Influences of Gender and Computer Gaming Experience in Occupational Desktop Virtual Environments

This study used a cross-case analysis methodology to compare four line-of-inquiry studies of Desktop Virtual Environments (DVEs) to examine the relationships of gender and computer gaming experience to learning performance and perceptions. Comparison was made of learning patterns in a general non-technical DVE with patterns in technically complex, occupationally-specific DVEs. Two oppositely-gendered occupations were sampled in the technical studies: surgical technology and policing. The cross-case analysis confirmed in the occupationally-specific DVEs the gender effect in favor of males on spatial learning that has been documented in previous research literature. It also supported a gaming experience effect in favor of more experienced gamers, but did not clearly demonstrate a relationship between gender and gaming experience. Several implications and recommendations are presented for practitioners and researchers in adult vocational, career, and technical education.

Public-Private Partnership Principles Applied to Industry-School Partnership to Support Technical and Vocational Education

The term partnership is increasingly used by governments, industry, community organizations and schools in supporting their daily activities. Similar to the terms ICT and learning, partnerships are now ubiquitous in policy discourse. Yet, the term remains ill-defined and ambiguous. This chapter reviews and reflects on a government-led industry-school partnership initiative in the state of Queensland, Australia, to understand how the concept was applied and the consequences. PPP principles derived from the literature were used as a framework to review this initiative. The methodology of this qualitative case study involved consultations with stakeholders and an analysis of Gateway schools' policy documents, and research literature. The review suggests that despite the use of terminology akin to PPP projects in Gateway school program and policy documents, the implicit suggestion that this initiative is a public-private partnership can be interpreted as partially tenable. The majority of principles shaping a PPP have not been considered in any significant manner in the Gateway schools program. Although the review recognizes the legitimate and sincere purpose of the Gateway schools program, a more explicit adoption of a PPP framework during the design, monitoring, and evaluation stages could have strengthened the initiative in terms of outcomes, benefits, and sustainability.

Workplace Incivility and Conflict Management Styles

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations among conflict management styles and target and instigator incivility and job performance, organizational commitment, and turnover intent. Data from 270 employees suggested that experiencing and instigating uncivil behavior occurred frequently. Using an integrative conflict management style was positively associated with job performance and organizational commitment and negatively with turnover intent. Dominant conflict management style was negatively associated with organizational commitment and positively with turnover intent. Both types of incivility were negatively associated with job performance and organizational commitment, and positively with turnover intent. Target incivility was the most powerful predictor in the hierarchical regression models.

In One Voice

This article examines the views of graduate students who are aspiring or practicing school leaders and faculty from two university degree granting leadership preparation programs. Drawn from a larger mixed methods study, the authors focus here on survey results that show how these groups rated the effectiveness of 14 potential curricular dimensions drawn from traditional leadership content (e.g., budget/finance, legal compliance) and more recent (contemporary) additions to leadership curricula (e.g., reflective practice, adult learning and development, social-emotional capacity). Both traditional and contemporary areas received high ratings for effectiveness and importance to professional growth and development. Implications of this research point to the joint importance and feasibility of a more integrated approach to leadership education that includes contemporary and traditional dimensions. These finding may have important implications for other settings as well.

Internet Technologies and Online Learning

This study analyzes whether or not active learning can be taught online. There are many definitions of learning, all reflecting the academic specialties from which each discipline is conducted: It is the process and the sum total of acquiring knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, beliefs, and emotions. However, active online learning is also defined as methods by which learners actively participate in the learning process (e.g., online discussion groups, problem-solving, experimentation, and the like). Many Web 2.0 platforms help promote active as differentiated from passive learning in which learners are unparticipatory learners. Among theoretical presuppositions such as informal learning, contiguity, reinforcement, repetition, social-cultural principles and andragogy guide the assumption that active learning can take place online. It is widely believed that active learning may lead to the creation of new knowledge and new skills needed by learners. Because of this belief in active learning, both educators and practitioners have been avidly promoting active online learning since Web 2.0 Technologies were used for online teaching and learning.

What Is CTE?

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to capture the perspectives of 13 masters' students, who are also practitioners in Career and Technical Education (CTE), regarding how they conceive of the field. A few recurring themes emerged: (a) transitional identity as the field tries to distance itself from the stigma of vocational education; (b) purpose of CTE reflecting the tension between narrow and broad preparation for work; and (c) perspectives on new directions in the field viewing CTE as an integral component of education for all students aligned with calls for more rigorous integration of academic and CTE. Curricular recommendations for CTE graduate programs are articulated, including implications to develop coherent and shared consensus regarding the purpose and mission of the field to provide programmatic direction and vision.

Digital Technologies as a Change Agent in Problem-Based Activities

This study deals with how problem-based activities were affected when digital technologies were integrated with PBL (Problem-Based Learning) in Swedish firefighter training. Based on socio-cultural perspectives on learning and a comparative distance-campus approach, the instructor and student roles and PBL activities were explored. Interviews with instructors and students from the two study modes were carried out at the beginning and end of the two-year training program. The results showed that, compared to the campus-based PBL, the problem-solving processes in the online PBL activities were characterized by greater individual responsibility, more authentic tasks and a clearer focus on literacy. Furthermore, the instructor's role as a teaching subject expert changed in favor of a tutoring approach, and the distance students developed a more self-directed learning approach compared to the campus students. The follow-up study in the latter part of the training program showed that the extended technology integration resulted in phases of both dissemination and normalization. The introduction of online PBL affected both the teaching design and educational discussions throughout the program. However, the prevailing teaching culture and the pedagogical and technological shortcomings of instructors unused to distance teaching resulted in a gradual normalization of the online PBL.

The Essence of Powerful Teaching

Empowering learners and using powerful techniques are prominent elements in the discourse of adult and vocational education. But what constitutes the elements of what might be considered as powerful teaching? This paper begins by examining the way educators talk about power and then proposes four elements that lie at the heart of powerful teaching; understanding how power dynamics intersect with adult educational approaches, supporting empowerment, helping learners understand how power works, and rendering teacher power transparent. The paper uses the work of Baptiste, Marcuse and Hooks to explore some of the problems involved in adult teachers attempting to work in the democratic manner endorsed by the adult education tradition. It concludes by acknowledging the practical and ontological contradictions of teachers trying to balance their prescriptive agendas with a learner-centered approach.

Learning Physical and Digital Conviviality through Practice Stories

This is a study of how members of a collaborative group interested in promoting convivial civilisation in human physical and digital society took up exchanging practice stories – stories of doing something or seeing something done as examples of convivial backyard civilisation – in order tacitly to create an informal learning environment where practices of such a convivial backyard civilisation could seem normal, desirable and do-able. Practice story exchanges are an attempt to ‘tell the truth but tell it slant' as Emily Dickenson put it in the poem cited, to work tentatively and collaboratively avoiding too much direct confrontation and rigid debate. This paper talks of the work of creating conviviality to redress an over emphasis on logical rational productivity and seductive digital virtuality in society; of the nature and importance of informal learning and its links with practice story exchanges and how this is pursued in the work of the Australian Centre for Convivial Backyard Civilisation (ACCBC).

The Need for Imagination and Creativity in Instructional Design

The purpose of this article is to explore the need for imagination and creativity in adult education instructional design both online and face-to-face. It defines both imagination and creativity as well as provides an overview of the history of instructional design. It provides an examination of imagination and its application in educational settings. Suggestions are presented for promoting creativity in instructional design as well as overcoming obstacles to creativity when creating classes. The article will also examine how creative activities in both online and face-to-face classes can contribute to successfully meeting learning objectives in adult education.