Journal of Academic Perspectives
Journal of Academic Perspectives

Volume 2015 No. 1

With Prudence and Charity: Toward a Christian Interfaith Theology

Joseph T. Kelley, Merrimack College, US

 

Scaling Online College Readiness Innovations: Preparing Students for College Math

John E. Cech, Montana University System, US

 

Abandoning Teaching: The Value of Experience as Laboratory for Learning

Dennis C. Beck, Thomas Arthur, and Thomas King, James Madison University, US

 

Uncovering Career Patterns: How Exemplary Career Paths Can Guide Young Female Scientists

Angelika Trubswetter, Anna Sinell, Kathinka Best, and Martina Schraudner, Fraunhofer, Center for Responsible Research and Innovation, Berlin, Germany

 

On Pedagogy of Difference: Revisiting Teaching Philosophy in the Context of Language Learning

Tatiana Galetcaia, University of Manitoba, Canada

 

Know Thy Impact: Blind Spots in John Hattie's Evidence Credo

(Book Review)

Steen Nepper Larsen, Aarhus University, Denmark

 

Reading Gender Violence in Valerie Tagwira's 'The Uncertainty of Hope'

(Book Review)

Salachi Naidoo, Great Zimbabwe University, Zimbabwe

With Prudence and Charity: Toward a Christian Interfaith Theology

Joseph T. Kelley, Merrimack College, US

Over recent decades adherents of different religious traditions in the US and Europe have been more likely to live in proximity to one another. Diana Eck of Harvard identifies “pluralism” as the creative response of active engagement with this new religious diversity. Pluralism is an “encounter of commitments” in which believers from different communities of faith approach each other with mutual respect, seeking to learn more about each other’s traditions in ways that advance the common good.
This article, responding to Eboo Patel’s call for “a theology of interfaith cooperation,” explores how Christian theology can function as an active, essential component of creative pluralism. Two existing fields within the discipline of theology—the theology of religion and comparati
Kelley_J.pdf
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Scaling Online College Readiness Innovations: Preparing Students for College Math

John E. Cech, Montana University System, US

The purpose of this paper is to describe how a state public higher education system is testing and implementing EdReady, an online math readiness system designed to help students avoid the time and cost of remedial mathematics courses. In 2013, the Montana University System (MUS), which includes the state’s public 2-year college and university units, implemented a small pilot project for EdReady involving freshmen students who performed poorly on their mathematics placement exam. The state subsequently received a large gift from a private foundation to fund implementation of EdReady statewide. This paper concludes with an introduction to Phase II of the study, which will include nearly 1,400 Montana postsecondary students who used EdReady in Fall 2014. Phase II summary findings and polic
Cech_etal.pdf
Adobe Acrobat document [374.6 KB]

Abandoning Teaching: The Value of Experience as Laboratory for Learning

Dennis C. Beck, Thomas Arthur, and Thomas King, James Madison University, US

This study examines ways in which the creation of a sphere of relative student autonomy for the conception, development, and realization of work not only augments classroom education but leads to types of learning poorly supported by teacher-led environments. The practices and policies of the Experimental Theatre at James Madison University (USA) provide an example of a faculty-created environment in which instructors effectively abandon teaching. The study draws on the theories and findings of researchers in various types of experiential learning to examine the pedagogical effectiveness of the Experimental Theatre process, although the origin of the Experimental Theatre predates the broad emergence and articulation of such theories in the 1980s.
Using four components of experience-based l
Beck_D.pdf
Adobe Acrobat document [363.5 KB]

Uncovering Career Patterns: How Exemplary Career Paths Can Guide Young Female Scientists

Angelika Trubswetter, Anna Sinell, Kathinka Best, and Martina Schraudner, Fraunhofer, Center for Responsible Research and Innovation, Berlin, Germany

Seeking to identify career patterns and major drivers of and barriers to scientific careers, we conducted a multivariate statistical analysis of 1.135 curricula vitae of prominent female scientists, provided online by AcademiaNet. We found no typical career paths within the sample. Simultaneously, our findings confirmed our initial assumption that career paths in so-called male-dominated and female-dominated fields significantly differed, especially with regard to subjects’ mobility. We also conducted an online survey of 245 AcademiaNet scientists. Most of them regarded publication productivity as the major career driver and those in male-dominated fields identified different major carrier barriers than those in female-dominated fields.
Our findings indicate that women’s scientific car
Trubswetter_Sinell_Best_Schraudner.pdf
Adobe Acrobat document [667.0 KB]

On Pedagogy of Difference: Revisiting Teaching Philosophy in the Context of Language Learning

Tatiana Galetcaia, University of Manitoba, Canada

As a complex construct, identity is often used in social sciences as a misleading label affixed to the learner to visualize her background (e.g., Asian students) more easily. Being a frequent item of academic discourse, this term reflects more the attributed characteristics of an individual than it does the existent characteristics of the learner population (Canagarajah, 2006; Heller, 1987; Hirano, 2009; Joseph, 2004; MacPherson, 2005; Miller, 2003; Morita, 2004; Norton, 2005; Pavlenko, 2001, Ricento, 2005). What in behavioural sciences is perceived as an attributive constant, in the post-positivist applied linguistics is viewed as an ever-changing and ever evolving continuum. Is it possible to define the learner’s identity solely relying on her ethnic, social and linguistic background?
Galetcaia_T..pdf
Adobe Acrobat document [311.4 KB]

Know Thy Impact: Blind Spots in John Hattie's Evidence Credo

(Book Review)

Steen Nepper Larsen, Aarhus University, Denmark

“Know thy impact and importance.” Such is the credo and the message of Professor John Hattie’s work Visible Learning for Teachers. Maximizing Impact in Learning (2012), based on summaries of 800 meta-analyses (covering 50,000 individual studies and approximately 240 million students) of the total of 138 different factors that affect learning. Hattie is one of the most cited and influential researchers in the field of education and recently, in collaboration with the cognitive psychologist Gregory Yates, he wrote: Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn (2014).
Hattie launches an unsurprising but hard-hitting conclusion, that teachers are the strongest factors of influence for learning. They must be passionately engaged in teaching and learning processes and construct meaning
NepperLarsen_S.pdf
Adobe Acrobat document [380.2 KB]

Reading Gender Violence in Valerie Tagwira's 'The Uncertainty of Hope'

(Book Review)

Salachi Naidoo, Great Zimbabwe University, Zimbabwe

This paper makes an exposition of gender based violence in Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope. The paper exposes gender based violence beyond domestic violence and violence against women, inside and outside the home. Rather, the paper exposes gender based violence as it is experienced by both men and women. The paper engages theories of social constructionism and womanism in its discussion of the manifestations, experiences and responses by men and women to gender based violence. The use of womanism more or less as constructionism will expose the extent to which gender identities and relations are constructed and are constantly mediated.
The proponents of these theories claim to be anti-western and claim to be conscious of the individuality of experience and the gendered condition
Naidoo_S.pdf
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