Literacy Development, Higher Education, and the Achievement Gap

This chapter will explore the challenges of students entering college who have gaps in their literacy development. Historical events within education that have led to some of these skills set gaps will be reviewed. Additionally, causes and current remedies to help students as they try to navigate higher education while needing additional support with their literacy skills will be discussed. Finally, the issue of how colleges are forced to react to students who do not have the skills to compete with the expected academic rigor and steps needed to help both high school educators and professors remedy these instructional challenges will be reviewed.

Psychology for Musicians

Throughout time, human beings have been fascinated with music. Research in music psychology has revealed how musicians acquire the ability to convey emotional intentions as sounded music, how listeners perceive it as feelings and moods, and how this powerful process relates to social and cultural dynamics. Of course, people who identify as musicians have special interest in these matters. In recent years, a psychological perspective has gained increasing acceptance in the education provided to musicians: teachers, performers, and “creatives” alike. The first edition of Psychology for Musicians: Understanding and Acquiring the Skills (2007, Oxford University Press) was a well-cited volume over the years. This new edition draws on the greater insights provided by recent research in music psychology. It combines academic rigor with accessibility to offer readers research-supported ideas that they can readily apply in their musical activities.

Creating SPACE to evolve academic assessment

Universities and research institutions have to assess individuals when making decisions about hiring, promotion and tenure, but there are concerns that such assessments are overly reliant on metrics and proxy measures of research quality that overlook important factors such as academic rigor, data sharing and mentoring. These concerns have led to calls for universities and institutions to reform the methods they use to assess research and researchers. Here we present a new tool called SPACE that has been designed to help universities and institutions implement such reforms. The tool focuses on five core capabilities and can be used by universities and institutions at all stages of reform process.

The Language Protection Project Should Achieve Three "Unifications" Under the Background of Industrial Industrialization

The Chinese Language Resources Protection Project (referred to as the "Language Protection Project") started in 2015 and has basically completed its original tasks so far. Combining the actual experience of participating in the language protection project and integrating the research results of others, And in the context of accelerating industrial industrialization and urbanization,the language protection project must achieve the best results, at least the top-level design, academic rationality and ideological unity; the unity of inheritance and innovation in the project implementation process; the unity of academic rigor and corpus value in project acceptance.

The training process of citation and the needs of university students

En la Educación Superior se requiere superar un número considerable de objetivos y tareas para alcanzar las competencias de propias de cada titulación y no todo el alumnado logra este objetivo con rigor académico, siendo el plagio un recurso utilizado en la realización de los trabajos académicos, de ahí la importancia de este fenómeno y la necesidad de tomar medidas que puedan erradicar este tipo de acciones. En este trabajo, utilizando una metodología cualitativa y a partir de las respuestas de alumnado universitario a la pregunta sobre cómo evitar el plagio se intentó comprender la importancia que los/as estudiantes otorgan al plagio y como lo conceptualizan, a partir del análisis e interpretación de las respuestas a: qué importancia tiene el proceso formativo en citación para ellos/as, quién debe ser el responsable de esa formación, dónde y cuándo se han de realizar esas acciones formativas, cómo debe desarrollarse el proceso formativo y motivos por qué motivos esta formación es imprescindible en el haber del alumnado. Los resultados indican que el alumnado considera que una buena formación en citación se convierte en una herramienta clave de la que se debe hacer uso para evitar el plagio en las aulas universitarias. In higher education, a considerable number of objectives and tasks need to be exceeded in order to achieve the competences of each degree and not all students achieve this goal with academic rigor, being Plagiarism a resource used in academic work, hence the importance of this phenomenon and the need to take measures that can eradicate this type of action. In this paper, using a qualitative methodology and based on the answers of university students to the question on how to avoid plagiarism, an attempt was made to understand the importance that students attach to plagiarism and how they conceptualize it, from the analysis and interpretation of the answers to: the importance of the training process in citation for them, who should be responsible for that training, where and when such training actions should be carried out, how the training process should be developed and the reasons why this training is essential to the students' lives. The results indicate that students consider that a good training in citation becomes a key tool that should be used to avoid plagiarism in university classrooms.

Teachers’ Beliefs about Authoritative Teaching: Response and Demand, or Response and Control?

In two studies, 254 secondary teachers completed a survey assessing beliefs about three putative factors of “authoritative teaching,” response, demand, and control. Control was positively associated with response, suggesting that teachers viewed development of relationships with students as congruent with classroom discipline. But demand was not associated with response, suggesting beliefs holding that academic rigor does not necessarily undermine relationships. Teachers apparently view authoritative teaching as combining response and control, not response and demand. Beliefs as such provide a window on classroom practices and provide a starting point for teacher educators who aim to facilitate optimal interactional styles in schools.

Critical Success Factors and Methods to Increase Persistence for Non-Traditional Online Students

With changes in technology, the needs and expectations of learners, and a number of environmental factors, enrollment in online courses continues to increase. Additionally, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions have recognized the importance of having a learning management system in place, online courses that provide academic rigor comparable to classroom-based courses, and instructors who are trained and prepared to teach in a virtual environment. It is equally important to ensure that students who are planning to participate in online learning possess characteristics that will allow them to be successful. A student who does not possess these characteristics can still become an online learner but may require additional support or resources to encourage success and persistence. This chapter discusses the success factors for online traditional and nontraditional students and the differences that exist among the success factors for each group as well as solutions and recommendations for higher education institutions to encourage persistence.

Learner-Active Technology-Infused Classroom

With the continued rise of importance in developing digital learners, this article seeks to review a study centered on an example of innovative, technologically-advanced curriculum through the learner-active technology-infused classroom (LATIC) format as well as to discuss the possibilities of engaging learners in this format through virtual education settings. The LATIC approach pursues student achievement through three primary principles: academic rigor, student engagement, and student responsibility. In order to accomplish these goals, students are encouraged to work both independently and collaboratively, to use technology seamlessly as a tool for learning, to set goals, manage projects, assess progress, and identify their own resources for learning. In the midst of the COVID-19 global crisis and its tremendous impact on learning, this article first reviews the original case study of a 3rd-grade LATIC and then further discusses the potential for incorporating these concepts into online and homeschool education.