Scholars who study educational equity and inequality in education, academic achievement gaps, and educational opportunity offer a variety myriad of explanations as to how or whether race has any role or impact on educational experiences, access, or opportunity. Indeed, race has been an abiding question in the social sciences and education for several decades.
Despite the debates within both fields regarding the meaning of race, the current popular sentiment among the lay public and many educational practitioners is that on November 4, 2008, America reached a post-racial moment with the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. In other words, according to the post-racial discourse, race no longer matters, especially as it relates to people of color. The editors and contributors of this volume challenge this rhetoric and examine how and whether race operates in understanding how issues of access to productive opportunities and quality resources converge and impact experiences and outcomes in education. Hence, the purpose of this NSSE Yearbook is to explain how and why race is a “dynamic system of historically derived and institutionalized ideas and practices” shaped by myriad forces (e.g., power, gender, language, class, and privilege), which determine the quality of educational opportunities, experiences, and resources for people of color in the United States.
Most students cheat, or so they eventually admit in surveys of college alumni. Weighing the collective evidence, it appears that only about a quarter of undergraduates have not cheated. Much of the misconduct goes on below the radar of faculty members, and we can’t do much about something we don’t see. The real question is: Why aren’t we reporting more of the cases that we do detect?
If you’ve taught in higher education, you no doubt have discovered plagiarism on a written assignment or cheating on an exam. It’s also likely that your college or university requires you to report every one of those incidents — or maybe on your campus, that’s a request rather than a mandate.
In the world of college composition, we spend a lot of time talking about how to teach writing — with as many opinions on that as there are instructors — but very little time talking about why we teach it.
Many professors take a philosophical approach, asserting that the purpose of teaching writing is to enrich students’ lives, promote self-exploration, or encourage political activism. Certainly all of those can be byproducts of a college writing course, but I would argue that none qualifies as its main purpose. The reason institutions offer — and often require — first-year composition is quite simple: so students learn how to communicate their expertise.
Few academics will be surprised to hear that more evidence has come out showing that student evaluations of teaching are often biased.
The latest study, released this year by the American Political Science Association, found that the "language students use in evaluations regarding male professors is significantly different than language used in evaluating female professors." The study also showed that "a male instructor administering an identical online course as a female instructor receives higher ordinal scores in teaching evaluations, even when questions are not instructor-specific."
On Monday, scientists published a study in Nature Genetics that analyzed the genes of 1.1 million people of European ancestry, including over 300,000 23andMe customers. Over 99 percent of our DNA is identical in all humans, but researchers focused on the remaining 1 percent and found thousands of DNA variants that are correlated with educational attainment. This information can be combined into a single number, called a polygenic score. – “Why Progressives Should Embrace the Genetics of Education” by Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden in the New York Times, July 24, 2018.
It’s that word “score” that made my heart sink a little. We love us some scores in education. SAT scores, NAEP scores, AP scores, GPA, IQ, and now here we have our “polygenic score for educational attainment.”
If I were the czar of higher education that is not explicitly vocational, I would require every undergraduate to study philosophy. And if I were both czar and czarina, I would require all students to take two philosophy courses — one in their first year and another just before graduation.
At first blush, that requirement may seem bizarre, especially coming from me. I am a psychologist and, more broadly, a social scientist — not a philosopher or a humanist. Even more deplorably, I have never taken a philosophy course myself.
We’re at that time of the academic year when the daily details begin to pile up. Teach a class, grade assignments, schedule advisees, and prep for tomorrow. It may not feel like a grind just yet, but it does require lots of focused energy, which makes this a perfect time for a quick reflection on why we teach. For some, teaching is just a job; it’s a paycheck necessity. But for readers of a blog on teaching and learning, I’m pretty sure we’re in it for something more than the bucks, which tend to be pretty modest anyway.
Want your students to think more creatively? The trick, a new study suggests, is all in the timing.
In an experiment, groups of students were found to generate twice as many ideas when they were quizzed around midday, compared with at the start or the end of the working day.
No time for lunch again? You’re the typical modern academic.
The problem with textbooks is that they’re expensive. They’re sort of a hidden educational fee.
Like a lot of students, James Tait was supposed to buy the online component to his textbook. Buying used to save a bit of money, he didn’t get the online access code that comes with a new book.
“I needed it for my chemistry class, it was called Mastering Chemistry, but I never bought it,” he said.
The online component is an addition to the textbook, for homework, self-tests, and tutorials. Textbook companies include these platforms with the sale of new textbooks as an additional service, but also to reduce used textbook sales. The access code for Mastering Chemistry is about $70.
As a new semester approaches, and we put the finishing touches on our syllabi, the issue of how to motivate students is very much on faculty minds. Behind every assignment, reading, and in-class activity lurks the same question: Will they want to do this?
That all may still be true, but the new reality is that COVID-19 is increasingly dominating not just our collective head spaces (in ways helpful and not) but also what our jobs are day to day. That's especially the case in certain realms, including for those of you responsible for helping to deliver instruction and learning at your institutions.
So today, at least -- next week seems very far away at this point -- this column will focus on a question that is generating a good bit of discussion among thoughtful observers of teaching and learning issues: What impact will this sudden, forced immersion and experimentation with technology-enabled forms of learning have on the status of online learning in higher education? Below, 11 experts share their thoughts on how the explosion of remote learning -- much of which may be primitive and of dubious quality -- could affect attitudes and impressions of a mode of learning that already struggles to gain widespread faculty and student support.
This study was a phenomenological study examining the experiences of faculty in an online learning environment in order to identify the factors that could produce job burnout and stress in master’s programs in education. The challenges and related stress-producing factors were also explored to identify best practices for online faculty and attributes most suited for the demands and expectations required in the online teaching environment. The study’s insights and findings are based on perspectives from online faculty who have been teaching in the modality for three or more years. These findings may be useful to stakeholders such as administrators, faculty mentors, faculty trainers, and faculty interested in employment in the modality so that identifiable and realistic criteria may be available upon which to base future hiring standards, employment practices, training, and decisions about teaching online. Insights about procedures and practices have been identified that may be effective in helping to develop initial training programs, faculty mentor supports, administrative decisions, and on-going faculty training. Based upon the findings, institutional leaders have information that could help identify best practices for online faculty and attributes most suited for the demands and expectations required in an online teaching environment. Institutions and administration can seek out and recruit the best possible online faculty who have the necessary skills, abilities, and characteristics required in this modality rather than hiring based merely upon academic credentials that would fail to identify specific attributes necessary for online teaching. Finally, those specific characteristics can then be applied to alleviate job burnout challenges online faculty would experience. The study will help institutional leaders (a) identify faculty earlier who will be better suited to the modality; (b) identify how to offer relevant, on-going faculty supports and training practices; and
(c) prevent online faculty job burnout.
Recognition of the importance of a high-quality system of postsecondary education (PSE) in meeting the demands of Canada’s knowledge-based economy has focused recent media and policy attention on the role of Ontario’s colleges and universities in facilitating the successful transition of postsecondary graduates to the labour market. In particular, there is growing interest in the expansion of postsecondary work-integrated learning (WIL) programs – which include co-op, clinical placements, internships, and more – as a means of improving students’ employment prospects and labour market outcomes. These programs are also believed to benefit students in other ways, for example, by enhancing the quality of the postsecondary experience and improving learning outcomes. Yet despite assumptions about the benefits of postsecondary WIL programs, relatively little empirical research has been conducted to assess students’ perspectives on the value of WIL and the learning outcomes associated with WIL participation.
The majority of university staff feel that they are overworked and underpaid, and that their careers have a detrimental impact on their relationships with their friends, families and partners.
These are some of the conclusions that can be drawn from Times Higher Education’s first major global survey of university staff’s views on their work-life balance.
Most, if not all, faculty and graduate students will agree with Dr. Joli Jensen’s statement that “academic writing is a perplexing burden, a source of constant anxiety, self-doubt, and confusion” (p. 4). When we and our colleagues discuss our own writing struggles or those of our graduate students, we recognize that there are many potential issues underlying writing problems: research design issues, lack of knowledge of other scholarly literature, underdeveloped academic writing skills, an
emerging identity as an academic writer, and ineffective writing processes and practices. Jensen, the author of Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics, claims that her book focuses solely on “offering academic colleagues process-oriented strategies for overcoming writing obstacles” (p. 88). In fact, we find that Jensen offers more than just process strategies in that she also details the affective and psychological barriers to writing; the things that happen in writers’ heads when they have carved out time for writing but still struggle.
The ability of postsecondary students to write and communicate proficiently is an expectation identified by many, including not only organizations such as the OECD but also other public and employer groups. There is concern, however, that students and thus employees often fail to meet expectations in these areas. To address this concern, it is necessary to understand more about the writing skills that students learn during their postsecondary education. This research project was designed to examine whether and how students are taught to write at university.
The ability of postsecondary students to write and communicate proficiently is an expectation identified by many, including not only organizations such as the OECD but also other public and employer groups. There is concern, however, that students and thus employees often fail to meet expectations in these areas. To address this concern, it is necessary to understand more about the writing skills that students learn during their postsecondary education. This research project was designed to examine whether and how students are taught to write at university.
If you’re a faculty member, you’ve spent the last few weeks preparing your syllabus for the spring semester. You’ve updated the document and added a little to it. This latest round of edits may have pushed your syllabus another page longer — most now run about five pages, though nearly every campus has lore of some that exceed 20.
This is the first article in a series designed to help you create an Individual Development Plan (IDP) using myIDP, a new Web-based career-planning tool created to help graduate students and postdocs in the sciences define and pursue their career goals. To learn more about myIDP and begin the career-planning process, please visit: http://myidp.sciencecareers.org.
So let’s start with the big picture. What is the purpose of schools in our society? Why do societies invest so many resources into educating their young? Yes, we teach so that students will learn, but to what end? What is the point? Of what benefit and to whom is a well-educated public? These kind questions have to do with the philosophy of education. (A philosophy is a set of principles based on one’s values and beliefs that are used to guide one's behavior.) These kinds of questions greatly affect how we educate students yet, they do not get asked nearly enough. Below is a list of possible reasons for educating young humans. You will most likely find that it is hard to select just one; instead, there seems to be a variety of reasons or purposes.