scholarly journals Capturing the Processes of Our Transformative Learning in a Transdisciplinary Research Course

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Janet C. Richards

Transdisciplinary scholarship has experienced a renaissance in higher education. Yet, little research has captured transformations in students’ viewpoints as they collaborate in transdisciplinary courses to consider solutions to complex societal problems. In this narrative inquiry, I chronicled my doctoral students’ perspectives and my thinking in a Transdisciplinary Research class in which students attempted to unravel the social justice dilemma of escalating economic disparities between rich and poor citizens in the United States. I believe knowledge is socially constructed. Therefore, student collaboration and sharing of their reflective stances were integral to the curriculum.

Rev Rene ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. e44199
Author(s):  
Wanderson Carneiro Moreira ◽  
Vanessa Carvalho Fontinele ◽  
Fernanda Cláudia Miranda Amorim ◽  
Maria do Perpétuo Socorro de Sousa Nóbrega ◽  
Cláudia Maria Sousa de Carvalho ◽  
...  

Objective: to learn about the social representation of nursing students about the sexuality of elders with dementia. Methods: qualitative study, based on the Theory of Social Representations, developed with 20 Nursing Graduation students from a Brazilian higher education institution. Data was collected through a focal group, processed in the software IRAMUTEQ and analyzed using a Descending Hierarchical Classification. Results: four semantic classes emerged: Sexuality as a right, The theme was insufficient in graduation, Meanings attributed to sexuality, and Care from the perspective of students. Conclusion: the study showed that the nursing students investigated had polysemic representations about the sexuality of elders with dementia, among which discriminatory and stigmatizing conceptions stood out, socially constructed and anchored in common sense.


Author(s):  
Alex Kumi-Yeboah

This chapter is a study of teacher experience amongst higher education faculty in the United States, drawing on a theoretical framework shaped by Mezirow's transformative learning theory, which first emerged in the late 1970s and has seen subsequent adaptations. Mixed-method research was used to analyze data on the transformational teaching experiences of faculty and examine the narratives of teacher experience based on this transformative learning theory framework. Data collected from 90 higher education faculty members were analyzed with regard to their transformational teaching experiences. Results indicate that the majority of faculty experienced transformational teaching. Mentoring, dialogue, critical reflection, personal reflection, scholarship, and research emerged as the educational factors shaping these experiences while relocation or movement, life changes, and other cultural influences were revealed as the non-educational factors. In addition to this, the chapter entails discussion of the theoretical framework of transformative learning as it applies to this research.


Author(s):  
Rong Chang ◽  
Sarah L. Morris

This chapter describes how the first author, Rong, has experienced stereotyping as a Chinese female immigrant and doctoral student in America, as her experiences typify the experiences of the model minority. Drawing from Rong's personal journal reflections, the authors use autoethnography as the methodology to present her lived experiences as research. Through reflections on Rong's own understandings, this writing seeks to connect individual experiences to larger social, cultural, and political conditions of the United States (Ellis, 2004). The authors recount four different personal encounters with stereotyping in Rong's local community and in the process of pursuing higher education, and discuss the psychosocial impacts resulting from this type of discrimination. Through this work, the authors seek to contribute to the discourse of the social problem of stereotyping for the so-called “model minority.”


Author(s):  
Jill Harrison ◽  
John Ryan

Technology use is contextual and tends to follow, often invisible, ground rules. Within the situational context of a higher education classroom the rules and sanctions regarding technology use become increasingly complex. Many universities in the United States now require that all incoming students have laptops, with the rationale being that technology is an important tool used to help students organize and catalogue knowledge. Laptops allow students to connect to library and campus resources. Further, requiring laptops on a networked campus creates a sense of digital unity rather than digital divides among students and faculty. The message to students is that personal laptops are important and even required. However, within the context of the higher education classroom, laptop use is often being limited or banned by classroom instructors, a contradiction of the larger university message. As Marcuse (1982) noted, technology is a social process. The diffusion of laptop technology into higher education has altered the modes of producing knowledge and the social relationships organized around that production process. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight how the use of this technology is negotiated between faculty and students and how issues of engagement, the self-production of knowledge, and security influence this negotiation. The authors argue that issues of laptop use in the classroom are rooted in concerns of power, legitimacy, and identity associated with the production of knowledge.


Author(s):  
Meagan Call-Cummings ◽  
Melissa Hauber-Özer ◽  
Jennifer Rainey

Participatory action research (PAR) is a community-based form of inquiry conducted with individuals affected by an issue or problem being studied rather than about them. Rather than a method of inquiry, PAR is an epistemological stance towards knowledge and knowledge creation that is rooted in critical, emancipatory pedagogy. Because it is an orientation, rather than a discrete method, PAR is difficult to teach. Here the authors explore the experiences of both undergraduate pre-service teachers and doctoral students as they seek to reconcile PAR principles and practice with their personal and professional backgrounds. The purpose is not to present the best approach for teaching PAR in the university classroom; rather, it is a reflective exploration of the experiences of the authors' participants, which reveals rich insights into what it feels like to become researchers within the ‘culture' of formal higher education in the United States.


2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-136
Author(s):  
Kristopher D. Copeland ◽  
Ketevan Mamiseishvili

State lottery policies have been created to generate additional funds to support public initiatives, such as higher education scholarships. Through 18 participant interviews and document analysis, this study examined how decision makers in Arkansas socially constructed citizens while forming lottery policy. The social construction of target populations theory provides a framework for better understanding how social constructions became embedded into the policy design process. Participants noted that beneficiaries included higher education students and the retail and vendor community. In addition, discussion centered on burdens being placed on people who derive from low income and people who have gambling addiction.


1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Coats

Few scholars would nowadays question the importance of the United States in the world of learning; but the process whereby that nation attained its present eminence still remains obscure. Among the cognoscenti, it is generally acknowledged that American scholarship had come of age by the early 1900s, whereas fifty years earlier there had been only a handful of American scholars and scientists of international repute, and the country's higher education lagged far behind its European counterpart. Yet despite the recent popularity of intellectual history and research in higher education, which has produced a veritable flood of publications touching on various aspects of this theme, the heart of the process—the emergence of the academic profession—is still inadequately documented and imperfectly understood.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. v-vii
Author(s):  
Penny Welch ◽  
Susan Wright

This issue of Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences includes authors from China, Canada, France and the United States. The first two articles analyse processes of developing international partnerships and networks promoting refugee access to higher education. The other three papers concern aspects of teaching and learning: online learning in accountancy; a flipped pedagogy in sociology; and the inclusion of national history in introductory international relations courses.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Agata Pyrzyńska ◽  

The Act of 20 July 2018 Law on Higher Education and Science modifies the system of education of PhD students in a significant way. In this act, the doctoral studies model was abandoned in favor of the doctoral school system. Along with the indicated change, the status of PhD students as a separate academic group was also ordered. Thus, the practice of treating PhD students as quasi -students has been broken. The new education model also provides for a number of institutional guarantees, which should have a pro -quality impact on the education system of future academic staff. The paper discusses selected solutions in this area, paying special attention to the universal scholarship system, the social security system of PhD students and mechanisms of parenthood protection among doctoral students.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (7) ◽  
pp. 18-29
Author(s):  
Gabriella Kiss ◽  
Tamás Veress ◽  
Alexandra Köves

The emerging concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI) in some ways always relates to sustainability. In the transition towards sustainability, the authors need to build responsibility for both society and the environment in higher education and management education. Non-formal approaches to learning provide an opportunity to transform a student’s ‘head, heart and hand’, including at the social level as well. This paper showcases the role of experiential and transformative learning in higher education practice. Two of their courses are described and analysed, which are intended to familiarise students with the problem of sustainability within economic higher education. The authors share the theoretical and practical experiences of designing, teaching and assessing these courses. They aim to contribute to the discussion on how business education could be producing useful and credible knowledge that addresses problems important to nature and society.


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