Privileging elite academic pedigrees in graduate admissions preserves racial and socioeconomic inequities that many institutions say they wish to reduce. To understand this preference, I integrate across perspectives on trust in rational choice, social capital, and social network theories, and use the resulting framework to interpret 68 interviews…

Life is full of ambiguities, but as teachers we generally try to teach our students in a manner that sanitizes knowledge of all of its ambiguities. In doing so, we create an educational environment which forces students to learn in a rather meaningless fashion and this in turn leads to a lack of vitality and relevance within the academy. This need…

In this conceptual contribution to the study of university governance the authors will approach potential patterns of behavior of key decision-makers at central university level, i.e. roles of governance actors, as well as the set of factors that shape and constrain the governance actor's room of manoevre and provide avenues to explain varying…

This study highlights the impact technology can have on the teaching-learning environment to the point of influencing and altering the educational ecosystem. A 5-point Likert scale was designed to elicit tertiary level instructors' attitudes regarding the use of ICT in their professional lives at an institution of higher education in North…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) require a major shift in instructional practices among teachers. Such changes cause much uncertainty as teachers' roles and identities begin to change. Major school reform creates difficulty for school leaders who must develop teacher support and dedication to 'top-down' reform initiatives in their…

All large high schools have teachers in middle tier roles who help run the school, and subject leaders (SLs) who engage in administrative and pedagogical practices to improve departmental achievements. By applying structuration theory (Giddens, 1984. "The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration." Berkeley, CA:…

Upon hearing a novel word, language learners must identify its correct meaning from a diverse set of situationally relevant options. Such referential ambiguity could be reduced through "repetitive" exposure to the novel word across diverging learning situations, a learning mechanism referred to as "cross-situational learning."…

The growing popularity and push for engagement in education abroad programs in the U.S. and globally, coupled with the need to demonstrate tangible benefits, has increased focus on how best to assess impact beyond academic outcomes. The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate a brief education abroad assessment that focuses on key…

The aim of this article is twofold: first, to identify and address three central divisions in the field of authentic education that introduce ambiguity and at times inconsistencies within the field of authentic education. These divisions concern a) the relationship between autonomy and authenticity; b) the division between the two basic attitudes…

Current models of idiom representation and processing differ with respect to the role of literal processing during the interpretation of idiomatic expressions. Word-like models (Bobrow & Bell, 1973; Swinney & Cutler, 1979) propose that idiomatic meaning can be accessed directly, whereas structural models (Cacciari & Tabossi, 1988;…

Encouraging students to engage with principles and ideas is one way to address ambiguity with consistent, effective approaches in situations made up of "gray area." This includes the looming post-college world where students may be unsure about choosing between job offers, geographic locations, or even communication fields. Such…

At the urging of the U.S. Department of Education, regional accrediting organizations have, during the last few years, placed much greater emphasis on implementation of assessment as a requirement for accreditation. The battle to control the terms of assessment and ambiguity surrounding those terms impacts the 3,000 colleges that are subject to…

This paper is about the notion of conflict in the work of John Dewey. Special attention is given to "Democracy and Education" (1916) because of its centennial and its acclaimed status of "magnum opus". After depicting "conflicts as gadflies" that stir thinking--reflection and ingenuity--and relating it to Socrates, in…

Purpose: This study was designed to examine the relationships among minority dialect use, language ability, and young African American English (AAE)-speaking children's understanding and awareness of Mainstream American English (MAE). Method: Eighty-three 4- to 8-year-old AAE-speaking children participated in 2 experimental tasks. One task…

Four- to 10-year-olds' and adults' (N = 263) ability to inhibit privileged knowledge and simulate a naïve perspective were examined. Participants viewed pictures that were then occluded aside from a small ambiguous part. They offered suggestions for how a naïve person might interpret the hidden pictures, as well as rated the probability…