INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF EDUCATION最新文献

Abstract

For a successful transition from distance learning to first careers, adolescents’ psychosocial and career decision-making will require analytics-driven support services. However, current distance-education support services in Ghana have yet to adopt psychometric techniques for effective career guidance and innovative pedagogy in the post-COVID period. Hence, the study presented here explored distance-education students’ career typologies and their need for achievement motives, using a cross-sectional survey design. John Holland’s Self-Directed Search (SDS) inventory, with high reliability coefficients, was administered to 523 first-year distance learners. Data were analysed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), t-test, and binary logistic regression with relevant assumptions explored. The results indicate a significant relationship between open and distance learning (ODL) students’ need for achievement motivation and career personality typologies. Enterprising, Social, and Conventional (ESC) personality typology also emerged as the dominant three-letter career code for students. While gender was not found to be important for categorising career personality styles, significant differences were observed between age and students’ job experience. The study concludes that students’ achievement motives have a strong impact on their career personality scores, with ESC codes confirming digitally engineered post-COVID job environments that are demanding innovation, critical thinking, humanity and ethical competencies for students. Given that many adolescents are enrolling in ODL programmes, recommendations are offered for curriculum development, guidance and counselling interventions and distance-education administration to adopt psychometrics analysis for psychosocial and career personality-targeted education support services.

This article examines issues of local community development in Rwanda, building on the triple helix model proposed by Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff in the 1990s to draw insights from international perspectives. The authors favour an expanded quadruple helix model which includes the local community as a unit of analysis, alongside higher education institutions (HEIs), the private sector and government. In this fourfold model, the local community is identified as an additional helix based on the idea that HEIs can serve as engines for boosting economic development. The results of the authors’ analysis show that innovations in higher education which are directed towards community development can, in turn, lead to changes in existing practices and teaching to better reflect the needs of the local community as well as the broader community beyond the immediate context of HEIs. Graduates’ employable skills can be strengthened through outreach initiatives by HEIs, along with the collaborative support of all elements in the fourfold model. The authors’ review of relevant literature and policy documents goes further to illustrate how each element can play an optimal role in forming a strong and sustainable partnership at the local level. The robust cooperation among helices in this model may lead to higher rates of graduates’ employment in a knowledge-based society. These innovations can further lead to full alleviation of poverty, starting from the sphere of local community development.

Abstract

Opting to homeschool children is a growing trend worldwide. However, surprisingly, there is a dearth of research on understanding how digital technologies are used by learners who opt for homeschooling. Thus, in the present study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten homeschoolers in the United States to examine: (1) how digital technologies are being used; (2) why these technologies are being used to support learning; and (3) what digital technologies are being used. Thematic analysis revealed that homeschooled children used a wide array of digital technologies to support their learning. Children’s learning projects commonly stemmed from their interaction with the real world, and a good portion of their learning was self-directed. Digital technologies afforded children access to specific materials and enabled them to collaborate with other learners. Perhaps most importantly, the homeschoolers reported a love for (self-directed) lifelong learning. They tended to learn in a self-directed and autonomous manner, and they commonly used digital technologies constructively and productively.

For the past four decades, intercultural bilingual education (IBE) has been a common policy prescription to address Indigenous/non-Indigenous education gaps in Latin America. Initiatives have grown from small, localised pilots to national and state-level initiatives across thousands of schools. While there is some rigorous evidence of the effectiveness of IBE pilot initiatives at a small scale, there is very little evidence that expanding them to a larger scale benefits learners to the same extent. This article reviews the existing evidence on IBE’s effectiveness and identifies a number of challenges in replicating success at scale. The authors identify factors which have limited our understanding of IBE’s effectiveness, as well as factors which may have contributed to less-than-ideal outcomes for larger programmes, including uneven coverage, varying teacher quality, and limited resource availability for smaller Indigenous languages. Addressing these issues will be crucial for improving IBE programmes’ ability to operate successfully at scale.