Juggling competing activities: academic staff as doctoral candidates

ABSTRACT

This article explores the experiences of a group of established academic staff in New Zealand and the UK, as they undertake a doctorate in their home institutions. Our interest is in how individuals negotiate this dual status from a cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) stance that explores how rules, tools, community and divisions of labour, and interacting activity systems, shape doctoral experiences. The focus in this article, having analysed their detailed narrative accounts, is on how academics experience three interdependent activity systems: those surrounding the thesis, the institutional context, and the home-life spheres. Issues related to time, workload and supervision issues, variability in collegial support and impact on personal priorities and time emerged. There is a range of particularities – from easy access to resources/supervisors to inflexible institutional regulations – applicable to this group of doctoral candidates. Negotiating life as an academic with concurrent doctoral candidature provides positive outcomes in terms of teaching, research confidence and general personal and professional development. However, a range of difficulties can also be encountered, particularly in relation to personal and professional relationships, and workload management.     

澳大利亚国家图书馆展览政策研究

[目的/意义]国内图书馆对展览政策的研究较少，而国外图书馆在相关领域有比较成熟的做法。研究国外图书馆展览政策有助于促进国内图书馆展览工作的开展。[方法/过程]通过对澳大利亚国家图书馆展览政策与展品租借政策文本的梳理与研究，探索其有益做法对我国图书馆的启示。[结果/结论]我国图书馆应从4方面完善展览工作：①重视展览工作的组织建设；②重视对展览原则的研究；③结合国家文物保护政策制定展品借出政策；④结合我国实际制定展品借入政策。     

Arts education partnerships: sources of harmony and dissonance with cultural institutions’ collaborative efforts

ABSTRACT

Due to budget constraints, schools in the United States have increasingly turned to community arts organizations for support. School-community arts partnership stakeholders collaborate because of shared missions to provide students with valuable arts learning experiences. Investigations of these initiatives indicate that these partnerships improve arts learning opportunities and increase public support and resources for arts education. However, not much is known about the experiences and perspectives of the arts organizations that participate in these partnerships. Coordinating collective efforts with a multitude of institutions and interests poses challenges. In this study, we examine survey data collected from arts organization administrators who participated in a large-scale school-community arts partnership initiative. We find that these organizations are generally positive about their impacts on students’ educational outcomes, but there is substantial variation in these views. We also find that organizations differ in their levels of support for these collective efforts. Sources of this variation appear to be attributable to organizations’ preexisting resources and extent to which they are established. While this difference in levels of support is potentially inevitable, we find evidence that the operations handled by the “backbone” organization, i.e. the initiative’s facilitators and overseers, can significantly influence organizations’ levels of support for these efforts. Organizations are more likely to support these collaborative efforts when they believe the backbone organization ensures transparency with initiative operations, provides regular, effective communication, and effectively resolves competing priorities.     

Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of the Portuguese Version of the Life Skills Scale for Sport

ABSTRACT

This research adapted the Life Skills Scale for Sport (LSSS) into Portuguese and provided evidence for its construct validity. Study 1 included four translators and five academics who developed a Portuguese version of the LSSS (P-LSSS). During this study, evidence for the content and substantive aspects of construct validity was provided using an expert panel and 25 sports participants. Study 2 included 413 participants that completed the P-LSSS. Within this study, evidence for the structural aspect of construct validity was provided via factor analyses. Study 3 included 134 participants who completed the P-LSSS and a measure of motivation. This study provided evidence for the external aspect of construct validity, with results showing more self-determined motivation had positive relationships with participant’s life skills development. Overall, our findings provided evidence for the construct validity of P-LSSS scores. Researchers and practitioners can use the P-LSSS to assess life skills development within sports participants.     

Blended learning in higher education: professional development in a Hong Kong university

ABSTRACT

Online learning has become a ubiquitous part of the educational landscape and how teachers are supported in developing approaches to teaching online is a fundamental aspect of the students’ learning experience. Based on the implementation of a professional development course on becoming an online teacher offered in a blended learning mode at one university in Hong Kong, this article proposes that offering this type of professional development in a blended mode is very effective in facilitating enhanced usage of the university’s learning management system. In a blended mode, teachers are actively engaged with blended learning and were found to make more extensive use of features/tools in Blackboard after they attended the professional development course. Results support that offering professional development in a blended mode provides teachers with an authentic student perspective, at the same time as they take guided steps in the teacher’s role in blended learning.     

少数民族传统体育文化资源开发利用的保障机制——以桂滇黔地区为例

由于少数民族传统体育文化保护起步晚和对其保护的公共投入不足,经济发展相对滞后、但传统体育文化资源占优的桂滇黔地区对通过开发传统体育文化具有的经济价值来弥补其保护资金不足有着更为迫切的需求。然少数民族传统体育文化资源的开发利用涉及诸多方面的利益,要实现其开发利用的可持续性,需从法律法规、资金支持、人才培养、规划评估、区域合作等方面建立起一整套有效的保障机制,使其开发利用的综合效益得到充分发挥。     

陕西省民办高等教育考察报告

陕西省民办高等教育发展很快 ,办学规模不断扩大 ,民办高等教育与公办高等教育共同发展的格局已初步形成。大胆进行教育创新 ,不断研究和解决面临的新情况、新问题 ,是陕西民办高等教育得以迅速发展的主要原因。为了促进民办高等教育进一步发展 ,应提高认识 ,提高质量意识 ,加强民办高校管理机构的建设     

健全人格的内涵及其教育

未来社会需要一大批智力与人格和谐发展的高素质人才。健全人格的最简单的定义就是人格的正常和谐的发展。开展健全人格的教育,培养学生具有健全的人格,是教育改革的当务之急。健全人格者作为教育培养的终极产品,是对素质教育的最好诠释。     

地属高职院校可持续发展问题之我见

20世纪80年代创办的地属高职院校是我国高等职业教育的开始。自1999年高校扩招以来,地属高职院校发展迅猛,成为我国高等职业教育的主干部分。在新的历史时期,地属高职院校只有坚持以办好专科层次高职为主体的多元化发展定位、与各类高校进行合理分工,并在地级政府的统筹管理下,构建与当地经济社会发展互利共赢的长效机制,才能不断增强自身的可持续发展能力,在地方经济建设和社会进步中有所作为。