Education Commons^™

Barriers Experienced By First Nations Deaf People In The Justice System, Brent Elder, Karen Soldatic, Michael A. Schwartz, Jody Barney, Damien Howard, Patrick Mcgee

College of Education Faculty Scholarship

Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that members of the First Nations Deaf community experience more barriers when engaging with the criminal justice system than those who are not deaf. Therefore, our purpose for writing this article is to highlight legal and policy issues related to First Nations Deaf people, including perspectives of professionals working with these communities, living in Australia who have difficulty in accessing supports within the criminal justice system. In this article, we present data from semi-structured qualitative interviews focused on four key themes: (a) indefinite detention and unfit to plead, (b) a need for an intersectional approach to …

Stress And Coping Mechanisms Of Non-Traditional International Doctoral Students, Ndidi Patience Iwuagwu

Theses and Dissertations

Higher education institutions are battling with the shrinking enrollment rate of students and the various college alternatives (Drozdowski, 2022); however, it has been evidenced in the literature that these issues can be augmented with international student enrollments and adult learners (Donaldson, 2022). Pursuing a doctoral degree is a tedious move (Devonport & Lane, 2014), and leaving one’s comfort zone to study in a different land for non-traditional international students can be exhausting due to the responsibilities at hand. Thus, this qualitative study examines the stressors experienced by non-traditional international doctoral students, the coping mechanisms utilized in the cause of these …

Teaching Librarians’ Experiences Of Individual And Shared Agency: The Lens Of Librarian Relationships And Workplace Culture, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Incorporating Ai Tools To Enhance Information Literacy And Critical Thinking In First Year Medical Students, James Martin, Mercedes Byrd

Rowan-Virtua Research Day

This study aims to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention incorporating medical databases, search engines, and generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools on the critical thinking skills and confidence of first-year medical students at Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine (SOM). Approximately 125 students participating in a three-week pre-matriculation program will be subjects of the study. The intervention will consist of a curriculum focused on developing research questions, using search tools and GAI, evaluating sources, and writing a research paper. Pre- and post-tests, including a CARS assessment and a perceived knowledge and abilities questionnaire, will be administered to measure changes in …

Planning, Outcomes, Oversight: A Linguistic Analysis Of New Jersey Statutes And Reports From 1970 To 1999, Sharon E. Mccann

Theses and Dissertations

Between the decades of 1970 through 1999, there were major shifts in higher education in New Jersey. Utilizing a grounded theory approach this dissertation created a database of legislation, hearings transcripts, and education reports. Searching this database for commonly used terminology, this dissertation was seeking a pattern in language use that could demonstrate the incursion of neoliberal economic terminology into the way high education was discussed during these years. A grounded theory exploration, this dissertation does not claim to have achieved a proven connection between the language shift and decisions made by education leadership. All it can demonstrate is that …

Differences In Drinking Patterns In Graduate Students Based On Degree Type, Faith Shank

Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Fellow Symposium

Graduate school is accompanied by high levels of stress, as students are faced with various responsibilities (El-Ghoroury et al., 2012; Offstein et al., 2004). However, many graduate students have barriers to mental health services, resulting in the use of maladaptive coping mechanisms, specifically alcohol use (Ayala et al., 2017). Related, professional doctoral students (e.g., MD, OD, JD) tend to engage in problematic drinking, with a range of 33-50% drinking heavily (Organ et al., 2016; Waring et al., 1984). There is limited research examining the drinking patterns of students enrolled in different types of programs. We aimed to examine differences in …

Academic Instruction Librarians’ Conceptions Of Teacher Agency And Affective Orientations Toward The Concept, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

This article reports on findings of an online survey on academic instruction librarians’ conceptions and experiences of teacher agency in the context of their instruction work and, more specifically, on their affective orientations (positive, ambivalent, or negative emotions and feelings) toward teacher agency. Two key dimensions of participants’ conceptions of teacher agency are evident throughout this analysis: 1) views of teacher agency as an individual experience of autonomy (individual agency) and/or views of it as more relational and interactive (and thus potentially collective), and 2) beliefs about the feasibility of librarians’ teacher agency, given librarians’ roles and positions as educators. …

Ontological Inquiry In An Undergraduate Communication Course, William B. Strean

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

This essay explores how ontological and somatic approaches were applied in an undergraduate communication course. Beginning by contrasting the assumptions of traditional knowledge and skills-based approaches with the shift to a focus on being within ontological methods, the author expands to show specifically how somatics informed the learning activities and students’ development in communication. After providing examples of the core content of public speaking and interpersonal communication and shares students’ learning and feedback, the author concludes by considering broader possibilities for ontological inquiry and transformative education.

Distinguishing Inauthenticities: The Role Of Personal Storytelling In Engaging With Equality, Diversity And Inclusion In Education, Susie Miles

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

This article challenges the traditional methodology of facilitating conceptual discussions about equality and diversity issues in training workshops, which has resulted in slow progress towards promoting more inclusive cultures in universities. The author puts forward the approach of ontological inquiry which enables individuals to look at and access their own tacit, unconscious, and inherited ways of being and acting. This approach, it is argued, has the potential to strengthen the way in which issues of power and injustice are addressed in universities. The author adopts storytelling as a pedagogical device to expose and invite inquiry about privilege, injustice and the …

Differentiating Modernity (The System Of White Supremacy) And Generating Otherwise Worlds As Publicly Engaged Scholars: What’S Ontological Inquiry Got To Do With It?, Carolyne J. White, Arturo E. Osorio, Tim K. Eatman, Margaret J. Weiss

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

Seeking an answer to Tina Turner’s refrain, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” this article is a rebellious, messy, place-based and deeply collaborative conversation. We draw upon the legacy of theatre and social critique and adopt the literary present tense to evoke a brave intimate space for imagining possibilities beyond the academic conventions of the present epistemological order. We seek to illuminate how ontological inquiry may provoke powerful access to generating new worldmaking for climate justice, particularly when one is being a publicly engaged scholar. Why new worldmaking? Within this unprecedented time of racial reckoning, war, climate catastrophe and …

Editorial Statement: Volume 1, Issue 2, Margarida Garcia, Carolyne J. White, Drew Kopp

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

No abstract provided.

Preferring Print: The Planned Behavior And Preferences Of First-Generation College Students In The Academic Library, Jennifer K. Matthews, Ane Turner Johnson

College of Education Faculty Scholarship

Background: Academic libraries have been adapting and changing their collections with technology. Often this technology has accompanied a transition from physical collections, such as print books, to electronic collections and electronic books. Understanding how this shift away from print formats might affect certain campus populations is essential as electronic collections continue to grow and expand in various academic institutions. Methods: This mixed methods case study aimed to understand how first-generation college students at a public research university use print books versus electronic books. Data was collected in two phases, with the first phase consisting of a Likert scale survey distributed …

Meaningful Work When Work Won't Love You Back: Sociological Imagination And Reflective Teaching Practice (Reports From The Field), Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

This essay explores the tension between pursuing meaningful work in instruction librarianship and the realities of working in a society in which many jobs provide little fulfillment or pleasure, or, as the journalist Sarah Jaffe puts it, “Work won’t love you back.” Drawing on a recent conference keynote by Anne Helen Petersen, C. Wright Mills’s conception of sociological imagination, and an ecological model of teacher agency, I propose that one way librarians can sustain their teaching practices and preserve their well-being is by actively investigating how social structures and relationships influence their teaching roles.

Navigating Online Information Spaces With Lateral Reading: Lessons Learned From Two Librarians Working With Students And Educators, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

As online content’s credibility has gotten harder and harder to evaluate, librarians and other educators have been growing their strategies for teaching online source evaluation. One of those strategies is “lateral reading,” the practice of quickly evaluating a web source by seeing what others on the web say about that source. On the surface, lateral reading is quite simple. However, effective lateral reading often requires complex thinking. How will you search for information about a source? Which search results will you click on and how will you evaluate those sources? How will you decide what you trust and to what …

Scents Of Place: Exploring Self, Place And Planet Through Botanical Fragrance, Jennifer L. Kitson, Donna M. Sweigart

Open Educational Resources

This learning module provides instructors with an experiential field guide for introducing students to the United Nations Inner Development Goals Framework through self-guided mindful smelling activities and reflection prompts related to botanical fragrance. The interdisciplinary nature of this module allows for use or adaptation in a wide range of courses looking for outdoor, place-based and self-guided experiential learning to explore the role of botanical fragrance for people, plants and pollinators. The overarching goal is to deepen students’ connections to their senses (and scents) of self, place and planet through exploring botanical fragrance with mindful smelling. The learning activities in this …

Teaching Inclusive Citation Through A Library Workshop, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

In response to calls for greater equity and inclusion in scholarly publishing and in academia in general, many academic instruction librarians are looking to ways to promote inclusive citation practices. Inclusive citation essentially involves citing sources that reflect a greater diversity of voices and perspectives, while being aware of how power and social structures have traditionally influenced what voices are amplified and which are often overlooked. Inclusive citation requires thinking creatively about how and where we search for information, since traditional scholarly practices and common structures and features of many search tools (e.g., citation metrics, relevance rankings) are part of …

Phenomenological Ontology: Turning To Practice, Kaustuv Roy

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

Ontology is often reduced to epistemology, that is, to yet another conceptual category for discussion. We do this because historically we are comfortable with the mental and are habituated to reducing everything to mental representation. But ontology is not rational discussion of ‘what is’; it is, rather, the cultivation of contact with ‘what is.’ And that means practice. We shy away from practice as though it is some native witchcraft, and prefer instead to think about it. The present paper proposes that instead of merely thinking about ontology, we practice toward its realization. I call this phenomenological ontology. Ontological practice …

The Faculty Journey As Ontological Inquiry, Miriam Carey

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

In this essay, Miriam Carey (recently retired Full Professor of Political Science and Policy Studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada) suggests a new form of faculty development based in ontological inquiry. Challenging the dominant educational paradigm, rooted firmly in epistemological approaches, she encourages us to explore what might become possible in educational development when ontological approaches are embraced. Finally, Dr. Carey suggests some of the many benefits to both faculty and students which become available when ontology is the focus of education.

Learning That Matters Is Messy: Experiments Revealing Hidden Potential In Higher Education, Ryan Derby-Talbot

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

Why are some learning experiences so profound that they alter our worlds, whereas others don’t end up sticking at all? The author investigates this question in the context of undergraduate education, recounting several educational experiments that highlight subtle but powerful aspects of the student learning experience. By exploring a different approach to teaching a math course, an alternative framework for academic specialization instead of traditional majors, and a radical approach to designing new institutions, an encounter with the hidden, ontological dimension of learning becomes possible. Accessing the ontological experience of the learner opens up new possibilities for meaningful, deep, and …

Ontological Constructivism In Higher Education: To Have, To Know, To Be, Richard Dubé

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

The first objective of this article is to acknowledge the significant contribution of constructivism in its ability to critically challenge what realism often takes for granted as certain or as the truth. The second is to explore how it could go much further, beyond thinking and into being. Having concerned itself mostly with epistemology and the transformation of our ways of thinking, constructivism has come to neglect ontology and the possible transformation of our ways of being. Such an ontological turn is considered important for the reform of higher education.

Re-Envisioning Decolonizing Pedagogies: Beyond Knowing, Delving Into Being As An Access To Possible Decolonial Futures, Fatemeh Moghaddam

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

This article argues that ontological phenomenological methods, addressing being, becoming, and existence, provide novel forms of knowledge production and pathways to decolonizing pedagogy in higher education through critiquing its neoliberalist and anthropocentric settler-colonial foundations. Two metaphors are employed to explore ontological pedagogy: one metaphor highlights the linguistic dynamics of joke-telling and the other compares the acquisition of a new language to ontological learning. A concise overview of decolonizing pedagogy and ontological phenomenological pedagogy is provided through sharing the author's experiences, positionality, and exposures to these frameworks. The inquiry also explores whether ontological pedagogical framework remains mainly discursive or leads to …

Ontological Inquiry: The Absent Heart Of The University, Drew Kopp

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

After defining and outlining the three movements of ontological inquiry, the author makes the case that ontological inquiry is rhetorical education at its best, concluding that making such inquiry central to the mission of the university may contribute to responding effectively to the complex of crises that academia and the world currently faces.

Editorial Statement: Volume 1, Issue 1, Carolyne J. White, Margarida Garcia, Drew Kopp

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

No abstract provided.

Neurodivergent College Students And Therapy Dogs In Higher Education, Georgia Jean Majka

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine neurodivergent students in higher education and their experience with The Shreiber Family Pet Therapy Program at Rowan University to investigate whether therapy dogs reduce anxiety levels and provide relaxation. In addition, this study provides recommendations for The Shreiber Family Pet Therapy program at Rowan University to promote the program and its purpose on campus. These resources are important when discussing the neurodivergent student population in higher education, which this research study discusses, based on previous research and the results found from this quantitative approach. This study also makes recommendations for Rowan University …

Zoom Affordances And Identity: A Case Study, Angela Cirucci

College of Communication & Creative Arts Faculty Scholarship

While how to engage students in online settings is a popular topic of study, largely left out are the ways in which virtual learning environments (VLEs) have implications for identity performance (and subsequently learning quality). This case study pairs a walkthrough analysis of Zoom with an open-ended survey (n = 250, M = 21.5) to investigate how VLE affordances impact student identifications. Findings indicate that students prefer Zoom because it is “user-friendly,” forgoing wordy options and instead presenting a more “appified” user interface. Students were concerned about their classmates and professors seeing their physical backgrounds, particularly those who reported family …

Flexible Pedagogies For Inclusive Learning: Balancing Pliancy And Structure And Cultivating Cultures Of Care, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

In this essay, I reflect on flexibility as a concept and as a practice that has informed my teaching, in particular since adapting to online library instruction in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how flexible pedagogy principles and practices can be catalysts for reflective and inclusive teaching and a culture of care in all teaching contexts.

Exploring Wikipedia As A Tool For Community Building And Teaching And Learning, Timothy R. Dewysockie, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

Wikipedia has become a widely accepted information source. Wikipedia is also by its very nature centered on community and on building and growing knowledge collectively. However, many are still understandably skeptical of how credible Wikipedia content is, and a gap remains between how frequently we use Wikipedia and how well we understand it. Wikipedia creates an opening for exploring how information is created and circulated, how the information creation process is often negotiated collectively, and how to critically evaluate online information. This session will explore how Wikipedia can be a rich tool for both teaching information literacy and building community …

Predictors Of Alcohol Hangover In College Students, Chelsie Young

Faculty Scholarship for the College of Science & Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Enhancing Deaf People’S Access To Justice In Northern Ireland: Implementing Article 13 Of The Un Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, Bronagh Byrne, Brent Elder, Michael Schwartz

College of Education Faculty Scholarship

Article 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) specifies that disabled people have the right to ‘effective access to justice’ on an equal basis with others. This includes Deaf people. There is a distinct lack of research which explores the extent to which Article 13 UNCRPD is implemented in practice and which actively involves Deaf people in its implementation and monitoring. This paper shares findings from a rights-based research study co-produced with a Deaf Advisory Group and a Deaf-led organisation. It explores the implementation of Article 13 UNCRPD in Northern Ireland through the …

Teaching Lateral Reading With An Online Tutorial: Preliminary Study Findings., Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

Challenges to Digital Literacy Education Stanford Cyber Center Policy

The internet is now the most common source of political news for almost half of Americans, and social media is now the primary source of news for those under 30. Yet today’s youth have little capacity to evaluate the credibility of digital sources, with colleges across the country often relying on severely outdated guidelines supporting digital literacy education. Join Stanford’s Sam Wineburg, Washington State University’s Mike Caulfield, and Rowan University’s Andrea Baer and Dan Kipnis, in conversation with the Cyber Center’s Kelly Born, about the many challenges and opportunities facing media …