The critical spirituality of Paulo Freire

Starting from the premise that Paulo Freire’s capacity for hope in the face of personal struggle and exile issued from his spirituality, this paper examines Freire’s spirituality through the lens of Michael Dantley’s concept of critical spirituality. The concept of spirituality as discussed in the literature is explored, followed by an explication of Dantley’s concept of critical spirituality, which is an integration of critical theory and African-American spirituality as articulated by Cornel West and others. After briefly reviewing Freire’s religious and cultural background, the paper compares Dantley and Freire in terms of their perspectives on hope, conversion to or solidarity with the oppressed and prophetic vision. The paper concludes by offering four implications of Freire’s critical spirituality for educators seeking to work for social change.     

The effect of context on student engagement in engineering

The self-belief, motivation, tendency to procrastinate and learning styles of engineering students are discussed. It is proposed that engineering has developed an idiom and a learning approach that favours the dominant client, i.e. men, while simultaneously undermining the self-efficacy and motivation of women. Thematic coherence and teaching within a context that is familiar to students have been shown previously to be effective approaches for engaging students and are extended here to utilise the common experiences of all students to initiate the learning cycle. These approaches are combined with a template for teaching that uses the 5Es (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate) in order to render the fundamentals of engineering more accessible to all students. This methodology can be introduced by individual instructors, who will be rewarded by students who are more engaged, more motivated and more likely to give a higher rating to the instructor and the course.     

Book reviews

The Metadata Handbook: A Book Publisher's Guide to Creating and Distributing Metadata for Print and Ebooks Renée Register and Thad McIlroy Columbus, OH, DATACurate, 2012, 133pp. ISBN: 978‐0‐9858288‐1‐3 (PDF), 978‐0‐9858288‐5‐1 (Kindle), 978‐0‐9858288‐2‐0 (epub), 978‐0‐9858288‐0‐6 (pbk), $125.00 (pbk) $95.00 (e‐book) http://themetadatahandbook.com/     

A Brief History of Item Theory Response

How did early work of Binet and Thurstone foreshadow item response theory? What connections to work in other areas are not widely recognized? What are current application trends?     

Performance Indicators as a Foundation of Institutional Autonomy: Implications for Higher Education Institutions in Europe

There has developed moderate discussion in European higher education about the use of performance indicators for both accountability and evaluation purposes. This paper begins by summarizing governmental expectations, institutional objections, and several of the controversies surrounding performance measures. We then report on using performance indicators for both external accountability and strategic planning in a case study of a public research extensive university in the United States, including how the flows of resources and students have changed following the use of institutional performance measures in strategic planning.     

Quality assurance of higher education in transition countries: Accreditation ‐ accountability and assessment

Abstract

One issue facing countries in transition concerns how to ensure quality for a broader and more diverse set of institutions. Quality assurance processes (i.e. accreditation, accountability and assessment) have particular relevance today as higher education undergoes dramatic changes in countries in transition, as the world becomes more internationalised, and as private higher education institutions increase in number and enrol increasing numbers of students. Three questions emerge. Do differences among transition countries relative to central control prior to independence explain the current set of quality assurance mechanisms? Has the growth of private higher education in transition countries affected how quality assurance is conceptualised? Have quality assurance mechanisms been affected by the opening of branch campuses in transition countries?