When I bent over my home printer one day last year to check that it was switched on, its tiny digital screen told me that it was in “deep sleep”. And for a moment – honestly – I felt jealous. Admittedly, my sleep had been particularly broken the night before. A bit of 3am dialogue […] … learn more→

Facebook recently announced that it now has over 2 billion monthly users. This makes its “population” larger than that of China, the US, Mexico and Japan combined. Its popularity, and with it the influence it has in society, is beyond dispute. But for many the experience of actually using the site fluctuates somewhere between the […] … learn more→

We were delighted that Times Higher Education reported on the anthropological research being conducted at Carnegie Mellon on the roadblocks to implementation of demonstratively effective pedagogical innovations. We’d like to take the opportunity to expand the conversation. Our research exposes multiple factors behind faculty resistance to making changes to their teaching practice, including the institutional […] … learn more→

Choosing a career path can be rather frustrating and stressful, since you know this will define your life. It is crucial to be familiar with the options, just to give you an idea of how well you will be able to handle them. Some people make the mistake of over thinking, ending in a disastrous […] … learn more→

Literacy involves meaning-making with materials that humans use to communicate – be they visual, written, spoken, sung, and/or drawn. Definitions vary according to culture, personal values and theories. We look to a broad definition of literacy as guided by UNESCO to be inclusive for all families. Children learn to be literate in a variety of […] … learn more→

I remember, years ago, when it was news that more females than males were in college. It was considered a major victory for feminism, and perhaps it was. Males never made a “comeback” after that, and soon the percentages went from a barely noticeable (but newsworthy!) 50.1% female, to 55% female, to today’s we-should-ask-questions 60% […] … learn more→

It is raw. It is real. It is one of the most challenging and taxing experiences a researcher can undertake, and presenting my Three Minute Thesis completely redefined my approach to research. Naively I assumed preparing for this competition would be a breeze. The rules of the competition were simple. You have 3 minutes to […] … learn more→

Every now and then patter offers a close-up of research writing. This near-sighted exercise is intended to illustrate how ‘reading for the writing’ can be helpful. This particular ‘reading for writing’ post looks at writing qualitative methods in a journal article. It speaks to last week’s post about the need to be specific, not woolly […] … learn more→

A “challenging set of results”, a politician might say. Others might suggest that heads should roll. What is clear is that if there were any sort of league table that measured how well-prepared school leavers are for university, there’d be some catch-up to do. I’m referring to the results of the 2017 Survey of University Admissions […] … learn more→

In the weeks after the Kent State killings in 1970, I grew increasingly perplexed and withdrawn. My campus—I was attending Utica College in upstate New York—shut down and students seemed triumphant. Triumphant, that is, in the matter of standing for a moment on center stage. But I was unhappy. For it wasn’t really “students” who […] … learn more→