The primary purpose of this investigation was to examine the perceived development of life-long learning skills of Division I student-athletes and their non-athlete general student peers. Using grade point averages and graduation rates, athletics administrators are constantly evaluating the academic performance and growth of student-athletes by comparing their results with those of non-athlete general students. Though these traditional metrics are useful in many ways, there is little research on the self-reported development of life-long learning skills. Due to a changing global economy, employers are less concerned with the knowledge students possess at graduation and are more interested in a student’s ability to adapt to changes, think critically, and acquire information on their own and apply this new knowledge in an effort to create solutions to existing problems in a team based environment repeatedly over time. Collectively, these skills can be described as life-long learning skills. The Capacity for Life-Long Learning Index (CLLI), which is comprised of fourteen items from the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ), purport to measure students’ perceived gains on academic skills relevant to life-long learning. This study compares scores on the CLLI for several different variables, including student-athletes, non-athlete general students, gender, class, and ethnicity to determine whether there were differences in the perceived gains in life-long learning skills. On the basis of the results of this study, the following conclusions seem warranted: 1. There were no significant differences in the CLLI score for student-athletes and non-athlete general students. viii 2. There were significant differences between the CLLI scores for female students, both student-athletes and non-athlete general students, and their male counterparts. 3. There were significant differences between the CLLI scores for senior students, both student-athletes and non-athlete general students, and their freshman student counterparts. 4. There were no significant differences between the CLLI scores among students of different ethnic groups. "

<p>Global citizenship is conceptualized within a neoliberal agenda and oppressive geopolitics of knowledge that furthers social inequities and unsustainability. Despite critiques and attempts to reframe global citizenship to achieve social justice and human rights aims, it is still masked in neoliberal and mono-epistemological terms as <em>global competence</em>. It is vital to explore possibilities of global citizenship <em>becoming</em> that can challenge neoliberal hegemony and the growing ethnocentric and ultra-nationalist thinking. This inquiry was conceptualized, within the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space, to explore the <em>being</em> and <em>becoming</em> of six South Asian female international students engaged in activism and the bearing it has on global citizenship. My co-researchers negotiated their dynamic identities and were influenced by multiple discourses as they shuttled between various places and spaces. In this inquiry, I examine autobiographical roots that illuminate my research puzzles and phenomena of interest and engage with South Asian female international students as they negotiate their personal, educational, and activist experiences. I analyze their lived experiences based on Ikeda’s perspective on global citizenship, informed by ideas of <em>sōka</em> or “value-creating” education and Buddhist-humanism. The research texts based on the livings and tellings of my participants are represented dialogically in culturally relevant ways, such as <em>chai pe charcha</em> or “conversations over tea.” From a narrative global citizenship perspective, these stories are examples of ‘creative coexistence’ and ‘value creation’ and offer a means to reimagine global citizenship from the standpoint of interconnectedness and interdependence.</p>

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The general question in this dissertation is whether the democracy of schools is carried out in a gender equal manner in Sweden’s gender segregated upper secondary school. Students’ experiences of school democracy are measured using the dimensions of influence, discussion and legal rights. Three different explanatory factors are considered: the significance of gender, gender context and the character of the school programmes for these experiences. The study is based on student responses to a poll conducted in the top form classes of Kronoberg County’s upper secondary schools during the school year 2008/2009. The results of a series of regression analyses show that neither gender, gender context or programme character alone had an affect on experiences of school democracy. However, the more males present in a teaching environment, the poorer the experiences of influence and discussion are when all of the three explanatory factors are controlled for. In addition, the school programmes having male-coded character content particularly stand out favourably regarding school democracy. The number of males is usually high in such programmes and therefore the negative effects of male representation cancel out the positive effects of programme affiliation unless an explicit division is made of both of these aspects. Thus, keeping gender context and programme character separate is very important with studies of school democracy, since significant effects otherwise remain hidden. The study demonstrates that school democracy is important for students. Those students who have good experiences of school democracy perceive the school environment as significantly better than those who have poor experiences of school democracy. Concerning secondary effects, it appears that experiences of school democracy have different implications for learning among female and male students. There is a negative relationship between male experiences of influence and their grades in Swedish and Maths, while female experiences of discussion seem to show a positive covariance with grades. There is no relationship found in the data between students’ daily experiences of school democracy and their thoughts on voting in the upcoming parliamentary election.

This thesis investigates undergraduate experiences of studying within a blended learning environment at a UK university in the first decade of the 21st century. Blended learning in this context comprises the use of institutionally provided technologies including a university-wide managed learning environment, alongside campus-based classroom teaching to support student learning. The personal ownership of technologies and their importance for the student learning experience is also considered. The University of Hertfordshire has promoted itself as a ‘blended learning institution’ since 2005 and this study considers what blended learning means and how students use information technology to support their learning. The study approaches the student experience of blended learning by considering three constituent themes: the student, their HE study and their use of technology. The preliminary study for this work used student constructed reflective video and audio diaries over a period of 18 months. Subsequently a new conceptual framework was drawn up by the researcher. This provided a matrix structure with which to explore through interviews with students their uses of technology for learning, and the relationship with approaches to pedagogy. The analysis of the interviews has provided a snapshot of students’ experiences of pedagogy and technology use across their studies. A Venn diagram was used to explore the three themes and provide a representation of the extent to which technology is seen by students as a part of their everyday lives whether for study or leisure. The student experiences reported here demonstrated a high degree of dependence on technology overall in both their personal and study lives. Their preferences were for a learning environment which included both the taught campus–based experience and the opportunity for easy online access to materials and supplementary activities to support their studies twenty four hours a day. As the students reported on their ‘maturing’ as learners during the course of the study, they described increasingly sophisticated online searching strategies and independent approaches to their learning regardless of their personal pedagogic preferences. Garrison and Vaughan assert that the ‘ideal educational transaction is a collaborative constructivist process that has inquiry at its core’ (2008:14). The outcome of this study presents a more complex view of the student experience of pedagogy in Higher Education. While recent research has reported on the student experience of either technology or pedagogy, the unique contribution of this study is its consideration of both pedagogy and the use of information technology from the viewpoint of the student experience.

“The apprenticeship of observation” is a person’s previous experiences as a student and it can greatly affect a person’s beliefs about teaching. This paper aimed to study the effect that previous student experiences had had on English major students at a university in China. A questionnaire was designed in order to collect data. The questionnaire was distributed to 117 undergraduate English majors. The results showed that the English majors considered their previous experiences as students to have greatly affected their current beliefs about English language teaching. The results further showed that the effects had mainly been positive and that the English major students considered “methods for English teaching”, “content”, and “lesson planning” to be the areas that had been affected most. These results were in accordance with most previous studies on the topic. / “Observationens lärlingskap” (min översättning) är en persons tidigare erfarenheter som elev och dessa kan starkt påverka en persons uppfattning om undervisning. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilken effekt tidigare eleverfarenheter hade haft på engelskstuderande studenter vid ett universitet i Kina. Ett frågeformulär utformades för att samla in underlag. Frågeformuläret delades ut till 117 engelskstudenter. Resultatet visade att engelskstudenterna ansåg att deras tidigare eleverfarenheter starkt hade påverkat deras nuvarande åsikter om engelskundervisning. Vidare visade resultatet att effekten mestadels var positiv och att engelskstudenterna ansåg att “metoder för engelskundervisning”, “innehåll” och “lektionsplanering” var de områden som hade blivit mest påverkade. Dessa resultat stämde med tidigare studier inom området.

This applied dissertation was designed to understand and explore the experiences of graduate students at a public four-year higher education institution in the southeastern region of the United States. This study utilized an interview based phenomenological qualitative study design approach for data collection and analysis. Committees in the field of higher education reviewed and approved the interview protocol. The research study and data analysis were conducted in the Spring Semester of 2017. The researcher employed semi-structured interviews that were guided by ten protocol questions. Transcription accuracy, credibility, and trustworthiness were established through diligent adherence to university protocols. The collected data revealed themes that supported the researchers’ understanding of graduate students’ perception of engagement and experiences in face-to-face, online, and blended classroom settings. The qualitative research study provides in-depth insight for future enrollees and program development. The selected institution’s IRB and Nova Southeastern University’s IRB granted permission to conduct the study. A phenomenological approach was used to maximize exploration of graduate students’ perception of engagement and experiences in face-to-face, online, and blended graduate level classroom settings. Ten protocol questions guided the semi-structured interviews. Subsequent to the scheduled 60-minute interviews, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to describe the meaning of several individuals’ perceptions. The most prevalent theme that emerged was a lack of meaningful social interaction, or student engagement, in online formats. Once the data had been analyzed, recommendations for future research were provided to support the needs of a graduate student population on university campuses.

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