Current Challenges to Educational Leadership & Administration: An International Survey Report on the Pilot Survey

Published in the UCEA Review, Summer 2018. It was also published in 2017 as a stand-alone report (entered into the RIS)

Educators' subjective experiences of workplace bullying within a perceived neoliberalist education system

Teachers in South Africa experience exceptionally high levels of bullying in the workplace, in particular, bullying that relates to their profession. As research has shown that the organisational culture can either inhibit or promote bullying, in this paper we consider the possibility that neoliberalism creates an environment for workplace bullying to thrive. Based on unstructured interviews with 4 educators, we draw parallels between what they subjectively perceived as workplace bullying within the hierarchal structure of the school and school system and the ideology of neoliberalism. The value of this study lies in the awareness that it could raise among managers in the education system of how the system actually influences their mind-set and actions.Keywords: education management; neoliberalism; performativity; teacher victimisation; workplace bullyin

2013 April

Press releases for April of 2013

UNI Grad Student News, v17n1, September 2018

Inside this issue: -- Graduate College Updates-- Graduate Student, Faculty, and Alumni Profiles-- New Graduate Student Orientation-- Graduate Student Social Mixer-- Annual MBA Conference-- Altrusa Scholarship Recipients-- Suicide Prevention Month-- Professional Development Opportunities-- Student Accoladeshttps://scholarworks.uni.edu/gsnews/1035/thumbnail.jp

What Do Computer Scientists Tweet? Analyzing the Link-Sharing Practice on Twitter

Twitter communication has permeated every sphere of society. To highlight and share small pieces of information with possibly vast audiences or small circles of the interested has some value in almost any aspect of social life. But what is the value exactly for a scientific field? We perform a comprehensive study of computer scientists using Twitter and their tweeting behavior concerning the sharing of web links. Discerning the domains, hosts and individual web pages being tweeted and the differences between computer scientists and a Twitter sample enables us to look in depth at the Twitter-based information sharing practices of a scientific community. Additionally, we aim at providing a deeper understanding of the role and impact of altmetrics in computer science and give a glance at the publications mentioned on Twitter that are most relevant for the computer science community. Our results show a link sharing culture that concentrates more heavily on public and professional quality information than the Twitter sample does. The results also show a broad variety in linked sources and especially in linked publications with some publications clearly related to community-specific interests of computer scientists, while others with a strong relation to attention mechanisms in social media. This refers to the observation that Twitter is a hybrid form of social media between an information service and a social network service. Overall the computer scientists’ style of usage seems to be more on the information-oriented side and to some degree also on professional usage. Therefore, altmetrics are of considerable use in analyzing computer science

Development of the Attitude Towards Women’s Sports Scale (ATWS)

The purpose of this study was to develop a survey instrument “Attitude toward Women’s Sports (ATWS) Scale” to measure attitude toward women’s sports, and seek various validity and reliability evidences for the instrument. First, item pool of ATWS scale was reviewed by subject matter experts to collect evidence on content validity of the instrument and to refine the instrument. Second, items were tested with two pilot studies to assess effectiveness of the items within the ATWS scale by performing item analyses. Total of 49 items were deleted in two pilot studies as a result of item analyses. The remaining items were used to create the ATWS scale, and tested with women’s sport fans (n = 230). Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to examine internal structure of the ATWS scale, and eight factors accounted for 68 percent of the variance in the items. Furthermore, relationship between attitude toward women’s sports and consumption intentions was investigated by a multiple linear regression analysis as evidence based on relationship to other variables. The regression analysis reported excitement, affect and drama as statistically significant predictors of consumption intentions

The Psychological Empowerment Impact of Twitter Microblogging: The Case of #stopasianhate During Covid-19 Pandemic

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a surge in anti-Asian hate incidents across the US (Misra et al., 2020). As a response to the alarming escalation in xenophobia and racism resulting from the pandemic, #StopAsianHate and #StopAAPIHate have been employed to shed light on the issues. Twitter can effectively assist protestors to participate in the movement by facilitating collective effort, efficiently disseminating the information, and encouraging the discussion about a topic (Chon & Park, 2020). Social media has been recognized for its contribution to one\u27s empowerment in various domains, allowing the marginalized group to regain their sense of power (Mehra et al., 2004; Perkins, 1995). Drawing on the association between Twitter microblogging and empowerment (Hermida & Hernández-Santaolalla, 2018), this study examines how the use of Twitter microblogging for anti-Asian hate crimes advocacy can affect users\u27 psychological empowerment. More importantly, this study aims to raise awareness of the violence against Asian communities and to combat prejudice toward Asians in the COVID-19 pandemic. With the mediating role of self-efficacy and sense of community, we analyzed the use of Twitter microblogging to advocate against Asian hate and users\u27 psychological empowerment level using Social Cognitive Theory. This study recruited 474 Asian Twitter users whose age between 18-29 years old and live in the United States by voluntary based convenience sampling to participate in the online survey administered by Qualtrics

Online Learning Communities in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Social Learning Network Analysis of Twitter During the Shutdown

This paper presents a social learning network analysis of Twitter during the 2020 global shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Research concerning online learning environments is focused on the reproduction of conventional teaching arrangements, whereas social media technologies afford new channels for the dissemination of information and sharing of knowledge and expertise. We examine Twitter feed around the hashtags online learning and online teaching during the global shutdown to examine the spontaneous development of online learning communities. We find relatively small and ephemeral communities on the two topics. Most users make spontaneous contributions to the discussion but do not maintain a presence in the Twitter discourse. Optimizing the social learning network, we find many potential efficiencies to be gained through more proactive efforts to connect knowledge seekers and knowledge disseminators. Considerations and prospects for supporting online informal social learning networks are discussed

MEASURING POSTSECONDARY STUDENTS’ SENSE OF BELONGING: PSYCHOMETRIC INVESTIGATIONS INTO STUDENT DEMOGRAPHICS AND COURSE DELIVERY CONTEXTS

Research suggests sense of belonging in academic contexts influences student academic outcomes and well-being. Instruments (i.e., surveys, questionnaires) developed to measure sense of belonging mainly focus on the experience of students in middle grades. Few instruments measure sense of belonging experienced by postsecondary students, despite many colleges and universities seeking to improve retention, persistence, and graduation by addressing this complex construct. Furthermore, the rapid growth of online courses necessitates and presents an opportunity to employ psychometric investigations to explore the sense of belonging experienced by both face-to-face and online students. The first of the two studies conducted for this dissertation extends a brief instrument originally tested on an adolescent sample for use among postsecondary students, testing for differential item functioning based on various groupings, including but not limited to degree level, gender, and ethnicity. The second study investigates if it is possible to similarly measure students’ sense of belonging to other students within the same course in face-to-face and online delivery methods using a common instrument. Employing modern measurement strategies, these studies demonstrate the value of rigorous analyses of internal structure to produce validity evidence for practical and reliable instruments—reflective of the diversity in student identities and learning contexts in higher education institutions—to measure postsecondary students’ sense of belonging

Education Leadership Data Analytics (ELDA): A White Paper Report on the 2018 ELDA Summit

Education Leadership Data Analytics (ELDA) is an emerging domain that is centered at the intersection of education leadership, the use of evidence-based improvement cycles in schools to promote instructional improvement, and education data science. ELDA practitioners work collaboratively with school and district leaders and teachers to analyze, pattern, and visualize previously unknown patterns and information from the vast sets of data collected by schooling organizations, and then integrate findings in easy to understand language and digital tools into collaborative and community-building evidence-based improvement cycles with stakeholders. In June of 2018, over 100 participants gathered for the Education Leadership Data Analytics Summit at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City, including researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and funders. This report provides a summary of the central issues, themes, and recommendations for the future of the field that emerged from the discussions at the ELDA Summit event. These issues include building capacity in the field through incentivizing researcher practitioner partnerships, and providing conference and networking opportunities, professional development, certification, and ultimately degree programs to train ELDA researchers and practitioners. Additionally, a central focus of the ELDA field is equity, data security and privacy, in concert with open and FAIR data standards to develop and share de-identified data and tools across contexts. We conclude the report with a blueprint of possible skills and competencies needed for ELDA practitioner training and professional development and provide recommendations for next steps to help grow the field