Learning leadership in outdoor education: Effects of feedback

There is paucity of knowledge regarding learning outcomes from outdoor leadership training courses. The aim of this pilot study was to examine progress in perceived leadership skills after a six-month outdoor education course, and to examine the effect of systematic feedback from fellow students. Seventeen students were randomized into intervention and control groups and participated in six outdoor excursions during which they took leader roles. The intervention consisted of systematic use of feedback from fellow students. To assess the progress in students’ perceived outdoor leadership skills, the students answered a questionnaire covering four categories of leadership both before and after the course. Significant progress in perceived outdoor leadership was found for all students after the six-month course. Systematic feedback from fellow students did not seem to enhance students’ perceived outdoor leadership skills. The reasons could be that the feedback was not given in the actual situations or that the student feedback was not valued. Feedback from teachers and from nature (self-experience) were found to be important for strengthening perceived leadership skills.

Video-based flipped learning in higher education: Effects on students’ learning motivation, attitudes, and engagement

In the recent years, flipped learning has become popular and been widely utilized as teaching approach to activate students’ learning engagement, which is frequently used to reverse the conventional teaching. However, much more efforts are necessary to enrich the literature about its practices across different teaching and learning contexts. This study is at the cutting edge of examining the practice of flipped learning in higher education contexts; as well as exploring its effects on students’ learning motivation, attitudes, and engagement. Data were collected using a questionnaire from 35 undergraduate students enrolled in “Introduction of Educational Technology” course at a college of education, and the data were tested using 24-version IBM-SPSS linear regression. The results demonstrated that flipped learning strategy is a positive predictor for students’ learning motivation (p-value 0.001 0.05), attitudes (p-value 0.007 0.05), and engagement (p-value 0.003 0.05). The results contribute to offering valuable insights for college stakeholders to enhance the efficacy of teaching and learning process, particularly for higher education curriculum designers to adapt to the current teaching approach. Instructional implication and research suggestions are provided based on the results of the study.

A Rapid Transition from Campus to Emergent Distant Education; Effects on Students’ Study Strategies in Higher Education

This article presents a literature review focusing on international research concerning distance education and students’ study strategies during the last 20 years. As distance education in higher education is a steadily growing trend and in particular because the COVID-19 pandemic has escalated the transition from campus education to different forms of distance education, knowledge about students’ study strategies and appropriate teaching strategies has become highly important. With this research review, we aimed to identify patterns and trends in research on distance education focusing students study strategies before and after the pandemic. The research synthesis identified and interpreted similarities and differences in the studies’ designs and findings, which we analyzed using integrative thematic analysis. Students’ study strategies seem to have changed to some extent during the pandemic, with more emphasis on their own responsibility and the need for a developed teaching strategy to align with the changing framework related to the emergency provision of distance education. We concluded that students have to develop metacognitive strategies, because self-regulated learning and a more flexible pedagogy seem to be important in teachers’ transitions and competence in digitalization. Therefore, more research targeting these aspects is needed.

English-Medium Instruction and Content Learning in Higher Education: Effects of Medium of Instruction, English Proficiency, and Academic Ability

English-medium instruction (EMI) has become increasingly popular in higher educational institutions across the world due to the prominence of English and the internationalization of higher education. Nevertheless, limited research to date has investigated its impacts on content learning through objective measures. The present study addresses this gap by examining whether students taught in English at a university in China perform differently in a business course from their counterparts taught in Chinese and how English-taught students’ English proficiency and academic ability (as measured by grade point average) relate to their EMI academic outcomes. The study employed a quasi-experimental design and adopted inter-translated versions of the same syllabus, textbook, class materials, and exam paper for the English- and Chinese-medium classes. It found no significant differences in students’ academic outcomes (i.e., total score, assignment, participation, and final exam) between the English- and the Chinese-taught classes. It also showed that both English proficiency and academic ability were statistically significant predictors of English-taught students’ academic outcomes with academic ability being a much stronger predictor than English proficiency. These findings add to a growing but still limited body of evidence on the impacts of EMI on content learning and point to several important implications for EMI.

Next Steps for the Relative Education Hypothesis

The relative education hypothesis states that in contexts where university degrees are scarce, workers with bachelor’s degrees are sought after and enter cognitively skilled occupations; but as education expands across birth cohorts, some workers with bachelor’s degrees are unable to maintain their position in the labor market. In an earlier ASR article (Horowitz 2018), I found support for this argument; however, Furey (2021) shows model instability in estimates of the education–skill relationship. We should treat the results from these two studies as a range of possible estimates, and carefully consider interpretation of the findings in the context of the selected reference categories. Future revisions of the relative education hypothesis should consider that absolute and relative education effects might not shift concurrently, and also that labor market experiences may vary considerably by field of study and occupation.

Knowledge attribution, socioeconomic status, and education: new results using the Great British Class Survey

This paper presents new evidence on the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) and education on knowledge attribution. I examine a variety of cases, including vignettes where agents have been Gettiered, have false beliefs, and possess knowledge (according to orthodoxy). Early work investigated whether SES might be associated with knowledge attribution (Weinberg et al. in Philos Top 29(1–2):429–460, 2001; Seyedsayamdost in Episteme 12(1):95–116, 2014). But these studies used college education as a dummy variable for SES. I use the recently developed Great British Class Survey (Savage et al. in Sociology 47(2):219–250, 2013) to measure SES. The paper reports evidence against an association between SES and patterns of knowledge ascription, and reports mixed evidence about education effects.