The Institutionalisation of Political Science in ECE: The Grounding of Theory

The chapter aims to establish a theoretical framework regarding the institutionalisation of political science as an academic discipline, by building on the experiences of 16 selected countries. Whether a discipline is institutionalised revolves around three issues: the process, that is, how institutionalisation develops; the outcome, that is, which properties appear indispensable; and what contextual factors matter most in influencing either process or property. Based on a critical review of the literature, the properties of stability, identity, autonomy, reproduction and legitimacy have been defined. These embody a well-institutionalised science: one that should have stable existential patterns, a clear academic profile; one that should be able to independently define its own rules and norms while getting external agents to accept them, and be able to ensure its own reproduction and to maintain a legitimate position. The chapter also examines the specificities in the latecomer political science communities’ institutionalisation patterns. Formation conditions, potential starting points, stability concerns and the issue of ‘regionality’ are specifically considered. As the institutionalisation tasks had to be dealt with in a ‘compressed period of time’ academia here faced the free world of opportunities and adjustment requirements at one and the same time.

Barriers and Enablers to Inclusive Education in Mauritius: Perceptions of Secondary School Educational Practitioners

Advocated as an educational philosophy to tackle exclusion, inclusive education (IE) is now a worldwide trend. Despite the well-acknowledged benefits of inclusion, educational practitioners have several difficulties which act as significant setbacks in operationalising inclusion in practice. Given its novelty in Mauritius, IE implementation is not fully understood. The purpose of the study was to explore the perceptions of secondary school educational practitioners on certain aspects of inclusive education, namely the academic profile of students with special education needs encountered by secondary school educators and rectors, the difficulties faced when dealing with them, and the barriers and enablers to inclusive education. It involved a quantitative descriptive research design. Data were collected from 588 secondary educators and 42 rectors using a specifically designed questionnaire. Following the analysis of data, respondents confirmed the presence of children with special education needs in their classrooms. While respondents indicated that the majority of students with special education needs had an academic profile of the same level of age-matched peers, they reported difficulties encountered with these learners in terms of deficits in attention, participation and behavioural problems. The main barriers identified were the lack of training in special education and the lack of proper infrastructure. Findings revealed training and knowledge in special education, the availability of proper infrastructure, support in terms of teaching aids, specialised equipment and teaching assistants as the main enabling factors. Training is therefore recommended to build competency of educators and rectors in inclusive practices. Appropriate infrastructure and support in terms of educational materials and support personnel should also be provided.

Effect of learning approaches on the academic profile of fourth year undergraduate students of a Private Medical College.

Objective: To identify the learning approaches and assess the effect of learning approaches on the academic profile of fourth year MBBS students of a private medical college of Lahore. Study Design: Descriptive study. Setting: Fatima Memorial College of Medicine, Lahore, Pakistan. Period: July to September 2019. Material & Methods: 97 fourth year medical students. R-SPQ-2F validated questionnaire was used to identify the learning approaches. Academic profile in the form of percentages of university third professional examination were taken in two categories (<65% and >65 %) while academic background of intermediate and A levels examination was inquired after fulfilling all ethical considerations. Results: A total of 97 fourth year MBBS students participated having a mean age 22±0.889 with female predominance. Majority 89 (91.8%) had done intermediate compared to 8 (8.2%) A levels. Preferred learning approach was surface 52 (53.6%) compared to 45 (46.4%) deep. Strategic approach was dominant, surface strategy 32 (33%), deep strategy 26 (26.8%), surface motive 20 (20.6%) and deep motive 19(19.6%) respectively. Significant relationship (p 0.037) between learning approaches and academic profile was observed. Learning approaches were significantly related (p 0.002) with academic profile especially in students securing more than 65% having a deep strategy approach. Conclusion: Majority students were surface and strategic learners. Students with better academic performance were deep learners.

How Can I Share My Work? A Review of the Open Access Policies of IS Journals

We conducted a literature review of the open access (OA) policies of IS journals which indicates they are adapting to the evolving research landscape that incorporates open science practices. And just as the IS journals are changing, IS researchers need to change too. However, while different entities can offer guidance, help, and nudges to authors to try and promote the practice of OA, it will not become a norm until the IS researchers themselves adopt it into their own practices. That is, they need to reconsider their practices by moving beyond the academic paper as the only output of a research project and consider how other research components they create can be made freely available as an open artefact. In doing so, not only can they increase their research outputs but also develop their academic profile while making opportunities for new projects and collaborations.

How Can I Share My Work? A Review of the Open Access Policies of IS Journals

We conducted a literature review of the open access (OA) policies of IS journals which indicates they are adapting to the evolving research landscape that incorporates open science practices. And just as the IS journals are changing, IS researchers need to change too. However, while different entities can offer guidance, help, and nudges to authors to try and promote the practice of OA, it will not become a norm until the IS researchers themselves adopt it into their own practices. That is, they need to reconsider their practices by moving beyond the academic paper as the only output of a research project and consider how other research components they create can be made freely available as an open artefact. In doing so, not only can they increase their research outputs but also develop their academic profile while making opportunities for new projects and collaborations.

Sensoriality and pupil immersive meaning making in a virtual secondary school: A pedagogical avatarial interaction

We present a study of avatarial interactions in a pedagogical virtual 3D world. We find that there are variations as regards the three dimensions of immersion, symbolic, bodily and social, according to the academic profile of the pupils. The class with a lower mastery of academic skills in maths, French, English and a second language, was found to be more involved with the symbolic immersion aspects, and less with aspects of bodily and social immersion, whereas the class group with a higher mastery of academic skills presented the opposite features. When merging the two class groups, it was the medium high score group that was found to present salient features, namely high indicators as far as the three forms of immersion were concerned.

How Can I Share My Work? A Review of the Open Access Policies of IS Journals

The traditional route of publishing an article and moving on to the next project is changing, where authors need to consider making their research more open. Open access (OA) is one open science concept that is often put forward as an approach that should be adopted to make research freely available to the public. However, while different entities can offer guidance, help, and nudges to authors to try and promote the practice of OA, it will not become a norm until the authors themselves adopt it into their own practices. In this study, we explain the components of OA; conduct a review of the OA policies of IS journals; and then discuss how IS researchers can improve the impacts of their research outputs and develop their academic profile by practicing OA...................................................................................................................................................This paper is a preprint of a paper accepted at HICSS 2021 which can be viewed here: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/70692.