Intertwined Higher Education Places and Spaces

10.28945/4535 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 079-084
Author(s):  
Elizabeth S Wargo

Aim/Purpose: This essay highlights how the way educational places and spaces are imagined impacts higher education research, policy, and practice. Background: Drawing on the rapid transition to online education in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, dichotomous thinking about education space is problematized by examining how the physical (e.g., the lecture hall) is intertwined with the digital (e.g., an online course shell). Methodology: Conceptual essay Contribution: I illustrate how shifting towards conceptualizing higher education as an intertwined environment, that which is a blended mix of the physical and the digital is a more robust construct that can better assist researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. Findings: Dichotomous— online or on campus—thinking masks issues of equity and justice deserving of higher education leadership research, policy, and practice in need of attention, which COVID-19 has brought to light. Recommendations for Practitioners: By embracing an intertwined educational environment construct, practitioners may be better positioned to see opportunities for increasing equity of higher education access. Recommendation for Researchers: By embracing an intertwined educational environment frame, future research can better examine higher educational equity issues and opportunities. Impact on Society: The larger societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will inevitably change individuals and institutions. By revisiting higher education through an intertwined environmental frame, higher education institutions will be better positioned to assist ALL in society. Future Research: As higher educational institutions grapple with changes in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, future research which problematizes educational space is needed to better understand the shifting, complex, and nuanced environments where learning, marginalization, and opportunities for change exist.

Author(s):  
Dimitrios Vlachopoulos

<p class="3">Quality Assurance (QA) concepts and applications in Higher Education (HE) emerge from evolving meanings related to HE’s dynamic relationship with social, economic, cultural, and technological developments.  The latter has been redefined by the growth spurred by the forms distance and online education acquired during the last decades.  Creating a roadmap with clearly articulated meanings of quality and consistent key actions fills a need for the involved communities to reground the research, policy-making, and the related discourse.  Our current work consists of a thorough meta-analysis on all available research in every identified pertinent field. It is a qualitative review of the concepts, definitions, and approaches about quality in general, but also specifically, in e-learning in HE, as they have globally appeared in peer-reviewed journals, government reports, and web pages.  As we left no stone unturned in enquiring regarding the meanings, uses, evolution, and applicability of the revealed variables it is our hope that the roadmap we provide here will guide future research and support policy-making in the field. The present study is part of the research project<em> e-learning Quality Assurance Design Standards in Higher Education</em> (e-QADeSHE), which was funded by Laureate International Universities as the winning research project for the <em>International David Wilson Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning</em> (2015 edition).</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4400
Author(s):  
Zhao Zhai ◽  
Ming Shan ◽  
Amos Darko ◽  
Albert P. C. Chan

Corruption has been identified as a major problem in construction projects. It can jeopardize the success of these projects. Consequently, corruption has garnered significant attention in the construction industry over the past two decades, and several studies on corruption in construction projects (CICP) have been conducted. Previous efforts to analyze and review this body of knowledge have been manual, qualitative and subjective, thus prone to bias and limited in the number of reviewed studies. There remains a lack of inclusive, quantitative, objective and computational analysis of global CICP research to inform future research, policy and practice. This study aims to address this lack by providing the first inclusive bibliometric study exploring the state-of-the-art of global CICP research. To this end, a quantitative and objective technique aided by CiteSpace was used to systematically and computationally analyze a large corpus of 542 studies retrieved from the Web of Science and published from 2000 to 2020. The findings revealed major and influential CICP research journals, persons, institutions, countries, references and areas of focus, as well as revealing how these interact with each other in research networks. This study contributes to the in-depth understanding of global research on CICP. By highlighting the principal research areas, gaps, emerging trends and directions, as well as patterns in CICP research, the findings could help researchers, practitioners and policy makers position their future CICP research and/or mitigation strategies.


Author(s):  
Joshua P. Taylor ◽  
Holly N. Whittenburg ◽  
Magen Rooney-Kron ◽  
Tonya Gokita ◽  
Stephanie J. Lau ◽  
...  

Many youth with disabilities experience persistently low rates of competitive integrated employment (CIE) and participation in higher education. In 2014, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) established a policy focus on CIE as the goal of vocational services for youth and individuals with disabilities. In addition, WIOA created provision for Pre–Employment Transition Services (Pre-ETS) to ensure that state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies focused sufficient resources toward transition-age youth. This study examined a sample of WIOA State Implementation Plans in depth using content analysis to identify how state VR agencies prioritized the provision of Pre-ETS services to youth with disabilities. Analysis of state plans resulted in three emergent themes: (a) instructional priorities, (b) instructional contexts, and (c) networks of stakeholders. We discuss the implications of these themes for future research, policy, and practice related to the employment of individuals with disabilities.


Inclusion ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karrie A. Shogren ◽  
Michael L. Wehmeyer

Abstract This article analyzes the relationship between the core concepts of disability policy and the three generations of inclusive practices. Specifically, we review the three generations of inclusive practice, highlighting the core concepts that have been most strongly emphasized during each generation of inclusive practices. Because we are early in the third generation of inclusive practices, we conclude by examining how the core concepts can guide and direct third generation inclusive practices and how future research, policy, and practice can actualize the aspirational values of all of the core concepts to enable desired outcomes.


Author(s):  
Jamie Axelrod ◽  
Adam Meyer ◽  
Julie Alexander ◽  
Enjie Hall ◽  
Kristie Orr

Institutions of higher education and their respective disability offices have been challenged with determining how to apply the 2008 Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA) in our present-day work settings. Prior to the amendments, third-party documentation was considered essential almost to the point of being non-negotiable in need for most disability offices to facilitate accommodations for disabled students (The authors have made an intentional choice to utilize identity-first language to challenge negative connotations associated with the term disability and highlight the role that inaccessible systems and environments play in disabling people). The ADAAA questioned this mindset. Students with disabilities often found (and still find) themselves burdened financially and procedurally by disability offices requiring documentation to the point where students may not receive the access they truly need. Furthermore, college campuses are increasingly focusing on the limitations of the environment and not the person. As a result of this evolution, the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) offered a new framework in 2012 describing how to define documentation. For professionals in the higher education disability field and for those invested in this work, it is critical to grasp the evolving understanding of what constitutes documentation and necessary information to make disability accommodation decisions. Otherwise, disabiled students may be further excluded from higher education access.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (esp. 2) ◽  
pp. 1118-1136
Author(s):  
José Aparecido da Costa ◽  
Rosely dos Santos Madruga ◽  
Alexandra Ayach Anache ◽  
Eladio Sebastian-Heredero

The inclusion of students with visual impairments in higher education has still been challenging for managers and teachers to ensure academic success. Despite the investment initiatives by the government, but they are still insufficient in the face of the difficulties of access and permanence of these students. Therefore, the objective of this work is to analyze research on access and permanence with an emphasis on Specialized Educational Assistance for students with visual impairments in the productions of the Special Education Journal of the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM) in the period from 2014 to 2019. We used a quantitative-qualitative analysis of the nature of reviewing scientific production in the journal in question, for this we work with the indicators of disability, visual impairment, higher education, access, permanence, specialized educational assistance and their combinations. The search resulted in 519 articles, of which only 39 address inclusion in higher education. 14 were selected for analysis, dealing with visual impairment, higher education, inclusion and permanence. We conclude that the number of visually impaired students in Higher Education has increased by more than 50% (fifty percent), that there is a set of legislation that favors inclusion, but the conditions, whether of resources/technologies or teacher formation, do not yet appear for its effectiveness, according to research. Specialized educational assistance, guaranteed by law, is not yet perceived as materialized. Publications are relevant for the creation of new policies, actions and strategies for the permanence of students with disabilities in higher education and specialized educational assistance according to their specificities, but it still need further study.


Author(s):  
Rachel Brooks ◽  
Jessie Abrahams ◽  
Predrag Lažetić ◽  
Achala Gupta ◽  
Sazana Jayadeva

Abstract Policymakers across Europe have increasingly emphasised the importance of paying close attention to the social dimension of higher education and taking further steps to ensure that the composition of Europe’s universities more adequately reflects the diversity of the wider population. While there have been a number of studies that have explored this through analyses of European- and national-level policy and others that have assessed a range of quantitative indicators related to student diversity, this chapter assumes, in contrast, an interpretivist stance; it is interested in the perspectives of those studying and working ‘on the ground’ within the European Higher Education Area. Specifically, we seek to answer this research question: To what extent do students and staff, across Europe, believe that higher education access and experiences are differentiated by social characteristics (such as class/family background, race/ethnicity/migration background, gender and age)? In doing so, we draw on data from a large European Research Council-funded project, including 54 focus groups with undergraduate students (a total of 295 individuals) and 72 in-depth individual interviews with members of higher education staff (both academic and non-academic). Fieldwork was conducted in three higher education institutions in each of the following countries: Denmark, UK-England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain—nations chosen to provide diversity with respect to welfare regime, relationship to the European Union and mechanisms for funding higher education. We explore commonalities and differences between staff and students and between different countries, before identifying some implications for policymakers keen to promote further social inclusion within Europe’s higher education institutions (HEIs).


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