"We Don't Do That Here": Calling Out Deficit Discourse in the Writing Center to Reframe Multilingual Graduate Support

Over the years, as writing center tutors, graduate assistants, and administrators, we have witnessed the challenges facing multilingual graduate student writers on their quest for academic writing support. We have spent our time researching campus resources only to find that holistic (and whole-istic) approaches to working with the particular needs of graduate multilingual writers (GMLWs) are lacking. One common narrative that we witness repeatedly is concerned with GMLWs: the “we don’t do grammar” frame that many writing centers endorse. In the example from narrative one, which is based on a client with whom Erica has been working, Yifan left embarrassed, as she was made to feel like she had been using the writing center fraudulently. In Erica’s next meeting with Yifan, she explained why writing centers are so resistant to changing this frame for their work. While her explanation may have mediated Yifan’s embarrassment somewhat, Yifan was still hesitant to work with anyone besides Erica. A similar sense of guilt and embarrassment is felt by Sam, the tutor in narrative three, who focuses on local concerns in longterm, high stakes projects that graduate students typically bring to the center. All three narratives echo what we identify as particular obstacles faced not only by our GMLWs when seeking out resources to improve their communication skills, but also by tutors and administrators who wish to identify best practices in serving multilingual students.University Writing Cente

Reframing the L2 learning experience as narrative reconstructions of classroom learning

In this study we investigate the situated and dynamic nature of the L2 learning experience through a newly-purposed instrument called the Language Learning Story Interview, adapted from McAdams’ life story interview (2007). Using critical case sampling, data were collected from an equal number of learners of various L2s (e.g., Arabic, English, Mandarin, Spanish) and analyzed using qualitative comparative analysis (Rihoux & Ragin, 2009). Through our data analysis, we demonstrate how language learners construct overarching narratives of the L2 learning experience and what the characteristic features and components that make up these narratives are. Our results provide evidence for prototypical nuclear scenes (McAdams et al., 2004) as well as core specifications and parameters of learners’ narrative accounts of the L2 learning experience. We discuss how these shape motivation and language learning behavior

To Frame or Reframe: Where Might Design Thinking Research Go Next?

Design thinking is gaining widespread attention in the practitioner and academic literature. Successful implementation has been documented, and its value shown in empirical studies. There is little examination, however, of how design thinking practices fit with other approaches from which firms might choose to frame and solve problems such as agile, lean startup, scientific method, Six Sigma, critical thinking, and systems thinking. By digging into the basic capabilities underlying design thinking, academic researchers might better understand problem framing and solving in general and provide insight for practitioners as to where alternative approaches might be applied

Reframing Library Student Employment as a High-Impact Practice: Implications from Case Studies

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how academic libraries can directly contribute to campus student success initiatives through student employment programs. Case studies from the perspectives of two supervisors demonstrate how library student employment programs can intentionally incorporate the characteristics of High-Impact Practices. This paper builds upon a previously published systematic review of the academic library literature on student employment, which found a significant gap in the discussion of employment as a mechanism for learning and retention. This paper aims to address this gap by focusing on practical applications for creating more learner-centered student employment programs

Revisiting the link between teaching and learning research and practice: Authentic learning and design-based research

It has often been argued that research in teaching and learning has only a weak link to practice. Much educational research is criticised for having little relevance to the day-to-day learning experience of students in K-12 and higher education. This criticism is particularly relevant in relation to educational technology research. In this field, many researchers conduct studies that are designed to test the effectiveness of the delivery medium—to prove that one medium is better than another—rather than exploring ways to improve instructional approaches and tasks. With the current proliferation of exciting and innovative technologies that are likely to become more and more common in classrooms (such as cell phones, tablets, and other mobile devices), research needs to move beyond simple comparisons of these devices with each other or with the ‘traditional’ approach. In this presentation, I argue that educational technology research has largely failed to change educational practice and outcomes because of the predominant aim of such research to prove rather than improve. Online and mobile technologies afford the design and creation of truly innovative authentic learning designs, where the technology is both a tool and a platform for presentation of genuine products, and the focus is on learning with technologies rather than from them. Instead of comparative research, a more powerful and appropriate approach is design-based research, where researchers and practitioners work hand in hand to iteratively refine innovations until they get the results they seek. A description of the characteristics of design-based research is given, together with an argument for the more widespread adoption of this approach to enhance the quality and impact of research in teaching and learning

A lecturer profile categorization for evaluating education practice quality

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.This research-to-practice work in progress paper is focused on creating a categorization of lecturers in order to define quality in their education practice. The reason for this work is that we found that our faculty perceived the time devoted to teaching as something that had no real impact on the progress of their academic careers, whereas the real impact consists of papers published and grants obtained. Our lecturers require from the university an institutional policy that defines strategies and guidelines to favour a quality education, which in turn requires the definition of a teaching evaluation system. However, a single evaluation system cannot be implemented for all teachers. Different teaching profiles must be defined and the lecturers must be evaluated in accordance with the profiles to which they belong. In this paper, a categorization of four lecturer profiles is presented.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Collaborative School Leadership in a Global Society: A critical perspective’

The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Educational Management Administration & Leadership, February 2018, published by SAGE Publishing, All rights reserved.In the context of evolving global challenges and opportunities, this article explores the kind of leadership that moves beyond the philosophy of dependence which pervades many of the everyday assumptions of educational leadership practice. The article argues for educational leadership that places relational freedom, self-determination, and critical reflexivity as the driving aim of distributed leadership by teachers, students and others in non-positional leadership roles. A project arising from the International Teacher Leadership initiative is examined in order to offer practical illustration.Peer reviewe

An awfully big adventure : Strathclyde's digital library plan

Describes how the University of Strathclyde is choosing to give priority to e-content and services instead of a new building

Developing an ecology of mind in design

The relationship between design and sustainability (DfS) is forever evolving: from the early focus on cleaner production processes and resource efficiencies to more recent endeavours to promote environmentally benign behaviours or to counter the increasing impacts of climate change. The uncomfortable truth though is that the majority of design activity serves market forces at a global scale and at an ever-increasing rate. Despite predictions of resource scarcity – peak oil, peak minerals, peak water – the increase in the linear transit of material through the Global economy rises year on year. Design straddles this production consumption cycle: it conceives of the processes and technologies that shape our artificial world; and it fashions the forms of that artificial world that drive a consumption ideology. Neither position is sustainable. Informed by Sterling’s rigorous exploration of different sustainable education paradigms, this paper reconstructs a design literacy that has the capacity to realize effective transitions for the long-term wellbeing of environment, biodiversity and humankind