Service-Learning for Remedial Reading and Writing Students

In 2008, Queensborough Community College incorporated service learning into 15 remedial reading and writing courses. To determine its impact, statistical analyses were performed, and they demonstrated significantly (a) higher GPAs, (b) improved rates of retention, and (c) the completion of more college credits among service learning participants. In addition, an ANOVA revealed insights into the individual service-learning projects. It was determined that the most effective programs (a) directly connected the service-learning activity to the course curriculum, (b) provided multiple experiences performing tasks, and (c) placed students in community-based organizations appropriate for their level of literacy.     

A MANAGEMENT TOOL FOR REALLOCATING COLLEGE RESOURCES

Community college administrators frequently need to deal with program enrollment shifts resulting from economic and demographic shifts. Reallocating resources between areas of the college to adjust to those enrollment shifts can become a difficult process if there isn't a careful monitoring of enrollment patterns and program costs. The authors describe their use of an enrollment and cost trends report that is published and distributed to the campus yearly. The report, with ten years of trend data on enrollments and credit hour costs, is utilized to provide a basis for planning, budgeting, and prioritizing personnel decisions. The authors contend that the public nature of the report is necessary to educate the campus to the importance of controlling program costs. The resulting campus awareness assists administrative efforts to reallocate funds within and between program areas and provide benchmarking comparisons. The usefulness of the data in legislative lobbying and fund raising also is described.     

Designing online assessment tools for disengaged youth

This article reports on the development of online assessment tools for disengaged youth in flexible learning environments. Sociocultural theories of learning and assessment and Bourdieu's sociological concepts of capital and exchange were used to design a purpose-built content management system. This design experiment engaged participants in assessment that led to the exchange of self, peer and teacher judgements for credentialing. This collaborative approach required students and teachers to adapt and amend social networking practices for students to submit and judge their own and others' work using comments, ratings, keywords and tags. Students and teachers refined their evaluative expertise across contexts, and negotiated meanings and values of digital works, which gave rise to revised versions and emergent assessment criteria. By combining social networking tools with sociological models of capital, assessment activities related to students' digital productions were understood as valuations and judgements within an emergent, negotiable social field of exchange.     

List of Reviewers 2006

ASCTRACT

This study aims to analyze the potential and constraints of group-based extension approaches as an institutional innovation in the Vietnamese agricultural extension system. Our analysis therefore unfolds around the challenges of how to foster this kind of approach within the hierarchical extension policy setting and how to effectively shape and enable learning groups. The analysis draws on qualitative data from case studies of five newly established extension groups in Son La province, collected between 2007 and 2008. Content analysis was applied as the main analytical tool. The basic principles of group-based learning approaches are still underdeveloped, mainly due to a non-supportive institutional environment and a command-and-follow mentality. Extension groups suffer from an insufficient distinction between social processes and technical procedures. Finding an appropriate balance between enhancing leadership and supporting collective responsibility is identified as key to sustain groups. The research identified room for adjustments in group-organizational issues since the external institutional environment is hard to change. The particular value of this paper lies in addressing how to organize group-extension approaches in the context of reformed extension systems in a transitional socialist setting.     

From Best Practice to Best Fit: A Framework for Designing and Analyzing Pluralistic Agricultural Advisory Services Worldwide

Abstract

We assess the long-term effectiveness of outreach and education efforts associated with a water quality improvement project in a watershed located in northern Utah, USA. Conducted 15 years after the original project began, our research examines the lasting impacts of different extension activities on landowners’ motivations to participate and their awareness and understanding of the water quality problem. Data were gathered by reviewing annual project reports, interviewing project staff about outreach and education efforts, and conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a majority of the farmers and ranchers who participated in the project. The findings suggest that landowners were motivated to participate in the programme more by practical farm and household considerations and available cost-share opportunities than by particular environmental concerns. Previous relationships between farmers and government programme staff and one-on-one visits with landowners played an important role in their decisions to participate, while demonstration projects and peer-to-peer social diffusion processes played a much smaller role than expected. Although participants had a good grasp of the project goals, they did not have a strong sense of ownership of the water quality problem. These results suggest that education and outreach approaches centred only on the environmental dimensions of conservation projects may be insufficient to motivate changes in conservation behaviour. The results also suggest that conventional outreach strategies often did not have their presumed impact on landowners.     

Being an Elbow: A Phenomenological Autoethnography of Faculty-Student Collaboration for Accommodations

Hybrid and online courses and advances in assistive technologies make accommodating students with disabilities ever-changing, requiring innovation. This reality, coupled with students’ reluctance to disclose disabilities, points toward a need for replacing accommodations directed at those with disabilities with universal design whereby they become accessible to all—virtually eliminating the need for accommodations. In this paper, a master's of social work student (Chad) and his instructor (Regina) document their collaborations to revise a social work research course to meet his request for accommodations to make options more universally accessible. These revisions are done through reflections from both Chad and Regina from a phenomenological autoethnographic perspective—depicting their lived experiences.     

Pre-service primary teachers’ shame experiences during their schooling time: characteristics and effects on their subject-choices at university

Educational Studies in Mathematics - Emotions play an essential role in pre-service teachers’ competence development, particularly in mathematics. However, the emotion of shame in mathematics...     

CONSER: The Very Model of a Modern Cooperative Program

Abstract

The CONSER Program is the oldest component of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) and many elements that made CONSER a success were adopted by the PCC over the past twenty-five years. This article describes how CONSER’s evolution over the years in the areas of membership, leadership, standards, training and documentation influenced the development of the PCC.     

Questioning Our Questions: Assessing Question Asking Practices to Evaluate a yPAR Program

The purpose of this research was to examine question asking practices in a youth participatory action research (yPAR) after school program housed at an elementary school. The research question was: In which ways did the adult question asking practices in a yPAR setting challenge and/or reproduce conventional models of power in educational settings? We aligned Fink’s taxonomy (Creating significant learning experiences: an integrated approach to designing college courses. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2003) to Freire’s (The pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum, New York, 1970/2000) banking concept and problem-posing educational models. All adult questions were categorized from twelve randomly selected yPAR sessions over 2 years. The program served 4th and 5th grade students. Of the 500+ questions adults asked, 17 % were foundational (aligned with Freire’s banking concept). All other questions were aligned with Freire’s problem-posing model. Specifically, 34 % were application, 3 % were integration, 15 % were caring, 11 % were human dimension, and 8 % were learning how to learn questions. By studying question asking patterns and practices, we gained a better understanding of how students and adults navigated this particular after school space, which, at its core, sought to disrupt conventional notions of power and status.     

De Genève à Belo Horizonte,une histoire croisée: circulation,réception et réinterprétation d’un modèle européen des classes spéciales au Brésil des années 1930

L’organisation des classes homogènes selon le niveau de développement mental des élèves et celle des classes spéciales pour les enfants en retard scolaire eut lieu dans les écoles élémentaires de Belo Horizonte, au Brésil, pendant les années de 1930, dans le cadre d’une réforme du système d’éducation, à laquelle participèrent des spécialistes étrangers, et en spécial la psychologue russe Helena Antipoff (1892–1974). Le projet des classes spéciales alors établies et leurs transformations dans le contexte brésilien sont étudiés à partir de données documentaires publiées entre 1930 et 1940. Née en Russie, Antipoff a fait des études supérieures en France (1910–1911), comme stagiaire dans le laboratoire Binet-Simon, et à Genève (1912–1914), à l’Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, où elle exerça ultérieurement les fonctions d’assistante d’Édouard Claparède (1926–1929). Notre hypothèse est que les classes spéciales créées à Belo Horizonte le furent sur le modèle genevois, et constituèrent un important exemple de circulation et diffusion de connaissances au niveau international, ainsi que de construction de repères dans le domaine de l’éducation spéciale au Brésil. Ainsi, la division des classes par niveau intellectuel mesuré par des tests d’intelligence, l’idée de “l’école sur mesure” proposée par Claparède, le dialogue avec les méthodes suggérées par Alice Descouedres démontrent les relations avec le modèle genevois. En même temps, l’interprétation des résultats des tests comme manifestation d’une forme d’ “intelligence civilisée” et les adaptations des exercices d’orthopédie mentale pour développer cette intelligence demandée par l’école montrent les transformations du modèle dans le contexte brésilien.