Roger Boshier

Motivational Orientations Re-Visited: Life-Space Motives and the Education Participation Scale

Continuing a line of motivational research that flows from Houles three factor typology, a model which describes adult edu cation participants as life-chance (deficiency) or life-space (growth) oriented was presented. Life-chance motivation was hypothesized as being a principal determinant of the participation behavior of people from the lower socio-economic groups while life-space moti vation was said to characterize the upper socio-economic groups. Part of the model was tested with a parent population of 242 Van couver adult education participants who completed the Education Participation Scale. E.P.S. data were subject to factor analysis and orthogonal rotation. Five factors were produced for the parent population and a sub-sample of 76 participants. Factor scores were related through correlation and analysis of variance to variables such as age, previous participation, occupation, educational attain ment, subject enrolled, and place of birth. The E.P.S. factors were labelled as indicative of life-chance or life-space motivation. Sev eral hypothesized relationships were confirmed, but it was argued that further research concerning the social and psychological foun dations of motive for participation is needed.

Why is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning such a hard sell

Advocates have difficulty convincing colleagues Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a worthwhile use of time and resources. This article highlights problems impeding SoTL. First, scholarship of teaching gets used as a synonym for other activities. Second, Boyer’s definition was conceptually confused. Third, SoTL is difficult to operationalize. Fourth, much discourse concerning SoTL is anti‐intellectual and located in a narrow neoliberalism. Fifth, there is uncritical over‐reliance on peer review as the mechanism for measuring scholarship. Each impediment makes SoTL a hard sell – particularly in research‐intensive universities. Taken together, they constitute a formidable problem for SoTL advocates and contain incendiary implications for promotion candidates and committees.

Best and Worst Dressed Web Courses: Strutting into the 21st Century in Comfort and Style

Web courses are constructed as the answer to fiscal crises evoked by neo‐liberal restructuring. They are also touted as an anarchist exemplar of ‘de‐schooling’ as envisaged by Ivan IIlich. The trouble is, some courses are vastly under‐dressed and merely attempt to display a face‐to‐face course on‐line. At the other extreme are those laced with links, animation and more than enough glitter and glam to make Liberace wince. In this study the authors employed a 43‐item coding schedule to examine the accessibility, opportunities for interaction and attractiveness of 127 courses on the web. Interrelationships between the 43 variables and issues pertaining to accessibility, interaction and attractiveness were identified with the aid of SPSS. Exemplary web courses were then distinguished from mediocre web courses. In our view, Madonna exemplifies qualities that should be incorporated into web courses. After examining 127 sites the Madonna award for the ‘best‐dressed’ site went to a University of Wisconsin History...

Factor Analysts At Large: a Critical Review of the Motivational Orientation Literature

The methodology employed in fourteen motivational orienta tion studies is reviewed. All studies used either the Education Participation Scale, the Continuing Learning Orientation Index or the Reasons for Educational Participation Scale. Issues discussed concern factor scoring, factor analysis, rotation, scaling, reliability and the extent to which the three-factor Houle typology is an accu rate representation of reality. There has been some well executed research in the orientation area. However, many deficiencies are identified and it is recommended that future orientation researchers emulate the strengths but avoid the weaknesses of previous studies.

Citation Patterns of Articles Published in Adult Education 1968-1977:

In an effort to establish the extent to which adult education researchers are creating their own body of knowledge citation behaviors in Adult Education articles were studied. Nine judges classified the 2247 references that appeared in Adult Education from 1968-1977 as primary or secondary adult education literature. Only 20 percent of citations appearing in Volume 19 (1968) but nearly 60 percent of citations in Volume 27 (1977) were to primary literature. The most fre quently cited writers were Boshier, Houle, Knowles and Verner; the most frequently cited publication was Johnstone & Riveras Volunteers for Learning. The self-citation behavior of authors publishing in Adult Education was studied. It was argued that adult education is an emerging discipline creating a unique body of knowledge. The prevalence of single-study publishing and the concomitant lack of sustained inquiry suggests a need to develop cumulative research projects.

World wide America? Think globally, click locally

Educators at all levels are enthusiastic about the potential of the World Wide Web to provide learners with access to vast amounts of information and exciting opportunities for interaction. However, few educators have considered the extent to which American corporations and institutions dominate the Web. Using a framework based on Chomskys 1988 examination of the mass media, the authors examine three filters that mediate learners’ access to on‐line courses and information: browsers, search engines and the digitisation of content. Recommendations for educators who wish to counteract the imbalance are included.

Lifelong Education and the World Wide Web: American Hegemony or Diverse Utopia?

The notion of network lay at the centre of Illichs and Faures 1970s proposals concerning lifelong education. Today, the World Wide Web dramatically exemplifies many features of lifelong education and is a metaphor for the learning society. The problem is that most sites are in the US and Web course architects are prone to include a large number of links back to the US Cultural ideas about what is good and bad and the way the world should be organized are nested within American Web courses and learning materials. In this paper three Canadians reflect on what US dominance of the Web means for smaller nations and indigenous,non English-speaking and other persons outside the US metropole. With the needs of non-US learners in mind, the authors make one lot of recommendations concerning the ‘positionality’ of Web course architects and instructors and another set concerning ‘diversity’. There is no point in blaming Americans for dominating the Web, but those who live outside the US should realise that the uncr...

In the House of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), teaching lives upstairs and learning in the basement

Staff and students grumble about how research allegedly obscures the merits of exemplary teaching at universities. Modern efforts to move teaching from the periphery to the centre of the university were marked by books on the scholarship of teaching (SoT). Starting in the 1990s it became possible for academic staff to cite their SoT in claims for promotion. After being criticised, advocates of SoT hurriedly added ‘learning’ and now speak of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Unfortunately, within the house of SoTL, teaching lives upstairs and learning in the basement. For SoTL to flourish there must be a more willing embrace of learning. The concept could gain traction by embracing work on adult education, lifelong education, self-directed learning, farm-gate intellectuals, communities of practice and learning communities. With SoTL struggling, it is time to launch the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SoLT).

Lifelong learning as bungy jumping: In New Zealand what goes down doesn't always come up

From 1984 until 1999, New Zealands economic ‘reforms’ were a model for others, particularly Canadians. At the centre of this model was lifelong learning which bore little relationship to the social democratic ethos embedded in Faure Report conceptions of lifelong education. In New Zealand, lifelong learning slept in the same bed as the ‘marketization’ of education. The radical excesses of the New Zealand Experiment might have ended with the December, 1999 election of a Labour/Alliance government. This paper traces the genesis of the post-1984 brand of lifelong learning in New Zealand, identifies consequences for universities and shows how educational policy needs to go backwards and forwards at the same time.

Market Socialism Meets the Lost Generation: Motivational Orientations of Adult Learners in Shanghai

In Western countries, women and men, young and old, enroll in adult education for different reasons. This is even more the case in China. This study helps Shanghai program planners better appreciate learners by understandinghow motivational orientations vary as a function of gender and age. The Chinese version of the Education Participation Scale was administered to 448 adults enrolled in Shanghai adult education classes. It had a factor structure loosely comparable to the English version. Women were more inclined than men to be enrolled for social stimulation, social contact and cognitive interest. However, gender differences were less pronounced than those for age. The Cultural Revolution and pressures of market socialism in postmodern Shanghai appeared to shape motivational orientations of participants who came of age between 1966 and 1976. Just the fact that learners were asked about motivational orientations may change the politics of human subjectivity in Shanghai adult education.