When Consensus Falters, We Co-create: Attending to Power in a Practitioner/Scholar Partnership to Amplify Newcomer Belonging

This article interrogates the politics of belonging in scholar–practitioner collaborations by analysing and reflecting upon a group project that advocated for a more equitable approach to newcomer belonging and integration in an urban setting in the United States. The structure of our collaboration revealed unaddressed and unspoken dynamics that collectively reinforced boundaries and hierarchies in our group, despite a level of intentionality around democratic praxis among the community-engaged scholars who initially brought participants together. The article asks: How can we work towards a notion of belonging if we haven’t worked out an equitable approach within our own group where everyone, including newcomers, feels like they belong? The article relies on a methodology of critical reflexive dialogue between the four co-authors – two scholars and two practitioners – to analyse and reflect on the ways that power imbalances are bound up in questions of belonging and representation.

Fast-tracking Research Methodology Immersion for Students: Experiences from a Project on Fairwork in the Gig Economy

This paper showcases an innovative student research project in a South African taught Masters programme, where students learnt to apply a sound research methodology in the real world, and align their work with a global research project. The Fairwork (https://fair.work) project assesses the extent to which gig work platforms in a number of countries conform to ‘fair work’ principles for their workers. The Fairwork project has a clearly defined and rigorous research methodology used by senior academics around the world to rate labour-broking platforms such as those in e-hailing (Bolt, Uber) or delivery services (UberEats) to rate their adoption of fair work principles for their workers. The University of Pretoria adopted this research methodology in the context of a student-based group project in a taught 2020 “Digital Economy” Masters programme. Student groups used the same methodology and interviewed South African platform workers to score seven different platforms. The key motivations and intended benefits were that the research methodology was already tried and tested, students should able to apply the skills taught in an earlier (theoretical) research methods course, subject specific knowledge around the gig economy had to be researched and was internalized, each group had the freedom to select its own platform, results could be validated against publicly available ratings, students engaged themselves in real world empirical research, and their research outputs had a real world relevance. In addition, this project turned out to work well under Covid19 partial lockdown circumstances. The student submissions exceeded the expectations of everyone involved, and some groups produced research results which matched the level of highly experienced researchers. This project also provides a strong contribution to the academic community, not only because it provides a validation benchmark and alternative research approach to the Fairwork project, but also because this project is easily portable to similar courses in other country contexts.

IDB Behavioral Economics Group: Project Highlights of the Last Decade

The IDB Behavioral Economics Group is an interdepartmental working group on behavioral economics. For nearly a decade, armed with the tools and insights offered by psychology and economics, the IDB has been partnering with local and national governments in Latin America and the Caribbean to promote knowledge related to individual and collective decision-making in the region. Through this work, we hope to serve our countries better and continue improving peoples' lives.

SCARING INTEREST IN LEARNING CHEMISTRY BASED ON CAREER INTEREST THROUGH ECOLECTROCHEMISTRY: PRESENTING INCLUSIVE CHEMISTRY IN ONLINE CLASS

The online learning of organic chemistry series chemistry in class XII MIPA Catholic SMA Santu Petrus Pontianak in the first three months of the odd semester showed a decrease in interest in learning chemistry. This study was conducted to find chemistry lessons that match the career interests of students, especially the study topics in the physical chemistry learning series (voltaic cells and electrolytic cells). On the topic of voltaic cells, group projects are carried out by choosing their own types of assignments according to the interests and learning styles of students with activities of making chemical songs, simple practicum, limited webinars and advertisements for voltaic cell products. On the topic of electrolysis cells, a group project was carried out with the concept of combining economics/business into electrochemistry, called ecolectrochemistry. The voltaic cell project assessment uses five parameters: the accuracy of the voltaic cell concept, the relevance of the voltaic cell concept to the concept raised, creativity, fulfillment of task requirements, and collaboration. The ecolectrochemistry project assesses problem-solving skills using the IDEALS model, presentation assessment and assessment of creative and disciplined attitudes. The active and enthusiastic involvement of students is better than in the organic chemistry series. There is an increase in interest in learning chemistry from 27.38% to 65.48% and there is an increase in the average learning outcomes of the physical chemistry learning series compared to the organic chemistry learning series. These results indicate that learning designed according to students'.

490 Hiflex Delivery: How Do You Turn It Around When Things Go Bad?

Upon return to classrooms in Fall 2020, University policy required every class delivered in person also offer an online option, resulting in hiflex delivery of a careers preparation course that traditionally relied on student interaction and in-person opportunities for knowledge application to teach soft skills. Early in the semester, the class experienced a dramatic decline in physical attendance as well as engagement across all platforms, resultantly substantial real-time changes were necessary. The first step in increasing student engagement was to dedicate a single course period to candidly discuss the decline in class quality and invite participants to take an active role in improving the course and facilitating learning. Concurrently, an anonymous survey was administered to gauge interest in remaining topics, anticipated method of attendance, and incentives to engagement. Student feedback was used to adapt lesson plans and class structure moving forward. These plans were shared with students, implemented, and resulted in increased engagement and performance. Active curriculum adjustment based upon honest feedback and increased student agency improved content retention and application based upon assessment. This presentation will provide an overview of methods utilized including: student surveys, transparency of course scaffolding, small stakes assignments, adaptation of a group project to focus on application, scheduled instructor interaction and feedback on assignments and discussion boards, and intentional creation of an online learning community. Adaptations were effective for improving performance toward course learning outcomes – every student that completed all small stakes assignments and remained actively engaged in class material for the remainder of the semester earned a high scoring grade. Acknowledging a lack of success with implementation of traditional teaching strategies in a non-traditionally delivered course was necessary and enabled the instructor to engage in active dialogue with students, which created opportunities for student-supported and informed adjustments for achievement of learning outcomes.

Work with aphorisms at school (a system of analytic, creative and project tasks)

The paper describes the best practices for multi-aspect work with aphoristic statements in Russian lessons. Studying aphorisms at school stems on the one hand from the need to enhance learners’ abilities to understand and decode writing of a variety of genres. On the other hand, it is determined by the immaturity of secondary school students’ skills required to create original statements of ethical, civic, or philosophical nature. Such a lack of essential skills becomes a key problem area during end-of-course assessment. The eight stages of instruction proposed in this paper are based on the axiological and system-activity approaches. They include a logical sequence of exercises teaching learners to manipulate aphoristic statements and boost different types of their verbal and cogitative activity. In the process of fathoming the paradoxical nature of aphorisms special attention is paid to those methods which develop flexible thinking and cognitive activity. This is only possible with dependence on learners’ emotional intellect (surprise, doubt, guesswork). Employing these practices not only improves the subject proficiency quality, but also facilitates the achievement of meta-subject and personal results. Cognitive competences are formed while interpreting and classifying aphorisms. Universal regulatory acts are honed in the process of judging aphorism ‘competitions’, self-testing, and mutual testing. Communicative acts are assessed during group project work. Personal learning outcomes are the strengthening of learners’ axiological attitudes and the development of their aesthetic consciousness.