Identity refers to all the characteristics that "specify who we are and also how we see other people" and is formed with the accumulation of our own experiences and those from social life with regard to certain roles like professional, political or parental roles. Some of the characteristics of identity that determine and describe…

Much research has acknowledged the importance of self-concept for adolescents' academic behaviour, motivation and aspiration, but little is known about the role of self-concept underpinning the motivation and aspiration of higher education students in a specialised field such as medical education. This article draws upon a programme of research…

Migration induces complex processes of human transformation that are usually not reflected in theories that describe these changes. In most theories regarding these transformations, the implicit assumption is that immigrants undergo a transition to the culture of the mainstream population according to a modernization perspective. Based on a review…

Ever since the author first read about the concept of a "Sit Spot" in "Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature" by Young, Haas and McGown (2010), it struck a strong chord within her. She has been aware of the concept of having a special place within nature that people are connected to and return to often, but she hadn't known that there are…

Many frameworks exist to explain and describe the phenomenon of same-sex sexuality as it applies to human development. This conceptual article provides a critical overview and synthesis of previous models to serve as a theoretical bridge for the suggested multiple continua model of sexual and relational orientations. Recommendations for how…

How can we understand human agency, and what does it mean to educate character? In this essay Klas Roth develops a Kantian notion, one that suggests we render ourselves efficacious and autonomous in education and elsewhere. This requires, among other things, that we are successful in bringing about the intended result through our actions and the…

This article argues that Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari's later works can be read as a theory of "Bildung" with Deleuze's three pedagogies as important "knots." "Bildung" happens in refrains. The article finally sketches the outline of an imaginary school based on Deleuzian philosophy. The discussions with local…

Through a year-long study of welfare-to-work students in the community college CalWORKs program, we investigated what self-authorship development looks like by examining developmental progress, and whether there are patterns in development along the three dimensions of self-authorship. Findings demonstrate progress toward self-authorship, but…

This study investigates the role of international experience on personal and professional development of university academic staff in the Humanities and Social Sciences fields in Thailand. The participants were 23 lecturers from nine universities in Thailand. A semi-structured face-to-face interviewing method was employed. The findings reveal that…

A key challenge in formative evaluation is to gather appropriate evidence to inform the continuous improvement of initiatives. In the absence of outcome data, the programme evaluator often must rely on the perceptions of beneficiaries and staff in generating insight into what is making a difference. The article describes the approach adopted in an…

In this research, we have examined the characteristics of university students' motivation and its connection with perceptions of the learning environment. Higher education teachers often find it challenging to decide how to organize their lectures and what instructional strategy they should use to be most effective. Therefore, we endeavoured to…

International business ethics courses imply four basic epistemological and pedagogical challenges: (a) understanding various perceptions of ethics and values/virtues; (b) identifying ethical maxims among religious/spiritual traditions; (c) designing international business ethics courses as dialogical experiences; and (d) deepening our personal…

Outdoor adventure education (OAE) is widely recognised for its ability to elicit personal and social development for its participants. However, quantitative evidence on which this recognition is based is frequently questioned, and is virtually absent in Scotland. To provide some of the first statistically determined evidence from Scotland that OAE…

This study involved whether psychosocial aspects of English classroom environments had associations with the English learning motivation types of Chinese tertiary-level English majors based on a case study of approximate 1,000 English majors in their first 2 years at one of the key universities located in South China. Canonical correlation…

Both in formal situations (as school teachers, football trainers, etc.) and in many, often unpredictable informal situations (both inside and outside institutions)--adults come close to children. Whether we intend it or not, we continually give them examples of what it is to live as a human being, and thereby we have a pedagogical responsibility.…