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The McDonnell International Scholars Academy was founded in 2005 to bring together future leaders during their time at Washington University as master’s or doctoral students. The Academy recruits Scholars from partner universities around the world and a few from the United States, and it provides tuition and a living stipend for their time to degree. The annual cohorts of 15–20 Scholars represent all seven schools at Washington University and to the extent possible all 31 partner institutions. The Academy currently has 72 alumni and 67 in-residence Scholars.

A basic assumption of the McDonnell Academy is that diversity does not just happen when we put a diverse group of people together; it has to be fostered. In addition to recruiting students who say they want to be part of a diverse community, we need to encourage productive forms of interaction. To do this, the Academy strives to build trust, encourage networking, and foster friendships and professional relationships that yield “McDonnell Academy Scholars for Life.”

Through the Academy’s experience, we have learned that some useful ingredients for “doing diversity” are bring together a wide mix of people who would not normally meet; build trust among this group by creating a “safe place for unsafe topics”; discuss topics that divide as well as unite the group and find the common threads that lead to productive engagement; organize initiatives and events that are part of the institutional structure of the university so as to foster involvement from all constituents; and create living communities that encourage interaction and deepen connections among a wide variety of individuals.

The Academy experiences and structure can serve as a possible model to expand the idea of “doing diversity” across graduate schools, across disciplines, and across cultures and backgrounds.

The chapter discusses pedagogical models of digital learning in the United Kingdom with a focus on online and blended learning, rolled out as a case study in one university. The chapter appraises the effectiveness of the model that implemented and foregrounded the evidence in the wider literature on models of digital learning in higher education. The chapter provides thematic analysis and methodological opportunities for the improvement of practice and presents a set of implementation implications and pitfalls to avoid for higher education institutions in Africa. Furthermore, a number of trends regarding the blending of learning and communication synchrony in digital learning have also been identified.

To reflect what a teacher’s inner voice mediated by a video observation and discussion revealed about the process of change in literacy practices.

Nexus Analysis (NA) (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) was used in studying the teacher’s self-reflective dialogue for identifying the teacher’s (the first author) ways of being in the nexus of old and new literacy practices – in the process of change in the context of literacy practices. These ways of being were reflected on further in the study in the collaboration with the other authors.

The teacher’s ways of being balanced between “not knowing” and “knowing” connected both personal and professional aspects of learning.

Inner states of professional learning processes imply that both personal and professional support is needed in educational changes, such as the change in literacy practices. Video observations and discussion should thus not only concentrate on practical or theoretical issues of professional learning, but on promoting and offering safe spaces for reflection on subjective learning experiences.

To show that the neo‐pragmatist position of Richard Rorty, when combined with a sociocultural perspective, provides library and information science (LIS) with a forceful epistemological tool.

Literature‐based conceptual analysis of: historical development of pragmatism in relation to other epistemological positions; neo‐pragmatism as a non‐dualist, both purpose and communication oriented, epistemology; and a sociocultural perspective within pedagogy, originated from the Russian researcher Lev Vygotsky.

Brought together, a neo‐pragmatist, sociocultural perspective contributes to a focus on people's actions through the use of linguistic and physical tools. As a tangible example of how neo‐pragmatism can be applied as an epistemological tool within LIS, information seeking seen as communicative participation is discussed. This article unites a perspective on information seeking as communicative participation with the neo‐pragmatist concepts of “tools” and “communities of justification”. The article is concluded by an assessment of neo‐pragmatism as an epistemological position within LIS, including those research issues that arise from this position and that are introduced along the way.

In its focus on usability, the neo‐pragmatist position provides a possible bridge between academic and other professional practices in the field of LIS.

Provides, through the means of neo‐pragmatism, an argument for the necessity of epistemological argumentation within LIS.

This article analyzes a classroom project that integrated desktop documentary making with an educational foundations course in order to foster empathetic development in pre-service teachers toward unfamiliar cultural groups. The project required each tertiary student in the course to create a desktop documentary about the school experience of a cultural group with which they did not immediately identify with. The findings indicate that half of the students in this project displayed empathetic development with regard to their chosen topics, using their encounters with imagery and stories to link their world with that which was unfamiliar. Additionally, as a result of the compositional process, several students became advocates for their assigned cultural group, carrying this sentiment with them as they progressed to become teachers. Implications of this study, including possible approaches toward improving this project’s effectiveness in achieving its aims, are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how students construct narratives of themselves as information seekers in a school context where their descriptions of their information activities are assessed and graded.

Blog posts on credibility judgements written by 28 students at a Swedish upper secondary school were analysed through a bottom-up coding process based in the sociocultural concept of narratives of selves.

Two tensions in the students’ accounts are identified. The first tension is that between the description of the individual, independent student and the description of the good group member. The second tension is between describing oneself as an independent information seeker and at the same time as someone who seeks information in ways that are sanctioned within the school setting.

The study focuses on a specific social practice and on situated activities, but also illustrates some aspects of information activities that pertain to educational contexts in general. It explores how social norms related to credibility judgements are expressed and negotiated in discursive interaction.

The study highlights that when information activities become objects of assessment, careful consideration of what aspects are meant to be assessed is necessary.

The study is based on the idea of information activities as socially and discursively shaped, and it illustrates some of the consequences when information activities become objects of teaching, learning, and grading.

Set in the Indian context, this chapter speaks of the wider concern expressed in teacher education more generally, that of increasing the efficacy of preservice teacher education for social justice. In India, equity in education has been a central concern within the striving for social justice since independence in 1947. Schools now include vast numbers of culturally diverse students, who were once excluded. However, notions of “standardization” and “homogenization” that tend to ignore their diverse voice, make transaction in the classroom an alienating experience for them. These normative ideas are challenged by emerging multicultural and critical perspectives in education which recognize linguistic and cognitive diversity and the need to create spaces for learners’ self-expression by nurturing their cultural identities in school. My chapter analyzes the effect of the collision of these two perspectives on an in-service ESL teacher and the culturally diverse learners she teaches. It then examines in what ways this pedagogy is promising for preservice teacher education that seeks to promote teaching for social justice.

This chapter describes how the anticipation of connected content relegates cognitive spacing, which opens the possibility for schema acquisition. Information organization does not simply involve putting new data into folders, but instead cognitively preparing for knowledge development.

Understanding information input and output is central to providing meaningful instructional opportunities. This chapter describes the three phrases of cognitive spacing: ready, set, and go.

Information organization does not simply involve putting new data into folders, but instead cognitively preparing for knowledge development. This is accomplished by ongoing reorganizations where new information, known information, and assumed information are evaluated against current stimuli. The subsequent shifts in understanding are the fundamental crux to instilling lifelong learning within students.

The importance of spacing theory in literacy development is significant to skill development and content acquisition.