scholarly journals Outdoor Adventure Builds Resilient Learners for Higher Education: A Quantitative Analysis of the Active Components of Positive Change

Sports ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
John F. Allan ◽  
Jim McKenna

The inability of young adults to adapt to university life has been attributed to their declining resilience. Resilience refers to any individuals’ capacity to change or modify behaviour in response to environmental hazards, so they thrive. Outdoor Adventure (OA) residential programmes have helped higher education inductees to acquire skills associated with resilience such as increased self-perception, better interpersonal relationships. However, this study addresses important gaps in existing literature by deploying a high-quality research design to examine the short-term impact of OA experiences on inductees’ resilience and to identify the active components of those experiences that best cultivate inductees’ adaptive capabilities. Multivariate analyses evaluated the efficacy of OA programming to build the resilience of over 2500 inductees. Significant positive gains were reported in the resilience of inductees attending 1-week residential OA programmes measured by an Effect size (ES) = 0.38 and 6.29% increase. Compared to students inducted at university, this represented an 8.35% greater increase in resilience (ES difference = –0.526). Camp-based experiences such as mastering new skills, developing new relationships and being female predicted heightened resilience. A defined blend of embodied, adventure-based meaningful challenges provides a template for helping university inductees to re-adjust, grow and persevere.

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Calver

Only those truly cryptozoic for all of 2010 could have missed the bustle and concern created by the Australian Commonwealth?s Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative (http://www.arc.gov.au/era/default.htm). In common with other national research assessment exercises such as the RAE (UK) and PBRF (New Zealand), ERA is designed to assess research quality within the Australian higher education sector, identifying and rewarding those institutions and departments producing high-quality research. The linkages between achievement, recognition and reward have the potential to shape the research priorities and agendas of institutions and individual researchers.


Education ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Jongbloed

The financing of higher (or tertiary) education deals with issues of resourcing (i.e., funding) higher education institutions, their students, and their (academic and nonacademic) staff. The study of higher education finance covers the sources of funding for higher education (including the balance between public and private funds) as well as the uses of those funds (for education, research, student support, infrastructure, staffing, campus development, etc.). The management of funds is essentially a study of choice—about using scarce resources to achieve often-conflicting goals—which implies that it also extends to issues of priority setting, effectiveness, and efficiency. In many ways, these are questions of a political-economic nature. With higher education being such a large part of the public sector, the study of higher education finance, on the one hand, may be seen as part of public finance, while on the other hand, as a subfield of the economics of education. In times of shrinking public budgets, there is increasing scrutiny on how public resources for higher education are allocated and used. At the national (country, state) level, reforms in educational financing are frequently debated in policy circles, with the goal of identifying the funding mechanism that produces the best outcomes in terms of guaranteeing access for students, high-quality education, and high-quality research, as well as connecting this education and research to the needs of society. At the level of the higher education institution (i.e., university, college, or specialized institution), debates will often focus on the internal budgeting system and how the institution can make sure it runs its operations in a financially sound way in the short term, with sufficient incentives for efficiency and revenue generation, as well as incentives for innovation on the mid- to long term. All of this illustrates the many trade-offs and dilemmas that appear in the study of higher education finance. It also shows that the topic of higher education finance touches on many other research fields in higher education, including, for example, governance, privatization, and student financial aid. And given the political-economic nature of these issues, many conceptual approaches used for the study of higher education finance are imported from economics, political science, public administration, public policy, or organizational studies. Because the field of higher education finance is constantly evolving, the topics that are at the forefront of scholarly research are to be found primarily in academic journals. The themes covered in the study of higher education finance deal with some of the above-mentioned major trade-offs and dilemmas. After first presenting some of the general-overview works in higher education finance, this article will cover some of these themes touching on the most-important policy debates in higher education finance.


2015 ◽  
pp. 19-21
Author(s):  
Simon Marginson

The California Master Plan for Higher Education, which combined high quality research universities with access-based community colleges in a system differentiated by institutional mission, has been influential worldwide. But in a low tax state, the access element of the Plan has now hit the wall.


1996 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 20-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Helitzer-Allen ◽  
Hubert Allen ◽  
Mary Field ◽  
Gina Dallabetta

The targeted intervention research (TIR) approach was developed to meet the need for better preprogram or "formative" research to develop more effective interventions. In the past, much of this formative research was conducted by consultants who provided short-term technical assistance to program managers. This separation of programs and research resulted in high-quality research, often delivered too late or not sufficiently focused to be useful for program design.


10.28945/2096 ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 039-055 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pia Bøgelund

In many Western countries, higher education has experienced a cultural change as a result of increased budgetary constraints, calls for greater accountability, and the greater competition for students. This development has had a profound influence on the working conditions of academic staff and on knowledge production in general at universities. The education of PhD students is no exception. However, little research has been carried out in regard to the implications of these changes. In particular, the way the supervisors think and react has not been explored. What do supervisors think about educating PhD students in today’s university context? And how and to what extent do they modify their practice based on that understanding? This article seeks to qualify, illustrate, and discuss these questions based on an interview study among twelve experienced supervisors at the Faculty of Engineering and Science at Aalborg University in Denmark. The data show that it has become more complex to be a PhD supervisor. Three knowledge production perspectives are identified, each embracing a specific university agenda: (1) High quality research; (2) Economically viable and efficient research; and (3) Internationally adapted research. Currently, the second perspective is dominant in the understanding and practice of supervisors – to some extent at the expense of the two other agendas. Finally, the consequences of this are discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 6846
Author(s):  
Jinyuan Ma ◽  
Fan Jiang ◽  
Liujian Gu ◽  
Xiang Zheng ◽  
Xiao Lin ◽  
...  

This study analyzes the patterns of university co-authorship networks in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. It also examines the quality and subject distribution of co-authored articles within these networks. Social network analysis is used to outline the structure and evolution of the networks that have produced co-authored articles at universities in the Greater Bay Area from 2014 to 2018, at both regional and institutional levels. Field-weighted citation impact (FWCI) is used to analyze the quality and citation impact of co-authored articles in different subject fields. The findings of the study reveal that university co-authorship networks in the Greater Bay Area are still dispersed, and their disciplinary development is unbalanced. The study also finds that, while the research areas covered by high-quality co-authored articles fit the strategic needs of technological innovation and industrial distribution in the Greater Bay Area, high-quality research collaboration in the humanities and social sciences is insufficient.


Author(s):  
Rachel Forsyth ◽  
Claire Hamshire ◽  
Danny Fontaine-Rainen ◽  
Leza Soldaat

AbstractThe principles of diversity and inclusion are valued across the higher education sector, but the ways in which these principles are translated into pedagogic practice are not always evident. Students who are first in their family to attend university continue to report barriers to full participation in university life. They are more likely to leave their studies early, and to achieve lower grades in their final qualifications, than students whose families have previous experience of higher education. The purpose of this study was to explore whether a mismatch between staff perceptions and students’ experiences might be a possible contributor to these disparities. The study explored and compared staff discourses about the experiences of first generation students at two universities, one in the United Kingdom (UK), and the other in South Africa (SA). One-to-one interviews were carried out with 40 staff members (20 at each institution) to explore their views about first generation students. The results showed that staff were well aware of challenges faced by first generation students; however, they were unsure of their roles in relation to shaping an inclusive environment, and tended not to consider how to use the assets that they believed first generation students bring with them to higher education. This paper explores these staff discourses; and considers proposals for challenging commonly-voiced assumptions about students and university life in a broader context of diversity and inclusive teaching practice.


1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 374-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
James T. O'Donnell ◽  
Moriah B. Richie ◽  
Lori A. Nesbitt

Although advances in knowledge about the pathophysiology of pain have been impressive in recent years, high-quality clinical research in patients with chronic pain has not been abundant. Because chronic pain often leads to profound changes in psychologic state, level of functioning, and interpersonal relationships, treatment requires attention not only to the pathophysiologic cause of the pain (if one can be found) but also to the psychologic and social consequences (and antecedents).


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