Pursuit Of Education Research Articles

UNLOCKING THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION: EXPLORING THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF GOOGLE CLASSROOM FOR ONLINE LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING

Since the onset of the COVID-19 era, the educational landscape in Nigeria has witnessed a profound transformation with the emergence of several online teaching platforms as invaluable resources, especially in times of crisis, offering schools and institutions the means to adapt to the ever-evolving world of education. One platform that stands out for its versatility and user-friendly interface is Google Classroom. This paper is a comprehensive exploration of the relative potential of Google Classroom as a platform for online education. The study embarks on an exploration of its features, functionality, and practical applications while drawing comparisons with other popular platforms. This study aims to provides an insightful assessment of Google Classroom's strengths and weaknesses. It further seeks to gauge the impact of Google Classroom on teaching and learning outcomes and contemplate how it might shape the future of online education. The focus of the study is to provide pragmatic insights, highlighting best practices and emerging trends in online education, thereby empowering educators, institutions, and policymakers with the knowledge to effectively harness the transformative potential of Google Classroom in their educational pursuits.

An assessment of the experiences, and perceptions of the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures in Southeast Nigeria: implications for policy and action.

there is limited evidence from developing countries including Nigeria on the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on the socioeconomic lives of citizens. The aim of this study was to explore citizens´ experiences and perceptions of the impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on daily living in Southeast Nigeria. this was a cross-sectional descriptive study conducted among policymakers, researchers, non-governmental organizations (NGO) officials, and health practitioners in Southeast Nigeria. Data were collected using short message sending (SMS), emails, and key informant interviews. although the COVID-19 lockdown measures had both positive and negative effects, it was largely negative. Some of the effects on family and social life were more quality time with family and improved family ties, increased social vices, reduced social and religious interaction, and disrupted academic calendars and educational pursuits. On economic life, the lockdown provided an additional source of income for those involved in the sales of facemasks and related commodities, while for others it reduced income and increased expenditures. Regarding work/career, the lockdown promoted the use of new technologies and skill acquisition, while remote work relieved work-related stress. The health effects were mostly negative including loneliness, depression, and anxiety, however, it improved health consciousness and personal hygiene. Other systemic effects stated were reduced air pollution and poor patronage at health facilities. without intending to, the COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria had mixed effects on family and socioeconomic life, negatively impacting mental health but improving work-related life among others. These findings are a call to policy action to mitigate the negative effects whilst sustaining the positive gains from the lockdown.

The effects оf Chinese population policy оn the labour market

Faced with high levels of poverty, China introduced its "one-child policy" in 1980 and began economic and systemic reforms that led to the country''s strong economic development. Thanks to the improvement in the average standard of living, certain socioeconomic aspects related to women''s employment, the pursuit of higher education, delays in childbirth, and the number of children have changed. These changes have not only reduced the number of children being born and led to population aging, but have also affected the labour market. The aim of this paper is to determine the effects of Chinese population policy on selected labour market indicators: labour force by age and sex in rural/urban areas, the labour force participation rate, and the unemployment rate. Research results from 2010 to 2020 show the growth of the labour force, while the unemployment rate has been growing since 2018. It is noticeable that the number of workers in the labour force is growing in cities, while it is declining in rural areas. On the other hand, the unemployment rate is lower in rural areas, while the growth of unemployment is evident in urban areas. The research shows that the long-term implementation of this population policy has resulted in a larger number of men, leading to greater participation of men in the labour force. Despite measures to improve the position of women at work, women''s social security is still not guaranteed, and it is more difficult for women to decide to expand their families. As China has ambitious plans for economic development, defining adequate population and social policies is crucial for their implementation.

Research on Curriculum Reform of Higher Education Major Based on OBE Education Concept

As an important venue for continuously exporting talents to China society, universities shoulder the task of adapting to the strategic development needs of China and educating people. However, at this stage, with the acceleration of the popularization of tertiary education, the traditional instructional mode has been unable to meet the new requirements of personnel training. Teaching reform, as an important part of improving instructional level, has been paid more and more attention by universities. Universities are constantly improving themselves in teaching methods, curriculum, personnel training and goal setting, so as to promote the output of compound talents. OBE education concept emphasizes students’ learning achievements and belongs to a new educational concept. Once put forward, it has been highly valued and widely concerned by the education sector, which has guided the correct direction for the pursuit of excellent education in major universities at present. This article introduces the connotation and core elements of OBE education concept; This article analyzes the present situation and existing problems of educational management in universities. On this basis, based on the concept of OBE education, this article puts forward the corresponding strategies to improve the instructional mode in universities, so as to promote the sustainable reform of the courses of education majors in universities, and thus improve the quality of talent training in universities.

Library services provision to visually-impaired users in academic libraries: A gap in the literature

The importance of providing library and information services to the visually-impaired students for educational pursuit in academic libraries cannot be ignored. This is because the students cannot use the normal facilities that their sighted counterparts uses, they require special facilities and services. This paper sought to provide a systematic review of theoretical and empirical literature about services provision for visually-impaired students in academic libraries. Reviewing the related literature focuses mainly on studies about availability of and accessibility to facilities for this category of students, perceptions about providing services for the students, training in visually-impaired services provision, accessibility to the services by the students, constraints to effective visually-impaired services provision in academic libraries as well as appraisal of reviewed literature. An in-depth account of the selected and related literature indicated that, many libraries in the university seldom provide services for the students who are visually-impaired due to limited financial and human resources, insufficient assistive technology, inadequacy of funding and absence of trained personnel among others. This category of students have limited access to many of the major required facilities and services. Furthermore, the article contributes to the growing body of knowledge and builds on existing literature in this area of study.

Transient Zip Codes: Utilizing Counternarratives to Examine the Compounded Effects of Structural Racism and Housing Insecurity

Lack of access to consistent, stable housing threatens the health, well-being, and educational outcomes of families and students experiencing homelessness. Equally important are out-of-school factors shaping student engagement. This research highlights the implications associated with high school aged students experiencing housing instability traveling multiple locales to remain engaged in school. Structural racism and counternarratives are employed to understand the experiences of two Black youth as they navigate housing insecurity while pursuing their high school diplomas. The student’s counternarratives elevate three significant themes: 1. Structural inequities, 2. Black youth experiencing homelessness value their education and, 3. The educational pursuits of youth experiencing homelessness in historically Black, disinvested communities are compounded by their community’s cumulative disadvantage. Structural racism, and counternarratives offer a more robust racial analysis of structural inequities inherent in schools and communities, and challenge deficit narratives that limit positive educational outcomes and housing stability for students and families experiencing homelessness.

Breaking down the STEM pathway: Utilizing neighborhood resources to improve Mexican‐origin adolescents' life chances

AbstractThis paper aims to identify neighborhood institutional resources (e.g., nonprofit organizations, libraries, and labor market conditions) that promote Mexican‐origin high school students' progress in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pathway into postsecondary education. A nationally representative, longitudinal sample of 1340 Mexican‐origin students from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 was used to investigate students' postsecondary education STEM outcomes. Neighborhood institutional resources, assessed during the high school years, were appended from multiple administrative data sources at the zip code level. Multilevel models utilizing the Heckman correction model, to correct for selection bias in postsecondary education pursuits, revealed that neighborhood resources during high school, specifically more minority‐ and immigrant‐serving organizations and a more STEM‐focused local labor market, support Mexican‐origin students' postsecondary STEM degree attainment, after controlling for risks and resources in the family and school contexts. We conclude by calling attention to how neighborhood institutional resources may facilitate Mexican‐origin students' STEM achievement and fulfill the labor market demands within high‐growth sectors of the economy.

Maternal Landscapes: An Answer to the Problem of Women’s Education in Colonial Mexico

In Sor Juana’s Respuesta a Sor Filotea (1691), she advocates for the education of women in colonial Mexico through emphasizing the figure of mothers as educators. I contend that Sor Juana uses the figure of the mother and maternal spaces to promote a more inclusive education system for women, enabling the pursuit of higher education, traditionally a male domain. Furthermore, by advancing this inclusivity, Sor Juana criticizes the idea that a mother’s role was solely to give birth. Ultimately, this article shows how Sor Juana reconceptualizes motherhood and femininity as an essential means of transmission and reproduction of culture.

What’s going on here? Black men and gendered-antiblackness at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

ABSTRACT This current study relies on in-depth interviews with 16 Black men to explore their experiences attending a Hispanic-Serving Institution in the Southwest region of the U.S. In discussing their experiences, the students identified antiblackness as a reality that accosted them personally and confronted them in their college years. In particular, they articulate what can be understood as gendered-antiblackness given that much of what they experienced hinged on their racialized-gendered identities. The findings detail the men’s sensemaking of how Black men are (re)positioned on campus, including the ways their identities matter in how they experience campus life, navigate the campus, and think about themselves and their educational efforts. These findings contribute to understanding how institutional environment impacts collegiate Black men’s experiences, sense of self, and educational pursuits.

Increasing Consumption of Korean Dramas during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This qualitative study focuses on Indonesian transnational fans’ consumption of Korean dramas (hereafter K-dramas) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study highlights the fans’ lived experiences, thoughts, and interpretation of Korean culture in watching K-dramas as well as how they construct identities through their consumption and articulation in their everyday lives. This study used qualitative questionnaire as the instrument to collect the data for the study. Using thematic analysis, the study reveals that there were four emerging motivating factors to watch K-Dramas among Indonesian viewers: fresh substitutive choice, easy access, interesting stories and visuals, and cultural factors. Additionally, the study also showed four outcomes of their consumptive behavior: language acquisition and motivation to learn Korean, cultural understanding and new perceptions of Korea, pursuit of education, and pure entertainment and stress-reliever. Hence, this study contributes to the body of literature on K-Dramas consumption, especially in the era of COVID-19 pandemic.

Education for sustainable development: Secondary school teacher's awareness and perception of integration

AbstractThe pursuit of education for sustainable development (ESD) integration is imperative for appraising the implications and progress of the educational plan. Teachers are critical agents in delivering sustainable development content in formal education. Consequently, understanding the teachers' perspective is necessary for integration. This study analyses teachers' insights on integrating education for sustainable development. The teachers filled out a questionnaire concerning sustainable development, and data analysis revealed that teachers have positive awareness, poor attitudes and a detrimental state of behaviour towards sustainable development. The four focus group discussions were conducted to congregate teachers' perspicacity for sustainability education integration. The participant perceived reform in student‐teacher curricula, teacher's training programs, and embedding sustainability‐related subject content as an elementary enabler. They emphasised the vitality of administrative inputs and the government's role in successful integration. Three interlocking (educative, administrative and government) dimensions were advocated for sustainability integration in the school educative process.

The Student Voice: Recommendations for Supporting the Success of Graduate Students with Disabilities in Online Courses

ABSTRACT This article offers recommendations for online graduate students, instructors, and universities to better meet the needs of students with disabilities who increasingly participate in online courses. Using semi-structured interviews, researchers asked what recommendations participants from respective disability categories have for supporting them in their pursuit of a graduate education in an online environment. Thirteen graduate participants represented five disability classifications including learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, psychological disorders, chronic health impairments, or visual impairments. Interview transcripts were analyzed to identify disability-specific recommendations through constant comparison of individual data sets. Recommendations for students, instructors, and universities focused on instructor-student communication and relationships, online course design, and a changing and active role of institutional support services. The collaborative efforts of all are emphasized.

Looking Away: On Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa and the Narration of Political Pedagogy in The Aesthetics of Resistance

Starting from Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the openness of the future and the function of promises for political action, this essay offers a new understanding of the political pedagogy at work in The Aesthetics of Resistance. Rather than being narrated by the author’s proxy, as much of the novel’s reception assumes, Weiss plays subversively with mask narration. The narrator’s selective reading of Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa guides readers to a complex assessment of the costs and deformations necessitated by the narrator’s promise to remain part of the antifascist resistance. Via its poetics of looking away, the novel discloses a probing of history, politics, and collective action that contrasts sharply with the narrator’s stated poetics and teleological expectations. The Aesthetics of Resistance prepares its future readings as an open, not-yet-determined pursuit of aesthetic and political education.

Online Teaching and Learning in Correctional Facilities: Opportunities and Tensions

In a prison environment, inmates participating in online learning face numerous challenges. Access to education and digital materials must compete with security protocols that usually stifle innovative approaches to online learning. Education in prison environments is well-established, and studies attest to this notion. This article explores online learning in a correctional environment where inmates enrol with two distance education institutions, the Open University of the United Kingdom (OUUK) and the University of South Africa (UNISA). The study showcases the conditions, opportunities and tensions in online education in prison contexts in the nexus of providing access while ensuring security. The article further concedes that various countries are embarking on viable partnerships between correctional services, institutions of higher learning, non-governmental agencies, and other stakeholders. The two institutions, OUUK and UNISA, through well-guided Memoranda of Agreements (as argued in this article), have provided best practices and models that could be emulated to advance the agenda for the fourth industrial revolution in online learning. The qualitative documentary research that directed this article used a case study of the two open distance learning institutions, and it entailed a directed, inductive document analysis of national and institutional policies and Memoranda of Agreement (MoA). The research findings point to the continued impact of the tensions between access and security and strategies in ameliorating these tensions. Thus, with specific practices and multiple factors in each country, conditions and opportunities for online learning exist and are utilised to the best of each country’s abilities in offenders’ educational pursuits.

Impact of early life shocks on educational pursuits-Does a fade out co-exist with persistence?

Changes in climatic conditions have increased the variability in rainfall patterns worldwide. A negative rainfall shock faced by children in the initial 1000 days of life and the resulting malnutrition can harm the likelihood of children's survival, overall growth, development of the brain, motor skills, and cognitive abilities, leading to poor performance in education and labor market. While the existing findings about the long-run outcomes are mixed, it is essential to understand the nuances in such an estimation. Using the exogenous variation in rainfall in India, we estimate the impact of adverse shocks at birth on the cognitive abilities of children at ages 5, 8, 12, and 15, on educational attainments, and the likelihood of studying STEM at higher secondary school. The Young Lives Survey data from Andhra Pradesh, India, presents evidence of the negative impact of rainfall shocks at birth on cognitive abilities from age 5 to 8, attenuating at age 12. Using nationally representative data, while we investigate the impact of adverse rainfall shocks at birth on academic performance measured by the high school grades and STEM choice at higher secondary school, we do not find a persistent impact. We unfold the impact of rainfall shocks on a chain of outcomes connected to long-run educational pursuits, as it helps to identify the most crucial stage for policymaking. Since STEM subjects are strongly associated with the labor market, connecting the association with early life shocks seems to be an essential addition to the literature. While we find evidence of reduced cognitive abilities in the early years, those do not seem to persist in the long run. The potential sample selection or attrition biases and the estimates of those biases can explain the nuances of estimating the long-run impact of adverse shocks at birth.

Exploring Enduring Microsystem Constraints That Hinder the Pursuit of Higher Education: A Case Study of Minority Ethnic Students in Zimbabwe

Exploring Enduring Microsystem Constraints That Hinder the Pursuit of Higher Education: A Case Study of Minority Ethnic Students in Zimbabwe

University Debt Reveal Podcast: Organizing Against University Capital Debt

The root causes of why students are accruing so much debt in pursuit of higher education is the steep rising cost of tuition and fees of college attendance. In this podcast, we examine the other college debt crisis. That's how university borrowing for capital projects has added thousands of dollars in fees to our students tuition bills, and subsequently to their student loan balances.

Abolitionist Pedagogies, Pedagogical Labor

Abolitionist Pedagogies, Pedagogical Labor

Accommodating life's demands: Childcare choices for student parents in higher education

Affordable, accessible, and quality childcare is important for student parents in higher education who are raising children under the age of 5. With a growing student parent population (Noll et al., 2017), it is important to explore how student parents make decisions on childcare for their children, ages birth to 5, to support their pursuit of higher education. Limited research exists on student parents’ childcare choices and the factors that inform their decisions. To identify how student parents choose childcare for their children, we conducted 36 in-depth interviews with student parents attending a 4 year university in the Western United States. We relied upon the accommodation model (Meyers & Jordan, 2006) to guide our research analysis as it allowed for a deeper understanding of the process and outcomes of childcare decision-making. Our findings demonstrate that student parents have diverse childcare needs. Student parents’ choices are shaped by larger social forces, particularly family necessity, family financial resources, beliefs and aspirations, community context, and social networks. We provide recommendations for institutions of higher education, policymakers, and researchers to support the educational pursuits of student parents and provide childcare that best suits their needs and desires.

Universal design for learning: not another slogan on the street of inclusive education

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is increasingly gaining currency as an approach towards achieving inclusive education by enabling the provision of flexible instructional strategies from the onset. However, there is need to find ways of navigating the hegemonic neoliberal, capitalist values controlling contemporary public education if meaningful change is to be realized. What is suggested is the necessity of paying attention to the invisible strings that control public schooling, its character and function in the society, rather than focusing only on proposing a few reforms that correct specific problems in the education system. UDL is a step towards the right direction in the pursuit of inclusive education, but much more systemic reform is needed.