Roles,practices and contexts for acting as agents of social justice – student teachers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

Student teachers are oftentimes encouraged to apply theoretical principles of social justice to their professional practice. However, this can be problematic when theoretical knowledge is contested or if it is inconsistent with the practices in their future workplaces. Studies in this area often examine student teachers’ beliefs and understanding of their roles without taking account of how concrete working contexts shape what they see as possible in their practice. This study explored how students in two teacher education programmes based at the University of Edinburgh perceived their roles, practices and contexts for acting as agents of social justice. Mixed methods were used for data generation and triangulation including a questionnaire survey (n = 299) and scenario-based interviews (n = 9) to explore how students think about social justice issues in context. Student teachers generally saw agency for social justice as part of their role. Their understanding of the ways of addressing context-embedded issues of social justice focused on classroom practices while they raised concerns about how their practice depends on others in the system. We discuss the implications of these findings for teacher education.     

Factors affecting the effectiveness and use of Moodle: students' perception

The purpose of this research paper is to identify the factors affecting the effectiveness of Moodle from the students' perspective. The research hypotheses derived from the suggested extended Seddon model have been empirically validated using the responses to a survey on e-learning usage among 255 users. We tested the model across higher education institutions in Serbia, Lithuania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. These responses have been examined through partial-least squares. The obtained results strongly support 16 of the 23 research hypotheses for the proposed e-learning model. We defined eight factors (behavioral intention to use in the future, communicativeness, format, information quality, performance outcome, perceived usefulness, satisfaction and system quality) in the initial theoretical e-learning model. Unexpectedly, system and information quality did not influence satisfaction, while communicativeness had the highest significant impact on performance outcome. Satisfaction had a significant effect on behavior intention and accounted for 68.4% of the variance in this area. The findings offer an insight into those factors that are likely significant antecedents for planning and implementing a Moodle e-learning system to enhance student-learning effectiveness.     

Testing Inequality Constrained Hypotheses in SEM Models

Researchers often have expectations that can be expressed in the form of inequality constraints among the parameters of a structural equation model. It is currently not possible to test these so-called informative hypotheses in structural equation modeling software. We offer a solution to this problem using Mplus. The hypotheses are evaluated using plug-in p values with a calibrated alpha level. The method is introduced and its utility is illustrated by means of an example.     

Profile and Motivations of Registered Whole-Body Donors in Turkey: Istanbul University Experience

Little is known regarding the profiles of whole body donors in Muslim majority countries where donation is scarce. Therefore, this study aims to profile registered donors in Turkey by means of a survey. The explored data could be used to improve ongoing campaign efforts and ethical practices such as commemoration services. Registered donors of the donation programs at the two faculties of medicine of Istanbul University were compared with the national population and a cluster analysis was performed to reveal any concealed sub-groups. Data from 188 respondents were analyzed. The majority of registered donors were married (42%), male (65.4%), aged over 50 years (76%), held a tertiary education degree (49.7%), and were irreligious (58.5%). Cluster analysis revealed two groups with significantly different educational levels, marital statuses, and religious choices. Regarding whether their bodies could be used for education or research, the majority (64.5%) of the respondents left the decision to the anatomy department. Similarly, 73.8% approved indefinite use of their organs, body parts and/or skeletons. The respondents were also willing to share their medical history (94.2%) and personal information (81.6%) if needed. Motivational themes for body donation including usefulness, impermanence, religion, awareness, and kinship were devised after a thematic analysis. Among the respondents, 56.5% were registered organ donors and 63.3% were frequent blood donors. The results of this study provide data that may help revising informed consent forms, developing and implementing thanksgiving ceremonies, and selecting additional targets for supporting body donation campaign activities such as organ and blood donation units.     

Towards new learning environments—Collective civic actions as learning interventions in post-Communist Belgrade

This article focuses on the social dimension of well-being, based on a critical analysis of the way it is conceptualised in late capitalism: As the dimensions of individual state of mind and body, something that evolves in the individual realm, stressing personal responsibility and achievement of well-being as a solitary act. Then, the contemporary conceptualisation and approaches to policy making for well-being are compared with the policy of adult and youth education and learning. The perspective of a strong individual orientation, detachment from the social, community and collective aspects and efforts seem to be a common denominator. Agency is considered not only as a possibility for individuals to create and change the environment, but also as a process of active co-construction of social reality. This includes (re)connection with a community, very often through new ways of community learning, civic actions and civic activities. An analysis of how these perspectives converge in civic interventions in urban areas of Belgrade places togetherness at the core of the broader approach to well-being and learning. This article presents several examples of civic activities in urban spaces whose learning character is interpreted within the concept of public pedagogy. The examples presented prevail in the post-Communist countries because public spaces as zones of civic interventions can oppose the controlling authority and through the fight for human and civil rights represent the bottom line of togetherness and collective agency. Learning through collective civic actions thus provides new ways of understanding well-being.     

Authors from the periphery countries choose open access more often

This article analyses attitudes of academic authors toward open access (OA) and the frequency of choosing OA publication venues. The research looks particularly at differences between authors based in countries with a gross domestic product per capita less or greater than US$18,000 (called periphery and core countries, respectively). The data were obtained with an online survey sent to 107,296 scholars listed on the mailing lists belonging to De Gruyter Open from December 2015 to January 2016. A total of 1,012 responses were received. Authors from the periphery countries publish their articles in gold OA more often and they also pay OA publication fees equally often as those based in the core countries. The reasons for that are complex, involving both their preference to publish in OA and the composition of the publishing market in the periphery.     

We game on skyscrapers: the effects of an equity-informed game design workshop on students’ computational thinking skills and perceptions of computer science

Educational technology research and development - This paper presents a game-design workshop built around a digital art installation featuring video games displayed over a real-world skyscraper to...