The Academy of Process Educators continues to increase its membership and work to drive transformational change in education by generating, disseminating, and archiving research based on the principles of Process Education, including the sponsorship of a yearly Process Education Conference. Academy membership is open to anyone passionate about Process Education and interested in engaging, supporting, and collaborating with a community of similarly dedicated educators. Visit the Academy online at: www.processeducation.org.

The Academy of Process Educators is a registered non-profit corporation.

Now for a few Academy news items:

Academy Store

This is a one-stop shopping area for Academy membership (new or renewals), the print version of the International Journal of Process Education, subscriptions to Dialogues, and free subscriptions to the Pacific Crest Newsletter and the Bi-weekly Insight. Donations are also accepted through this site as the Academy is a registered non-profit 501(c) corporation.

Member Portal on Academy Website

We've created a special area where members have direct access to (1) e-Faculty Guidebook, (2) electronic version of the International Journal of Process Education, (3) Academy directory, (4) Insights and Dialogues, (5) Pacific Crest website, (6) Academy meeting minutes, and (7) Process Education learning objects that you can use to support professional and classroom work. 

International Journal of Process Education

This is our peer-reviewed journal that serves as an archive for research on best practices in process education. Issues are unveiled each year at our Annual Conference where attendees (as well as those who separately renew their membership) receive a hard copy. Is there an interesting curriculum or pedagogy topic on which you've done literature analysis and/or about which you've collected data? Why not submit an article for review and development. The deadline for draft paper submissions for the 2010 issue that will appear at next year's conference is January 15, 2010.
 www.processeducation.org/ijpe/

Learning to Learn Camp Research

A sub-group of Academy members has begun a multi-year effort to assess the long-term impact of pre-college Learning to Learn Camps. Two research questions have been posed based on an extensive literature review:

  1. How do learner efficacy in personal identity, learning skills growth, and retention and persistence statistics change for Learning to Learn Camp participants compared to a control group of students who have not taken the Camp? 

  2. How do educator effectiveness and practices in mentoring, facilitation of learning, and attitude toward students change as a result of the Learning to Learn Camp?

Institutions collaborating on this initiative are Hinds Community College (Libby Mahaffy, Vickie Kelly and Tom Kelly), Gaston Community College (Virgil Cox), North Carolina Central University (Bernice Johnson and Janice Harper), Lamar University (Brenda Nichols), and Grand Valley State University (Ed Baum). These institutions are interested in holding Camps that will use common data collection procedures for follow-up measurement of the students from the camps.  Joann Horton of Pacific Crest is leading the team by coordinating biweekly phone conferences. Steve Beyerlein and Barb Williams, both of the University of Idaho, are providing assistance with research design, and Carol Nancarrow is offering her experience as a facilitator of many Learning to Learn Camps. The near-term goal of the group is a completed proposal to investigate the first research question before December 15th.

Writing Rubric Research

We are checking out our tools! Academy members and Pacific Crest have developed many rubric measures that are used in the field by faculty across the country. The next step in measurement development for process educators requires research to establish the inter-rater reliability of these existing measures. One prominent example is the Writing Rubric published in the Faculty Guidebook, 4th edition, by Kathy Burke and Carol Nancarrow. A research team consisting of Cy Leise (Bellevue University), Tris Utschig (Georgia Tech), and Kathy Burke (SUNY Cortland) are gathering data on a sample of about 50 papers for each of three types of writing, e.g., scholarly papers, project reports, and student self-growth reports. To study the reliability of the tool, each paper will be read by the research team and the rating results will be analyzed for consistency. Initial work is focusing on rating issues arising from pilot work and the development of an electronic means of rating individual papers and collecting the data for later statistical analysis. This project will help (1) determine to what degree the Writing Rubric can produce consistent results and (2) guide further development of this useful tool.