Book reviews

Distributed Learning: social and cultural approaches to practiceEdited by Mary R. Lea and Kathy Nicoll, 2002 RoutledgeFalmer 214 pp., £19.99 ISBN 0 415 26809 5Distributed Learning: social and cultural approaches to practice, edited by Mary R. Lea and Kathy Nicoll, is published as part of the Open University UK course Understanding Distributed and Flexible Learning within the Postgraduate Programme in Open and Distance Education. The book comprises of 12 chapters written by authors from different academic backgrounds. They draw on their extensive practical experiences to present and reflect on a number of conceptual models and describe best practices in distributed learning. The volume is aimed at practitioners who intend to use technology in a higher education setting and also helps those who may have been using it for a few years to rethink their approaches to online learning and teaching. The reader is introduced to several theoretical concepts based on different disciplines and perspectives, e.g. anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, economics and pedagogy. The specific focus is on the social and cultural aspects of learning. What does the term distributed learning mean? It describes practices on the continuum between traditional distance education and campus-based face-to-face education (cf. flexible learning, blended learning). With the proliferation of information and communications technology (ICT) in campus-based educational settings the boundaries between distance education and face-to-face education are fading. More and more traditional campus-based universities are providing access to higher education in a distance learning format. In fact, ICTs facilitate contact over a distance. Some authors even speak of a convergence between the two forms of education (Mills &;Tait, 1999). Campus-based institutions cannot deny their tradition: they insist that contact sessions are essential for successful internet-based independent learning, although distance education with its high quality pre-prepared study materials and tutorial (online) support has proven otherwise. This is what models for blended learning try to illuminate: the appropriate mix of face-to-face and distance teaching approaches. A strength of the book is that the authors come from both distance teaching as well as campus-based institutions and thus different views on the continuum are presented.     

Client Pretreatment Characteristics as Predictors of Outcome in Brief Therapy for Bulimia

An overview for college counselors of the literature on bulimia treatment outcomes is presented for purposes of screening, treatment, and referral. Pretreatment characteristics that seem amenable to success in brief therapy are outlined, as are those that do not lead to a positive outcome.     

Teaching Through Testimonio: Accessing Community Cultural Wealth in School

Using the concept of community cultural wealth, this article examines the ways that a group of 3rd-grade students engaged in writing testimonios, or personal narratives, to reflect on their cultural and linguistic lives in and outside of the classroom. Countering deficit notions of Latina/o students, families, and communities, this study illuminates the powerful ways that students utilize various forms of community cultural wealth. The findings indicate that testimonio can be an effective pedagogical tool to help students identify their individual and collective community cultural wealth and draw on these forms of knowledge in the elementary classroom.     

States of Insecurity: Cold War memory, “global citizenship” and its discontents

This article situates the dominant discourses of “global citizenship” employed in North American universities to internationalize the curricula, drawing in part on evidence from one Pacific northwestern Canadian university in the post-September-11 context of recent restrictive immigration policies, anti-terrorist measures and evocative Cold War memories. Far from weakening the Canadian nation-state or jettisoning neoliberalism, it argues that authoritarian post-Fordism constitutes a supra-juridical state that offers fewer social services but governs with more entrepreneurship through its globalization, immigration and “national security” policies. The article shows how the post-September-11 changes to Canada's immigration and refugee legislation from 1978 to 2001, write evocative fears about “terrorists” and “invading immigrants” on the national body politic. These changes provide literal and metaphorical transnational, economic and socio-legal mobility with substantive and specific human rights to those prospective immigrants deemed “highly skilled global citizens”. Yet, such policy efforts and legislation also reproduce the exclusions and differential hierarchies of gendered, classed, ableist and racialized notions of skill, flexible work and vulnerable or unobtuinuble citizenship for those it deems “non-immigrants”, migrants or non-citizens. The conclusion asks: Is “global citizenship” an oxymoronic slogan; a well-meaning but naïve equation of transnational mobility or “belonging” with formal legal substantive citizenship and human rights; or an opportunity to claim democratic praxis through a decolonized curricular, pedagogical and educational policy?     

User acceptance of a digital library system in developing countries: An application of the Technology Acceptance Model

This study examines the factors that influence people's adoption and use of a digital library system and tests the applicability of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in the context of developing countries. Using data from a survey of 16 institutions in Africa, Asia, and Central/Latin America (N = 1082), a path analysis revealed that perceived ease of use of the library system had a significant impact on perceived usefulness, which ultimately led to behavioral intention to use. In addition, the study examined the similarities and differences in the significant predictors of the digital library acceptance across countries and continents. Further, the current study suggests that external variables that affect perceived ease of use and usefulness need to be considered as important factors in the process of designing, implementing, and operating digital library systems. Such consideration will help decrease the mismatch between system design and local users’ realities, and further facilitate the successful adoption of digital library systems in developing countries.     

Enhancing Students’ Learning Process Through Self-Generated Tests

The use of new technologies in higher education has surprisingly emphasized students’ tendency to adopt a passive behavior in class. Participation and interaction of students are essential to improve academic results. This paper describes an educational experiment aimed at the promotion of students’ autonomous learning by requiring them to generate test type questions related to the contents of the course. The main idea is to make the student feel part of the evaluation process by including students’ questions in the evaluation exams. A set of applications running on our university online learning environment has been developed in order to provide both students and teachers with the necessary tools for a good interaction between them. Questions uploaded by students are visible to every enrolled student as well as to each involved teacher. In this way, we enhance critical analysis skills, by solving and finding possible mistakes in the questions sent by their fellows. The experiment was applied over 769 students from 12 different courses. Results show that the students who have actively participated in the experiment have obtained better academic performance.     

Effects of active‐learning experiences on achievement,attitudes, and behaviors in high school biology

Active‐learning labs for two topics in high school biology were developed through the collaboration of high school teachers and university faculty and staff and were administered to 408 high school students in six classrooms. The content of instruction and testing was guided by State of Texas science objectives. Detailed teacher records describing daily classroom activities were used to operationalize two types of instruction: active learning, which used the labs; and traditional, which used the teaching resources ordinarily available to the teacher. Teacher records indicated that they used less independent work and fewer worksheets, and more collaborative and lab‐based activities, with active‐learning labs compared to traditional instruction. In‐class test data show that students gained significantly more content knowledge and knowledge of process skills using the labs compared to traditional instruction. Questionnaire data revealed that students perceived greater learning gains after completing the labs compared to covering the same content through traditional methods. An independent questionnaire administered to a larger sample of teachers who used the lab‐based curriculum indicated that they perceived changing their behaviors as intended by the student‐centered principles of the labs. The major implication of this study is that active‐learning–based laboratory units designed and developed collaboratively by high school teachers and university faculty, and then used by high school teachers in their classrooms, can lead to increased use of student‐centered instructional practices as well as enhanced content knowledge and process learning for students. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 960–979, 2007