematics classrooms was associated with mathematics achievement and three measures of attitudes toward mathematics. Results showed that moderate amounts of group work in class had positive effects on mathematics achievement scores. Moreover, a significant interactive effect was evident, with girls showing greater achievement benefits from group work than boys. Increased levels of group work were also associated with more positive attitudes toward mathematics.