'Non-traditional' student identity: developing a hybrid ethnographic framework to explore attitudes within a new University teaching and learning context

Abstract Background ‘Non-traditional’ student is a term associated with widening participation in higher education. This broad label contains a number of subgroups and characteristics, many of which relate to intersectional aspects of identity. Concerns have been raised in wider literature that the term can be negatively applied. Observations in practice indicated that tutors used the term divergently. One application celebrated student diversity; another labelled the student as lacking sufficient academic ability. The demographics of the university studied indicate the high representation of students from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds. The institution’s vocational facing orientation means that a significant number of the tutors are recruited for their practice experience and many come from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds too. Aims To make use of this opportunity to compare how the two participant groups navigated their personal educational journeys and how they responded to the term ‘non-traditional’ in relation to their sense of identity. The aim was to develop separate dialogues that could then be used to inform aspects of professional practice. Specifically, to raise the voice of students and tutors and engage them in shared learning and to reduce potential stigma attached to ‘non-traditional’. To promote an inductive framework of research to iteratively explore issues relating to student identity within a teaching and learning environment

The Great Awakening

"As we enter a time of climate catastrophe, worsening inequality, and collapsing market/state systems, can human societies transcend the old, dysfunctional paradigms and build the world anew? There are many signs of hope. In The Great Awakening, twelve cutting-edge activists, scholars, and change-makers probe the deep roots of our current predicament while reflecting on the social DNA for a post-capitalist future. We learn about seed-sharing in agriculture, blockchain technologies for networked collaboration, cosmolocal peer production of houses and vehicles, creative hacks on law, and new ways of thinking and enacting a rich, collaborative future. This surge of creativity is propelled by the social practices of commoning new modes of life for creating and sharing wealth in fair-minded, ecologically respectful ways. It is clear that the multiple, entangled crises produced by neoliberal capitalism cannot be resolved by existing political and legal institutions, which are imploding under the weight of their own contradictions. Present and future needs can be met by systems that go beyond the market and state. With experiments and struggle, a growing pluriverse of commoners from Europe and the US to the Global South and cyberspace are demonstrating some fundamentally new ways of thinking, being and acting. This ontological shift of perspective is making new worlds possible.

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

‘Non-traditional’ student identity: developing a hybrid ethnographic framework to explore attitudes within a new university teaching and learning context.

Abstract Background ‘Non-traditional’ student is a term associated with widening participation in higher education. This broad label contains a number of subgroups and characteristics, many of which relate to intersectional aspects of identity. Concerns have been raised in wider literature that the term can be negatively applied. Observations in practice indicated that tutors used the term divergently. One application celebrated student diversity; another labelled the student as lacking sufficient academic ability. The demographics of the university studied indicate the high representation of students from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds. The institution’s vocational facing orientation means that a significant number of the tutors are recruited for their practice experience and many come from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds too. Aims To make use of this opportunity to compare how the two participant groups navigated their personal educational journeys and how they responded to the term ‘non-traditional’ in relation to their sense of identity. The aim was to develop separate dialogues that could then be used to inform aspects of professional practice. Specifically, to raise the voice of students and tutors and engage them in shared learning and to reduce potential stigma attached to ‘non-traditional’. To promote an inductive framework of research to iteratively explore issues relating to student identity within a teaching and learning environment

Debating Termination: Rhetoric and Responses to U.S. American Indian Policy, 1947-1970

This thesis examines discussions surrounding U.S. American Indian policy from 1947 to 1970, a period in which Congress aimed to “terminate” the federal trust status of Native individuals and groups. Federal rhetoric promised that Termination would lead to “equality” for Native Americans, allowing them to become “full citizens” and gain “freedom” from government paternalism. In practice terminated tribes, like the Klamath, lost both Bureau of Indian Affairs health and educational services and protections on their land holdings, and were consequently subjected to land tax. These changes led to a loss of lands, as well as increasing rates of unemployment, alcoholism and ill-health among members of terminated tribes. This thesis argues that public and tribal acceptance of Termination was secured by the vague nature of policy rhetoric, obscuring the gravity of federal aims, as well as the persistence of assimilationist social evolutionary ideology in the U.S. throughout the twentieth century. Scholarship agrees that Termination was destructive, but generally presents the policy as short-lived, beginning in 1953 and running out of political steam by 1958. However, it was not actually repudiated until 1970. Drawing on discussions in the national press and the councils of both terminated tribes (Klamath) and groups that retained their trust status (Navajo, Mississippi Choctaw, Five Tribes), this thesis argues that eventual Termination remained the aim of federal Indian policy until President Nixon’s 1970 Special Message on Indian Affairs. It also demonstrates that the rhetoric of “freedom” and “citizenship” was interpreted in multiple ways, playing both to the mainstream belief in the inevitability of Indian assimilation, and tribal governments’ hopes to gain further self-determination. This thesis thus highlights the power and significance of language, demonstrating that understanding the development of U.S. Indian policy demands that more attention be paid to its role

2020-2021 Bulletin

https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/bulletins/1078/thumbnail.jp

2019-2020 Bulletin

https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/bulletins/1077/thumbnail.jp

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books