Building Racial Justice Into a Master's Program

This chapter describes a five-year equity initiative to transform a language teacher education professional master's program into one that cultivates racial justice and equity-minded practices in graduates. This chapter will review program work over the last five years on two critical efforts involved in the ongoing five-year equity-minded initiatives. The program activities include data review and planning from 2017 to 2018 and equity curricular re-design from 2018 to 2020, where faculty revised program goals, curriculum, and syllabi. Critical race theory and equity-mindedness frameworks guided this equity initiative's process, goals, and content. The authors argue that building racial justice into a professional master's program requires applying a critical race analysis to the normative assumptions about academic program redesign. Individual and institutional challenges are discussed, and recommendations for building racial justice into the curriculum, instruction, and program policies are provided.

Teaching Model-Driven Engineering in a Master's Program

Model-driven engineering (MDE) is an approach to software engineering that adopts models as the central artefact. Although the approach is promising in addressing major issues in software development, particularly in dealing with software complexity, and there are several success cases in the industry as well as growing interest in the research community, it seems that it has been hard to generalize its gains among software professionals. To address this issue, MDE must be taught at a higher-education level. This chapter presents a three-year experience in teaching MDE in a course of a master program in informatics engineering. The chapter provides details on how a project-based learning approach was adopted and evolved along three editions of the course. Results of a student survey are discussed and compared to those from another course. In addition, several other similar teaching experiences are analyzed.

Designing a Master's program in speech therapy education in the context of interaction with stakeholders

Introduction. The relevance of the study is due to the need to match the requirements of stakeholders to the level of preparedness of a graduate of a master's degree. The purpose of the research. The research is aimed at the development and scientific substantiation of the master's degree program in the field of speech therapy support for persons with communication disorders of various categories in terms of interaction with stakeholders. Methodology and research methods. The Master's program is based on the principles and provisions of practice-oriented and competence-based approaches that ensure the formation of students ' professional competencies and practical skills in solving real professional problems, both in practical classes and during industrial practice on the basis of stakeholders. The research used methods of design, content analysis, questionnaires, mathematical statistics (descriptive statistics, factor analysis). The results. The mechanism of designing the master's degree program is based on the inclusion of stakeholders in the process of forming professional competencies of graduates, the development of its structure, content and areas of implementation (educational process, scientific work, practice, final qualification work, career guidance). The conducted research with the participation of stakeholders (56 people: speech therapists, speech pathologists, psychologists, rehabilitologists, managers) allowed us to determine the four-factor structure of knowledge, skills and labor actions (professional competencies) necessary for a speech therapist when working with people with communication disorders of various categories: ability to plan and implement the content of correctional and developmental classes (percentage of dispersion – 29.4); the ability to design an adapted basic general education program and a special individual development program (percentage of dispersion – 24.5); the ability to implement speech therapy support in the rehabilitation work system (percentage of dispersion – 18.9); the ability to plan and conduct applied scientific research in education, including the diagnosis of persons with communication disorders of various categories (percentage of dispersion – 7.8). Practical significance. The results obtained can be used by the heads of universities focused on the development of interaction with stakeholders, can help to encourage the introduction of practices and strategies that take into account the influence of stakeholders in the development of management decisions and the organization of effective training of teachers in the master's program. They may be of interest to speech therapists-practitioners, scientific supervisors of master's programs.

Transformation of pedagogical consciousness in the context of digitalization of society

The transition from the informatization stage to the stage of digitalization in the world, including in our country, occurred very quickly. This gives society advantages, but also makes you think about the problems that have appeared in connection with this. Digitalization in education opens up wide opportunities for learning people of different ages throughout their lives, but at the same time requires cardinal changes in the entire education system. All this leads to the transformation of pedagogical consciousness. Since colossal changes in digital technologies, including in the education system, are proceeding rapidly, the consciousness of many teachers does not have time to rebuild. As a result of the study, it was found that this leads to stress, dissatisfaction, fears and irritation. Only a few are interested and excited. There is a process of awareness of one's Self in a changing pedagogical space, one's place in it. The results of the study confirm that the speed of introduction of new digital technologies in the education system depends on the pain of the transformation of pedagogical consciousness. The course Active Methods of Socio-Psychological Learning on the basis of the Master's program Psychological and Pedagogical Education of Samara University allows you to prepare teachers to solve problems related to the transformation of pedagogical consciousness in the context of digitalization of education.

University–industry collaboration in curriculum design and delivery: A model and its application in manufacturing engineering courses

The advantages and importance of university–industry collaboration, particularly in curriculum design and delivery, are well-known. However, although curriculum development models are available in the literature, very few are sufficiently concrete to be applicable in practice or are generalizable beyond their discipline of origin. In this paper, a co-operative model based on the Plan–Do–Study–Act cycle is presented and described. An example of its application in the curriculum design of two courses in welding within a Manufacturing Engineering Master’s program is detailed. The model was found successful based on the evaluation of the courses by students, teachers, and the industrial representatives involved. Therefore, it proved to be an effective tool for bridging the gap between industrial needs and academia in the field of Manufacturing Engineering education. At the same time, the methodology is generalizable and is applicable to any field of education.

ORGANIZATIONAL FORMS (STRUCTURES) OF BLENDED LEARNING AS POWERFUL MEANS OF INFLUENCE ON THE FORMATION OF LEGAL COMPETENCE OF THE FUTURE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION MANAGEMENT MANAGERS IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE MAGISTRACY

On the basis of the analysis of theoretical sources on this problem, this article clarifies: 1) ideas of leading scientists on the content of the basic concepts of research (legal competence, blended learning, etc.) and components of blended learning; 2) the ways of formation of legal competence of the future educational institution management managers in the conditions of the magistracy are defined. The specifics of organizational forms (structures) of blended learning as a powerful means of influence on the formation of legal competence of the future educational institution management managers in the conditions of the magistracy are discussed. It is the organizational forms (structures) of blended learning that should be the basis for creating a blended learning environment in the formation of legal competence of future managers in the management of educational institutions in the master's program.

What Encourages Longer Educational Careers in Tertiary Education? A Three-Level Approach for the Case of Romanian Universities

Students’ commitment and engagement in the educational process are shaped by a dense combination of factors, with effects on educational attainment and on the length of their educational careers. Decisions of prolonging education by enrolling in master’s degrees are beneficial for both individuals and societies, as such programs provide higher levels of specialized skills Longer educational careers are favored by a mix of factors acting at the level of individual, university, or wider environment. We focus our study on exploring factors conducive for students’ intentions to pursue master’s degrees considering longer educational careers as desirable outcomes. Thus, this article investigates how the individual and environmental factors interplay and shape the predisposition of students to prolong their educational career by enrolling in master’s degrees. For this, we applied three-level logistic regression models for a sample of 502 students enrolled in their final year of bachelor studies grouped by universities and universities grouped by counties. The empirical results revealed that the final grade, the father level of education, the type of working contract, and job seniority are individual-level determinants influencing the decision of enrolment in a master’s program. At the university level, the type of university and the university performance score positively impact the students’ decision to enroll in a master’s program. At the county level, the empirical evidence pointed out the significance of determinants such as the proportion of students enrolled in bachelor studies; participation rate in education and training; employment level in high-technology sectors (HTC), total-knowledge intensive sectors (KIS), and knowledge-intensive high-technology sectors (KIS_HTC); proportion of persons with tertiary education employed in science and technology; proportion of scientists and engineers; local development; R&D expenditure, personnel, and researchers in the business sector; average gross earnings; density of active firms; birth rate of companies; proportion of innovative enterprises or those introducing product innovations on the decision to enroll in a master’s program.

It’s Not Where You Start or Where You Finish - It’s How You Get There

A career in librarianship may start in a library science master’s program, but the path to and/or between career opportunities builds and shifts with time. This commentary discusses the career paths followed by two librarians who each attended the same master’s program and are currently both health science librarians at the same institution. While these similarities exist, the unique journeys each followed have helped to shape their approaches to their current jobs, roles within their careers, and their approaches to librarianship. From library school and first jobs, to current positions, this piece discusses how every step along the way has had a lasting impact on the authors’ careers.