Adjunct mentoring,a vital responsibility in a changing educational climate: the Lesley University Adjunct Mentoring Program

Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, has established an adjunct mentoring process in response to its growing number of adjunct faculty. Lesley’s adjunct corps serves in Lesley programs offered both on and off campus. The primary goals of the mentoring program are to support excellence in teaching, and to engage in mentoring that begins at hiring and provides continued professional development to the adjunct faculty member. This article underscores the general need for adjunct mentoring in postsecondary institutions, and describes Lesley University’s Adjunct Mentoring Program – developed specifically in anticipation and response to this need. The article outlines the program’s main elements, the principles that underlie it, and the place of such a program in higher education today. It is precisely because part‐time faculty members in postsecondary institutions often assume a number of roles – teacher assistant, annually hired adjunct, internship supervisor – that adjunct mentoring programs are a responsibility, and not a choice.     

Making sense of global warming: Norwegians appropriating knowledge of anthropogenic climate change

This paper studies how people reason about and make sense of human-made global warming, based on ten focus group interviews with Norwegian citizens. It shows that the domestication of climate science knowledge was shaped through five sense-making devices: news media coverage of changes in nature, particularly the weather, the coverage of presumed experts' disagreement about global warming, critical attitudes towards media, observations of political inaction, and considerations with respect to everyday life. These sense-making devices allowed for ambiguous outcomes, and the paper argues four main outcomes with respect to the domestication processes: the acceptors, the tempered acceptors, the uncertain and the sceptics.     

The cognitive contribution to the development of proficiency in a foreign language

The present paper reports results of a longitudinal research project studying the contribution of cognitive skills and other factors to proficiency in a foreign language (L2) in the Hungarian educational context. The larger project aims to describe the levels of L2 proficiency of school-aged populations in order to explore the conditions and factors contributing to processes and outcomes in foreign language education in public schools. For this purpose, paper and pencil tests were administered in English and German as a foreign language to nationally representative student samples. The project also aims to find answers to some theoretical questions; therefore, a questionnaire and other assessment instruments complemented L2 tests to provide insights into how participants' cognitive, affective and first language (L1) variables, as well as their social and school variables interact with one another over time. Students' general thinking and learning abilities were assessed with an inductive reasoning test.In the present paper we focus on the relationship between students' proficiency in English or German and inductive reasoning skills to show how general cognitive abilities interact with levels of L2 proficiency. We use a multivariate context to explore complex relationships between L2 levels in English and German and inductive reasoning skills if influences of other variables are controlled. We present results of multiple regression analyses on L2 listening, reading, and writing tasks in the two target languages. In the present paper we use both cross-sectional and longitudinal data to examine the relationships between students' L2 proficiency in the first phase (2000) and two years later (2002). Thus, a longitudinal research design was implemented by repeating cross-sectional assessment at a two-year interval.     

A response to Scott's concerns about the relevance of environmental education research: applying social–ecological systems thinking and consilience to defining research goals

In William Scott's plenary address at the World Environmental Education Conference, he expressed concerns about the relevance of environmental education research in a world facing global environmental and demographic change. In responding to Scott's concerns, I argue that addressing challenges related to development and the environment requires examining EE goals at multiple levels as well as bridging diverse disciplines. I further suggest that integrating social‐ecological systems and other approaches in environmental education research may provide a means for consilience among potentially divisive environmental education practice and research traditions. In so doing, I hope to spark debate about possibilities for an environmental education research agenda and learning organisation that spurs action relevant to concerns about the environment, individuals, and their communities.     

Boys Will Be Boys; Cows Will Be Cows: Children's Essentialist Reasoning About Gender Categories and Animal Species

Two studies ( N =  456) compared the development of concepts of animal species and human gender, using a switched-at-birth reasoning task. Younger children (5- and 6-year-olds) treated animal species and human gender as equivalent; they made similar levels of category-based inferences and endorsed similar explanations for development in these 2 domains. In contrast, 10-year-olds and adults treated gender and species concepts as distinct from one another. They viewed gender-linked behavioral properties as open to environmental influence and endorsed environment-based mechanisms to explain gender development. At all ages, children demonstrated differentiated reasoning about physical and behavioral properties, although this differentiation became more stable with age. The role of psychological essentialism in guiding conceptual development is discussed.     

Memory Binding in Early Childhood: Evidence for a Retrieval Deficit

Previous research has suggested that performance for items requiring memory-binding processes improves between ages 4 and 6 ( J. Sluzenski, N. Newcombe, & S. L. Kovacs, 2006 ). The present study suggests that much of this improvement is due to retrieval, as opposed to encoding, deficits for 4-year-olds. Four- and 6-year-old children ( N  = 48 per age) were given objects, backgrounds, and object + background combinations to remember. Younger children performed equivalently to 6-year-olds during a working memory task for all types of memory questions but were impaired during a long-term memory task for the object + background combinations. Furthermore, this deficit was completely due to differences in false alarm rates, suggesting that separate analyses of hits and false alarms may be preferable to corrected recognition scores when studying memory development.     

Defining the essence of a university: lessons from higher education branding

Branding is a phenomenon that has become increasingly common in higher education over the last few years. It entails defining the essence of what a university “is”, what it “stands for”, and what it is going to be known for, requiring precision and consistency in the formulations as well as internal commitment to the brand. This article details what happened in the process of defining the essence of a regional university in Northern Norway. Addressing the challenges, the article reveals that the notions of consistency, precision, and commitment generated resistance from faculty members and made the process very difficult to fulfill. An important finding is that a university may be too complex to be encapsulated by one brand or identity definition. The article describes this process, explains the reasons for the difficulties, and discusses some implications for higher education branding.     

Apprentice or Student? The Structures of Construction Industry Vocational Education and Training in Denmark and Sweden and their Possible Consequences for Safety Learning

There is a notable difference in occupational injury rates in the two Scandinavian countries, Sweden and Denmark, with the latter having a 40% higher rate of fatal occupational injuries in the construction industry. This study explored differences in the vocational education and training (VET) systems between Sweden and Denmark that may be important for students’ safety learning and practice during VET. In both countries, students participate in full-time education, and the curriculum includes school-based as well as company- based training. However, during company- based training Swedish students retain their student status, whereas Danish students are employed as apprentices. From a perspective of viewing safety as a social practice developed through interactions of different social and institutional bodies, the analysis points to this difference in employment status as important for their safety practices and also for the teachers’ position to influence safety learning and practices during company-based training. An analysis of interview and survey data focusing on how VET students enact safety ‘knowings’ across learning sites, suggest how different forms of connectivity models in VET promote various forms of safety learning among students.     

On the Role of Ritual in Interfaith Education

In religious pedagogy focused on teaching religious diversity, two approaches are usually discussed: multireligious learning and interreligious learning. Here, I will explore both approaches and argue why I think interreligious learning is to be preferred. Interreligious learning, however, can take many forms. In academia learning tends to be focused on an exchange of experiences and insights mediated by a joint reading of both scholarly and sacred texts. For various reasons, however, I have come to consider this approach to be too limited, and I wish to explore the possibility of moving beyond texts to include symbolic practices in interreligious education.