Abstract Cultural Landscapes

Fred B. Kniffen's career as an educator and scholar spanned more than 60 years (1929-1993). The Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University, countless undergraduate and graduate students who had the good fortune to study under his thoughtful guidance, and American academic geography all bear an indelible imprint of Kniffen's eclectic interests, academic leadership, meticulous scholarship and innovative teaching. To generations of students, Kniffen was an exemplary role model and kindly "father figure." His students were encouraged to work in the field. As graduate advisor, he ensured that students were well versed in the history and philosophy of the discipline, as well as possessing a broad understanding of both physical geography and cultural anthropology. As an educator, perhaps his most lasting contribution was the work ethic and genuine love and enthusiasm for geography that he imparted to students.     

Delayed,deferred and dropped out: geographies of Filipino-Canadian high school students

Models representing the assimilation of post-Second World War immigrants to North America use the academic achievement of children of first-generation immigrants as a benchmark of social mobility. Filipino youths in Canada fall short of this benchmark – they neither meet nor exceed their parents’ academic achievements. While concern with outcomes is a useful starting point, I suggest that there is a need to interrogate how and where students are produced as different. To do this, I attend to the geographies in the narratives of youths gathered from Filipino high school students in Vancouver (unceded Coast Salish Territories). I examine how they negotiate the spaces of transnational migration, their lives as students and spaces where their educational trajectories are deferred and delayed. I argue that the geographies of transnational migration and family should be held together with spaces of the school and education when considering academic outcomes.     

Foundation Degrees in Geography and Tourism: A Critical Reflection on Student Experiences and the Implications for Undergraduate Degree Courses

Over the last decade, some UK Geography Departments have diversified their range of courses to offer Foundation degrees (Fds), providing students with alternative routes through higher education (HE). These courses are delivered either offsite at further education colleges (FECs), embedded within an undergraduate programme at higher education institutions (HEIs), or by work-based learning. These pathways present students, staff and institutions with new opportunities, issues and challenges. This study examines contrasting pathways of offsite and onsite Fds in Tourism Management and Development Geography offered by two HEIs and two FECs in southwest England. The needs and experiences of Fd students are varied, related to the individual's personal and academic background, the course pathway taken, institution-specific issues and the degree of support and preparedness for HE. The contrasting academic cultures, teaching methods and assessments encountered in FECs and HEIs, and the availability of resources, raise generic and specific issues, such as confidence building and learning to become independent and autonomous learners, which challenge Geography and Tourism students during their academic careers. This study concludes that closer collaboration between the HEI and the partner FEC is necessary for Geography and Tourism courses, and highlights the need for better alignment and reinforcement of HE systems in FECs, for instance through fieldwork, and the offering effective induction and support in study skills. Finally, it is important to facilitate the smooth transitions of students ‘topping-up’ to Year 3 of an Honours degree at the parent HEI. Managers of undergraduate courses in Geography and associated subjects can also learn from the vocational and contextualized learning promoted by Fd courses and direct entry students to undergraduate courses.     

Multiple Intelligence Styles in Relation to Improved Academic Performance in Kuwaiti Middle School Reading

Research was conducted with middle‐school Kuwaiti children to assess the effectiveness of student multiple intelligence styles in predicting students' improved reading skills through academic performance. A group of middle school students who had received first quarter grades and enrolled in an after‐school tutoring program were studied, with half of the students in a traditional tutoring program and the other half in a Gardner multiple intelligence style‐tutoring program. Results show that the students in the experimental group (mean = 48.99), whose multiple intelligence was applied to learning, performed better overall for the academic year than the students in the control group (mean = 45.30) who studied using traditional teaching methodology. Gender, school type, and residential living area were all analyzed within the experimental group. The experimental group results show that, with regards to grades during each quarter period, female students attending private institutions living in suburban areas had greater reading improvement.     

年谱散论

年谱起源问题 ,学术界有不同看法 ,但从实际出发 ,年谱起源于宋 ,这是有其历史条件的。年谱的出现为谱学发展开辟了一条新的途径 ,是史学发展的一个重要方面。年谱有自撰年谱 ,有谱主的朋友 ,门人弟子和子孙为之撰写的 ,这些年谱有溢美掩恶的弊病 ,但年谱在研究历史人物 ,研究历史上 ,其重要学术价值是明显的。年谱的写作有很高的要求。     

Clear the Mind of Pre-conceived Ideas and Get Your Hands Dirty! An Approach to Field-based Courses: The SLUSE-southern Africa Experience

This paper explores an approach to problem-oriented, interdisciplinary field-based courses devised by university consortia in southern Africa and Denmark. The SLUSE (Sustainable Land Use and Natural Resource Management) model has been applied on six three-week field courses within southern Africa and trained over 200 students. Student groups composed of individuals from different academic disciplines that investigated problems specifically devised to integrate social and natural science approaches set the stage for an interdisciplinary approach. The field locations are in rural areas that have a legacy of marginalization, poverty and reliance on natural resources for at least part of their livelihoods thus allowing for environmental and natural resource issues to be investigated. Course evaluations show that students feel they gain invaluable exposure to the innovative field-based learning environment created by the SLUSE approach. The main benefit perceived by hosting local communities was an increase in their self-esteem and to harness the knowledge and experience gained from the courses to further enrich their own communities. On reflection, the students value the opportunity to work cross-culturally, and trying new techniques on ‘real’ issues. To many students the personal challenges they face adjusting to the demands of the field course are as important as the academic outputs.     

论清末的省界观念

清末的省界观念,学界对其在多个领域中的普遍存在缺乏清晰的认识和更进一步的探究.其实,到了清末,以地缘情结为基础的省界观念无论是在地方政权体系、私营经济领域当中,还是在留学生特别是留日学生群体、资产阶级革命派当中,都广泛地存在着,并产生着极其恶劣的影响.直到21世纪的今天,省界观念依然如幽灵一般无处不在,因此,涤荡省界意识,有着重要的现实意义和价值.     

Dancing to Different Tunes: Conveying Latin American realities to composite classes

Students are often attracted to courses about Latin America by media images of the region with their aura of danger and unpredictability. Such stereotypes must be addressed in teaching, but the means is far from clear when the participants stem from different disciplinary backgrounds and academic traditions. The method adopted here was to tackle development through discourse construction through an appreciation of positionality. This approach enabled students to draw on their respective backgrounds and experience critically; it also ensured that students appreciated the core concepts embedded in the discipline, while engaging in a challenging way with the issues raised by Latin American development.     

Teaching energy geographies via videography

In our digital age of information acquisition, multimedia information streams are constant, constantly changing and often contain multiple messages about topics important to everyday life, such as energy geographies. Recognizing that college students are prime consumers of digital information, it seems that crafting of academic engagement for and with students that is in touch with the knowledge networks they utilize and will continue to be part of today and into the future is important. Engaging students in the production of videos about important topics, such as energy geographies, aids them in becoming critical producers of knowledge.     

中国人日本留学史料补遗--兼谈日本亚细亚大学的中国留学生教育

笔者在日本亚细亚大学任教期间,通过资料查询和走访调查,发现了被我国中日关系史及留学日本史研究界忽视了的有关日本战后首批正式招收中国留日学生的史料。史料证明,战后第一批留学日本的是中国香港地区的学生,这既是中日两国在战后文化交流的一个重要侧面,也为战后日本亚细亚大学的成立与发展提供了一个契机。     

A history of anatomy theaters in sixteenth-century Padua

The history of anatomy includes not only professors and the support of their institutions but also medical students. Because medical students were quick to assess a teacher's pedagogy, their complaints tell us a great deal about the transition from Galenic to Aristotelian projects of anatomy. When Fabricius of Aquapendente instituted a new style of anatomical inquiry, one based on Aristotle and the search for universal principles, students repeatedly complained that his demonstrations did not provide technical education in structural anatomy (as demonstrations employing a hands-on, Galenic pedagogy did). Within the new anatomy theater (the second of its kind in Padua), however, students were persuaded to accept Fabricius's demonstrations. Fabricius's philosophical orientation combined with the formal atmosphere and aesthetic features of the new theater to create anatomy demonstrations that relied on orations and music for their structure (rather than on the progressive stages of human dissection). A place that emphasized a discourse of anatomy as the study of the "secrets of nature," the new theater so effectively publicized a new style of anatomy that a larger, more diverse group of spectators attended subsequent demonstrations and participated in the celebration of leading academic figures as well as the institution of the university.     

Investigating student use and value of e-learning resources to develop academic writing within the discipline of environmental science

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education to support student learning is expanding. However, student usage has been low and the value of e-learning resources has been under investigation. We reflect on best practices for pedagogical design of e-learning resources to support academic writing in environmental science. A case study demonstrates that where resources are embedded into the curriculum they are highly valued by students with on average 83% of the class accessing files. Students were confident at writing tasks indicating that the resources effectively met their needs and expectations and enabled them to further develop discipline-specific writing skills. Scaffolded e-learning resources, designed around the identified threshold concepts of writing within the discipline, incorporating a knowledge narrative of explicit instruction and a strong teacher presence, delivered in a sequential manner and embedded into the curriculum, are valued and highly used by students in academic writing tasks.     

LABORING FOR LOVE? A COMMENT ON ACADEMICS AND THEIR HOURS OF WORK

Evidence would suggest that for those in work, the rigors of the contemporary labor market require them to work longer and harder than was previously the case. While new workplace cultures of obsessive over-work have been documented amongst professionals in the private sector, the parallels have rarely been drawn with academic work. This paper uses original research material collated by students at Southampton University to discuss the changing nature of academic work and illustrate the social costs resulting from long hours of labor.     

Advice and reflections for a university teacher beginning an academic career

Although graduate programs typically prepare university students well for research activity, many have been less successful in educating for other aspects of academic careers. This article discusses Iain Hay's “Letter to a New University Teacher,” which has been used internationally to help new lecturers beginning their career. Prepared as an autoethnographic account for a recent graduate, “The Letter” distils principles held to underpin a successful academic career. Five university teachers and academic managers discuss critically the content and their applications of “The Letter” and make some suggestions for its use in continuously transforming higher education contexts.     

Learning Styles in Relation to Academic Performance in Middle School Mathematics

Research was conducted with middle‐school Kuwaiti children to assess the effectiveness of student learning styles in predicting students' academic performance in Mathematics. A group of middle school students who had received first quarter grades and enrolled in an after‐school tutoring program were studied, with half of the students in a traditional tutoring program and the other half in a Markova learning style‐tutoring program. Results show that the students in the experimental group (mean = 45.91), whose learning styles were accommodated for, performed better than the students in the control group who studied using the traditional method (mean = 43.80) of teaching. Gender, type of school attended, and area in which the students lived were all analyzed within the experimental group. The experimental group results show that the highest‐grade improvement in Mathematics was found to be predominately male students attending private institutions, and living in the urban areas of Kuwait. Students learn in a variety of ways, and their ability to attain this information also varies. A student's capacity to learn is impacted by the teacher's style of conveying information. Unfortunately, little attention has been given to how children think (Markova, 1992). Often, it is assumed that students' minds operate in the same way as the teacher's does. So much of student failure in school comes directly out of the larger failure to stimulate all those areas in the children's brains, stimulation which could open up their minds in so many ways (Markova, 1992). Student's academic performance is a matter of concern to educators, parents, and students themselves. The ways in which an individual characteristically acquires, retains, and retrieves information are collectively referred to as his or her learning style (Felder and Henriques, 1995). Unfortunately, the manner in which children acquire the information to perform well academically is too often ignored. Considerable research has examined the relationship between students' learning styles and their academic performance (Witkin, 1973; Gregorc, 1979; Claxton and Murrell, 1987; Brunner and Majewski, 1990; Schroeder, 1993; Klavas, 1993). These studies have consistently found that when learning styles were considered in the teaching process, academic performance increased. Schroeder states that accommodating the variations in learning styles could improve curricula and the teaching process (1993). The results of a study by Dunn et al. (1995) suggested that students whose learning styles are accommodated would be expected to achieve 75% of a standard deviation higher than students for whose learning style had not been accommodated. Many researchers have reported that students often classified as poor achievers, learning disabled, at‐risk youth, or dropouts were able to improve their academic performance when instruction was redesigned to respond to their particular learning style preferences (Stone, 1992; Perrin, 1990; Elliot, 1991; Andrews, 1990). Children suffer deeply when their natural way of thinking, of absorbing and processing information, of creating and expressing is criticized, mocked, or ignored (Markova, 1992). However, learning efficiently empowers children to gain confidence since many believe they have learned a skill only after they can perform it easily. Markova acknowledges that many approaches to understanding individual differences include something about the fact that most of us have one sense we are most comfortable using in the learning process. Understanding these patterns of processing information is crucial to finding the most effective ways to educate our children. Markova has identified six patterns of personal thinking, which are different combinations of the perceptual kinesthetic (K), auditory (A), and visual (V) channels. He posits that information is first received by the conscious mind, sorted by the unconscious mind and finally integrated by the subconscious mind (Markova, 1992). The six different combinations (KAV, KVA, AVK, AKV, VKA, and VAK) are referred to as personal thinking patterns and determine the most comfortable and effective way for each learner to learn.     

Introduction

There are significant numbers of international postgraduate students studying in Western universities thanks to scholarships provided by governments and other donors. While these fully funded students are generally welcomed by geography departments, inadequate attention has been paid to considering how to facilitate their learning experiences given the particular impediments they face. Based on research conducted at Massey University, New Zealand, and an extensive literature review, this article argues that academic success is strongly related to the personal well-being of students. Particular pressures were faced by students during the first few months as they adapted to a new cultural, linguistic and learning environment. Female students and those with families faced additional, continuing pressures.     

Performing Academic Practice: Using the Master Class to Build Postgraduate Discursive Competences

How can we find ways of training PhD students in academic practices, while reflexively analysing how academic practices are performed? The paper's answer to this question is based on evaluations from a British–Nordic master class. The paper discusses how master classes can be used to train the discursive skills required for academic discussion, commenting and reporting. Methods used in the master class are: performing and creative arts pedagogical exercises, the use of written provocations to elicit short papers, discussion group exercises, and training in reporting and in panel discussion facilitated by a meta-panel discussion. The authors argue that master classes have the potential to further develop advanced-level PhD training, especially through their emphasis on reflexive engagement in the performance of key academic skills.     

School accessibility and academic achievement in a rural area of Taiwan

This study empirically analyzes the influence of school accessibility on student academic achievement in a rural area of Taiwan. The sample population comprised elementary and junior high-school students in Pinlin, a small village outside Taipei City, the capital of Taiwan. Data were obtained through a questionnaire survey and analyzed via linear regression and ordered logit regression for continuous grade point average and discrete letter grade, respectively. Compared with previous research, this study presents the following new findings: (1) similar to elementary-school children, travel obstacles also negatively affected learning achievement of junior high-school adolescents; (2) travel obstacles affected academic achievement more significantly for adolescents than children; and (3) travel obstacles affected letter grades more significantly than grade point averages in children. The empirical evidence indicates that travel obstacles explain the academic achievements of children and adolescents with moderate or weak significance.     

Are South African Geography education students ready for problem-based learning?

Problem-based learning (PBL) is one of the possible training strategies that could be more fully implemented in the South African formal education system. The intention to migrate from teacher-centred to learner-centred instructions in higher education institutions and schools makes PBL a plausible option. Geography education students might be exposed to PBL because their training implies the acquisition of abilities to solve real-world situations at various geographical scales. This paper explores the perception of second- and third-year students in a BEd programme in Potchefstroom, South Africa. The study uses a mixed-method research approach based on questionnaire application, students' learning journal entries and field notes. Findings from the study indicate that students show very positive perceptions of PBL as a training strategy for teaching and learning. A gender difference regarding general aspects of PBL, independent learning, workload, assessment rubrics and the different role-players in PBL indicates that female students hold more positive perceptions of the PBL experience. Overall, the results indicate that students with higher academic performances in most instances hold more positive perceptions of the PBL experience.     

The Honours Year—A Reflection on the Experience from Four Former Students

An honours year is an introduction to new relationships with supervisors, fellow students, research participants and, importantly, yourself. This paper is based upon the experiences of four former Australian honours students who felt there was a distinct lack of guidance for first-time researchers in the available academic literature. In this paper, we explore the research experiences, processes and relationships that characterize the honours year including, working with theoretical frameworks and the student–supervisor relationship, providing examples from our own experience. We conclude by considering the ethical implications of the research and the power and ethical obligations of the researcher.