Author Archive for kathryn

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.

Discursivity, International Students and Representation: Walking through Different Worlds  by Margaret Kumar  is now available as part of The Learner series.

Discursivity, international students and representation: Walking through different worlds is a text that will help academics, support services staff and administrative personnel who are involved in the teaching and learning practices of international students. The question it answers is: what constitutes an international student? In relation to this it looks at strategies for internationalising the curriculum at a micro level. It also offers a new approach towards understanding the multiple subject positions of international students whilst at the same time providing an analysis of the ways in which students are identified through various forms of labelling.

Margaret Kumar PhD. currently works as the Higher Degrees by Research, Language and Learning Advisor at Deakin University. Previously she worked as an Academic and Language Skills Advisor for undergraduate, coursework postgraduate and higher degree by research international students at the University of Melbourne and Deakin University. Through her work, Margaret has presented challenging perspectives on how teaching and learning practices for international students could be mediated. She has presented dialogic models on how international students from postcolonial backgrounds are represented.