Partners in Learning: A Grounded Theory Study of Relational Practice between Master’s Students and Professors

Meaningful academic relationships between adult master’s students and their professors can both deepen students’ learning and serve as a regenerating force for professors. This study employed grounded theory methods to explore the question, “What goes on in relational practice between master’s students and professors?” I interviewed 10 matched pairs of recent alumni and professors who identified as having “a meaningful academic relationship”. Dimensional analysis surfaced two core dimensions: reconstructing and regenerating. In reconstructing, the students’ core dimension reveals the student experience of reconstructing, or understanding more deeply, theory or one’s self. In the case of regenerating, the professor’s core dimension identifies the professors’ experience of “giving back” through their teaching and extending their professional reach by training others. These experiences serve to reinvigorate professors over the course of their careers. In addition, findings in this study resonate with sensitizing concepts including relational cultural theory and relational practice. Finally, the analysis surfaced evidence supporting authentic teaching concepts and connected these concepts to faculty and student learning partnerships.     

Graduate employability as a professional proto-jurisdiction in higher education

Higher Education - Much research into how universities seek to support their students’ graduate employability has focused on academic strategies such as graduate attributes and...     

Debate tournament results

This study compares the difficulty in speechreading various transformations of a kernel sentence. Different transformations were found to vary in their intelligibility under these conditions.     

The impact of the First Language First model on vocabulary development among preschool bilingual children

The aim of this exploratory study was to examine the role of the First Language First model for preschool bilingual education in the development of vocabulary depth. The languages studied were Russian (L1) and Hebrew (L2) among bilingual children aged 4–5 years in Israel. According to this model, the children’s first language of educational instruction (up to age three) is the language to which they are exposed at home. Their second language—the dominant language of the country that is spoken by the majority of the population—is acquired sequentially, after relative maturity in the first language. Fifty-one Russian/Hebrew-speaking bilinguals (around age four) were selected from bilingual (Russian/Hebrew) preschools, which used the First Language First approach, and monolingual (Hebrew) preschools. The research was designed as a longitudinal study, as the children’s vocabulary was measured at two time-points—near the beginning and the end of the academic year. The children’s vocabulary was measured in both languages by examining its depth dimensions (paradigmatic semantic relations and syntagmatic semantic relations). The results demonstrated that the later immersion in L2 and continuing development of L1 within the First Language First model does not results in retardation in development of bilingual children in L2 in comparison to their bilingual peers from the monolingual (Hebrew) preschools. In addition, this model of early bilingual development enhances the linguistic interdependence of depth of vocabulary knowledge, and, therefore, supports balanced bilingual development.