For several decades, Western universities have been subject to wide-ranging structural, financial and ideological changes. These changes have problematised afresh the meaning of academic identity as evidenced by the emergence of a substantial, international, anglophone research literature. This article examines how the idea of academic identity…

Students often see college courses as the presentation of disconnected facts, especially in the life sciences. Student-created Structure Mechanism/Relationship Function (SMRF) models were analyzed to understand students' abilities to make connections between genotype, phenotype, and evolution. Students were divided into two sections; one section…

Despite the unanimous agreement regarding the positive outcomes of learner engagement, theorists and researchers draw attention to the disparate conceptualizations and structural models of "engagement" construct. The present study, in this respect, attempts to contribute to the development of a theoretical framework by suggesting a…

"Coupling" is a concept used within education, business, and organizational management literature. Its application to organizational management literature allows researchers to understand how organizations function. This article argues that coupling theory can be applied to advising systems' technical (practice) and authoritative…

Proper institutional planning requires accurate enrollment forecasts. This is especially true in the community college context given open enrollment policies and reliance on public funds. Despite the importance of this task, enrollment forecasts are relatively disconnected from theoretical advances in the study of retention and enrollment. In this…

This paper, while conceptual in nature, is informed by both research and practice. Exploring the "engagement interface" as the site for student engagement (SE), we offer a conceptual contribution in engaging with the Kahu and Nelson (2018) model by bringing in a fuller understanding of SE grounded in the higher education context rather…

Dr. Elfreda Chatman was a professor of library and information science at the University of North Carolina and Florida State University in the 1990s and early 2000s until her passing in 2002. Her research incorporated the disciplines of education, sociology, and LIS, covering topics at the nexus of these fields, from which she worked to develop a…

In this chapter, I introduce the critical campus ecology model (CCEM) to account for systems of oppression in an individual's ecosystem. Drawing insights from queer geographies and critical whiteness studies, I add "oppressive systems" as the fifth contextual system to the Process-Person-Context-Time model. Forces in the oppressive…

Mentoring is a favoured practice in many fields, including teacher education. This article challenges the uncritical acceptance of the beneficial effects of mentoring, by developing a novel conceptual model which allows to theorise and study mentoring as a discursive practice, focusing on the relations between all actors involved (i.e. teacher…

The Dual Pathway to Creativity Model theorizes that creative performance arises from cognitive flexibility, persistence, or a combination of the two. Existing research has only examined these pathways independently, limiting our understanding of the model and of how people generate ideas. We extend the DPCM model by predicting that creative output…

Purpose: Critically, to improve and manage online learning quality (OLQUAL), higher education providers need to regularly measure OLQUAL. Hence, a reliable measure of OLQUAL in higher education from the students' perspective is indispensable. Further, as a pioneer in examining OLQUAL outcomes in the online education context, we assert that…

This article describes a two-credit critical service-learning course at the University of Minnesota and its evolution to utilize both the Social Change Model and Social Action, Leadership, and Transformation models in complementary ways to support student leadership development.

This article traces the journey and outcomes of research undertaken by evaluating theoretical wellbeing models and practice research. The findings have culminated in the new Universal Wellbeing Model (UWM). Emerging from this UWM are innovative ways to support and inform higher and wellbeing education and social learning in praxis. The innovations…

Background: It is well established in the literature that active learning instruction in introductory STEM courses results in many desired student outcomes. Yet, regular use of high-quality active learning is not the norm in many STEM departments. Using results of a national survey, we identified 16 departments where multiple instructors reported…

This literature-based study traces the emergence and application of theoretical frameworks and conceptual models applied to the study of higher education transfer students and practices. From the application of early theories in economics and anthropology dating back to the 18th century, to the development of transfer-specific frameworks as…