Academic Independence Research Articles

The Development of Character Education Model to Improve Students’ Academic Independence in Islamic Boarding School in Sinjai District, Indonesia

Abstrak The Objektive of this research and development is to crate a description of the operational model of character education amnd to determine the effectiveness of a character education model in ebhancing students’ academic independence. There are some results of this research. First, the description of the prototype model if character education to enhare stuents academic independence consists of five parts, namely rationalization of character education model; Supporting theries of character education for using character education models ; and development of character education model. Second, the operational model of character education is supported by development tool and developed at five stages, namely analysis, desigen, development, implementation, and evaluation. Third, the character education model is effective to enhance students’ academic independence in Islamic Boarding School, Sinjai. Keyword : character education, academic independence, Islamic boarding School

Academic Independence and Its Limitation: A Reexamination of the Election and Appointment of President of Academia Sinica in 1940

Academic Independence and Its Limitation: A Reexamination of the Election and Appointment of President of Academia Sinica in 1940

Assistive technology for students with learning disabilities: A glimpse of the livescribe pen and its impact on homework completion

This research investigated the effectiveness of an assistive technology tool, the Livescribe Pen (LSP), with an elementary student identified with dyslexia. Using interview and focus group methodologies over the span of one academic year, the study probed the perceptions of teachers, parent, and child. While the LSP was primarily utilized for curriculum accessibility and an audio tool to promote academic independence, the study’s findings reveal its impact as an assistive technology on both academic success for children with disabilities as well as non-academic gains. These included an increase in independence, more time for social activities, and the ability to develop strategies for homework success. Most importantly, the academic team and the parent reported a sense of higher aspirations for this student; ones they had not thought possible previously. Finally, the study revealed two elements critically important for students with disabilities. Those are the importance of fostering communities of support and the importance of self-determination.

الحریة الأکادیمیة والقیم الجامعیة

الحریة الأکادیمیة والقیم الجامعیة

What Role for Law, Human Rights, and Bioethics in an Age of Big Data, Consortia Science, and Consortia Ethics? The Importance of Trustworthiness.

The global bioeconomy is generating new paradigm-shifting practices of knowledge co-production, such as collective innovation; large-scale, data-driven global consortia science (Big Science); and consortia ethics (Big Ethics). These bioeconomic and sociotechnical practices can be forces for progressive social change, but they can also raise predicaments at the interface of law, human rights, and bioethics. In this article, we examine one such double-edged practice: the growing, multivariate exploitation of Big Data in the health sector, particularly by the private sector. Commercial exploitation of health data for knowledge-based products is a key aspect of the bioeconomy and is also a topic of concern among publics around the world. It is exacerbated in the current age of globally interconnected consortia science and consortia ethics, which is characterized by accumulating epistemic proximity, diminished academic independence, “extreme centrism”, and conflicted/competing interests among innovation actors. Extreme centrism is of particular importance as a new ideology emerging from consortia science and consortia ethics; this relates to invariably taking a middle-of-the-road populist stance, even in the event of human rights breaches, so as to sustain the populist support needed for consortia building and collective innovation. What role do law, human rights, and bioethics—separate and together—have to play in addressing these predicaments and opportunities in early 21st century science and society? One answer we propose is an intertwined ethico-legal normative construct, namely trustworthiness. By considering trustworthiness as a central pillar at the intersection of law, human rights, and bioethics, we enable others to trust us, which in turns allows different actors (both nonprofit and for-profit) to operate more justly in consortia science and ethics, as well as to access and responsibly use health data for public benefit.

Commercial Collaboration and Critical Engagement in Food Research

This series of essays addresses some of the challenges that arise when academics engage in research and other forms of collaboration with food businesses. Assessing what is at stake at the interface between academia and industry, the essays explore the practical, methodological, theoretical, and ethical challenges involved when food researchers engage with commercial partners, assessing whether they risk undermining academic independence and whose interests they serve. This introductory essay is followed by four case studies from the United Kingdom and Portugal, raising questions about why these issues have emerged more sharply in Europe than elsewhere. The essays are followed by a series of commentaries from different perspectives, opening up a debate with which we hope other readers will engage.

Lost in between colonialism and corporatism: A critical review of the case of South Korean academia

In this paper, we critically examine the hypothesis that higher education in Korea still operates under the context of colonial dependency and has become corporatized, driven by the ideologies of neoliberalism and market capitalism. In doing so, we discuss the academic dependency and corporatization of Korean colleges by pinpointing three events: first, the recent attempt by Korean colleges to adopt the American journal accreditation system; second, the annexation of the universities to Chabeol to make universities more competitive and efficient; and third, Korean college policies for expanding English mediated courses in their curricula. We argue that these changes impacting the atmospheres of higher education and academia in k orea are not legitimate because such changes confuse the real purposes of higher education, which should not be determined only by the logic of competition or scientific development. These changes also disregard the rights of students and lecturers to think, communicate, and perform research using their own mother tongues. We suggest alternative attitudes and strategies for Korean academia to revive academic independence.

The Student’s Experience of Attending Large Classes in a South African Higher Education Context

The increase in numbers of students entering South African universities results in the challenge of effectively managing large groups of students in classrooms. Previous research has focused on resourcing and the manner in which knowledge can be conveyed in large classes. To date not much research has been conducted on the student experience within a large class setting at South African higher education institutions. To make provision for responsible massification of higher education that does not affect the quality of student learning negatively, it is necessary to identify the perspective of students on teaching and learning in large classes. A descriptive exploratory study was undertaken using quantitative data derived from a questionnaire. Undergraduate students were asked to provide information related to their experiences of various aspects in the largest class they attend, such as physical environmental, teaching in class, methods/activities, learning and assessment. The results indicate that the students’ level of academic independence determines how well they cope in a large class and the competence and enthusiasm of the lecturer influences whether they attend these classes regularly. It is recommended that teaching and learning methods that can develop students’ ability for independent learning be gradually introduced in large classes. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n16p375

The Effect of Cybernetic Pattern on the Characteristic of Learning Organization in University : A Case Study of Iran

By debating the issue of academic independence, it is expected that the academic systems act more efficiently than before and academic system had to rethink about the structures, aims and goals to understand the complex nature of its organization and widen its social realm with a more modified and proper design. The present research aims at studying the effect of cybernetic structure on characteristics of learning organizations. 163 of faculty members of Iran universities were chosen as the sample and participants of the present study through random classification method and using a standard questionnaire. In order to analyze the data and answering the research questions and also studying the fitness of the conceptual model which introduces a meaningful network of relationship among the variables, the path analysis and structural equation model analysis were used. The findings suggest direct effects of the Cybernetics model on learning organization have been (0.63).

Corporatisation, Managerialism and the Death of the University Ideal in Australia

The idea of the university as it originated in medieval Europe was that of a self-governing community of teachers and students. However that ideal has been undermined in Australia, where legislative changes over the past 20 years have led to a progressive diminution in university autonomy. Changes to Commonwealth and State legislation mean that universities are now subject to the same internal governance rules as trading corporations, and these are incompatible with the mission of a university and with academic independence. In addition, the regulation of universities has become so invasive that they can no longer be seen as truly autonomous self-accrediting institutions. This article examines the harmful effect of these changes and suggests what changes should be made to the law in order to restore a governance framework for universities which is consistent with their social purpose.

A Better Understanding of Reasons for the Failure of the Healthcare Reform in Colombia

The Colombian healthcare crisis is evidenced by obstacles to health service, diminished working conditions and medical autonomy, financial infeasibility, loss of leadership and legitimacy of the healthcare system. In the year 2013 twelve reform projects were presented to Congress, including a statutory law that defines health as a fundamental right which was approved and another ordinary one which sought a complete reform of the system but was rejected and criticized by different opinion leaders. For this study we have made an adaptation to Q methodology, which assigns quantitative values to the most frequent statement variables obtained from secondary sources (norms, articles, media, forums) giving objective information about the diverse positions in the proposals to healthcare reform. We analyzed from the most objective position and from academic independence the different views of the opinion leaders for a better understanding of the reasons for this failure in healthcare reform. There was a great polarization in the diverse statements which made an agreement with the government unlikely and, when added to a political moment in which the presidential election was being held, made the new reform non-viable. Although there is an agreement about the existence of a crisis, this has not been the case about the analysis of its causes or solutions. At the present time, the government is not presenting a new reform proposal and is focusing on some decree to create a model of healthcare in rural zones, define financial conditions for the EPSes (health providers), update norms for membership in a healthcare system and regulate biotechnological drugs. Even though to date there have been no opinions, plus taking into account the previous analysis, it is very possible there will be much criticism from those who demand a structural change in the system.

Globalization and the Political Economy of the Brazilian Federal University

The purpose of this research is to explain how Brazilian higher education becomes a commodity of global capitalism through a focus on institutional culture change, which transforms academic independence toward a model of corporate-sponsored applied research. Brazilian federal universities are invested in S.T.E.M. education and are instruments in the country’s twenty-first century hegemonic aspirations. This national development strategy has ramifications for the humanities, fine arts, and social sciences. Applied science and public-private partnerships (PPP) have irreversibly changed the trajectory of the Brazilian public university and its relationship to global capitalism. This research examines these changes to higher education and Brasilia’s broader political agenda through a critical political economy perspective.

Identifying Teaching and Learning Opportunities within Professional Relationships between Clinic Supervisors

There is growing attention in the educational literature on the role of postgraduate student research groups in Higher Degree Research (HDR) student learning and experience. Yet, there is little research specifically on law HDR students, including research on the factors key in successful development and sustainability of HDR groups in law. This article focuses on the institutional and disciplinary framing of postgraduate research student groups. It considers how academic involvement in these groups might be both limiting and productive and asks how the contours of legal scholarly inquiry might impact on students’ engagement in an interdisciplinary HDR group and on its sustainability. Given an absence of literature and empirical research specifically within the legal discipline, the article draws on empirical data from surveys and interviews we conducted to identify factors promoting postgraduate student group sustainability. HDR students surveyed indicated a strong desire for academic involvement. This may reflect a desire for longevity and stability in groups, but also a need for continuation or reiteration of the traditional “master-apprentice” type relationship between student and academic that has traditionally characterised HDR pedagogy. Alternatively this may signal a perceived need by HDR students to establish pathways for professional engagement with academics as a vehicle for transition and socialisation into the scholarly community. Although impermanence is a particular challenge given the transient nature of student populations and the sometimes onerous administrative burden placed on coordinators of groups, the development of academic independence in students is also vital to achieving sustainability. Further in light of the legal discipline’s particular tendencies towards isolationism and reductionism we consider whether successful strategies for longevity utilised by interdisciplinary groups, primarily from the humanities, might be successfully applied to a group based within the law faculty.

Ethics of Relationships between Accounting Academics and External Sponsors

ABSTRACT: A variety of relationships can develop between accounting academics, academic units, and external sponsors that raise issues of ethical propriety. External donors may seek to influence academic decisions by applying pressure on recipients to gain favored treatment. We believe these types of situations are on the rise because of increased commercialization of universities. In this study, we examine relationships between accounting academics and external sponsors that challenge academic independence because of conflicts of interest when donors seek to impose conditions on financial support. We solicit the opinions of academic accountants about how likely they are to go along with the conditions. We link these activities to the following ethical issues: fair-mindedness, objectivity, and integrity. We conclude that the more experienced accounting academics (i.e., full professors, current chairs, holders of endowed chairs, and designated faculty fellows) are less likely to engage in ethically questionable relationships with external sponsors than academics who are less experienced. The results are driven primarily by two cases: allowing a Big 4 CPA firm to interview students before other firms as a condition of continued recruiting, and allowing a firm to decide on the recipient of a named faculty fellowship.

Good University Income Generating Governance in Indonesia: Agency Theory Perspective

The objective of this study aims to comprehend and portray the management opinions of the three Public Service Board (PSB) universities in Indonesia dealing with the good university income generating governance. Furthermore, this study applies epistemological subjectivism, interpretivism paradigm with multi-site design. The findings were analyzed using agency theory perspective. Therefore, the finding results show that the principles of good university income generating governance is law-abiding, academic oriented, accountable, professional, independent and transparent. The emergence of the principle of law-abiding indicate hierarchical relations agency that is purely between the government and the universities in income generation. The principle of academic orientation, accountability, independence and autonomy suggests that the goal synergy of both principal and the agent are the essence of agency relationship. Meanwhile, the professionalism demonstrated that the agent fully realizes which the principal requires certain tasks to be implemented by the agents because agents have the skills required. Yet, independence gained through wide autonomy both on academic as well as non-academic matters. The principle of transparency demonstrates the importance of the information factor in agency relationship. Agent transparency is necessary for the principal due to the difficulty in obtaining information dealing with the headway of the agent itself. Keywords: Good University Governance, Income Generating, Agency Theory

Race and Girls’ Self-Evaluations: How Mothering Matters

Research conducted in the United States shows that Black adolescent girls have higher self-esteem and, to a lesser extent, a higher sense of control than White girls. However, few studies conducted with representative samples of Black and White girls systematically examine why Black girls may have higher self-esteem and sense of control. Drawing on Black feminist thought, we posit that Black mothers’ socialization of their daughters may explain Black girls’ higher self-esteem and sense of control. Using survey data collected in 1994 from a nationally representative sample of U.S. Black (N = 1,330) and White (N = 3,797) girls and their mothers, we examine racial differences across two key components of the self-concept: self-esteem and sense of control. We ask: 1) Do Black girls have higher self-esteem and sense of control than White girls? 2) Do Black girls have more positive relationships with their mothers and receive more encouragement of academic achievement and independence from their mothers than White girls? and 3) Do more positive mother-daughter relationships and mothers’ encouragement help to explain Black girls’ higher self-esteem and sense of control in comparison to White girls? Findings indicate that Black girls have higher self-esteem and sense of control than White girls, and Black mothers’ relationship with their daughters and stronger encouragement of daughters’ independence in part explain race differences in self-evaluations.

Making better use of our brain MRI research data

Increasingly, MRI is used outside the diagnostic setting to study brain physiology, or the biological mechanisms of brain maturation and ageing. In an era with an increasingly ageing population, the study of age-related brain changes is important to understand risk factors and early signs of neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer’s disease. To detect subtle changes in brain structure, large image banks are typically needed, for example to examine the impact of rare or weak genetic traits. Those studies often require substantial efforts to collect and then are used to address a limited set of questions framed by the original investigators, even though they would allow additional questions to be considered by others if disclosed publically and well documented. One could argue that publicly funded agencies of such studies would get better value for the money if the data were used by more than one research group, a trend that is now being translated into new policies regarding ownership of research material in various countries. The ADNI project (www.adni-info.org) was a big step forward, where the ultimate goal was to create a publically accessible data set, which to date has already been used in hundreds of published studies. One advantage of such a prospective initiative is that the homogeneity of images and metadata is better than for retrospectively disclosed repositories, with often only partly overlapping data dictionaries. The review by Dickie et al. [1] in the current issue systematically reviews open access of publically accessible databanks of the ageing brain. Among a large number of potential databases, only a few were found to have public access; among those, nine fulfilled the inclusion criteria, and far less than 1,000 complete MR imaging data sets were available in subjects over the age of 60. Furthermore, access is often not easily obtained (even for ADNI user have to submit a proposal and obtain approval); metadata (e.g., clinical) are often presented incompletely (and vary between studies), intermediate results (e.g., segmentations or statistical maps) are typically lacking and basic MRI descriptors (e.g., the amount of white matter lesions) not available. Therefore, despite the excellent original intentions, the yield of public databases so far has been modest. What would be needed to enhance to unique possibilities in this field? First of all, the need for a public call to disclose more data publically should be articulated. The paper by Dickie et al. [1] helps to revive this public appeal. Secondly, there will be a need for a consortium that proactively approaches potential data donors. For example, the MRI data from existing studies such as the Cardiovascular Health Study (www.chs-nhlbi.org) or the Rotterdam Scan Study are not available, although they were funded by government money. Thirdly, for major funding requests, public funding agencies should strongly prefer applications that have both the plan and commitment to make the data publicly accessible within 2 or 3 years of acquisition (making the sponsors rather than the investigators the owners of the data). Fourthly, an independent forum may be needed to share the data publically in a regulated environment, ensuring subject confidentiality and data integrity. For example, the FP7 project entitled neuGRID (www.neugrid.eu) provides such a portal, and at the same time allows users to take advantage of the virtual laboratory and computing facilities typically needed to handle such large image data sets [2]; similar endeavours exist in North America (www.outgrid.eu). Fifthly, to ensure academic independence, users of the data should only have to report published results to the original investigators. Sixthly, there should be standards of reporting data and storing of intermediate results that can be used by subsequent users, and avoid replication of for example segmentation and registration efforts. Finally, metadata such as clinical, laboratory, genetic and other information should be unified. Standard terminology in various domains is being developed by the NINDS (http://www.commondataelements.ninds.nih.gov). Future expansion beyond the study of normal ageing could include disease states, such as Alzheimer's, or into other imaging techniques, such as nuclear medicine. Beyond the collection of anatomic brain MRI scans, there is increasing interest in more advanced MRI data, such as resting-state functional MRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to unravel the “human connectome” (http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org and humanconnectome.org). An example of PET/SPECT data sharing in Alzheimer’s disease already exists (https://www.eu-decide.eu). Data sharing could also be expanded to other disease areas where international collaborations already exist, such as for multiple sclerosis (www.magnims.eu) and Huntington's disease (http://hdresearch.ucl.ac.uk/our-results/track-hd), where currently such data are usually not publicly accessible. The scale of economy that is needed in brain imaging research calls not only for larger studies in ageing and dementia, but also for better use of data by third parties by making such data publicly accessible. Ideally, this is considered at the study outset, allowing interoperability of images and metadata with existing repositories.

Maintain academic independence and justice to remodel the public trust in academia

Acadamy is the basis of discipline construction,and the public trust is the life of academy.However,the decline of public trust has become prominent in our science field.This paper is aimed at revealing the potential factors for the decline,and to propose measures to counteract them,so as to to remodel the public trust in academia. Key words: Academic independence; Public trust of academy; Integrity of scientific research

Examining the Relationships among Doctoral Completion Time, Gender, and Future Salary Prospects for Physical Scientists

Using data from a national survey of Ph.D.-holding chemists and physicists, time-to-doctoral degree is found to be a strong predictor of salary: each additional year in graduate school corresponds to a significantly lower average salary. This is true even while controlling for standard measures of scientific merit (grant funding and publication rates) and several other factors expected to influence salaries (field of research, type of position and rank, type of employing institution, years of seniority, and age). This picture is complicated by the inclusion of gender in the analysis, which reveals that women earn significantly less than men overall and experience no effect of doctoral completion time on their salaries, while men do see a significant gain in salary stemming from earlier completion times. Further investigation indicates that doctoral completion time is largely unconnected to measures of prior academic success, research independence, and scientific merit. This suggests that doctoral completion time is, to a great extent, out of the control of individual graduate students. Nonetheless, it can be influential on an individual's future career prospects, as can gender-related effects.

The University of Oklahoma: The First Independent Academic Anesthesia Department?

John Alfred Moffitt, M.D., was the Head of the Department of Anesthesiology at the Oklahoma Medical Center when it became the first ever academic independent Department of Anesthesia. Photograph courtesy of the University of Oklahoma Bird Library Medical History Archives at the OU Health Sciences Center by Mr. Jack Wagner. Introduction The true independence of a teaching department in an academic setting is based on its organizational separation from other departments with which it is affiliated. In academic anesthesia, such independence was unheard of for three quarters of century after the introduction of clinical anesthesia in 1846. The struggle for academic independence and authority for anesthesiology reached a high point in the second quarter of the 20 century when Dr. Ralph Waters established an academic anesthesia teaching center in Madison, Wisconsin in 1927. Yet, despite his vision and the sympathetic endorsement of his surgical colleagues, Dr. Waters’ division of anesthesia at the University of Wisconsin remained, not as an independent teaching program in the form of a department, but a section under the department of surgery. It took another quarter century for this beacon of anesthesia education to achieve full independent status in 1952. Organized medicine worldwide was slow to recognize the importance of anesthesia as a specialty. An inevitable question will be asked; if the Wisconsin program was not the beginning of true independent academic anesthesia teaching for medical students in 1927, when and where did such a program begin, and how? To date, all indications point to the University of Oklahoma, when a trained anesthesiologist from the Wisconsin program joined the faculty of the medical school in Oklahoma City as an instructor in anesthesia and assumed the leadership of the first truly independent Department of Anesthesia in 1930.