Tracking New Directions in the Evaluation of Postgraduate Supervision

This article focuses on the evaluation of thesis supervision and highlights the vast range of problem areas presently documented as significant areas of concern for both graduate students and their supervisors. Additionally, the authors report on a study completed in 1995, which surveyed all Australian universities about current evaluative practices in postgraduate supervision. The conclusion of this study was that the conduct of such evaluations appears to be minimal and is primarily designed to obtain an indicator of the general health of a university's postgraduate supervision rather than to foster improved supervisory practices. As part of the same study, the authors conducted University faculty-based student and supervisor focus groups. Key issues emerging from these focus groups were: (1) the importance of relational aspects of supervision as the student communicates over the long term with one or more supervisors; (2) the importance of systematic feedback, monitoring, and evaluation to the supervisory process; and (3) the lack of strategies to facilitate this evaluative feedback process. On the basis of these findings, the authors designed evaluative strategies to facilitate regular ongoing feedback between students and supervisors.     

Role Behavior Profiles of Israeli School Counselors

This study of 681 school counselors in Israel examines how counselors allocate their time between counseling tasks and whether their role behavior can be characterized according to distinctive profiles. Three distinctive profiles of role behavior were identified: The traditional profile (40% of the sample), in which individual counseling to students was prominent; the prevention profile (20% of the sample), in which a guidance curriculum with an emphasis on prevention programs was preva1ent; and the balanced profile (40% of the sample), in which the time devoted to the main counseling responsibilities is allocated in relatively equal proportions. Three variables were found to affect the profiles: the school setting (i.e., level), the principals expectations from the counselor and the counselors personal preferences. The findings of this study can contribute to the effort of defining and clarifying the role and function of school counseling in Israel and other countries.     

“Conversation of Mankind” or “idle talk”?: a pragmatist approach to Social Networking Sites

What do Social Networking Sites (SNS) ‘do to us’: are they a damning threat or an emancipating force? Recent publications on the impact of “Web 2.0” proclaim very opposite evaluative positions. With the aim of finding a middle ground, this paper develops a pragmatist approach to SNS based on the work of Richard Rorty. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, we analyze SNS as conversational practices. Second, we outline, in the form of an imaginary conversation between Rorty and Heidegger, a positive and negative ‘conversational’ view on SNS. Third, we deploy a reflection, again using Rortian notions, on that evaluation, starting from the concept of ‘self-reflectivity.’ Finally, the relations between these three steps are more detailedly investigated. By way of the sketched technique, we can interrelate the two opposing sides of the recent debates—hope and threat—and judge SNS in all their ambiguity.     

The Frontiers of Borderless Education

Preface

The Frontiers of Borderless Education     

Contribution to the Collective by Religious‐Zionist Adolescent Girls

The act of contribution to the collective raises a major dilemma in contemporary religious Zionism in regard to girls and women: how to maintain their traditional restriction to the domestic sphere while allowing participation in national tasks that demand their presence in the male‐dominated public sphere. From in‐depth interviews conducted with 37 seventeen‐year‐old religious girls studying in a unisex residential boarding high school, we uncover the manner in which these girls, as they proceed to young adulthood, experience the act of contribution in three social arenas: the Bnei Akiva youth movement, national service and the domestic sphere. Our analysis reveals a gradual recruitment to contribution during the passage from girlhood to womanhood, paralleled by the gradual intensification of feminine’ qualities. This process facilitates the girls’ participation in the public sphere without challenging the traditional gender dichotomy. It also constitutes a central practice by means of which religious‐Zionist society recruits the girls to the Israeli collective yet keeps them within its own socio‐cultural boundaries.     

Contemporary induction to teaching in Australian universities

Australia has 42 universities. In 2015/16, 30 of 40 universities reviewed provided one or more days of teaching induction for their staff, while 10 did not. Twenty-six of the 30 teaching induction program directors were surveyed and 24 of those were interviewed to provide a snapshot of professional development for new teaching staff in Australian universities. The key findings of that research showed that almost two thirds of universities did not pay sessional staff to attend a teaching induction program; just over half the programs included peer observation of teaching; only one in five programs offered mentoring opportunities; three quarters of programs included assessment; and approximately a third of programs provided credit towards an award course. We conclude that all universities need to provide new teaching staff with a longer teaching induction program, which will support them to develop student-centred, scholarly behaviours and attitudes.     

Examining workload models in online and blended teaching

Over the past decade, most Australian universities have moved increasingly towards “blended” and online course delivery for both undergraduate and graduate programs. In almost all cases, elements of online teaching are part of routine teaching loads. Yet detailed and accurate workload data associated with “e‐teaching” are not readily available. A search of the international literature indicated that there is limited rigorous literature and research that points to the actual effects on workload in online and blended higher education teaching environments. This paper reports on a research project in four Australian universities, and the perceptions of a representative group of staff who perceived that e‐teaching had increased their “teaching time” workload, and that Workload Allocation Models (WAMs) did not take account of contemporary teaching modalities.