This study examines impact of study abroad on early career outcomes at a professionally-focused northeastern private college. A mixed-methods sequential research design provides a thorough inquiry into the influence of study abroad on early career outcomes at this institution. In the first, quantitative phase of the study, The National Organization of College and Employer’s (NACE) First-Destination Survey data is analyzed to assess whether a study abroad experience has an impact on career outcomes. The quantitative results compare career outcomes for 2014, 2015, and 2016 graduates who have studied abroad (n = 523) and those who did not study abroad (n = 661). The quantitative survey contains 1184 participants and represents a response rate of approximately 90% of the total graduates at the college. The second qualitative phase examines the quantitative results in order to help explain and provide insights into the outcomes. A theoretical lens of appreciative inquiry is applied as a framework for interpreting the results and informs the qualitative line of questioning. In this project, studying abroad did not prove to significantly impact early career outcomes. Based on the NACE First Destination Survey, the higher education industry standard for capturing career placement information, graduates from this college got no quantifiable positive early career impact from studying abroad. In fact, some trends in the data even show an early negative effect from having studied abroad especially for female graduates. Further trends in the results contradict assumptions about study abroad that are held by students and international educators. However, meaningful impacts of studying abroad on graduate’s vocational clarity along with personal and professional development are revealed in the qualitative phase of the study that simply cannot be captured in the NACE survey.

The current shortage of clinical sites for neurodiagnostic technology (NDT) students is limiting enrollments and subsequently limiting graduates from NDT schools in the U.S. A lack of knowledge or consensus concerning the use of educational technology in NDT clinical skills training prompted this investigation. The purpose of this study was to explore the use of educational technology in providing NDT clinical skill training. This qualitative Delphi study was guided by experiential learning theory and cognitive constructionist epistemology. Thirty expert panelists were recruited to rate the effectiveness of educational technology methods in addressing neurodiagnostic competencies for electroencephalography. Twenty-four completed round one, twenty-two completed round two and nineteen completed the third and final round. The competencies were derived by combining national competencies or practice analysis from the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom for neurodiagnostic technologists performing electroencephalography (EEG). Results of the three rounds of the Delphi study were processed using the mean value and interquartile deviation for evaluation of consensus. Consensus among the expert panelists supported the potential effectiveness of educational technology to address neurodiagnostic graduate competencies for technologists performing EEG. In conclusion, the expert panel consensus was NDT clinical skills for performing EEG can be addressed using educational technology, followed by a post-graduate clinical residency. Using educational technology and a post-graduate residency could increase school capacity. An increase in graduate numbers would help sustain the existing schools, better supply the profession, and increase public access to quality neurodiagnostic care.

Children are being used as marketers and consumers for the purpose of financial gain. Although much research exists about children's stance as consumers, very little is known about their role as marketers. Such lack of information indicates that children's authentic voices about their experiences are seldom articulated, heard, listened to, and acted on. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological heuristic study was to explore the lived experiences of former child participants in commercial activities in order to understand their perceptions as well as, the meaning, and impact of the experiences on their childhood development. The theoretical framework used included the theories of Bandura's social learning, Bronfenbrenner's ecological system, Vygotsky's social constructivism, Knowles' andragogy, and Meziro's transformative learning. The primary questions focused on participants' perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes, as well as the meaning, and impact such lived experiences had on their childhood development. The final sample consisted of 13 adults above age 18 who participated in commercial activities during their childhood and were selected through the snowballing technique. Data were collected, analyzed, and manually coded from multiple individual and focus group interviews. The thematic results and findings are necessary labor, cultural practice, belief system, power of tangible and intangible rewards, independent mobility factor, social dangers of risk factor, participants' affective response, and experiential learning. Implications for social change include the establishment of partnerships among schools, children, parents, and commercial industries to strengthen advocacy for, and effect improved conditions and treatment of child participants in commercial activities.

The academic benefits and enhanced social responsibility that students derive from service-learning (SL), defined as experiential learning that ties community service to academic courses, have been well documented. However, for a college to fully institutionalize SL, a high proportion of faculty needs to include SL in their courses. Based in Kolb's experiential learning theory, the purpose of this study was to enhance planners' understanding of how college faculty's past experiences assigning SL influence their inclination to assign SL in future courses. In this basic qualitative interpretive study, data were collected from 13 individual interviews with faculty who assigned SL at a Southern metropolitan university. Findings were interpreted using Chickering's 7 vectors of student development from the conceptual framework and other relevant perspectives from the literature. One of the major themes from emergent coding of data was that faculty viewed some difficulties as challenges to be overcome rather than as deterrents to using SL. To reduce deterrents, institutions could compensate for extra time required for SL by providing stipends, released time, and support databases; recognizing SL in tenure and promotion; and helping faculty brainstorm how to incorporate SL into courses. To increase incentives to use SL, institutions could provide a full range of training and support for faculty. More courses with SL, besides increasing benefits of SL for all stakeholders, may mean that students form the habit of serving in the community and continue serving and contributing to positive social change, perhaps for a lifetime.

Despite the widely acknowledged contention that pollution control measures would be less beneficial than pollution prevention technologies in the long run, pollution control approaches remain a popular solution for organizations seeking, or coerced, to engage in corporate environmentalism. Drawing on the conceptual underpinnings of the Theory of Planned Behaviour as an integrative framework, this study combines the tenets of five major management theories - institutional, stakeholder, planned behaviour, resource-based view, and life-cycle management - to examine how and why small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises (SMMEs) embrace dissimilar approaches to implementing green initiatives under different circumstances. This research adopted a nested, multiple-case design to explore why some organizations have been able to obtain beneficial effects from their green initiative implementation while others have not. The findings, based on the experiences of s even SMMEs, which implemented a total of 27 green initiatives in their production operations, reveal that legislative requirements, stakeholders' expectations, organizations' natural environmental orientation, as well as their environmental resource base and capabilities, jointly drive corporate environmental strategies. The case study found that the higher the external pressures, a combination of legislative requirements and stakeholder expectations, the more likely it was for SMMEs to adopt quick-fix, off-the-shelve solutions, which typically carried limited short-term benefits with associated high long-term costs. By contrast, less intense external pressures offer firms the opportunities to explore plausible options and exploit internal resource capabilities to advantage, giving rise to the adoption of more sustainable approaches. The study further discovers that experiential learning, i.e., a firm's ability to learn from its green initiative implementation experience, separates SMMEs capable of capital izing on the values of their implemented green initiatives to gain competitive advantages and redefine competition from those that are immersed in a cognitive lock-in, unable to free themselves from an unproductive green wall. The findings suggest that nurturing organizational learning among environmentally resistive firms could transform them into environmentally responsible enterprises. The study concludes by interpreting its findings into a number of theoretical propositions for theory building in corporate environmental management.

<p>The focus of the study is the teacher in the under-resourced schools in the townships of the Western Cape. The purpose is to discover how teachers learn to cope under adverse working conditions.</p>

This research used case study methodology with both qualitative and quantitative research tools to examine the transfer of learning from the classroom to the cooperative education workplace and the relationship of students’ learning styles to this transfer of learning in a Bachelor of Applied Business program at a large comprehensive College of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario. Kolb’s experiential learning theory was used as the conceptual framework. A purposive convenience sample of six students (28.6%) who had completed the second of three cooperative education work terms in the program participated and completed all components of the study. The research findings led to six conclusions: 1. Foundation skills learned in the classroom, such as communication and technical skills, and in this case general business concepts, are used in all of the cooperative education workplace experiences in this study. 2. The co-op work term experience itself, including the workplace environment and culture, is more important than the student’s learning style in explaining the learning from the classroom that a student is able to transfer to the co-op workplace. 3. Co-op experiences may not challenge students to the level they may be capable of with respect to what they have learned in class. 4. A co-op work term learning plan, opportunity to use previous learning, and a supportive co-op environment are important for students to be able to transfer their learning from the classroom to the cooperative education workplace experience. 5. Perceived barriers to transfer of learning can also provide the opportunity for learning experiences. 6. The program curriculum design plays a role in enabling transfer of learning. Several recommendations related to implications for practice were also identified. These included the need to reinforce the importance of communication and technical skills with students, providing a variety of learning experiences, designing curriculum to link classroom learning with the co-op experience, selecting co-op experiences so as to ensure alignment between the students’ knowledge and abilities and the opportunities available, providing formal orientation and training to cooperative education employer supervisors, and aligning the work term learning plan with the program curriculum.

Undergoing a self-study using the method of currere (Pinar, 1976), I examine my own learning as holistic, embodied, and relational in the context of my mother’s garden. Specifically, I explore my mother’s garden as a site of relational learning that intersects with various classrooms that feature in my educational experiences. The garden and the classroom intersect with/in one curricular landscape, where self and other engage in an embodied process fostering connections and knowledges about each other and place. In bringing forth my narrative through currere, I engage in reflective and reflexive praxis through journal writing, poetry, meditation, and photographic collage. Using these forms of expression, I reflect upon my experiential learning process, analyze issues and concepts related to the body-in-movement, as well as focus on community connections and ecology-based learning as pedagogical praxis.

Undergoing a self-study using the method of currere (Pinar, 1976), I examine my own learning as holistic, embodied, and relational in the context of my mother’s garden. Specifically, I explore my mother’s garden as a site of relational learning that intersects with various classrooms that feature in my educational experiences. The garden and the classroom intersect with/in one curricular landscape, where self and other engage in an embodied process fostering connections and knowledges about each other and place. In bringing forth my narrative through currere, I engage in reflective and reflexive praxis through journal writing, poetry, meditation, and photographic collage. Using these forms of expression, I reflect upon my experiential learning process, analyze issues and concepts related to the body-in-movement, as well as focus on community connections and ecology-based learning as pedagogical praxis.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is intended to provide students with a cross-subject, contextual learning experience. In order to more fully prepare our nation's students for entering the globally competitive workforce, STEM integration allows students to make connections between the abstract concepts learned in core subject classrooms and real-world situations. FFA and 4-H programs, by nature, are intended to provide students with hands-on learning opportunities where abstract core subject principles can be applied and more fully understood. Junior livestock projects through FFA and 4-H can provide rich connections for students between what they learn in school and how it is applied in the real world through their livestock project. Using a modified Delphi technique, this study identified STEM concepts associated with junior livestock projects. The study also examined whether STEM concepts should be integrated into the supervision of junior livestock projects and identified barriers which would prevent the incorporation of STEM concepts into local 4-H and FFA programming and instruction. The experts identified several (13 of 19) STEM concepts associated with junior livestock projects, four reasons local 4-H and FFA leaders/advisors should incorporate STEM concepts into their programming and instruction, and no barriers which would prevent local 4-H and FFA leaders/advisors from incorporating STEM concepts into their programming and instruction. This paper explores rationale regarding why STEM integration is important and makes recommendations for the integration of STEM concepts into the supervision of junior livestock projects.