While public colleges and universities have a long history of engaging in the political process, relatively little is known about their activities. This study attempts to examine, both theoretically and empirically, the relationship between state economic, demographic, political, and policy contexts and state public higher education interest group…

We describe an exercise for introducing undergraduate students to the practice of assigning tasks to followers and illustrating that proper task assignment is contingent on context. Students are assigned the roles of "manager" or "employee," and managers instruct employees how to create a penholder out of Mega Bloks® using only…

This study explores variation in willingness to communicate (WTC) in English between whole-class interaction and dyadic and group interaction, and teacher interaction strategies identified to sustain students' WTC in whole-class interaction that primarily followed the initiation-response-feedback (IRF) pattern. Data were collected from a regular…

Writing experiences have a crucial role in the wellbeing of academics and PhD researchers and this paper seeks to extend a body of work on writing retreats, by exploring them from a wellbeing perspective. Drawing from literature on wellbeing and the practical experience of developing and delivering writing retreats, it highlights wellbeing…

The problem-solving process is investigated for five groups of students when solving context-rich problems in an introductory physics course included in an engineering programme. Through transcripts of their conversation, the paths in the problem-solving process have been traced and related to a general problem-solving model. All groups exhibit…

This study aimed to assess the perceived impact of young people's active engagement in ensemble music making. Sixty-two non-music university students were asked to report on the impact that their participation in music making had on their lives. The data were analysed using Atlas.ti software. There was a reported positive impact on social, musical…

To prepare students for effective workplace learning, it is necessary to have insight into the contextual characteristics that affect students' developing interest. Aiming at students to become self-regulated learners, teachers should act as mindful coaches, encouraging their students to monitor the quality of collaborative group work. A field…

The aim of this article is to identify concepts and methods for studying collaboration in context. The article presents a two-level methodology designed to combine individual and group-level perspectives for the evaluation of collaborative knowledge construction in student groups. The group-level analysis is focused on the students' negotiation…

An appropriate understanding of the nature of the scientific enterprise (NOSE) is a key element of scientific literacy and can arguably be influenced through an exploration of the history of science. An elective, undergraduate History of Science course was organized in the form of small-group discussion-based inquiries into the history of science…