North American Higher Education Research Articles

Assessment through a cross-cultural lens in North American higher education

Assessment through a cross-cultural lens in North American higher education

Insights from a cultural-historical HE library makerspace case study on the potential for academic libraries to lead on supporting ethical-making underpinned by ‘Critical Material Literacy’

This article explores the tensions and contradictions in the potential success of maker-learning in Higher Education (HE) as supported in academic library makerspaces. Insights are formed from an in-depth, Cultural-Historical Activity Theory framed case study on a well-established North American HE academic library-based makerspace service. Lessons are drawn from the organisational tensions that emerged as challenges in its development. Participants were from the library service, students and academics from different disciplines that make significant use of the library makerspace. The ‘relational agency’ and ‘common knowledge’ of academic librarians in bringing together academic and student perspectives on the utility of maker-learning is found to be key. Maker-learning is observed to be an intertwined embodied/haptic, social/dialogic and rational/critical expansive cross-disciplinary system in a Zone of Proximal Development. Evidence of attempts to address the themes of inclusivity, diversity and sustainability to achieve ethical-maker-learning outcomes are discussed and developed. The article then expands on Ratto’s Critical Maker pedagogy utilised by the case study library service. I conclude with the proposal of a potentially transformative new concept for supporting cross-disciplinary maker-learning systems, ‘Critical Material Literacy’ (CML), whereby technical and material awareness connects with progressive concerns for people and the planet. This new theoretical concept is designed to start proactively addressing the key case study themes, with academic librarians becoming critical agents in creating ethical-maker knowledge hubs.

Building collective power amidst white supremacist backlash

Students and community members forcefully tore down a confederate monument known as Silent Sam at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2018. This action unleashed brutal retaliation and ongoing strife. The toppling of Silent Sam should be celebrated as an antiracist milestone that can inspire deeper reflection, racial reckoning, and institutional accountability locally and in other North American higher education institutions. While the Jim Crow era monument’s massive concrete plinth held aloft an armed confederate soldier, a brass plaque on its base vividly depicted white women’s moral authority in encouraging militarism. I argue that white supremacy is deeply rooted at UNC, the oldest public university in the country, and is reinforced by layers of official lies such as the invented historical narrative of the Lost Cause, celebrating an idyllic slaveholding past that never existed. In order to build on this moment of rupture, scholars must begin to think of themselves as cultural and intellectual workers and endeavor to build collective power through labor unions, creative activities, American Association of University Professors chapters, professional and antiracist organizations. Only in this way, can scholars protect themselves, their colleagues, and students. Signing petitions is not enough! In this paper, I discuss a few ways antiracists built collective power on our campus in recent years. I also analyze the visual lessons of the confederate monument that was erected at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill more than a century ago during an earlier period of brutal white supremacist backlash.

Mentoring and Supervision for Women of Color Leaders in North American Higher Education

Reflecting on their mentoring and supervision experiences as Latina and Black women leaders in higher education, this article proposes that Women of Color employees are more effective when supervisors give them space to draw upon their own rich histories and cultural wealth in their professional lives. Viewed through the lens of Relational Cultural Theory, which grew out of the work of Jean Baker Miller and colleagues providing culturally relevant, affirmative supervision is a growth-fostering experience for both employee and supervisor. The tenants of RCT include authenticity, growth-fostering relationships, mutual empathy, and mutual empowerment as aspects of supervision that are particularly effective for employees with multiple intersected identities working in higher education spaces. The authors make recommendations for supervisor training that would allow supervisors to draw upon the cultural capital of their diverse employees to provide healing from oppression and build resilience through validation of cultural assets and approaches to leadership.

Projeto 500: desafios da inclusão de estudantes negros numa universidade pública de pesquisa nos Estados Unidos, 1968-2018

Resumo O artigo analisa uma política de inclusão de estudantes negros em uma importante universidade pública de pesquisa nos Estados Unidos, desde o período em que foi implementada, através do Projeto 500, no final da década de 1960, até os dias atuais. Levam-se em conta relações raciais e peculiaridades do sistema de educação superior norte-americano na contextualização dessa política de ação afirmativa. Examina-se o modo como um grupo historicamente discriminado em instituições de educação superior que formam a elite branca do país questiona não apenas a organização interna da instituição, mas também a relação universidade e sociedade.

Are We Speaking the Same Language? The Experiences of International Students and Scholars in North American Higher Education

More than a million international students studied at U.S. colleges and universities in 2016–2017 (Open Doors Report, 2017), bringing close to 39 billion dollars into the U.S. economy (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2017). Previous research reveals that international students often face significant obstacles in their adjustment with the U.S. education system, cultural differences, language barriers, and social isolation. This article adopts a social constructionism approach to discuss the experiences of international students in North America from the perspective of three individuals who graduated from North American universities within the last six years. Issues of cultural, linguistic, structural, and social barriers experienced by international students are discussed. Moreover, practical suggestions based on personal experiences of the authors are provided to prepare prospective international students and scholars entering the North American education system for the challenges they may encounter.

The Status of Web Mapping in North American Higher Education

Most maps are now consumed online, yet colleges and universities struggle to keep their cartography and GIScience curricula up to date with the use of modern web technologies. I present a qualitative interview study aimed at providing insight into current teaching practices, along with challenges that may hamper the uptake of web mapping technologies in the classroom. The study involved interviews with 20 instructors of web mapping courses at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. Participants were asked about the overall vision for their web mapping courses, the scope of material covered, what specific topics are included, which web technologies they use and why, their preferred teaching pedagogy, and what challenges they have experienced. The results highlighted several strategies that cartography and GIS instructors can use to implement or increase the inclusion of web mapping in their curricula.

Enrollment Logics and Discourses: Toward Developing an Enrollment Knowledge Framework

This article brings attention to a typology of enrollment knowledge possessed and enacted by contemporary chief enrollment officers. Interview narratives are used to reveal enrollment principles and associated actions—enrollment logics—that form enrollment discourses, which in turn shape the institutionalized presence of strategic enrollment management, particularly in North American higher education.

Eco‐campus: applying the ecocity model to develop green university and college campuses

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to argue that Richard Register's ecocity model offers a strategic framework to help guide sustainability initiatives in North American higher education (HE) institutions.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper examines the theory of the ecocity and investigates the implications for its proposed building strategies for university and colleges, as institutions seek to create more sustainable campuses. The paper examines previous efforts to achieve sustainability and how the concept of the eco‐campus can be practically and productively applied.FindingsThere is no single campus that has fully embraced every facet of sustainability, but numerous HE institutions are strong leaders in diverse areas. The eco‐campus model provides concrete principles that proactively address HE institutions' ecological footprints and develops sustainable community practices.Social implicationsSustainability is a pressing social issue. As world leaders in research, innovation, and education, universities and colleges are key places to address this global issue and foster progressive action within current and future generations. The eco‐campus approach represents an opportunity to initiate a cultural paradigm shift, whereby university and colleges become global leaders in sustainability.Originality/valueWhile sustainability is now a cornerstone of research and teaching, North American HE institutions are faced with the challenge of realigning institutional practices, processes and resources to fully institute sustainability on campus. The eco‐campus model provides an innovative guide around which to hinge the development of sustainable institutional practices, structure progressive action, and foster meaningful change.

The Study of Religion in the University: Beyond Scientific and Humanistic Approaches

This essay considers an exchange between ‘‘new secular’’ theologians in the US and a Canadian proponent of the scientific study of religion, about humanistic and scientific values in the academic study of religion, in relation to the character of contemporary universities and the scope of the humanities. It suggests that the humanistic study of religion is culturally normal in North American higher education and educationally important, but is limited as a program for the study of religion as social reality. The essay argues that systematic, integrated study of religions, incorporating contemporary knowledge about human behavior, is necessary for understanding actions of religious people in social and historical circumstances. To this end it proposes an integrated causal model, drawing on Michael Pye’s concept of Religionswissenschaft and Talcott Parsons’s general action theory.

Tenure or Permanent Contracts in North American Higher Education? A Critical Assessment

This article offers a critical perspective on the academic tenure system in the USA. Academic tenure is most frequently defended for the protection it affords freedom of speech in higher education, and it is attacked for its cost and lack of flexibility in a rapidly changing sector. The paper makes a third argument, that tenure sustains an unhealthy divide between tenured, untenured, and non-tenure-track staff members. It leads to differences in status, income, and job satisfaction that are inimical to basic principles of social justice. While financial considerations are a powerful factor in university efforts to constrain or challenge tenure, the maintenance of the tenure system and its use to control entry to permanent employment needs further examination. The author explores the system of ‘permanent’ contracts common in British and Australasian universities as an alternative for the USA – not because it benefits entrepreneurial university managers and administrators, but for its potential to offer a greater range of career positions for actual and potential staff members.

Not a Luxury, But a Necessity: Toward Transgressive Teaching

Not a Luxury, but a Necessity:Toward Transgressive Teaching Nami Kim (bio) I still remember the excitement I felt two years ago about the prospect of participating in the "Teaching for Change" conference. I was excited about the conference; as a "brand-new," struggling teacher, I hoped and expected that the conference would shed some light on the many questions I had regarding teaching and scholarship, and their relationships to the transformation of both the academy and religious institutions. Two years later, I still have many and maybe even more questions. However, what has changed since then is that I am asking different sets of questions: questions that challenge me to become more accountable and (self-)critical in the process of producing and reproducing [End Page 112] knowledge, and that urge me to reexamine my own commitment to teaching and scholarship that seeks to change society. In this brief reflection on my experience and thoughts about feminist "Teaching for Change," I focus on three interrelated conference highlights as a guidance to affirm what I have learned from the conference and to address some of the issues with which I continue to wrestle. First, the call for an ongoing critical analysis of the institution and the renewed vision of teaching for change the conference participants articulated challenged me to reexamine my own teaching context more critically. Many feminist/womanist teacher-scholars and/or activists who were at the conference voiced their concerns over the increasing corporatization of the academic institutions in U.S. higher education. The conference was an alarming call for me to be aware of institutional aspects of teaching context as a site where knowledges are manufactured as well as contested. In this light, I realized that reexamination of my teaching context includes understanding not only who my students are but also what kind of academic institution I am situated in. As Chandra Talpade Mohanty has explained, the academic institution is one of the few "contested sites crucial to feminist struggles" and, at the same time, the space that "determines the everyday material and ideological conditions" of my work as a teacher and a scholar.1 To what extent does this institution provide spaces for feminist engagement and practices when global market economy, U.S. imperialism, and the religious Right is forming evermore-solid alliances? What are the institutional supports for or roadblocks to teaching and engaging in feminist studies in religion, especially when technology savvy "generation Y" students and their "helicopter parents" view themselves as "rightful consumers" of the academic institution, where they can get necessary credentials to become "successful" global consumer-citizens? Does this institution affirm the teaching that "enables transgressions—a movement against and beyond boundaries"2 when education tends to become another "commodity"? Asking these questions, I continue to struggle over what my roles and responsibilities are as a teacher at this historical juncture in which students expect to become "winning players" in the competitive global markets, and how I can challenge students to engage in critical thinking and enable the classroom to become "the most radical space of possibility in the academy."3 A close examination of my own teaching context in relation to the broader social, political, and economic context has also pushed me to look more critically at how I am implicated in this contested site of struggle through my teaching [End Page 113] and scholarship. In other words, examining teaching context also includes a critical assessment of my participation as a racialized-gendered person in the production and reproduction of various forms of knowledge in the U.S. academy. The second issue I'd like to address is how the conference reaffirmed the importance of the ongoing examination of the relationship between knowledge production and its relationship to power. To what extent does our work challenge or reinscribe the politics of knowledge that "naturalizes global capitalism and business-as-usual in North American higher education"?4 How do we implicitly and explicitly maintain the status quo or even inadvertently serve the interests of the religious Right in conjunction with global capitalism through our engagement in the production and distribution of knowledge? As bell hooks and many other feminists have critically explained...

Classroom Critiques: Transforming Conformity into Creativity

North American higher education finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, it accepts droves of freshmen who equate learning with rote memorization and who correlate achievement with the ability to pass narrowly focused standardized tests. On the other hand, it is expected to contribute to the country's cultural and economic vibrancy by graduating engaged citizens and creative professionals. After contextualizing its desirability and the support for its efficacy, this paper discusses how one pedagogical technique - the classroom critique - can help higher education to resolve the discrepancy between the improperly prepared student and the excellence a college education is expected to impart. The author suggests that this neo-Socratic method can not only help to correct previous educational deficiencies but can also nurture the civic and creative skills necessary to a democratic society and required by a competitive business community.

"Drop it like it's hot": Releasing Scholar-Baller™ Voices and Changing the "Character of the Discourse" in North America's Post-Secondary Institutions

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the synergy of education, sport and entertainment from the perspective of one faculty member, his former students, and student-athletes across the country. The Scholar-Baller movement, supported by the NCAA, is summarized in the context of North American higher education.

Voting With Their Feet: Students, Faculty and the Future of Higher Education

Looks at the challenges facing higher education in the future. Highlights the combined problem of unprecedented student demand for places and the acceleration in the retirement of existing professors that is facing North American higher education. Suggests that this problem has been at least in part addressed through the use of part‐time or adjunct professors. However, it is argued that these models create administrative problems and re not to the advantage of the professors or the standards of education. Explores the tension between academics and university administrators.

Control and independence strayegies for large geography classes

Abstract A variety of innovations from UK institutions are described that tackle the problems of larger geography classes and more students. Each is set out according to a common format. The introduction sets these UK innovations in the particular context of developments in North American higher education and in the wider context of control and independence strategies for dealing with higher student: staff ratios.