Positioned within the social constructivist view of learning that individuals make meaning from their experiences and through their social actions and interactions, this qualitative study explores the ways in which nine instructors of underprepared adult English as a Second Language students made meaning of their classroom experiences. Through…

Public libraries in the United States have a long history of providing resources and education to immigrants. This tradition may be traced to Andrew Carnegie's support for public libraries as a place for immigrant self-education, enlightenment, and the study of democracy and English. This role is especially relevant today as the immigrant…

This article examines some issues surrounding transition to higher education. It is based on the case study of a cohort of Year 1 students in a modern university in England. The purpose of the study was to ascertain any potential transitional issues and therefore any areas for development in our Year 1 programmes to aid student progress. Data were…

Through its analysis of birth plans, documents some women create to guide their birth attendants' actions during hospital births, this article reveals the rhetorical complexity of childbirth and analyzes women's attempts to harness birth plans as tools of resistance and self-education. Asserting that technologies can both silence and give voice,…

"How can you help students most effectively in the classroom?" As a Teaching Assistant, you play a vital role in today's schools. This fully updated new edition will help you get to grips with the main issues to do with psychology and its role in the processes of teaching and learning. This accessible text, building on the success of a…

After many years of research focused on the individual and psychological aspects of self-directed learning, the field has taken into consideration the context and situation surrounding the education of an adult, placing the development of individual autonomy into a constructivist perspective. But it is only recently, in France at least, that…

This article describes a creative intervention used in an independent study course which focused on Enneagram studies. In addition to extensive reading, writing, discussion, and reflection at weekly meetings, one assignment for the course involved the compilation of songs that depict the core motivations, fears, and desires for each type.…

As an online competency-based university, Western Governors University (WGU) requires that students demonstrate competence in given content areas through a series of assessments. WGU employs a number of assessment techniques, including objective assessments, performance assessments, portfolios, capstones, and observations. Unlike most academic…

Background: Almost three decades have passed since the Grunwald Declaration on Media Education was issued by the representatives of 19 nations at UNESCO's International Symposium on Media Education in Germany (UNESCO 1982). Cycles of information revolution and education reform over this period have led to significant changes in the sectors of…

Socialization has become the common theoretical framework used to better understand the complexity of the doctoral student experience. In particular, theories of socialization have been connected to the issue of attrition in doctoral education, with researchers often attributing poor or inappropriate socialization to a student's decision to depart…

The results of a self-paced reading study with German second language (L2) learners of Dutch showed that noun animacy affected the learners' on-line commitments when comprehending relative clauses in their L2. Earlier research has found that German L2 learners of Dutch do not show an on-line preference for subject-object word order in temporarily…

This contribution aims to examine how different areas of self-regulation are related to academic achievement in adolescents and young adults. The study involved participants, drawn from following age groups: 14-15, 17-18 and 22-23. In order to get information about cognitive, metacognitive, motivational and emotional aspects of self-regulation,…

The purpose of this study was to explore the alignment of soft skills sought by current business IS entry-level employers in electronic job postings, with the integration of soft skills in undergraduate business information systems (IS) syllabi of public four-year universities in Texas. One hundred fifty job postings were extracted from two major…

This volume examines the assessment of higher order thinking skills from the perspectives of applied cognitive psychology and measurement theory. The volume considers a variety of higher order thinking skills, including problem solving, critical thinking, argumentation, decision making, creativity, metacognition, and self-regulation. Fourteen…

This study compared the SDL readiness and behaviors of two homogeneous groups of junior level undergraduate nursing students (n = 33) as measured by Guglielmino's SDLRS. One group was exposed to an educational module that addressed the purpose and process of SDL and the other was not exposed to the educational module. An experimental,…