Prior Learning

Learning about rapists you discover their motives, signature behaviors, and typologies. This was a group effort to make a presentation for the course that could be used as a tool to further women's group to educate them on different types of rapists and preventative measures that are applicable should an individual find themselves in a similar predicament.

This study was an investigation of the additional risk conferred by the experience of psychogenic amnesia for memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) on the likelihood of becoming a victim of sexual assault in later life. A total of 210 community respondents completed a retrospective web-based trauma survey. The majority of respondents were female (74.3%) and their ages ranged from 16 to 65 years, with a mean age of 33 years. Chi-squared analysis revealed that survivors of CSA demonstrated significantly greater risk (58%, x2 = 44.461, p = 0.0005) of experiencing sexual assault in adolescence in comparison with their non-abused counterparts (13%).
Furthermore, survivors who reported having been amnesic for their abuse related memories demonstrated a higher rate of adolescent revictimisation (86%) than survivors who had retained continuous memories of their victimisation (48%, x2 = 8.626, p =0.003). Overall, once-amnesic survivors of CSA demonstrated 6.6 times the risk of sexual assault and an eight-fold risk for rape during adolescence in comparison with their non-abused counterparts. It is proposed that the elevated risk conferred by amnesia for CSA might be mediated by two distinct pathways, both of which are associated with the use of dissociation as a defence mechanism.

We studied the effect grade aspiration, confidence in achieving that grade, prior learning and university entrance ranking had on first year biology students’ final grade. We hypothesised that (1) students with higher aspiration will achieve higher grades than those with lower aspiration; (2) students with prior biology learning will have a higher grade aspiration and a higher confidence of achieving that aspiration than those without such learning; (3) university entrance rank will impact students’ final grade; and (4) students with prior biology learning will achieve a higher final grade than those without such study. We found that Hypotheses 3 and 4 were supported, Hypothesis 2 was partially supported, and that Hypothesis 1 was unsupported. If these results reflect broader patterns - that undergraduate student grade aspiration is not a predictor of their subsequent final grade - then targeted information and curricula scaffolding must be provided to better align student aspirations with their actual academic achievement.

This paper addresses the importance of focusing on prior student knowledge and its relationship to course learning outcomes. Regarding this, Bass comments in the article “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: What’s the Problem?” the following: “I realized I didn’t know really if the better students in a course who demonstrated a real understanding of the material by the end of the semester were actually acquiring that understanding in my course, or were merely the percentage of students who entered the course with a high level of background and aptitude” (3). Indeed, there is a need for professors across the curriculum in higher education to consider student prior knowledge in relation to course learning outcomes for the sake being able to emphasize specific learning outcomes and to help guide pedagogy. This paper, taking a scholarship of teaching and learning approach, focuses on three different courses and explores the problem of understanding student prior knowledge in relation to course learning outcomes and includes results pre and post student surveys, feedback from students, and final course grades. Overall, in a collaborative spirit, this paper seeks to help other professors refocus their attention on what they specifically want students to learn by the end of a course, why learning such objectives is important, and how to help students achieve these learning goals.

Employability has been put into focus of educational developments by governments, policymakers and other stakeholders since the beginning of the Bologna process. This often met with strong negative reactions coming from academics and students. Keeping academic values at the core of education is opposed to transforming higher education institutes purely into agents for economic development. At the same time students do strive for employment after graduation, and preferably meaningful employment.