Monthly Archive for January, 2012

Academic Service-learning Across Disciplines

Published on January 31, 2012 in Book, Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Academic Service-learning Across Disciplines: Models, Outcomes, and Assessment edited  by Jonathan H. Westover  is now available as part of The Learner series.

While service-learning is not a new phenomenon, the popularity and usage of this “civically-engaged” experiential learning pedagogy has increased in educational settings in recent years. As we live in an increasingly hyper-competitive and interconnected globalized world, where consumers and citizens are demanding greater levels of corporate social responsibility and civic engagement from organizational leaders within their local community, service-learning is being utilized more and more to provide meaningful community service opportunities that simultaneously teach civic responsibility and encourage life-long civic engagement, while also providing opportunities for significant real-life, hands-on learning of important skills and vital social understanding for students.

This edited collection provides a comprehensive introduction to service-learning, its outcomes, and approaches to effective assessment of service-learning activities by presenting a wide range of cross-disciplinary research in an organized, clear, and accessible manner. It will be informative to both K-12 and higher education teaching professionals, administrators, students, and community leaders seeking to understand proven practices and methods for effective Service-Learning implementation across academic disciplines.

Dr. Jonathan H. Westover is Director of Academic Service Learning and Assistant Professor of Management at Utah Valley University, specializing in international human resource management, organizational behavior, and adult learning. He received a Master’s of Public Administration with an emphasis in Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior from the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. His ongoing research examines adult learning, social entrepreneurship, and issues of globalization, labor transformation, work-quality characteristics, and the determinants of job satisfaction cross-nationally.

Early Learning: Supporting children by teaching the adults who shape their lives

Published on January 29, 2012 in News. 0 Comments

By Elizabeth Gudrais, Harvard Magazine

Mary Kinsella Scannell, vice president for early education and care, plays with baby Kinsey Ferraguto and toddler Margot Vorhees.

Sister Suzanne Deliee climbs the steps of the East Harlem brownstone, rings a bell, and is buzzed in. The visiting nurse has come to see Susana Saldivar and her four-week-old son, Xavier. He was born prematurely, at 33 weeks, and as Deliee asks questions, it becomes clear Saldivar is nervous about caring for him properly, even though he is not her first child.

Xavier has not yet learned to latch onto his mother’s breast. While keeping him nourished with formula, Saldivar has been encouraging him to suckle. “That’s all you can do—truly,” the nurse reassures her.

The conversation turns to how Saldivar plays with her son. “What kind of rattle are you using?” Deliee asks. Saldivar looks bashful and begins to explain in a soft voice. Deliee gently interrupts: “Do you have a bottle of pills? That will work just fine.” More…

Image by Stu Rosner via Harvard Magazine

The One-Shot society

Published on January 25, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From The Economist

ON NOVEMBER 10th South Korea went silent. Aircraft were grounded. Offices opened late. Commuters stayed off the roads. The police stood by to deal with emergencies among the students who were taking their university entrance exams that day.

Every year the country comes to a halt on the day of the exams, for it is the most important day in most South Koreans’ lives. The single set of multiple-choice tests that students take that day determines their future. Those who score well can enter one of Korea’s best universities, which has traditionally guaranteed them a job-for-life as a high-flying bureaucrat or desk warrior at a chaebol (conglomerate). Those who score poorly are doomed to attend a lesser university, or no university at all. They will then have to join a less prestigious firm and, since switching employers is frowned upon, may be stuck there for the rest of their lives. Ticking a few wrong boxes, then, may mean that they are permanently locked out of the upper tier of Korean society.

Making so much depend on an exam has several advantages for Korea. It is efficient: a single set of tests identifies intelligent and diligent teenagers, and launches them into society’s fast stream. It is meritocratic: poor but clever Koreans can rise to the top by studying very, very hard. The exam’s importance prompts children to pay attention in class and parents to hound them about their homework; and that, in turn, ensures that Korea’s educational results are the envy of the world. The country is pretty much the leading nation in the scoring system run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In 2009 it came fourth after Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong, but those are cities rather than full-sized countries. More…

Image courtesy of The Economist

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success

Published on January 21, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Anu Partanen, The Atlantic

Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West’s reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point.

The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known — if it was known for anything at all — as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life — Newsweek ranked it number one last year — and Finland’s national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.

Finland’s schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best. More…

Image: Sergey Ivanov/Flickr

In Washington, Large Rewards in Teacher Pay

Published on January 17, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Sam Dillon, The New York Times

WASHINGTON — During her first six years of teaching in this city’s struggling schools, Tiffany Johnson got a series of small raises that brought her annual salary to $63,000, from about $50,000. This year, her seventh, Ms. Johnson earns $87,000.

That latest 38 percent jump, unheard of in public education, came after Ms. Johnson was rated “highly effective” two years in a row under Washington’s new teacher evaluation system. Those ratings also netted her back-to-back bonuses totaling $30,000.

“Lots of teachers leave the profession, but this has kept me invested to stay,” said Ms. Johnson, 29, who is a special-education teacher at the Ron H. Brown Middle School in Northeast Washington. “I know they value me.” More…

Image: Shannon Jensen for The New York Times