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Required undergraduate diversity courses often expose students to topics and worldviews which may push them out of their comfort zones and prompt dissonance and even resistance. This paper reports on interviews with 68 faculty members across 16 humanities and social science disciplines at five predominantly white institutions in the Southern United States, detailing how they navigated discussion of controversial topics in required diversity courses. Most instructors aimed to expose students to critical social issues yet were concerned that resistance could disturb the learning process. We identified 20 unique strategies for handling controversial topics in class that included proactively establishing community and safety and normalizing conflict, and reactively acknowledging and surfacing multiple perspectives, as well as connecting content to students' lived experiences. Some instructors also reported a lack of controversy or conflict in their classrooms, which they variously attributed to student characteristics or their own disinclination to promote heated discussion - which, we argue, calls into question the breadth and criteria of many institutionally defined diversity course requirements. We conclude the paper with implications for faculty, educational developers, administrators, and institutions.

While scholars have found that undergraduate involvement in research is beneficial, the lack of such experiences in the social sciences and humanities is glaring. This paper analyzes how an emphasis on community through cohort models impacts undergraduate student experience in research, taking from the Emerging Scholars Program, an interdisciplinary research program where cohorts of undergraduates are matched with faculty and attend meetings, workshops, and presentations together. We find that the cohort model created a robust community that fosters positive relationships that develop professional skills and emotional support, allowing students to collaborate and aim more toward their professional goals. The results from this study offer valuable insights into how universities can ensure that students have meaningful research experience beyond the classroom.

This paper replicates models developed by previous research to study the effects of graduate education on new graduates' initial employment in the Japanese labor market. If education is the best investment for an individual's economic success, then graduate degrees are expected to provide an individual with higher-earning job opportunities. Despite this reasonable economic premise, previous research showed that master's degrees in the humanities or social sciences in Japan have, in fact, a negative impact on obtaining initial employment compared to those with only a bachelor's degree in the humanities or social sciences. This previous research, however, could not overcome omitted variable bias because of data limitations. Omitted variable bias is a key problem for research on education; therefore, this study uses new longitudinal data to overcome omitted variable bias and clearly demonstrate the robustness of these earlier findings. The empirical results of this study corroborate earlier work, showing that master's degrees in the humanities or social sciences do not provide graduate students with an advantage in obtaining initial employment, after controlling for potential bias. At the same time, this study also confirms that natural science majors have a higher probability of obtaining initial employment in comparison with humanities or social science majors. In other words, this paper offers a valid replication of existing research. This shows that the Japanese labor market structure for graduate students has, in essence, remained the same since previous research was completed.

In an uncertain labour market, the questions around the employability of graduate students take on a new urgency. Fears about the graduate market in the coming years are acute and are compounded by a sense that there is a large disconnect between a university education and what is expected in the workplace. Australian labour market trends clearly demonstrate that the skills most in demand by Australian graduate employers are precisely the transferrable skills which are honed by doing a HASS degree at the university. However, HASS academics do not usually talk about the skills and attributes students are gaining during their university studies and how this is useful in the workplace. Creating this awareness in both staff and students is immensely important for future graduates to survive and excel beyond university. Based on focus groups, interviews, and student-led projects over the last three years, this paper explores how to balance the need to engage with deep disciplinary knowledge with the understanding that this knowledge is only useful in the real world if accompanied by explicit skills. By using a case study, this paper showcases how to articulate skills and knowledge to HASS students to prepare for workforce. Furthermore, it focusses on how graduate attributes and learning outcomes can be connected from assessment tasks to classroom teaching.

The Bologna Process represents the most significant extensive reform of higher education in Europe. The particular aspects of the Bologna Process still incite critical evaluations as regards the successfulness of its implementation. The theoretical part of the paper analyzes the fundamental principles defined in the Bologna Declaration, requirements and critical views of the Bologna Process, as well as the relevant research conducted on this issue used for the comparative analysis. The introduction of the Bologna Process into the Serbian university education has initiated numerous changes, the increase of the student mobility being the most striking one. The empirical part of the paper focuses on the study of the following problem: the manner in which students of social sciences and humanities perceive the Bologna Process fifteen years after its implementation into the Serbian university education. Consequently, the subject matter of the research is the observation and description of students' attitudes to this phenomenon with the purpose of acquiring relevant information "firsthand." The achievable objective of the presented research reviews the context and condition of the Bologna Process during 2019/2020 academic year and its feasible improvements, which can contribute to comparative study of similar researches in the time of the pandemics. The specific research tasks include the study of the Bologna requirements, attitudes to the Bologna Process, benefits and restrictions of this reform, and particularly the attempt to suggest the improvement of the Bologna Process realization from the perspective of students of social sciences and humanities. The research sample consisted of the Bachelor students of social sciences and humanities from the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš (N=150). The survey technique and the scaling technique with a rating scale questionnaire were used (BOL-JM-JOZ). The questionnaire had five closed-ended questions, while the Likert scale was comprised of 23 items. The test of the instrument consistency proved its reliability. The obtained results were shown by the chi square test, which proved a statistically significant difference in the respondents' answers as regards the year of study, p<0.05. The main factors were extracted from the assessment scale by the application of the factor analysis. These factors examined the students' perceptions of the Bologna Process, comparing the answers provided by the students of the first, second, third and fourth year of study of social sciences and humanities, p<0.05.

This paper critically reviews the research done in education faculties in Nigerian universities. This research, though categorized in postgraduate schools or colleges as mainly in the liberal arts/humanities and the social sciences, depends on the theories and methodologies from other disciplines. The arts and social sciences are disciplines where undergraduates in education take courses in teaching to earn bachelor's degrees, the postgraduate level offers varied opportunities for educational research to maximize the uniqueness of mixed method research for education.

Initial Teacher Education (ITE) reform in Australia has mandated that graduating teachers demonstrate their practice and 'impact' through the completion of a Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) prior to graduation. The requirement to analyse 'impact' in teaching, requires a nuanced understanding of what 'impact' is and how it manifests in varied contemporary classrooms. This paper reports on how a sample of high-performing pre-service teachers from one Australian ITE institution, within a framework devised by Australia's largest TPA consortium, appraised the impact of their teaching in the context of the disciplinary area of Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS). How 'impact' was articulated through GTPA submissions revealed data-informed and holistic interpretations layered to include opportunistic teaching moments and relational and affective impact as well as analysis of cognitive progress. The paper also identifies ways in which analysis of impact might be further finessed with greater attention to pedagogical content knowledge and discipline-specific progression.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-generated environment with noteworthy didactic applications in different educational levels and areas of knowledge. The study of the perceptions of the agents involved about the use of VR in lectures is a fruitful line of research because it has implications in terms of the measures to be taken to improve the training and competence of professors in its use. In this paper, a quantitative, descriptive, and correlational research is carried out on the assessments of a sample of 1638 Latin American university professors on both (i) the didactic use of VR and (ii) the influence of the professors' area of knowledge on these assessments. For this purpose, a validated questionnaire was used, the responses to which were subjected to statistical analysis. As a result, it was found that the ratings of VR are very high, but professors believe that their digital skills for its use are insufficient. In addition, the professors' area of knowledge significantly influences their ratings, being higher in the areas of knowledge in which professors have a better self-concept of their digital skills. Furthermore, gender gaps have also been identified in the answers given, which behave differently according to the area of knowledge. Finally, some conclusions, implications, and recommendations are drawn from the results obtained.

This paper focuses on exploring the intellectual basis for establishing an academic development program for international doctoral students in social sciences and humanities in Central Europe so as to cultivate a reflective scholarly approach to teaching early on in their academic career. The program conceptions and practices are embedded in the notion that a scholarly approach to teaching integrates the understanding and demonstration of knowledge about teaching and necessitates a continuous learning process about teaching through reflection and through conducting research on teaching in the various disciplines. In particular, taking on board the domains of teaching knowledge which derived from the kinds of reflections on teaching (cf. Kreber & Cranton, 2000; Mezirow, 1991), instructional, pedagogical and curricular knowledge and continuous reflection at the level of content, process as well as premise, are represented in an integrative manner in our overarching program principles and pedagogical strategies. As we see, professionalization of doctoral students' teaching practice in higher education (cf. Lueddeke, 2003) is particularly important in the context of enhanced faculty mobility and internationalization. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to the literature and practice on establishing academic development programs, especially in academic environments with low institutional support for teaching and lack of formal requirements for professional development.

This essay argues for the urgent need for philosophy as the necessary first step in any educational undertaking. Philosophy is involved with making fine distinctions which are necessary to clarify concepts and terms. The paper focuses primarily on the problems with an overreliance on scientific research in the social sciences, with special emphasis on the dangers posed in educational research. Three specific problems are identified. First, the emphasis on scientific research downgrades non-scientific research, which may be more appropriate as modes of inquiry in many aspects of education. Second, the emphasis on scientific research distorts research in areas such as the arts and humanities because individual success as a scholar is largely measured by criteria that make sense in the natural sciences but not necessarily in the arts. Third, and most significantly, the paper questions whether social action and interaction can be investigated in a truly scientific manner. [This paper was presented at "Philosophical Issues in Education: A Symposium in Honour" of Dr. Robin Barrow, held at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, B.C. on November 2, 2018.]

This paper provides a reflection on the way changes taking place in doctoral education are being perceived and internalized by doctoral students. The Doctoral perceptions are analyzed through Ph.D. candidates' motivations to enroll in the program and to their levels of satisfaction with the supervision experience. Comparisons between national and international students, as well as differences according to doctoral programs' scientific areas, i.e., between students enrolled in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and in Social Sciences, Languages and Humanities (SSLH) are established. Based on a case study developed in a Portuguese university, conclusions point to the dominance of a romanticized, traditional view of doctoral education, with the academic profession at its core. This view is mostly shared by international students and those from SSLH scientific areas. In turn, national Ph.D. candidates and those from STEM areas have incorporated a more instrumental view of doctoral education, aiming for training participants to professions outside academia.

One of the most important tasks of higher educational institutions is the training of specialists to be able to adapt to changes in their professional life. At the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the 21st centuries, some methods for developing foreign language competence, needed for their future professional activity, were created by teachers. However, the effectiveness of these methods has not been studied. This fact has aroused the authors' interest and generated the idea about the necessity to conduct scientific research in order to identify the most effective methods of teaching foreign languages for special purposes. Methods: The given research paper is based on the analysis of Russian and foreign scholars' scientific works covering the problem of teaching foreign languages for special purposes to the students of humanitarian professions, as well as on the basis of the results from questioning students of bachelor degree programs who study foreign languages for special purposes in the field of humanitarian professions, and also of the results from questioning teachers specializing in teaching foreign languages for special purposes. Results: In the students' opinion, the most effective methods of teaching foreign languages for special purposes in the field of humanitarian professions are the following: discussion, ICT (information and communication technologies), and SCRUM (framework that helps teams work together, encourages team to learn through on a problem). According to the interviewed teachers' opinion, the most effective methods are discussion, ICT, and round table. The "dilemma" method is the least effective according to the students. As for the teachers, the less effective method is CLIL (content and language integrated learning). Conclusions: The study showed some common views among teachers and students concerning the effectiveness of methods of teaching foreign languages for professional purposes, such as discussion and ICT. The effectiveness of the discussion method is explained by the fact that it allows the integration of students' knowledge from different areas when solving a problem and provides an opportunity to apply language knowledge and skills into practice. This contributes to forming students' ability to think clearly, to perceive information critically, to highlight the main idea and find the means and arguments to confirm and substantiate it, and, consequently, to improve the understanding of any theoretical material. The use of ICT in the educational process allows the efficiency of the educational process itself to be improved significantly and leads to new approaches and organizational forms of educational work. In fact, while preparing educational programs and creating didactic materials, special attention should be given to the implementation of ICT methods and discussions in educational activities. Nevertheless, the respondents' subjective opinion should not reduce the scientific value and effectiveness of other methods of teaching a foreign language for professional purposes. The authors of the paper believe that methods that have not found much support from students and teachers should be studied more thoroughly and carefully. To this end, it could be recommended to organize special training seminars that would allow teachers to be informed of new methods of teaching foreign languages for professional purposes, of their particularities, and to help their active implementation in the learning process.

This paper explores the potential for using practice-based assessments in higher education in preparing humanities and social sciences specialists. The authors tested a set of innovative methodologies for practice-based summative assessment of the progress made in learning certain disciplines by students majoring in Law, International Law, and History and Archaeology at Sumy State University (Ukraine). To assess the effectiveness of practice-based assessments, the authors employed anonymous surveying, tested students' level of mastery of key theoretical concepts, and carried out a comparative analysis of the performance of students who took part in practice-based assessments and those who took exams in a traditional way. The conducted pedagogical experiment indicates the advisability of employing practice-based assessments as part of teaching humanities and social sciences disciplines. It revealed a significant increase in the level of preparation of students on subjects summative assessment around which was based on practical assignments. Having students train their practical skills can help them assimilate theoretical knowledge better and for a longer time and become more confident in their preparedness for their future profession. Practice-based assessments can also serve as a yardstick for gauging the effectiveness of instructors' teaching methods and stimulate the quest for new ways of teaching and learning that can help meet the needs of the labor market and the interests of students pursuing a higher education as much as possible.

The digital humanities (DH) remain a growing area of interest among researchers and a locus of new positions within libraries, especially academic libraries, as well as archives, museums, and cultural heritage organizations. In response to this demand, many programs that train information professionals have developed specific curricula around DH. This paper analyzes courses offered within two overlapping contexts: American Library Association (ALA) accredited programs and iSchools. In addition to documenting the scope and extent of DH courses in these settings, we also analyze their contents, relating our findings to previous research, including analysis of job ads and interviews with professionals.

This article questions the use of the term 'siloed' to describe certain degrees or subjects in the Australian university curriculum. Education Minister Dan Tehan used the term as part of a justification of a re-set of funding priorities for university education from 2021 which he announced in June 2020. The Minister partly turned his argument on the floating of an impression that humanities degrees are 'siloed'. They or, more specifically, units within them, would become more expensive for students since 'job readiness' needs to be prioritised. The author analyses the term, its uses and applications to fields of knowledge, and concludes that such a term is neither accurate nor useful. He suggests that focusing on needs arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic might provide a less conflicted and future-oriented way of thinking about the problem rather than making superficial judgments of the merits of particular undergraduate degrees as a foundation for dictating education and education funding policy.

In an attempt to survive in the highly competitive terrain of academic publications, Portuguese humanities and social science professors are increasingly giving up writing their papers in Portuguese, and, instead, they now opt to write in English, today's scientific default language. This paper aims to portray the current panorama of humanities and social sciences publications in Portugal, and focuses on the language choices and the process of academic writing of a group of Portuguese professors in the fields of humanities and social sciences with the aim of illustrating their language preferences, as well as the aspects they take into consideration while writing either in Portuguese or in English. Results of this study indicate that Portuguese humanities and social sciences professors prefer to write in Portuguese, their own language, but for reasons associated with the need to achieve scientific visibility they use the English language when they submit their manuscripts for publication. Results further illustrate participants' major concerns while composing and revising their papers in Portuguese as well as in English.

This article aims to reveal the factors that affecting the impact of international collaboration papers in the field of social sciences and humanities. Based on resource-based theory and transaction cost theory, we analyzed the articles from a sample of 13,331 listed research papers come from the 42 world class universities in China using descriptive statistics, ordinary least square (OLS) regression, and came to the following conclusions: First, it is the quality rather than the quantity of international collaborator that affect the academic influence of the research outputs. Second, researchers from different backgrounds are conducive to improve the impact of research papers and the collaboration leading by Chinese university perform better. Yet, too much collaborators coming from different institutions would have an adverse impact, which may due to the increase cost of cooperation. Finally, collaborating researchers from developed countries or top universities will significantly improve the research performance because of the abundant resources behind them. Findings from this research suggest that setting up international collaboration should pay more attention to the level of the collaborator and consider the cost behind the whole process.

This is a theoretical paper that addresses the challenge of educational access to the Humanities and Social Sciences. It plots a theoretical quest to develop an explicit pedagogy to give "disadvantaged" students in the Humanities ways of working successfully with texts. In doing so it draws on Bernstein, Moore and Maton's work to theorize the nature of knowledge in the Humanities, and also on Brandom's analysis of inferential reasoning. It uses elements of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to analyse student texts. The empirical work reported on here is work-in-progress and represents no more than an indication of the approach advocated. The approach is illustrated by examples from comprehension exercises designed to promote students' inferential reasoning. Selected findings are presented to illustrate the extent of the challenge entailed in facilitating access to Humanities texts. The paper concludes by suggesting that mastery of ways of working with texts in the Humanities entails attending to the acquisition of both recognition and realization rules for reading and writing.

This paper offers a medical-education perspective that I will hope complement other disciplinary perspectives in examining the value of reflection for learning in tertiary education. The paper outlines some of the theoretical strands of reflective practice facilitated in a unique course subject for professionalism and patient safety, within the new spiral curriculum at Leeds University School of Medicine. The material presented in this paper outlines some of what is delivered during the medical students' interactive sessions; this material is continually modified based on feedback from both students and learning facilitators. The paper discusses why both students and clinicians need to reflect, some of the theoretical dimensions and models and examples from the Leeds context of how reflective competence can be progressively developed over the course of an undergraduate program. The focus of the final section suggests directions for reflective practice in the future, where reflexivity takes the form of more collective endeavours requiring some change in culture and perceptions of professional identity. The paper concludes with the proposition that collaborative forms of reflection need to include more involvement of patients, interprofessional communities of practice and the use of learning from other disciplines; all of these require different levels of thinking and different ways of working.

A PhD combines experiential learning of the research process with socialisation into the research community. Studying a PhD is a highly individual experience with each student seeking and receiving different types of support from different agents. In this paper we investigate the experiences of four PhD students at a Humanities faculty at a Thai university through a series of interviews. To account for the unique nature of each student's experience, we use Individual Networks of Practice (INoPs) as the main method of analysis. The interviews were first analysed by adapting Sala-Bubaré and Castelló's (2016) model of socialisation, identifying the social agents and the content of the experience shared with each agent, and then constructing an INoP (Zappa-Hollman and Duff 2015) map to visually represent each student's social network. These INoPs served to guide a qualitative analysis of the salient issues in the interviews. The INoPs highlight the unique nature of each student's set of agents and experiences, but there are also commonalities across students showing that peers and faculty staff serve as key social agents.

Using poetry, role play, readers' theatre, and creative manipulations of space through yarn and paper weaving, a workshop in 2008 challenged one of educational development's more pervasive and least questioned notions ("constructive alignment" associated most often with the work of John Biggs). This paper describes the reasoning behind using humanities approaches specifically in this case and more generally in the Challenging Academic Development Collective's work, as well as problematising the notions of "experiment" and "results" by unarchiving and re-archiving such a nonce-event. The critical stakes in using an anti-empirical method are broached, and readers are encouraged to experience their own version of the emergent truths of such approaches by drawing their own conclusions.

This paper discovers the role of learner's needs analysis in English for academic purposes courses in higher education before designing any language curriculum. The research is essential as it can be used to support students to be aware of their motivation to learn and a basis for teachers in helping students improve their learning motivation. Students have either instrumental or integrative or both motivational orientations while studying EAP courses (locally called communicative English skills) for their present and target situation needs. Therefore, 308 first-year students (using systematic sampling) and 41 instructors (using census technique) from the Social Sciences and Humanities College in Wachemo University, Ethiopia, participated in the study. A mixed-methods research design was used to collect the data. Survey questionnaire and interview instruments were employed for data collection, analysis, and interpretation. The findings revealed that the students have instrumental and integrative orientations for learning English. However, instrumental motivation surpassed integrative motivation because most of the study participants thought that the students predominantly need English for practical reasons in the context of the present study than integrative orientations to pursue their academic courses at the university level. When the participants were asked about the students' reasons for learning English, they indicated many aspects related to instrumental and integrative motivation. For reasons related to instrumental motivation, students learn English because it is helpful in getting a good job in the future, studying or working abroad, and passing a test (an exam), while the students who are integratively motivated learn English because they like the language and the culture. Consequently, through thorough needs analysis, course designers and practitioners should identify learners' reasons for learning the EAP course before implementing the material in the EFL classroom.

This paper explores the transformative power of digital humanities in teaching family history online to large cohorts of Australian domestic students. It takes as a case study a unit developed specifically for students to learn about how to research their convict ancestors' lives and how to situate their ancestors' lived experiences within relevant wider contexts. Its focus is twofold. The convergence of rapidly expanding digital repositories and databases of family history-related information and increasingly sophisticated online teaching platforms and how this has facilitated a shift from face-to-face to fully online learning and teaching is examined. The ways in which this transformative change was engineered through the unit design, delivery, and evaluative processes are then canvassed. The case study demonstrates how, with thoughtful, well-structured, and innovative approaches to design and by adopting a bespoke delivery model for online delivery, students can readily learn to access and engage critically with extensive online resources and can be equipped with the digital tools to use these optimally and to their satisfaction.

Honors educators frequently engage in conversations about the decline of interest in and funding for the liberal arts and humanities. Larry Andrews's essay "The Humanities are Dead! Long Live the Humanities!" is one of several that contributes to a metanarrative about the liberal arts and humanities, playing out along the following lines: workforce-minded politicians, short-sighted university administrators, STEM-related programs, and market-driven students no longer understand the true value of the liberal arts and humanities because they cannot be easily measured in dollars and cents; consequently, higher education today typically narrows students' perspectives, facilitates short-term and uncritical thinking, and fails to adequately enable student growth and development--that is, growth and development of the fully formed person, of the well-rounded individual, and of the caring soul. (For other articles that tie honors education to this narrative, see Blaich and Ditzler; Dooley; Martino; Salas; and Wintrol.) This familiar narrative offers some truths, no doubt, but its simplicity is troubling. It quickly papers over many complexities related both to workplaces and to the liberal arts and humanities, and, followed to its logical conclusion, it becomes less a narrative about education and more a narrative about limits, about who and what provide limits as opposed to who and what provide freedoms, about who and what open minds and who and what close them. Those in higher education who focus too much on careers, as this narrative goes, are in the business of setting limits on what students receive from a college education, which stunts their personal, professional, and intellectual growth; conversely, proponents of the liberal arts and humanities are interested in developing fully formed minds, expanding horizons, and unshackling students from career-based chains that keep them from becoming critical thinkers, strong and empathetic communicators, and seekers of truth.

This article features a conversation on the occasion of a May 2018 "Festschrift" in "Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies" to honor the work of William Newell, between Newell and P. Sven Arvidson. William Newell is Emeritus Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Miami University, where he taught interdisciplinary courses full time in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies (Western College Program) from 1975 until his retirement in 2012. He has consulted on interdisciplinary course development and teaching and conducted external reviews of interdisciplinary programs at well over a hundred colleges and universities. He has published numerous articles and chapters on interdisciplinary higher education. P. Sven Arvidson is Associate Professor and Director of Interdisciplinary Liberal Studies at Seattle University, where he is also the founding coordinator of the Consortium of Interdisciplinary Scholars. He has been co-editor of Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies since 2017. Some topics discussed include whether or not Newell considers himself an academic radical, or academic pioneer, how a liberal arts-educated philosophy major from Amherst College, with a subsequent PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, bloomed into the founding leader of interdisciplinary studies in the U.S., and Newell's thoughts on the historic development of the first European meeting of the annual Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) conference in Fall 2019. Arvidson asks Newell this provocative question: "Having reviewed over a hundred integrative and interdisciplinary programs of all types over the years. What are several things that good programs seem to get right?" Newell's top ten best practices for conducting and teaching interdisciplinary studies listed in "The State of the Field: Interdisciplinary Theory" (2013), are discussed, and he is asked if he would add more to this list now. He is also asked if he would like to modify existing practices he named in that list.

This paper addresses the professional preparation of future teachers of social pedagogy (social educators) in the context of current tasks which the social pedagogy in the Czech Republic still has. Based on the results of the research which aims to present the professional characteristics of students of social pedagogy, we propose an innovation of the current curricula in social pedagogy study program and thus strengthen the independence of the profession which has undergone a specific development in our country. BIP questionnaire was used to obtain data. The main aim of the research was to analyze the professional orientation of social pedagogy students with the use of the standardized BIP questionnaire. The research has involved 154 social pedagogy students in a chosen Faculty of Humanities in the Czech Republic. Besides the research of the students' professional characteristics, an analysis of the study program Social Pedagogy has been done in order to create a constructive proposal of innovation of the study program subjects. So the authors call the attention to the fact that the study program must necessarily not only respond to the present demands of the tertiary sector (services marketing) but also be adapted to the professional identity of future social pedagogues and the development of students' competences.

Since the mid-1990s, there has been an abrupt growth of doctoral enrollments and doctoral programs in Argentina and Latin America. However, completion rates at this education level are far from satisfying. Attrition rates in Social Sciences doctoral programs "are known" to be high, and higher in Social Sciences and Humanities (which will be later called "Soft Sciences") than in STEM (which will be later called "Hard Sciences") disciplines, although there are no valid and reliable data. In order to address this problem, we carried out an investigation with two objectives: (1) to measure performance (efficiency or productivity) in 18 doctoral programs in STEM disciplines, the Social Sciences, and Humanities at various universities in Buenos Aires city and the surrounding Metropolitan Area; and (2) to design a procedure for collecting valid and reliable information that would allow us to assess doctoral programs' performance. This measure was defined along two dimensions: completion rates (regular time rates and extra time rates) and average time-to-degree by cohort. We compiled data on individuals' academic tracks in each cohort from their enrollment to their completion or dropout by using paper-files and digitized databases provided by academic departments. Information was analyzed by program, by cohort, and by six grouped cohorts for 2001-2006. Substantive and methodological results were found. Among the substantive results, we discovered better performance in STEM disciplines than in the Social Sciences and Humanities. As to the methodological results, postgraduate statistical registering matrix was designed and a series of recommendations are presented for use by doctoral programs and graduate programs generally.

Dissertations and theses with interactive digital components seldom fit neatly into the institutional format requirements designed for traditional humanities texts. This creates challenges for students, administrators, and librarians who are charged with preparing these works for library deposit. While disciplinary acceptance of digital dissertations in the humanities may be increasing across institutions, little attention is given to the mechanics of documenting and submitting such projects. Readers, also, are challenged to find and interpret digital projects that may not be entirely described in the accompanying paper. To address this, the authors examined a set of digital theses and dissertations at their institution to determine how these digital components might fit into traditional manuscript formatting guidelines. This article introduces the resulting set of local documentation guidelines for digital dissertations and theses aimed at improving access, preservation, and reproducibility.

This research explores the opportunities and challenges for incorporating employability-related support into STEM (Sciences; Technology; Engineering; Mathematics) degree programmes, based in part on recent research (O'Leary, 2016a) outlining that significant variations in employability-related support exist across the STEM disciplines. These issues were highlighted at a recent conference on STEM pedagogy (O'Leary, 2016b) and this paper explores them in more depth. While O'Leary (2016a) finds that Engineering and Sciences are performing relatively well on employability-support matters, in comparison with Social Sciences and Humanities, there is still room for improvement across STEM programmes. The research suggest that students' employability can be enhanced through a combination of the content of the curriculum and the development of key student capabilities and characteristics. To achieve this, it is necessary to address several issues: the development of academic staff, the use of external speakers, the provision of business and management expertise, cross-disciplinary approaches and the integration of professional services into the curriculum. In addition, the most effective gains from a cross-Faculty viewpoint may exist in what may seem unlikely liaisons; for effective employability-related support, the Sciences and Humanities think along the same lines, while Social Sciences & Engineering think along another line. Therefore, improvements to the provision of such support may be better achieved by such non-traditional cross-Faculty partnerships. An approach based on the "3E's" is suggested: Enhanced Learning & Teaching; Employer-engagement; and Embedding into the Curriculum.

Much of the research into higher education and its role in work-based learning (WBL), and especially in supporting undergraduate students on placements, has focussed on longer term internships and sandwich courses. Research has also focussed on subject areas that have traditionally been associated with the above; for example, Business, Health, and Engineering. By contrast, the aim of this study was to gather data from students on a much shorter period of placement, categorised as a 'short project' (Brennan & Little, 1996). Furthermore, the data recovered was from students studying within the social sciences paradigm, undertaking an undergraduate degree in Education Studies (not teacher education). The social sciences and humanities more generally have not been discussed to any great extent within the context of research on placement or work-based learning (see Smith, Clegg, Lawrence, & Todd, 2007); the subject of Education Studies is not covered at all by previous research. This paper considers the different ways practitioners might blend learning and support university students' experiential and academic learning in this short project format. The results suggest that even a relatively short period of structured placement can be of significant benefit to students although for many respondents, face-to-face contact in the form of lectures and tutorials is still an important component of a blended approach to WBL.

This article explores the degree to which student collaborations on research and writing assignments can effectively realize learning outcomes. The assignment, in this case, encouraged students to contribute discrete parts of a research project in order to develop their complementary abilities: researching, consulting, drafting, and revising. The outcomes for students included appreciation for their individual expertise, and experience combining discrete contributions into a result that surpasses the sum of its parts. In the course, we gave students preliminary guidance for establishing team objectives and roles for the duration of this assignment and asked them to evaluate their learning experience at the end. In this paper, we analyze the students' quantitative and qualitative feedback, and suggest ways to structure and supervise collaborative assignments so that students develop their expertise and complementary skills. We suggest that collaborative work such as this is essential for advanced undergraduates in the humanities, where collaborations are less common than in other disciplines. Moreover, we conclude that future humanities instructors should be open to the benefits of collaborative research and writing. This article will be of interest to instructors who wish to develop collaborative assignments that improve students' disciplinary expertise, engagement with course materials, and outreach to audiences beyond the academy.

If we want to combat contemporary "neoliberal" attacks on universities, we should start by refusing the way that their pseudo-rationalities already determine so many aspects of the intellectual and institutional regimes that we consider under threat. This paper sketches an analysis of those aspects of the internal practices of academia that reinforce the interests at the origin of the attack on public education, and that make it possible, and indeed expected, for universities' leaders to oversee the betrayal of their institutions' very raison d'être. How have the physical and intellectual geographies of academic professionalism prepared the ground for "neoliberal" reforms? How do the varied dispensations of modern higher education work against the ideal of open, democratic universities? How would university education, especially in the humanities, still exacerbate the privatisation and enclosure of knowledge in our societies, even if it remained public and accessible to everybody?

The relevance of the study is conditioned by the changes in the content of socio-humanitarian education, aimed at the acquisition of knowledge, the development of tolerance, civic and moral education. The purpose of the paper is to identify the modern functions of a textbook on social sciences and humanities as an informational management tool of university education. The leading approach to the study is the functional-oriented approach, allowing identifying the functions of information objects and objective criteria for their evaluation. The study involves 350 teachers, 350 students who have expressed their demands to the functions of textbooks on social sciences and humanities, participated in the selection of the most effective books. The main results of the study are to identify the characteristic features (including in the contents of the scientific material in accordance with the teaching, educational, developing educational objectives, consistent and systematic knowledge presentation, the figurative representation of the educational material, the availability of multiple questions of different levels for self-control and Exercises for independent work) publications features (multilevel system of different types of books editions), functions (adaptation, systematizing, methodical, ideological, managerial) textbooks on social sciences and humanities. The significance of the results obtained is that the revealed characteristic features of the textbooks provide the unity of logical and rational, artistic and imaginative ways of presentation of knowledge; publications' characteristic features--compliance with the requirements of state educational standards, training, educational, developmental objectives of the educational curricula, didactics of university education; functions--integration of cognitive, research and professional activities of students. Identified features of a textbook on social and humanitarian disciplines contribute to the formation of the students' holistic humanitarian view of the world and reliability of higher education, which manifests itself in the awareness of the objective laws of the functioning society and its development trends.

The urgency of the problem, which is developed in the article enclosed in an emerged reducing tendency, and sometimes a complete rejection of importance of the humanities knowledge at the current stage of scientific development. The article shows that in the context of the overestimation the role of natural and technical education by modern society, it is clearly underestimated importance of humanities education. Paper is aimed at creating prerequisites for the study of contemporary place in science of humanities and culture in general. As the leading methodological approaches of this study the author uses the cultural approach and the principle of determinism. The article substantiates the proposition that without an understanding of human nature and the sake of what a man lives on the earth, the solution of all other problems and technical quests are meaningless. In other words, the humanity stands as a mainstay of human in culture. As a result of the systematization and generalization of facts, the author offers a new universal metasubjected approach in cognition of the social reality that allows evaluating the possibilities and prospects of the global human survival. Because of the article's methodological nature, it is aimed at the creation of a theoretical basis for future researches of the humanities in general and for those whose scientific work is not indifferent to the fate of the humanities.

Assessment is one of the most important elements of student life and significantly shapes their learning. Consequently, tutors need to ensure that student awareness regarding assessment is promoted. Students should get the opportunity to practise assessing work and receive tutor feedback so that they might improve on both the work and their assessment of it. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how student engagement with criteria, exemplars, self-assessment, and feedback influenced students' performance, their assessment capacity, and also how students experienced the process. A mixed methods approach was used. Students' performance and assessments were established using a rubric that included 5 criteria each evaluated using 5 point Likert scale linked to descriptors. A thematic analysis of the focus group resulted in two themes. The findings show that overall students' performance in the assignment significantly improved between draft and final submissions. Students' assessment of their work significantly differed to the tutor's on some criteria at both submissions but in opposite directions on one criterion between both submissions. The focus group found that the rubric guided students to produce their draft while tutor feedback guided them to improve on it. However, these findings require further investigation. The following recommendations ensue from the research and should assist student development concerning assessment. Tutors should give students an opportunity to assess work and also see tutor's assessment of that work using the same criteria. Also, tutors should provide constructive feedback during an assignment.

The emphasis on STEM education should not be interpreted as an omen of the death of humanities; art, literature, history, and philosophy can inform and enlighten STEM studies if the walls of academic silos are broken down and taught in combination. Where the physical universe collides with the fanciful and flawed human experience of life, there is creative energy, be it in scientific research or creative writing. Both are meant to birth new knowledge, rouse questions, explore one's relationship with the world, employ the senses, test ideas, and better one's understanding of life and the human experience. The humanities can easily combine with other disciplines through applied speculation. A strategy to combine might be, for instance, to adapt the writing core to an interdisciplinary, experiential course that uses science as the lens through which students analyze and apply literary devices. Creating short stories based on scientific articles, they practice reading and understanding articles, conveying complex ideas, building conclusions in a way similar to a literature review, and extrapolating information to imagine implications. Just as young humanists can benefit from developing a greater understanding of science, so too can young scientists benefit from applying communications to science. One of the goals of an undergraduate education is to learn a discipline well enough to develop an educated worldview. A student should graduate with a way of understanding and analyzing the phenomena in their life and greater, global habitat. Different disciplines emphasize different ways of looking at the world: as an organism of power relationships, a set of outcomes dependent on historical precedence, a complex of interdependent systems, or the control of information through presentation.

In a cultural environment that maintains that post-secondary education ought to produce job ready graduates, the importance of the liberal arts and the competencies they teach, along with the questions they engage, often comes up for debate. In such a culture, honors may appear frivolous, elitist, and rear-guard. Angela Marie Salas defends both honors and the humanities, and calls for the need to prepare a compelling case that those who would be steered away from honors and humanities are the ones who might best be served by them. She contends that both honors and the humanities protect the equalizing function of higher education. She posits here that postsecondary education provides benefits that extend beyond job prospects, and articulates that those working in higher education institutions are called to assert as persuasively as possible that humanistic study is required for the well-being of a robust democracy and an engaged citizenry. Salas calls for colleagues in honors to be making the case to support humanities calling upon American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U's) recent employer survey which substantiates the fact that "the types of problem-solving and analytical thinking skills students gain through undergraduate education are more important that the specific major or program in which they earn a degree." Salas closes by saying that, to her mind, honors programs and colleges seem as necessary as clean water and air. To function well, individually and as a democracy, we must each have access to questions, competencies, ideas, and experiences beyond the pressing issue of how we will provide a salary to support ourselves.

In a world that no longer privileges thinking, Andrew Martino writes here that we might need to consider what we are asking of our students--and why--when we ask them to think. This article presents a declaration of how Martino thinks honors education can serve as a resistant force against the increasing encroachment of a wholly utilitarian concept of education. With the costs of higher education on the rise, the call to justify getting a college degree has been indissolubly linked to the ability to obtain a job once the student graduates. He points out that what has been lost along the way is the justification of getting an education for the sake of enriching one's life and one's community, a model of education that is increasingly available only to the privileged. He strongly supports the position that the humanities have taken the brunt of criticism aimed at such a justification, but the jobs-based model that so preoccupies social discourse is a misguided objective that will eventually turn our work force into semi-literate specialists whose main task is to keep the economy moving. Martino argues that if we continue to equate education with use value, then we are headed toward an intellectual and creative abyss; by privileging use value in education, we do grave harm to our students and communities. The article closes by saying that we get the society we deserve, and, if we have a society filled with nothing more than skilled workers and middle-managers, then no one will be able to lead us into the future in meaningful and thought-provoking ways.

This paper presents a course design model created in response to the pedagogical challenges inherent in a 'Big Questions' course in the humanities. We conceptualize the model as an Open Dynamic Educational Project (ODEP), namely, a carefully designed learning environment--physical, intellectual, and digital--which comprises "both" a collection of growing multimedia resources "and" a dynamic community of learners who contribute to this collection and to the learning process as a whole. Methodologically, an ODEP aims at the ideals of "significant learning" and "deep learning" and makes use of digital technologies--in our case a website and a computer game--in order to enhance a student-oriented course design. As we discuss the role of digital aids we also touch on the new educational trend of "gameful learning", its potentials and possible shortcomings. Based on theoretical findings in conjunction with our practice of transforming a Big Questions course into an Open Dynamic Educational Project, we suggest a number of future trajectories.

In recent years, a more sophisticated vocabulary has emerged in the field of higher education. Categories such as" socially relevant research"; "knowledge mobilization"; "research impact"; "innovation"; and "university priorities" have appeared. At first glance, these words may appear neutral, simple and free from conflicts of interest. However, I argue that each of them requires deeper analysis, especially in relation to current scientific and university public policies, as their use has consequences and/or impacts both at the institutional level (higher education institutions) and actor-level (scholars, project managers, etc.). Therefore, by shedding light on the fact that "social relevance" of university is a commonly addressed category in documents regulating university activities, I postulate that such categories indicate a reductionist notion of "relevance" that is used haphazardly as a substitute for the ideas of meaning, mission, and the aims of a university. In order to pinpoint and discuss these new terms and categories that are used as measures of academic knowledge, the paper focuses on public university systems in Argentina and Canada. From a comparative perspective, I aim at grasping a better understanding of the changes in knowledge mobilization.

With the rise of digital scholarship, humanists are participating in increasingly complex research teams and partnerships, and academic libraries are developing innovative service models to meet their needs. This paper explores modes of coworking in humanities research by synthesizing responses from two qualitative studies of research practices in the humanities and proposes a taxonomy of multiperson research that includes collaborative, consultative, and transactional research partnerships among scholars, graduate students, academic staff, and a range of other potential stakeholders. Based on an analysis of humanities scholars' self-described research behaviors, we provide recommendations for academic librarians who are developing and sustaining service models for digital scholarship.

This article provides a student's viewpoint in response to Larry Andrews' article, "The Humanities Are Dead! Long Live the Humanities!," which addresses and solidifies the notion that, at least from the standpoint of academicians, the humanities are alive and well. The author believes that a broader base of learning, an increased awareness of diverse beliefs, or in other words, more exposure to the humanities is essential to the health and well-breeding of the citizens of our world. [For "The Humanities Are Dead! Long Live the Humanities!," see EJ1081262.]

This paper addresses the topic of work-life interferences in academic contexts. More specifically, it focuses on early career researchers in the Italian university system. The total availability required from those who work in the research sector is leading to significant transformations of the temporalities of work, especially among the new generation of researchers, whose condition is characterized by a higher degree of instability and uncertainty. Which are the experiences of the early career researchers in an academic context constituted by a growing competition for permanent positions and, as a consequence, by a greatly increased pressure? Which are the main gender differences? In what elements do Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics disciplines differ from Social Sciences and Humanities? The collected narratives reveal how the ongoing process of precarization is affecting both the everyday working activities and the private and family lives of early career researchers, with important consequences also on their future prospects.

International debates on the aims and purposes of entrepreneurship education in universities are examined in this paper through the prism of a policy critique of recent English higher education initiatives. The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) policy to integrate rather than "add on" enterprise education throughout university courses has been widely implemented. In contrast to the debates about enterprise policy by authors in social psychology, business studies, secondary school education and entrepreneurship, which question the claims of enterprise rhetoric and examine the practicalities of forming start-up companies, policy to integrate entrepreneurship into the curriculum has remained largely uncontested in UK universities. It is argued that policy to integrate enterprise into the humanities and social sciences produces three critical gaps; a limited scope for social theory, a historical analysis and the absence of demand-side economics. This critique of BIS policy is set within the wider context of the neo-liberal reconfiguration of the institutional relations between the university, the state and the market that erode university autonomy in the UK and on an international scale.

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