Review of Research on Spiritual and Religious Formation in Higher Education

College students have diverse ways of expressing their spirituality. The purpose of this review is to examine and critique the research used to study college students’ spiritual and religious formation. Implications for faculty, student affairs professionals, and ministers doing research on spiritual formation in higher education are discussed.

Implementation of service -learning in higher education courses: Perceptions of faculty

This study examined the motivation of college and university faculty to implement service-learning into their traditional courses. The benefits derived by faculty, as well as those issues of maintenance, including supports and/or obstacles, were also investigated in relation to their impact on motivation. The focus was on generating theory from the emerging data. ^ Data were collected from interviews with 17 faculty teaching courses that included a component of service-learning. A maximum variation sampling of participants from six South Florida colleges and universities was utilized. Faculty participants represented a wide range of academic disciplines, faculty ranks, years of experience in teaching and using service-learning as well as gender and ethnic diversity. For data triangulation, a focus group with eight additional college faculty was conducted and documents, including course syllabi and institutional service-learning handbooks, collected during the interviews were examined. The interviews were transcribed and coded using traditional methods as well as with the assistance of the computerized assisted qualitative data analysis software, Atlas.ti. The data were organized into five major categories with themes and sub-themes emerging for each. ^ While intrinsic or personal factors along with extrinsic factors all serve to influence faculty motivation, the study's findings revealed that the primary factors influencing faculty motivation to adopt service-learning were those that were intrinsic or personal in nature. These factors included: (a) past experiences, (b) personal characteristics including the value of serving, (c) involvement with community service, (d) interactions and relationships with peers, (e) benefits to students, (f) benefits to teaching, and (g) perceived career benefits. Implications and recommendations from the study encompass suggestions for administrators in higher education institutions for supporting and encouraging faculty adoption of service-learning including a well developed infrastructure as well as incentives, particularly during the initial implementation period, rewards providing recognition for the academic nature of service-learning and support for the development of peer relationships among service-learning faculty. ^

Supporting Students with Intellectual Disabilities in Higher Education through Mentoring

Federal legislation is now making it possible for students with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) to enroll in university programs through inclusive transition models. The need for more knowledge in the workplace, in addition to newly acquired opportunities, draws students with ID to college campuses. With this increase of student in postsecondary education settings, it is necessary to examine the types of supports needed to ensure their success. Peer mentorship has been identified as a crucial aspect of support for academic and social development. This paper identifies the skills mentors use during their sessions and outlines challenges with mentoring partnerships in postsecondary transition programs. Data analysis revealed major themes related to inclusion, self-determination, and adaptive behavior skills.

Academic Risk-Taking in Higher Education

Little is known about how adults learn to take risks. However, learning to take risks can be beneficial to adults who fear uncertainty or struggle with academic achievement. Higher education can play a leading role in embracing risk-taking and raising the interest level of adult learners through strategic learning activities.

Negotiating queer and religious identities in higher education: queering ‘progression’ in the ‘university experience’

This article addresses the negotiation of ‘queer religious’ student identities in UK higher education. The ‘university experience’ has generally been characterised as a period of intense transformation and self-exploration, with complex and overlapping personal and social influences significantly shaping educational spaces, subjects and subjectivities. Engaging with ideas about progressive tolerance and becoming, often contrasted against ‘backwards’ religious homophobia as a sentiment/space/subject ‘outside’ education, this article follows the experiences and expectations of queer Christian students. In asking whether notions of ‘queering higher education’ (Rumens 2014 Rumens, N. 2014. “Queer Business: Towards Queering the Purpose of the Business School.” In The Entrepreneurial University: Public Engagements, Intersecting Impacts, edited by Y. Taylor, 82–104. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.) ‘fit’ with queer-identifying religious youth, the article explores how educational experiences are narrated and made sense of as ‘progressive’. Educational transitions allow (some) sexual-religious subjects to negotiate identities more freely, albeit with ongoing constraints. Yet perceptions of what, where and who is deemed ‘progressive’ and ‘backwards’ with regard to sexuality and religion need to be met with caution, where the ‘university experience’ can shape and shake sexual-religious identity.

The Reversal of Gender Inequalities in Enrollment in Higher Education in Cape Verde

Higher education is nowadays the main driver of development of knowledge, science and hence, the wellbeing of various people in different countries. On the other hand, gender inequalities represent a delay toward this status. Gender inequalities have been proven to be a great barrier to the development of the full human being’s potential and if it manifests in education, their effect will be worse. This research paper seeks to determine what drives the reversal of gender inequalities in enrollment in higher education in Cape Verde. The paper outlines the struggles for a more equal society and look for different reasons behind this phenomenon. This study has brought out some barriers that interfere with an equal enrollment in that level of Education. The objective of this study is to raise awareness about the need to change the positive measures related to girls, and use some of them to encourage boys in the education field because they are lagging behind in all levels of education.

'Always Connected’: Transforming Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

The argument of this chapter is that the idea that young people and students being ‘always connected’ should not be seen as being polarized into good or bad, but instead there is a need to see being connected as ‘learning at the interstices’. It also suggests that there is a need to be aware of the impact of digital governance on teaching and learning space. This chapter therefore introduce questions about the value and impact of always being connected and the impact and possible transformation it could have on teaching and learning in higher education.

All the Lab's a Stage: the Use of Drama to Promote Engagement in Higher Education Science

Communicating science can be challenging at any educational level. We used informal and experiential learning to engage groups of potential University applicants in one project that involved staging a play in one of the teaching laboratories at the University of Worcester whilst a second project designed a play in house and took this to schools. In the first project the plot centred on stem cell research. School pupils and students from FE Colleges were offered complementary sessions including a lecture exploring the science behind stem cell research, a discussion on ethical aspects involved and a practical using university facilities. We ascertained attitudes to Higher Education in the students participating before and after the event. We found an enhanced view of the science and a highly significant change in attitude to attending University for students taking vocational subjects at FE level. The second project was aimed at exploring attitudes to ethics and animal welfare among a cohort of 15 – 18 year olds. Students engaged with the issues in the drama to a high degree. Our conclusions are that drama is an excellent way to inform potential students about higher education and HE level science in particular. Additionally we demonstrated the importance of events taking place at HE institutions in order to maximise change in attitudes to HE.

Gaining by Giving? Peer Research into Service User and Carer Perceptions of Inclusivity in Higher Education

Service users and carers (SUAC) have made significant contributions to professional training in social work courses in Higher Education (HE) over the past decade in the UK. Such participation has been championed by government, academics and SUAC groups from a range of theoretical and political perspectives. Most research into the effectiveness of SUAC involvement at HE has come from the perspectives of academics and very little SUAC-led research exists. This qualitative peer research was led by two members of the University of Worcester’s SUAC group. Findings were that SUAC perceived their involvement brought benefits to students, staff, the University and the local community. Significant personal benefits such as finding a new support network, increased self-development and greater confidence to manage their own care were identified in ways that suggested that the benefits that can flow from SUAC involvement at HE are perhaps more far-reaching than previously recognised. Barriers to inclusion were less than previously reported in the literature and the humanising effects of SUAC involvement are presented as a partial antidote to an increasingly marketised HE culture.

Widening participation in higher education: the role of professional and social class identities and commitments

Since the neoliberal reforms to British education in the 1980s, education debates have been saturated with claims to the efficacy of the market as a mechanism for improving the content and delivery of state education. In recent decades with the expansion and ‘massification’ of higher education, widening participation (WP) has acquired an increasingly important role in redressing the under-representation of certain social groups in universities. Taken together, these trends neatly capture the twin goals of New Labour’s programme for education reform: economic competitiveness and social justice. But how do WP professionals negotiate competing demands of social equity and economic incentive? In this paper we explore how the hegemony of neoliberal discourse – of which the student as consumer is possibly the most pervasive – can be usefully disentangled from socially progressive, professional discourses exemplified through the speech and actions of WP practitioners and managers working in British higher education institutions.

Tweeting the lecture : how social media can increase student engagement in higher education

Extracurricular language activities in higher education: Perspectives of teachers and students

This Master’s thesis researches the topic “Extracurricular language activities in higher education: Perspectives of teachers and students”. In the light of several learning theories, namely, Self-Determination Theory, Social Learning Theory and Incidental Learning Theory, extracurricular participation in language related activities is studied. The main aims of the research are as follows: to study how extracurricular language activities can be organized and supported by the education institution; to investigate how such activities can promote the participants’ learning; and, to research how these activities can be developed and improved in the future. Due to the qualitative character of this research, the empirical data collected through interviews and their thematic analysis allow to study the participants’ perceptions on the above-mentioned issues. Among other results of the research, it can be noted that the organizers of extracurricular language activities and the participants of the activities may have different perspectives on the aims of the activities, as well as their advantages. Additionally, it has been found that the participants of activities would often speak on certain categories that imply the connection to some learning theories, which allows to hypothesize that some learning could be observed in those participants, following participation in extracurricular activities. This is an implication for further research in the area, which can focus on correlations between participation in extracurricular language activities and learning outcomes of the participants.

Tracing the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education

This chapter presents a comprehensive view of the main activities and findings of a research project entitled TRACER-Portuguese Public Higher Education Use of Communication Technologies, which focused on how the information about the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education Institutions  can be collected, systematized, processed, and deployed to stakeholders. The project was carried out between 2011 and 2014 and its main results are a consolidated proposal of an analysis model to address the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education institutions, as well as the U-TRACER® tool. This Web-based tool provides support to the process of collecting, processing, and deployment of data related with the use of Communication Technologies in a specific Higher Education or in a group of institutions, based on institutional or geographical criteria.

Children of Matter: Luxury Value Perceptions of Millennials in Higher Education in Europe

In recent years, the luxury market has entered a period of very modest growth, which has been dubbed the ‘new normal’, where varying tourist flows, currency fluctuations, and shifted consumer tastes dictate the terms. The modern luxury consumer is a fickle mistress. Especially millennials – people born in the 1980s and 1990s – are the embodiment of this new form of demanding luxury consumer with particular tastes and values. Modern consumers, and specifically millennials, want experiences and free time, and are interested in a brand’s societal position and environmental impact. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what the luxury value perceptions of millennials in higher education are in Europe, seeing as many of the most prominent luxury goods companies in the world originate from Europe. Perceived luxury value is herein examined from the individual’s perspective. As values and value perceptions are complex constructs, using qualitative research methods is justifiable. The data for thesis has been gathered by means of a group interview. The interview participants all study hospitality management in a private college, and each represent a different nationality. Cultural theories and research on luxury and luxury values provide the scientific foundation for this thesis, and a multidimensional luxury value model is used as a theoretical tool in sorting and analyzing the data. The results show that millennials in Europe value much more than simply modern and hard luxury. Functional, financial, individual, and social aspects are all present in perceived luxury value, but some more in a negative sense than others. Conspicuous, status-seeking consumption is mostly frowned upon, as is the consumption of luxury goods for the sake of satisfying social requisites and peer pressure. Most of the positive value perceptions are attributed to the functional dimension, as luxury products are seen to come with a promise of high quality and reliability, which justifies any price premiums. Ecological and ethical aspects of luxury are already a contemporary trend, but perceived even more as an important characteristic of luxury in the future. Most importantly, having time is fundamental. Depending on who is asked, luxury can mean anything, just as much as it can mean nothing.

Curriculum, content and controversy in higher education

Recent evidence suggest that academic staff face difficulties in applying new technologies as a means of assessing higher order assessment outcomes such as critical thinking, problem solving and creativity. Although higher education institutional mission statements and course unit outlines purport the value of these higher order skills there is still some question about how well academics are equipped to design curricula and, in particular, assessment strategies accordingly. Despite a rhetoric avowing the benefits of these higher order skills, it has been suggested that academics set assessment tasks up in such a way as to inadvertently lead students on the path towards lower order outcomes. This is a controversial claim, and one that this paper seeks to explore and critique in terms of challenging the conceptual basis of assessing higher order skills through new technologies. It is argued that the use of digital media in higher education is leading to a focus on student's ability to use and manipulate of these products as an index of their flexibility and adaptability to the demands of the knowledge economy. This focus mirrors market flexibility and encourages programmes and courses of study to be rhetorically packaged as such. Curricular content has becomes a means to procure more or less elaborate aggregates of attributes. Higher education is now charged with producing graduates who are entrepreneurial and creative in order to drive forward economic sustainability. It is argued that critical independent learning can take place through the democratisation afforded by cultural and knowledge digitization and that assessment needs to acknowledge the changing relations between audience and author, expert and amateur, creator and consumer.