In this paper the assumption that critical reflection skills are acquired automatically during postgraduate study is queried by examining whether keeping a reflective journal is an aid in developing reflective habits. All course outlines in the postgraduate program studied for this paper state that students will learn how to critique issues relating to the topic being studied. The assumption is that critical reflection is a skill that is acquired automatically during the degree. Postgraduate students at this particular institution are required to complete a Research Methods course before enrolling in a thesis or dissertation. Research Methods students are encouraged but not required to keep a reflective journal. This paper reports on the effectiveness of keeping a reflective journal by analyzing results obtained over five semesters within the Research Methods course.
A problem situation that is at the heart of a New Zealand higher education institute applying for university status is meeting the requirement for sufficient academic staff with postgraduate qualifications. For this particular New Zealand higher education institute that was originally a teaching institution offering only sub-degree qualifications, the move to firstly offering degrees and secondly seeking university status has meant that employment conditions have shifted for many academics. In order to explore the multiple world views on the impact to the whole system of a significant number of staff upgrading qualifications whilst engaged in full-time teaching at the same time, views were sought from senior executives, heads of schools, human resource personnel and staff engaged in their own postgraduate study. Multiple conceptual models have been utilised to gain an understanding of this problem situation: Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland and Scholes, 1990Scholes, , 1999 in both its original and its current form; complexity theory (McKenna, 1999;Merry, 1995;Stacey, 1996) and context-dependent cluster model (CDCM) (Fielden and London, 2001). These multiple conceptual models have all contributed to providing a basis upon which to compare multiple-perceived worlds with appropriate conceptual models upon which to base a future action plan.Outcomes discussed are both positive and negative factors including: recognition, time, stress, employment contracts, senior staff expectations, family, collegial and institutional support and the integration of own study with teaching practice and content. Implications for alignment across institutional organisational levels and also for higher education outside of the university sector are also discussed.
In this paper, a multi-stakeholder, multi-level theoretical framework has been used to analyse a selection of 125 published papers on academic integrity, all with Australasian authors. Concepts informing the theoretical framework include: underlying author's moral or value judgements about academic integrity; views held by multiple stakeholders; overlapping levels of abstraction in producing research outputs; human information-seeking behaviour; three stances adopted in researching academic integrity; the influence of a managed higher education climate; and the changed nature of information availability. Results obtained from this study suggested that there was a dominant positivist mindset adopted by authors in this particular sample; moral or value judgements about academic integrity are present, but often not stated; most papers are about student behaviour; and academic staff researchers provide the dominant stakeholder view. Widely available global information has brought with it both benefits and problems. In the academic context, the issue of properly acknowledging sources (which is an important aspect of academic integrity) has received a lot of attention in the last five or six years. Joyce (2007) conducted a review of publications by Australasian authors concerned with academic integrity (AI) and located 125 papers that have appeared in journals or have been presented at academic conferences since 1998. He noted that 'many of the academic papers (more than 50) had been presented at one of the two Asia-Pacific Educational Integrity Conferences (held in 2003 and 2005) and there was considerable overlap in content (p. 188). In this review paper a selection of 125 academic papers on AI with Australasian authors have been analysed utilising a theoretical framework initially proposed by Fielden (2008). This theoretical framework is underpinned by Bates' (2006) theory on information searching, Floridi's (2006) 'infosphere' and Introna's (2005) multiple views of the nature of information technology. According to Bates, four main ways of searching for information are (Figure 3): searching, which is active and direct; monitoring, which is passive and direct; browsing, which is active and undirected; and being aware, which is passive and undirected. Floridi has provided a starting point for this framework with his infosphere (Figure 1) and levels of abstraction (Figure 2). Introna (2005) provided a third dimension to the theoretical framework utilised in this paper when he established multiple views of the nature of information technology in considering information ethics. This notion of multiple levels has been applied to published papers on AI; the levels being AI as artefact, AI as social construction, and AI as phenomenon. These three levels are reflected in the main column headings of Tables 1, 2 and 3. This study was conducted because one of the authors is interested in developing conceptual frameworks to inform a deeper understanding of research issues and the other author has a breadth of knowledge about plagiarism, particularly in Australasia. The structure of the paper is as follows: firstly the terminology and themes used in this paper are defined and the domain in which the theoretical framework applies is discussed; secondly the theoretical framework is described; then 125 papers from the current body of literature on academic integrity (1998 2006) are positioned according to the theoretical model; finally a discussion on findings from this positioning is followed by conclusions and recommendations for future research.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.