Elections were held at the PE Conference in June this year and we are pleased to present your new Academy Executive Board. This is a truly special group of educators (and life-long learners!) and we invite you to get to know not only the executive board but members of the wider board as well. Simply visit the About Us page (available from the Academy home page) to view any member’s biosketch information.

(When you visit this page, you’ll also notice that we have some empty director and chair positions. If you appreciate what the Academy offers and have a couple of hours each month to contribute, we’d LOVE to hear from you! academy@processeducation.org)

Welcome to the twelfth volume of the International Journal of Process Education (click here to visit the current volume or any of the titles below to view that article).

In this issue, we present a collection of the collaborative research efforts of many Process Educators. Methodologies, frameworks growth and self-growth are discussed in this volume. From improving performance to increasing quality of life examining learning, growth, and self-growth will be explored in this issue.

In our first article, Improving Performance Using the Performance Development Methodology, Van Slyke, Utschig, and Apple discuss the steps for supporting learning and growth to develop performance capacity through a Performance Development Methodology. The methodology includes planning, performing, and then reviewing to generate performance improvement for the next opportunity. The performance development methodology plays a similar role for performance development as the learning performance methodology does for learning performance.

Learning to learn is the focus for Woodbridge, Ulbrich, Nelson, Apple, Ellis, Horton, and Leasure’s article, Conceptual Understanding Required to Implement a Learning to Learn Experience. In this work, the authors clarify the key components of a learning to learn experience through an outline of the framework necessary for creating a successful learning to learn experience. Additionally, a concept map visually displays the interconnectedness of the key components.

The fifteen components that comprise growth capability are the focus of our third article Modeling Growth Capability—What is it? In this work, Hurd, Apple, Beyerlein, Ellis, Leasure, Leise, and Nelson provide an extensive discussion of these growth capability components along with related professional development activities.

The final three articles relate to self-growth. The 13 contributing components of self-growth capability that increase growth capability and raise self-growth consciousness is the focus of the multi-author paper, Self-Growth Capability Components and Their Impact on Growth. Apple, Leise, Ellis, Beyerlein, Leasure, Batchelor, Burke, Woodbridge, El-Sayed, Ulbrich, Duncan, Utschig, and Donald discuss the how these components elevate growth experiences into self-growth experiences, support the journey toward ideal self, and help individuals stay in their ideal zone of development. Dombi and Watts explore how self-growth process can be facilitated through a fuzzy cognitive map framework which models the relationship between these professional characteristics and risk factors in the article, Modeling Self-Growth with Fuzzy Cognitive Maps. Finally, King-Berry, Apple, Ellis and Leise outline a quality-of-life framework for self-growth through the identification of domains and dimensions in their article, Developing a Quality of Life (QoL) Framework for Self-Growth.

It is our hope that you will enjoy reading the contributions to our newest issue as much as we enjoyed working with the authors to bring the research to fruition. We look forward to receiving your feedback as well as your future research contributions.

The e-Faculty Guidebook (eFGB) has received a much-needed makeover/update/renovation!

Before we share details of the changes, remember that as a member of the Academy of Process Educators, you have automatic access to the electronic Faculty Guidebook! We’ve made it much easier to access the eFGB from the Member’s Site (see the screenshot below). You don’t even have to remember a username and password; the information is right there, on the screen!

Now for an overview of the biggest updates:

First, the primary interface (image 1). If you’re familiar with the new Classification of Learning Skills, this interface will not be a surprise. If you’re not familiar with the new CLS, just know that the wheel/wedges in a circle is a selector. Simply choose any of the main sections of the Guidebook to view the contents in that section (image 2). Those contents are presented in drop-down trees, allowing you to quickly locate modules by topic (and number).

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If your preference is to navigate the Guidebook by module number, the entire table of contents is available from the menu under "Contents" (image 3). Simply follow the structure, clicking through to the module you want.

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For those who used the Compass of Higher Education (“the star diagram”) to navigate, that structure is preserved in a drop-down menu of "Key Processes" of Process Education (image 4). Even if you didn’t use the Compass as your interface of choice, these processes allow you to quickly find the modules related to the major topics in PE.

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There is also a new and much more robust search function available from the home page. Simply enter a search term or terms and click “Search”. Results are ranked and the results page provides a great deal of information (image 5).

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One last surprise (image 6) is a new Appendix (G): Faculty Guidebook modules cited in the International Journal of Process Education (IJPE). ALL IJPE articles that cite and reference one or more FGB modules are listed here, organized according to the Faculty Guidebook table of contents. The IJPE article titles are links and a single click opens that article in your browser. This new appendix will be updated each time a new IJPE issue is released and should be a useful repository for Process Education researchers.

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In the annals of questioning, few approaches can be so frustrating for learners and simultaneously incapable of raising the level of thinking as fill-in-the-blank questions (FIBQs).

Consider the following poorly constructed FIBQ:

Process Education is a ____________ philosophy of education which integrates many different __________ theories, processes, and ______________.

Isn’t it frustrating? And that’s when you already KNOW about Process Education and practice it yourself. Imagine the level of frustration that would be felt by someone just beginning to learn about Process Education. What this question seeks isn’t understanding, but rather rote memorization and eidetic recall. Most poorly constructed FIBQs can only be answered correctly by someone who has memorized information, word for word, as it was provided in a book or lecture. Or telepaths who are able to read the mind of the instructor and knows exactly what words they are looking for.

These kinds of questions are probably fine, if the goal is to test sheer memorization ability:

I pledge ____________ to the flag of the United States of ____________ and to the ___________ for which it stands…

or

You have the right to remain __________. Anything you _________ can and will be used against you in a ______________ of law. You have the right to an _______________…

If the goal is simply to test for the Information level of knowledge (Level 1 in the Levels of Learner Knowledge, Faculty Guidebook 2.2.1: Bloom’s Taxonomy – Expanding its Meaning), well-constructed FIBQs will work:

In the electromagnetic spectrum, the wavelength of red light is at approximately ____________nm.

Note that this is still a directed question – it is forever parked at the Information level of knowledge, no matter which word we leave out:

In the ___________________, the wavelength of red light is at approximately 700nm.

In the Electromagnetic Spectrum, the wavelength of ______________ is at approximately 700nm.

In the Electromagnetic Spectrum, the _________________ of red light is at approximately 700nm.

Plainly put, FIBQs are Directed questions (as opposed to Convergent or Divergent questions; see Faculty Guidebook 2.4.15: Writing Critical Thinking Questions) that ask for discrete information to be supplied with a further strongly implied constraint that the final sentence should be grammatically correct. Is there any other pedagogically defensible use of fill-in-the-blank questions? They are traditionally very popular, probably owing to the fact that they make for easier grading of exams or quizzes, as the answer(s) comprise only a single word or group of words.

One problem with poorly constructed FIBQs is that they can actually penalize students who have progressed beyond memorization/recall to the higher-level skills of conceptual understanding, where the ability to demonstrate comprehension through relating, comparing, interpreting, explaining, rephrasing, and summarizing is indicative of actual understanding. These students use their own words to explain concepts and do not tend to do well with FIBQs.

A student who understands Process Education (for example) can probably explain what it is, how it works, some of the implications of it as a practice, and the similarities and differences between it and other approaches. This same student, unless he or she has an eidetic memory or is telepathic, would probably still be unable to fill in the blanks in the question above.

(We share this article every few years because, unfortunately, it remains as topical as ever.)

In a recent column, “They Scoff at Your Piddly Rules” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ms. Mentor (pen name of Emily Toth of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge) shared her response to the ubiquitous complaint that students do not follow directions.

“If they would just read the syllabus,” many a professor fumes. That is a problem so egregious that Facebook worthies have a page called “Read the freakin’ syllabus, people.” More than 4,700 fans have found some solace there.

Beleaguered teachers deduct points, use pop quizzes, try shame and bribery (“we’ll have a class party if we can go the whole semester without anyone asking things that are answered on the syllabus”). At some campuses, students aren’t allowed into their labs until they copy the lab instructions, word for word, into their notebooks and have them initialed by a supervisor. Grades may be docked if students fail to number their pages or forget their source lists. Students who do get everything right—who, in short, do exactly what they’re supposed to do—sometimes get extra points. http://chronicle.com/article/They-Scoff-at-Your-Piddly/64774/

We’d like to point out what should be obvious: Asking students to read their syllabus is a world apart from students reading, processing, and understanding their syllabus, let alone being able to apply the information it contains to any given assignment or set of circumstances in the course.

In response to this same issue (we did say “ubiquitous”), the activity, “Analyzing a Course Syllabus” is included in the Student Success Toolbox. Beyond simply asking (i.e., hoping) that students read or copy or have their course syllabus indelibly tattooed on their arms, this guided-discovery activity not only aims to familiarize students with the contents of their course syllabus, it requires that they achieve at least Level-3 competency (i.e., Application in Bloom’s Taxonomy) with the information it contains. They do this through answering Critical Thinking Questions, writing and sharing Inquiry Questions about the syllabus contents, and creating a personal Plan of Action for the Course.

Simply click the image below to download a pdf version of the activity.