Faculty and staff perceptions of undergraduate mentoring

ABSTRACT

The connection between students and faculty is a recognized component of student belonging and engagement. To better understand how these relationships are formed, we utilized a qualitative design to explore the ways in which faculty and staff at a mid-sized public university perceived their roles in supporting, and connecting with, students. Based on our focus group data, we identified three themes. The first theme defined the mentoring relationship in the university context. The second theme addressed the unique features of mentoring Underrepresented Minority (URM) and First Generation (FG) students. Our third theme focused on perceived barriers to mentoring, including personal, institutional, and student-related barriers. Our findings provide a first step in developing a framework for colleges and universities working to promote a culture of mentoring as a means to support students.     

Encouraging the habit of seeing in student teaching

This article addresses how mentoring can move the student teachers' process of learning towards constructive teaching forms. An underlying assumption of such an approach is the need to understand what pupils know and say. The focus in the article is on how Sara, a cooperating teacher in Norway, encourages student teachers to start their student teaching by developing a mindset where seeing the kids is in focus. She does so by designing and taking care of natural learning situations, and by assisting them to develop their habit of seeing through their own teaching.     

Mentoring Faculty to Improve Teaching and Student Learning

For teaching to improve, three factors must be in place. First, the college must use a valid and reliable student evaluation instrument in combination with other feedback mechanisms. Second, there must be an accompanying norming report that provides comparative and diagnostic information to departmental chairs and teachers. Raw data from even a valid and reliable instrument may not be informative. Third, the college must have a mentoring process in place. This article discusses briefly each of the three elements to initiate and sustain a successful mentoring program to improve teaching and student learning. Of course, if the school does not reward improved or effective teaching it is not likely to occur.     

Teacher Access and Mentoring Abilities: Predicting the Outcome Value of Extra Class Communication

Reasoning from Sunnafrank's theory of predicted outcome value (POV), this investigation examined how students' assessments of their teachers' accessibility and mentoring abilities influenced their perceptions of the predicted value of engaging in extra class communication (ECC). Student perceptions of teacher physical and social accessibility, along with teacher mentoring abilities (including career, course, and psychosocial), were all substantially and positively related to students' ratings of the POV of ECC. However, only social accessibility, course mentoring, and career mentoring emerged as significant predictors of POV in the regression model. These findings validate POV theory by confirming that students readily assess what they have to gain (or lose) from potential ECC encounters based on what their teachers can offer them. These findings are discussed with regard to understanding how students may be motivated to realize the benefits of ECC.     

宿舍学长制的实践探索——以北京化工大学为例简

北京化工大学在朋辈互助式教育的基础上,在低年级校区创新实施宿舍学长制,充分利用校友资源,有效促进学长与学生间的终身沟通交流,在探索长效育人机制方面取得实效。     

Adventures in Online Mentoring: The New Members' Roundtable Career Mentoring Program

ABSTRACT

Many programs for mentoring of librarians exist within organizations, for specific areas of librarianship, or for particular groups of librarians. These programs generally depend on face-to-face contact and some organizational commonalities or similarity in positions. With the advent of online communication, could a more general program matching up new librarians and ALA members with experienced librarians for online mentoring be feasible? ALA's New Members' Round-table Mentoring Committee coordinated a new project to find out. This article outlines the planning process and the mechanics of the program through two iterations. Feedback received from participants was mixed but provided valuable insight into what could make a wholly online mentoring program work.     

Cracks in the iceberg: surfacing the tensions of constructivist pedagogy in the context of mentoring

In this study, the reciprocity between educational reforms and the role of teachers is examined. A social-discursive approach to sense-making provides a theoretical framework for understanding how teachers position themselves within the context of a reform. To illustrate the utility of such an approach, the specific case of a teacher involved in reforms is presented. The results show an ongoing positioning process and this process to constitute both the input and output for the interaction between teacher and reforms. The development of sensitivity to this positioning process appears to be a necessary prerequisite for successful reforms.     

Computerization in Nigerian libraries: a state of the art review

Computerization of library services is intended to modernize the entire library system in Nigeria as in the industrialized countries, and to ensure accuracy, efficiency, effective information management, reliable user services, enhanced interlibrary co-operation and library prestige. By 1985, only the library of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, had succeeded in automating its library services. Other libraries are mostly at the trial stage. University and research libraries and the National Library of Nigeria are leading the race to computerize their services. Lack of co-operation between libraries is an obstacle to library automation in Nigeria. Some librarians are not sure whether computerized library services would thrive owing to problems of poor funding, inadequate physical and environmental facilities such as low grade buildings, unreliable power supply and the scanty amount of information holdings in most of our libraries. Staff computer training, standby power generating plants, competent personnel, computer technicians and support for computer acquisition and hardware maintenance are major factors to consider before any Nigerian library decides to automate its services. In future, use of natural language by computers will make computers more user friendly. Installation of mini- or microcomputers, with powerful information storage capacity, rather than main frames are recommended for small Nigerian libraries with fewer than 20000 book titles, but which wish to automate their services.     

从涂尔干的“集体意识”审视武术的师徒关系

从文化学视角,借用涂尔干的集体意识理论,对武术文化中的师徒关系进行文化人类学意义上的剖析。提出了武术文化传承的引者——师父,作为武术资源的携带者、联动武术文化不断推演的重要纽带;武术文化的传送者——徒弟,秉承师者的“传统”基础之上并发挥主观能动性的创新者,了解师徒关系的有机构成成为了感知武术文化的重要通道。