News, Information and Useful Links for Education from
the Chancellor Oppenheimer Library
Teacher.org.za|Connecting to make a difference is an online platform where key stakeholders in the Education Arena can connect, collaborate, and participate to make a discernable difference to the future of our children. [from the website]
The publisher of the site, Argo, is asking teachers to share their ideas, tips and advice on how to better support teaching and learning in our schools.
From InsideHigherEd : The Carnegie Corporation of New York has published an unusually frank analysis of the successes and failures of a 10-year effort in which several foundations poured hundreds of millions of dollars into trying to stabilize and strengthen Africa's universities.
The case study was released by Carnegie's Partnership for Higher Education in Africa and prepared by an outside consultant.
Jan Herrington, Anthony Herrington, Jessica Mantei, Ian Olney and Brian Ferry (editors), _New Technologies, New Pedagogies: Mobile learning In Higher Education_, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, 2009, 138p. ISBN: 978-1-74128-169-9
Full text and individual chapters available at http://ro.uow.edu.au/newtech/
Preface
While mobile technologies such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and digital music players (mp3 players) have permeated popular culture, they have not found widespread acceptance as pedagogical tools in higher education.
The purpose of this e-book is to explore the use of mobile devices in learning in higher education, and to provide examples of good pedagogy. We are sure that the rich variety of examples of mobile learning found in this book will provide the reader with the inspiration to teach their own subjects and courses in ways that employ mobile devices in authentic and creative ways. This book is made up of a collection of double blind peer-reviewed chapters written by participants in the project New technologies, new pedagogies: Using mobile technologies to develop new ways of teaching and learning.
The book begins with an introductory chapter that describes the overall project, its aims and methods. The second chapter describes the professional development process that was used for the teacher participants involved in the project. This is followed by 10 chapters, each describing a mobile learning pedagogy that was employed in the context of a subject area within a Faculty of Education. The final chapter presents guidelines or design principles for the use of mobile learning in higher education learning environments.
We wish to acknowledge the support provided for the project on which this book is based by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. This research was also funded by generous support from the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Wollongong. Jan Herrington, Anthony Herrington, Jessica Mantei, Ian Olney & Brian Ferry, April 2009
The Academy of Science of South Africa report, "Scholarly Books: their production, use and evaluation in South Africa today" (released this month), argues that the Department of Higher Education and Training needs more urgently to encourage and support the writing and publishing of scholarly books, including how they are ‘weighted’ when the department calculates higher education institutions’ research output subsidies.
(Thanks to Education Blog @ University of Pretoria)
Who uses textbooks? Do students actually read the text? A study in Teaching Educational Psychology by Derryberry & Wininger looked at the relationship between student motivation and textbook selection and use.
The authors combine a group of measures to create a group of “internal motivation” measures, including need for cognition (enjoying effortful thinking), mastery goal orientation (focus on increasing competence), and intrinsic motivation. Similarly, a separate group of measures was combined to create a measure of “external motivation”: performance goal orientation (focus on judgments of others) and external regulation. Finally, they also had an “amotivation” scale measured level of motivation. Most previous research on motivation suggests that those with internal motivation are more likely to engage in deeper processing of materal and have higher degrees of self-regulation.
Derryberry, W. P., & Wininger, S. R. (2008). Relationships among textbook usage and cognitive-motivational constructs Teaching Educational Psychology, 3 (2), 1-11(spotted on Researchblogging with links to the Connections Research Blog)
A new open access journal, Journal of Instructional Pedagogies publishes covers contemporary instructional techniques and education issues in higher education. Educational topics related to delivery methods, implementation of classroom technologies, distance learning, class activities and assessment are typical topics.
Published by the Academic and Business Research Institute.
Spotted on intute.ac.uk
OE Eprints is a depository of research papers produced by the Institute of Education in London. These electronic copies of academic papers "Eprints" can be "pre-prints" (the version of a paper submitted for peer review) or "post-prints" (the final peer reviewed version, which has been accepted for publishing) or similar material such as book chapters, conference papers, working papers, technical reports and so on. It is possible to search the database by keyword, type of publication, author etc., browse the repository by department / year or view the latest accessions chronologically. The full text of items is available for some of these papers.
Quoting from this morning's State of the Nation Address by His Excellency JG Zuma, President of the Republic of South Africa. (Full text is available on Amandla blog; also thanks to Kate Hunter at the GSB Library)
Compatriots,
Education will be a key priority for the next five years. We want our teachers, learners and parents to work with government to turn our schools into thriving centres of excellence.
The Early Childhood Development programme will be stepped up, with the aim of ensuring universal access to Grade R and doubling the number of 0-4 year old children by 2014.
We reiterate our non-negotiables. Teachers should be in school, in class, on time, teaching, with no neglect of duty and no abuse of pupils! The children should be in class, on time, learning, be respectful of their teachers and each other, and do their homework.
To improve
school management, formal training will be a pre-condition for promoting
teachers to become principals or heads of department.
I will meet school
principals to share our vision on the revival of our education system.
Fellow South Africans,
We will increase our efforts to encourage all pupils to complete their secondary education.
The target is to increase enrolment rates in secondary schools to 95 per cent by 2014. We are also looking at innovative measures to bring back into the system pupils who dropped out of school, and to provide support.
Honourable Members, we are very concerned about reports of teachers who sexually harass and abuse children, particularly girls.
We will ensure that the Guidelines on Sexual Harassment and Violence in Public Schools are widely disseminated, and that learners and teachers are familiar with and observe them.
We will take very serious, and very decisive, action against any teachers who abuse their authority and power by entering into sexual relationships with children.
To promote lifelong learning, the Adult Basic Education and Training Kha ri Gude programme will be intensified.
Compatriots, Honourable Members,
We have to ensure that training and skills development initiatives in the country respond to the requirements of the economy.
The Further Education and Training sector with its 50 colleges and 160 campuses nationally will be the primary site for skills development training.
We will improve the access to higher education of children from poor families and ensure a sustainable funding structure for universities.
Mail and Guardian reports that the Education Department has released a draft policy to be used by university councils when determining the salaries of VCs and other senior officials or face intervention by the Department.
Councils have failed to follow guidelines recommended in a 2005 study conducted by Mamphela Ramphele. That study was commissioned by the then South African Universities' Vice-Chancellors' Association -- now Higher Education South Africa (Hesa).
A report from the JISC, assessing how the online lifestyle of young people going into higher education would herald for higher education and policy.
Key findings are here. PDF of the report here. [2 MB]
From the website:
As we began our work, the online lifestyle of young people going into higher education was inescapable, and those working in it had sensed a clear change in their students’ pre-entry experience. The time was ripe for an informed, impartial assessment of this and what it might herald for higher education policy and strategy. This was our remit. Since they represent the future, we took young learners as our baseline. We have, however, been concerned with learners of all ages.
We reviewed the findings of completed and, where they were available, ongoing studies related to our remit; took oral evidence from a range of practising academics and researchers; and commissioned briefings and studies, including one substantial piece of work on current and developing international practice in the use of Web 2.0 in higher education. We met six times in full session and held one event dedicated to hearing evidence.
We structured our Inquiry into a consideration of the prior experience of higher education learners, their expectations, and international practice in the use of Web 2.0 in higher education. From our findings in these three areas, we identified a number of critical issues, the exploration of which then informed our conclusions and recommendations.
A report on UCT's debate on Admissions criteria on allAfrica.com.
A long running debate over racially based undergraduate admissions criteria has recently come under the spotlight at the University of Cape Town recently, with many academics argue that race-based criteria is no longer applicable 15 years into democracy.
The report on the UCT News page.
An Op-Ed piece from the chairman of the Religion department at Columbia, Mark C. Taylor .
"Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans). "
Spotted on Intute.ac.uk
The Journal for the Public University is a full-text ejournal, published by the Australian Association for the Public University Inc.
Quoting from the journal's website: It is intended to provide a forum for the debate of university reform; of related social, economic and educational policy; and of the cultural and intellectual context within which these reforms operate.
At April 2008 there are five issues online, freely offering articles in PDF form. The journal will be of interest to those researching the politics of the production of knowledge in university systems. There are many articles of relevance to those in the arts and humanities.
Spotted in the University World News: -
" Since the end of apartheid, access to universities for poor students in South Africa has grown phenomenally. Enrolment of (mostly disadvantaged) African and mixed-race students rose by 268% in the decade to 2006. But in the face of low pass rates the debate has moved on from access to success, and government is considering extending three-year degrees to four years to include the foundational learning many under-prepared students need."