The Public,The Media,and the Knowledge Gap

Abstract

Academic wilderness education is separate from adventure and skills-oriented approaches. Though problems in logistics, academic expertise, and leadership place unusual demands on teachers and students, the qualitative benefits of field studies can be profound. Three programs are described ranging from short- to long-term immersion in backcountry environments. The University of Montana Wilderness and Civilization program focuses on the boundary between wildness and domesticity. The Outdoor Program of Hampshire College uses an individual-in-community approach that leads toward participatory empowerment. Sierra Institute programs, offered through the University of California Extension, Santa Cruz, challenge students with eight weeks in wilderness areas, probing the roots of ecology and attitudes toward nature. At the deepest level, wilderness studies direct participants toward reconnecting culture with nature through advocacy and cultivation of the ecological self.     

Transference,Counter-transference,and Reflexivity in Intercultural Education

The article addresses the contributions psychoanalytic theory, particularly its concepts of transference and counter-transference, can make to our understanding of reflexivity in intercultural education (IE). After the introduction, the article is organized into three parts. The first part is a psychoanalytic discussion that focuses on the concepts of transference and counter-transference. The second part elaborates on the concepts of transference and counter-transference by presenting examples through existing studies in the fields of multicultural and IE and psychoanalysis to illuminate what it would mean to psychoanalytically understand aspects of intercultural relations and reflexivity. In the third section, while contending that this article does not exclude other forms of reflexivity or delimit the danger of uncritically accepting the potentials for reflexivity, it offers the implications drawn from the discussions in the first and second sections by concluding that psychoanalysis is an area of inquiry that forces us to question how unconscious forces affect our interaction with students, the curriculum, and the meaning we give to teaching and learning experiences. The article concludes that reflexivity in IE can benefit from considering the effects of transference and counter-transference.     

Fear of Falling and Older Adult Peer Production of Audio-Visual Discussion Material

A growing body of work suggests that negative stereotypes of, and associations between, falling, fear of falling, and ageing, may mean that older adults reject falls information and advice. Against a widely accepted backdrop of demographic ageing in Europe and that alleviating the impacts of falls and fear of falling are pressing health care matters, this is a critical issue. This paper describes a recent peer learning and sharing strategy that set out to iteratively produce a series of short audio visual discussion programs on falling and fear of falling. Key outcomes included older adults appreciating peer group sharing as an acceptable way of opening up the silence surrounding falls incidences, enjoying participating in a problem solving strategy, and emphasizing that falls prevention is not just their responsibility. Outcomes suggest that peer learning and sharing are valuable falls and fear of falling support strategies.     

WhatsApp use among African international distance education (IDE) students: transferring,translating and transforming educational experiences

ABSTRACT

Much of the research on how social media is embedded into the educational practices of higher education students has a Western orientation. In concentrating on a case study of the varied ways in which African International Distance Education (IDE) students actively use social media to shape their learning experiences, we discuss an under-researched group. The paper draws on analysis of 1295 online questionnaires and 165 in-depth interviews with IDE students at UNISA, South Africa, one of the largest providers of IDE globally. WhatsApp emerges as ‘the’ key social media tool that opens up opportunities for IDE students to transfer, translate and transform their educational journey when studying ‘at a distance’. Although WhatsApp does provide a ‘space of opportunity’ for some students, this is framed through socio-technical marginalisation, itself a reflection of demographic legacies of inequality. Exploring social media practices though the case of African IDE students places these students centre stage and adds to the awareness of the multiple centres from which international education is practiced.     

Academics' Motivation and Self‐efficacy for Teaching and Research

The study focused on academic staff in a post‐1987 university, that is, a former college of advanced education which had been awarded university status as a result of the Australian Government's decision to have a Unified National System of universities. The focus of attention was motivation and self‐efficacy for teaching and research. The effect of faculty of affiliation, level of appointment, gender, qualifications, and research productivity on staff's self‐reported attributions for teaching and research were examined. Tutors, staff with bachelor degrees, academics with low research productivity, and women had higher teaching motivation. One faculty was lower in both research motivation and self‐efficacy, and associate professors and professors had high levels of research efficacy. Men and women had the same level of research motivation and self‐efficacy. Staff with higher degrees and greater research productivity were more motivated and self‐efficacious about research. The results suggest the need to understand more clearly how each individual's research motivation and self‐efficacy is constructed and to determine the best method of increasing motivation and self‐efficacy for teaching and research.     

Referral,enrollment, and completion in developmental education sequences in community colleges

After being assessed, many students entering community colleges are referred to one or more levels of developmental education. While the need to assist students with weak academic skills is well known, little research has examined student progression through multiple levels of developmental education and into entry-level college courses. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the patterns and determinants of student progression through sequences of developmental education starting from initial referral. Our results indicate that fewer than one half of the students who are referred to remediation actually complete the entire sequence to which they are referred. About 30 percent of students referred to developmental education do not enroll in any remedial course, and only about 60 percent of referred students actually enroll in the remedial course to which they were referred. The results also show that more students exit their developmental sequences because they did not enroll in the first or a subsequent course than because they failed or withdrew from a course in which they were enrolled. We also show that men, older students, African American students, part-time students, and students in vocational programs are less likely to progress through their full remedial sequences.     

The relation between resource limitations and optional conceptual processing by children and adults

In some situations children fail to perform optional conceptual processing that they are able to perform. The purpose of the 4 experiments was to determine if the difficulty of word identification affects optional conceptual processing by second/third graders, fifth graders, and college students in a cued recall task. Conceptual processing was manipulated by presenting Hard (e.g., hawk eagle canary) or Easy (river lake canary) word triplets that varied in the contrastive processing necessary to identify the "odd" target word (canary). The orienting activity also varied: for the Oddity Choice activity, contrastive processing was obligatory because the subject had to identify the target; for the Read activity, contrastive processing was optional because the experimenter identified the target. A recall advantage for the Hard over the Easy triplets was the measure of contrastive processing. Finally, the difficulty of word identification varied in that the subjects read the stimuli or the experimenter read the stimuli, and all the words were degraded, only the nontarget words were degraded, or all the words were intact. The results established that contrastive processing facilitates recall, and that word identification difficulty may limit the extent of optional contrastive processing.     

Developmental Status and Social–Emotional Functioning of Young Children Experiencing Homelessness

The developmental status and social–emotional functioning of young children who are homeless has received inadequate attention in spite of high rates of homelessness among families with young children and the potentially negative impact of homelessness and associated stressors on children’s well-being. The aim of this study was to gain understanding of homeless children’s social–emotional adjustment and their functioning in language, motor, and cognitive skills. We also examined gender and age differences in those areas of development. The sample included 328 children residing with their parents in one of 11 emergency shelter or transitional housing programs for families who were experiencing homelessness in a central North Carolina county. Child case managers administered the Brigance Early Childhood Screen II and the Ages and Stages Questionnaire: Socioemotional form in the shelter setting. Findings indicated variability in competence among the children, with some children performing above average on the developmental screening and demonstrating few social–emotional problems. However, developmental scores for overall functioning of the sample were significantly below the norming group, with particularly low functioning in language and communication skills. Parents of 24.8 % of the children had substantial concerns about their children’s mental health status. Although there are individual differences in adjustment of children experiencing homelessness, results support wide-scale screening and access to early intervention for these vulnerable children. Future investigations could be directed to identifying factors associated with resilience among children without homes.