In a 2017 speech at the Brookings Institute, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos drew a striking comparison between K-12 schools and ride share services. This idea--that education, like other consumer goods, improves through competition between providers--has been around a long time. Whenever existing schools fail to deliver what students, parents, or…

The aim of this study is to explore and analyze metaphors constructed around academics, in both the contexts of the UK and Turkey, to see if general opinion on academics seems to be shifting from the well-known 'ivory-tower' reputation, and if the perception differs amongst sub-groups based on their varying amounts of exposure to the reality of…

Abstract concepts dominate university science teaching, and much of this content is taught without sufficient connection to students' prior knowledge or everyday experiences. As this can be problematic for students, the aim of this research was to determine the utility and effectiveness of a professional development module on using analogies to…

Global university rankings are often thought of as games, defined by roles and rules that universities must play in order to confirm their legitimacy and gain visibility as actors in the global academic market. While some countries are well represented at the top of rankings charts, others are just joining the race and testing out different…

Although the notion is certainly cliched, baseball often serves as an excellent metaphor for life. Some of the methodologies currently being used to measure, evaluate, manage, and even play baseball may serve as references for ways that higher education may be measured, evaluated, managed, and played. This chapter proposes and presents…

Research has shown that consistently right-handed individuals have poorer memory than do inconsistently right- or left-handed individuals under baseline conditions but more reliably exhibit enhanced memory retrieval after making a series of saccadic eye movements. From this it could be that consistent versus inconsistent handedness, regardless of…

The purpose of this dialogue was to begin grappling with notions of neutrality and academic development in three non-western contexts: (1) Jamaica; (2) Ethiopia; and (3) Japan. The authors were asked to describe the political geography of academic development in their countries and to explore questions of neutrality. This dialogue therefore tries…

The student-as-employee metaphor emphasizes student accountability and participation in learning and provides instructors with work-oriented methods for creating a productive class environment. The authors propose that the tenets of performance management in work organizations can be applied to the classroom. In particular, they focus on three…

University administrators can take a cue from pilots. Pilots regularly face decision situations where much lies in the balance. So it is with university administrators. The department, college or university itself can be compared to an aircraft. In flight, there are times when the sun shines and winds are favorable: a comfortable flight results…

To learn more about how people read literary texts, with a view to improving the way literature is taught in schools, a study examined the extent to which the reading of literature is affected by variations in readers, texts, and situations. Subjects, 12 skilled (faculty) readers and 96 novice (undergraduate) readers, read a short story, either in…

Papers in this serial on aspects of applied linguistics include: "An Investigation into Teachers' Attitudes to Using Literature in the Language Classroom" (Marie Gilroy); "Creating Multimedia Courseware for ESP" (Philip Goertzen, Ron Howard); "A Comparison of Listening and Speaking Tests for Student Placement" (Anne Heller, Tony Lynch, Linda…