Doing Interpretive Research

Previous articleNext article FreeThe Life and Career of Matthew O. HowardJeffrey M. JensonJeffrey M. JensonUniversity of Denver Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreMatthew O. HowardView Large ImageDownload PowerPointOn December 15, 2018, social work and the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research (JSSWR) lost one of its most prolific scholars, outstanding teachers, and thoughtful mentors in recent memory. Matthew O. Howard, PhD—the Frank A. Daniels Distinguished Professor of Human Services Policy Information and associate dean for doctoral education in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—passed away following a lengthy hospitalization. As an associate editor for JSSWR, Matthew had a significant impact on improving the quality and influence of the journal. He will be sorely missed by our editorial team.Matthew was a consummate scholar who possessed a singular ability to understand and conceptualize social problems of all types. His research contributed greatly to existing knowledge of the etiology, prevention, and treatment of substance abuse, alcohol dependence, and mental health disorders. And, Matthew’s provocative articles assessing the state of social work education, practice, and research set forth ideas that will affect the trajectory of social work for years to come. His passion for knowledge—conveyed quietly and effectively to countless graduate students—was felt deeply by the many lives he touched over the course of an academic career that included appointments in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington, the Department of Psychiatry at the Oregon Health Sciences University, the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, the School of Social Work and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Matthew’s training in social work coincided with my own enrollment in the University of Washington School of Social Work doctoral program in 1984. Matthew and I became immediate and close friends during our graduate studies in Seattle, and we spent hours discussing social work, class assignments, and the research projects we worked on as doctoral students. Many of these conversations occurred in an alley coffee shop in Seattle’s University District, just a stone’s throw from the School of Social Work. Known by the employees as “Matt and Jeff,” we were treated as regulars who would sit at our customary window table for what was likely far too long. It was a time of great intellectual pursuit, and I had found the perfect colleague and friend with whom to share ideas and discuss future plans. It was the beginning of a personal friendship and professional relationship that lasted 34 years.Matthew entered doctoral education with a well-developed interest in understanding the etiology of alcohol and other substance use disorders. Over the nearly four decades that followed, he devoted his career to conducting basic and applied research aimed at ameliorating substance abuse dependence and co-occurring problems associated with alcohol and drug abuse. He became particularly well known for his basic research and intervention studies addressing the vexing problem of inhalant abuse (e.g., Howard, Balster, Cottler, Wu, & Vaughn, 2008; Howard, Bowen, Garland, Perron, & Vaughn, 2011; Howard & Jenson, 1999b). Matthew’s innovative and rigorous research in this area led to three grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and to widespread recognition as one of the world’s foremost experts on inhalant abuse. In recent years, Matthew extended his work to testing mindfulness-oriented interventions for people with chronic pain and opioid misuse. His coinvestigator in much of this work was Eric Garland, professor and associate dean for research in the University of Utah College of Social Work. Eric, a former student of Matthew’s at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, describes some of the important lessons he learned under Matthew’s tutelage in an accompanying article in this issue (Garland, 2019).Matthew also made significant contributions to social work education and research. In the Aaron Rosen Lecture at the 2015 Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research, Matthew traced key developments in social work during the past 30 years and reflected on a vision of the field that stretched to 2044—30 years into the future (Howard & Garland, 2015). The ideas he shared in this lecture have provided a useful framework for assessing the relatively recent history of social work and addressing the challenges in educating master’s-level practitioners and doctoral students in the future. Matthew delivered a similarly thought-provoking lecture on the current state and future of social work doctoral education at the 2016 Annual Conference of the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education. Ideas presented in his lectures were coupled with action. One such example is illustrated by Matthew’s early development of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill doctoral-level course on conducting systematic reviews. Students in this class often produced publishable papers as a result of Matthew’s fastidious attention to breadth and quality. In earlier work at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, Matthew and colleagues advanced the idea of evidence-based practice as a paradigm for training MSW social work practitioners (Howard, McMillen, & Pollio, 2003). Enola Proctor, the Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor in the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, was a colleague of Matthew’s at the time. She remembers Matthew as… a brilliant scholar and dear person. Highly regarded for his excellence in the classroom at the Brown School, he was demanding yet was a frequent winner of student-elected teaching awards. Matthew used his seemingly boundless energy to better the fields of addiction research and social work practice. He had my highest respect and unending affection. His passing is a tremendous loss to our field and community of scholars [and] saddens me deeply. (E. Proctor, personal communication, January 9, 2019)In 1999, Matthew and I had the good fortune to guest edit a special issue of Research on Social Work Practice that explored the utility of clinical practice guidelines for social work practice (Howard & Jenson, 1999a). Collectively, Matthew’s lectures and published papers assessing the state of social work education and practice stimulated debate and produced tangible curricula changes in schools across the country.A prolific writer, Matthew published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers in his career. His written work also included 40 book reviews, editorials, and government reports. Matthew’s h-index of 55 and nearly 9,000 citations of his work to date illustrate just how much his scholarship was valued by colleagues. His written contributions will be recognized and used by practitioners, policymakers, and researchers for decades to come.Matthew was a fellow and a board member of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and a fellow of the Society for Social Work and Research. A proponent of interdisciplinary work, he also was a faculty research fellow in the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the time of his passing. Matthew’s devotion to empirical research and scholarship is widely recognized. However, what may be most impressive about Matthew’s career is the recognition he received as both a scholar and a teacher. He was awarded eight outstanding teaching and mentoring awards from students and colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Two of Matthew’s doctoral students at North Carolina (Eric Garland, University of Utah; and Carrie Pettus-Davis, Florida State University) received Doctoral Fellow Awards from the Society for Social Work and Research. Matthew connected with his students by combining high scientific standards with a compassionate approach to helping people succeed. He was soft-spoken, but his ideas and words carried great weight and influence.Matthew’s service to the fields of social work and addiction was also exemplary. He reviewed manuscripts for more than 60 different academic journals in his career. He was on the editorial boards of more than 50 journals—including serving a JSSWR associate editor for the past several years—and he previously served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Social Service Research, Social Work Research, and the Journal of Addictive Diseases. Matthew also was vice president and served on the Society for Social Work and Research Board of Directors from 2005 to 2008.The task of summarizing the life and career of a prolific and impactful scholar, teacher, and mentor like Matthew is daunting. Mark Fraser, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the founding editor of JSSWR, was a longtime friend, collaborator, and colleague. Reflecting on Matthew’s career, he recalls,As a scholar and a teacher, Matthew was eloquent and encyclopedic. Students flocked to his classes. A gentle spirit who treasured collaboration with others, his greatest joys came in exploring new ideas and reading recent research. In the profession as a thought leader, Matthew was a tour de force. At once, he was creative, insightful, sensitive, critical, and thorough. Matthew was—quite simply—incomparable. (M. Fraser, personal communication, January 8, 2019)Tangible accomplishments like those summarized here do not tell the complete story of a person. Matthew had an uncanny ability to effectively express his strong personal beliefs and ethical values in everyday interactions with friends and colleagues. He had a deep interest in applying the lessons gained from his own empirical work to promote fairness and equity for all people. Matthew’s invaluable input and feedback to students and colleagues about their ideas, papers, or projects came with great civility and kindness. He was an insatiable reader whose knowledge extended to topics well beyond social work or the addictions. In this sense, one could discuss a wide range of topics with Matthew with the preordained understanding that he had very likely already read much of what had been written on the topic. Matthew’s longstanding practice of underscoring written text with yellow highlighters was applied to thousands of empirical and conceptual articles and manuscripts during his career.On a personal level, Matthew enjoyed taking walks, listening to music, and reading novels and poetry. His wry sense of humor often left many of his closest friends and colleagues writhing in laughter. I was among them.JSSWR is proud to count Matthew as one of its most influential associate editors and contributors. His place as an important teacher and scholar in social work education and research is secure. Matthew’s many contributions will be discovered anew by emerging scholars for decades to come. His presence in social work and the broad field of the addictions will be missed by us all.NotesJeffrey M. Jenson, PhD, is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research and the Phillip D. & Eleanor G. Winn Endowed Professor Children and Youth at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work.Correspondence regarding this article should be directed to Jeffrey M. Jenson, University of Denver, 2148 S. High St., Denver, CO 80208 or via e-mail to [email protected]ReferencesGarland, E. L. (2019). Standing on the shoulders of giants: Matthew O. Howard as a mentor and his influence on the science of mindfulness as a treatment for addiction. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research. Advance online publication. doi:10.1086/702654First citation in articleGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O. (2016, March 31). Hot topics in doctoral education. Presentation at the 2016 Annual Conference of the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education, Chapel Hill, NC.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., Balster, R., Cottler, L. B., Wu, L., & Vaughn, M. G. (2008). Inhalant use among incarcerated adolescents: Prevalence, characteristics, and predictors of use. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 93, 197–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2007.08.023First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., Bowen, S., Garland, E. L., Perron, B. E., & Vaughn, M. G. (2011). Inhalant use and inhalant use disorders in the United States. Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, 6, 18–31.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., & Garland, E. L. (2015). Social work research: 2044. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, 6, 173–200. https://doi.org/10.1086/681099First citation in articleLinkGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., & Jenson, J. M. (1999a). Clinical practice guidelines: Should social work develop them? Research on Social Work Practice, 9, 283–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973159900900302First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., & Jenson, J. M. (1999b). Inhalant use among antisocial youth: Prevalence and correlates. Addictive Behaviors, 24, 59–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0306-4603(98)00039-2First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., McMillen, J. C., & Pollio, D. (2003). Teaching evidence-based practice: Toward a new paradigm for social work education. Research on Social Work Practice, 13, 234–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049731502250404First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research Volume 10, Number 1Spring 2019 Published for the Society for Social Work and Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/702653HistoryPublished online February 04, 2019 © 2019 by the Society for Social Work and Research. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Introduction. Part One: Approaches to Social Research 1. Social research Controversy 1: Can there be Objectivity in Social Research? 2. Scientific social research Controversy 2: Macho, Mourner, Freedom-Fighter or Thug? 3. Interpretative social research Part Two: Techniques for Collecting Information Controversy 3: The Choices within Research Design 4. Samples, cases and response Controversy 4: What Really went on under the Banyan Trees? 5. Observation Controversy 5: The Never-ending Nature-Nurture Debate 6. Questions Controversy 6: Class Size in Primary Schools 7. Variations on the experiment Controversy 7: Burt Rumbles on 8. Reinforcing the evidence Part Three: Personal, Professional and Political Influences Controversy 8: Suffer the Little Children 9. The author in time and place Controversy 9: The Publication of Piaget 10. The publication of research Controversy 10: The Effectiveness of Schools 11. The limitations and scope of social research References. Index.

Interpretivism is a research paradigm that is associated with qualitative research.A tradition of Interpretivism can be linked to the ethnographies of non-western peoples in the 19th century and continues to be a popular way to explain human behaviour and social phenomenon today.The interpretivist view invites the researcher to investigate meaning behind the understanding of human behaviour, interactions and society.This involves the researcher attempting to develop an in-depth subjective understanding of people's lives.The difference between the natural sciences and social sciences is that the natural sciences requires the researcher to observe and interpret natural processes but the social sciences requires the researcher to observe a phenomenon and understand the interpretations that individuals have already made.Social work research aims to explain human behavior and social phenomenon and not to focus on isolating and objectively measuring variables or on developing generalizations.Social work research requires a focus on gaining an empathic understanding of an individual's feelings and the meaning that they give to everyday life with the goal to gaining greater understanding of the individual's behavior.For this reason, interpretive research is well suited to social work research.In this introductory paper, the authors present the validity of interpretive research and the value of using it in social work research.

Investigation into the motivation and experience of midlife learners can provide educators with concrete information about the learning process. Such investigation must include careful longitudinal observation and a case history approach to individuals who attend gerontology programs. This paper discusses the academic and personal experiences of one class of midlife women enrolled in a small graduate program in gerontology—one designed from a human development perspective. A study of the class (mean age 42) revealed a picture of middle‐age concerns. It examined the women's participation and their motivation for learning through the experience of affective involvement in the process. The method of study integrated participant observation, survey data, student journal writing, and in‐depth interviews. It found that many of the women had high expectations for their academic performance. Motivation and experiences of the learners are explored in the context of social and educational theory and research. The p...

This research was carried out on the basis of skills that must be mastered by students which are still limited to low-level thinking skills. This is because the IPS learning process does not develop and improve problem solving. Therefore, researchers want to improve the quality of learning by applying the social inquiry learning model. This study aims to describe the activities of teachers and students in social studies learning using the social inquiry model. This research was conducted at SD Negeri 71 Banda Aceh. This research uses a qualitative approach with descriptive research type. The research subjects were teachers and students of grade IV and teachers and students of grade V SD Negeri 71 Banda Aceh. Data collection techniques through observation and interviews. Based on the results of the research shown from the results of observations of researchers and interviews with teachers and students, it shows that 1) The application of a social approach to high-grade social studies learning is maximal, that is, the teacher is able to apply the social inquiry model to social studies learning properly according to the stages of the model social inquiry. 2) Student response to learning shows good results, it can be seen that both grades IV and V find it easy to understand the lesson and actively participate in the learning process. The conclusion of this study is that the teacher has played a good role in applying the social approach through the social inquiry model, only there must be commitment and consistency through activities or in the social studies learning process using the social inquiry model so that students are able to easily understand social studies learning. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers and other educators to work together in maximizing learning models for students so that learning is easy to understand.

Contents: Introduction Part I Perspectives on Social Work Research: Cutting edge issues in social work research Is social work distinctive? Ways of knowing in social work Rereading The Jack Roller: hidden histories in sociology and social work William J. Reid: an appreciation. Part II Evaluation: Social work and the human services Evidence from qualitative evaluation Seeing the trees for the wood: the politics of evaluating in practice Evaluation for a learning organization? Part III Qualitative Research: Qualitative social work: a room with a view Qualitative research and outcomes in health, social work and education Ethics and the practice of qualitative research Constructing causal accounts in social work The consequences of qualitative social work research Unbroken voices: children, young people and qualitative methods. Part IV Research, Theory and Practice: The quality of mercy: the management of quality in the personal social services Game plans, buzzes and sheer luck: doing well in social work Practitioner evaluation at work Evaluating in practice Culture and the indigenisation of quality in Third World social research. Part V Service Users and Research: Consumer opinion and social policy: a research review Consumer evaluations of the personal social services Engaging the user: participation, empowerment and the rhetoric of quality Just inquiry? Research and evaluation for service users Users and practitioners' research Indexes.

The Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) degree prepares individuals in research and professional practice in education. In the case of Doctor of Education programs that have a focus on leadership, candidates are expected to act as agents of educational and social change. This chapter turns a critical lens to educational leadership programs in two states, Connecticut and Ohio, in order to better understand the current state of qualitative research and social justice within Doctor of Education programs. Additionally, mission, visions, and educational websites were examined to assess the range of experiences around social justice offered in educational leadership programs. This work also explores the literature on qualitative research methods as a form of inquiry and the history and evolution of qualitative methods that makes this research paradigm a good fit for social justice research and activities within educational leadership programs. Lastly, it illustrates practical approaches to embedding social justice in qualitative research courses.

This article describes one school's effort to establish a social work research development center in the area of coexisting drug and mental disorders (dual disorders), within the context of the social work profession's efforts to compete more effectively for federal research grants. This center was funded as part of a successful application in response to the National Institute on Drug Abuses announcement of support for a Social Work Research Development Program stressing the development of social work research in drug abuse intervention and services research. The center builds on the school's previous research and training experiences in the area of co-occurring drug and mental disorders. The center's purpose, structure, and institutional impact are described, with particular attention to the challenges faced in both its formation and its operation and the lessons learned that could generalize to other similar efforts. KEY WORDS: dual diagnosis; dual disorders; research development; research infrastructure; social work research ********** In November 1999, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) released a program announcement of support for a Social Work Research Development Program stressing the development of social work research in drug abuse intervention and services research. Below, we describe one school's effort to establish a social work research development center in the area of coexisting substance use and mental disorders (dual disorders) which was funded as part of this NIDA initiative. ADDRESSING THE NIDA ANNOUNCEMENT The Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences (MSASS) at Case Western Reserve University has long recognized its responsibility to provide productive educational research experiences in the fields of substance use and mental disorders. Building on our past efforts, faculty at MSASS responded to NIDA'S program announcement for a Social Work Research Development Program. Our submission was funded in June 2002. This five-year project was designed to support a multidisciplinary study team to address the theme of facilitators and barriers to treatment in individuals with dual disorders: The program linked faculty at MSASS to experts in Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine who had existing NIDA research support and to national experts. The program's two objectives were (1) to establish and implement an infrastructure improvement plan that supports knowledge and research on treatment barriers and facilitators in dually diagnosed individuals and their families and (2) to generate pilot research and ensuing RO1 proposals in the identified core area through the establishment of multidisciplinary working teams. Eight MSASS faculty and collaborators from the School of Medicine formed the nucleus of a team to implement pilot studies related to facilitators of and barriers to treatment of dually diagnosed individuals. One pilot study investigated the social network characteristics and nature of perceived social support among dually diagnosed, low-income women; another studied dually diagnosed female offenders' suitability for specific treatments, considering their motivation for change and readiness for treatment and their social networks. A third pilot study examined the family caregivers of women with dual disorders, with particular attention given to their caregiving roles and burdens. More than 500 participants were interviewed at community agencies and in corrections settings to complete these pilot studies. Information generated from the pilot studies and other planned program learning experiences resulted in the preparation and submission of R01 proposals. CHALLENGES It is interesting that one of our major challenges came before we received grant funding. Although we had submitted a competitive program proposal that was scored, a major criticism was that the school did not offer enough faculty support and course offload. …

In this chapter, the focus is on ways in which content analysis can be used to investigate and describe interview and textual data. The chapter opens with a contextualization of the method and then proceeds to an examination of the role of content analysis in relation to both quantitative and qualitative modes of social research. Following the introductory sections, four kinds of data are subjected to content analysis. These include data derived from a sample of qualitative interviews (N = 54), textual data derived from a sample of health policy documents (N = 6), data derived from a single interview relating to a “case” of traumatic brain injury, and data gathered from 54 abstracts of academic papers on the topic of “well-being.” Using a distinctive and somewhat novel style of content analysis that calls upon the notion of semantic networks, the chapter shows how the method can be used either independently or in conjunction with other forms of inquiry (including various styles of discourse analysis) to analyze data, and also how it can be used to verify and underpin claims that arise out of analysis. The chapter ends with an overview of the different ways in which the study of “content”—especially the study of document content—can be positioned in social scientific research projects.

This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities involved in incorporating publicly available search engine data in scholarly research. In recent years, an increasing number of researchers have started to include tools such as Google Trends (http://google.com/trends) in their work. However, a central ‘search engine’ field of inquiry has yet to emerge. Rather, the use of search engine data to address social research questions is spread across many disciplines, which makes search valuable across fields but not critical to any one particular area. In an effort to stimulate a comprehensive debate on these issues, this paper reviews the work of pioneering scholars who devised inventive — if experimental — ways of interpreting data generated through search engine accessory applications and makes the point that search engines should be regarded not only as central objects of research, but also as fundamental tools for broader social inquiry. Specific concerns linked to this methodological shift are identified and discussed, including: the relationship with other, more established social research methods; doubts over the representativeness of search engine data; the need to contextualize publicly available search engine data with other types of evidence; and the limited granularity afforded to researchers by tools such as Google Trends. The paper concludes by reflecting on the combination of search engine data with other forms of inquiry as an example of arguably inelegant yet innovative and effective ‘kludgy’ design (Karpf, 2012).

Ubuntu is an African moral and philosophic worldview based on the values of shared and interconnected humanness. This contribution argues that Ubuntu can and should be extended to the realm of social science research by embracing Ubuntu ethics: an alternative ethical framework to the dominant Western-centric conventions. This presents social science researchers with a viable opportunity to open areas of inquiry that are often considered too sensitive, taboo, or risky to study. This is especially true for researchers working in oppressive, exploitative, exclusionary, and dehumanising contexts. This youth-centred qualitative study shows that research which embraces Ubuntu ethics has the potential to rehumanise research participants and researchers alike. By reflecting on research conducted with young people who work and live on the streets of Cape Town, I illustrate the transformative potential of research rooted in Ubuntu Ethics. This contribution offers a novel reformulation of research ethics in practice, specifically useful for the teaching and practice of Social Work Research in Africa. Current and previous volumes are available at: https://ajsw.africasocialwork.net HOW TO REFERENCE USING ASWDNET STYLE Makhetha T (2024). Ubuntu Ethics: A framework for rehumanising social research with young people. African Journal of Social Work, 14(6), 382-391. https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajsw.v14i6.9

The debate concerning replicable scientific research has reached geography’s shores. This has exposed old fault lines in our discipline, because some forms of geographical inquiry are more amenable to replicability than others. If there is a corner of the discipline that seems especially ill-suited to replicability, it is critical human geography. Almost no work in the subfield exhibits the combination of qualities—explicit and replicable methods; large, numerical data sets; full reporting—that enable reproducibility. Should we care? Although the inability of critical human geographers to reproduce our research results does not constitute a crisis, it is a matter worthy of reflection. Even if it proves difficult to realize, the challenge of designing replicable research promises to generate insights into the relative rigor of our disciplinary practices. Moreover, by clarifying the limits on replicability in social inquiry, we should be better positioned to weigh and mediate between competing values, for instance, the potential conflict between the principle of scientific integrity and the protection of vulnerable research subjects. I contend that producing a rigorous and reproducible geographical research, while also respecting the dignity of subaltern social groups, would require significant changes to standard research practice. To flesh out these claims, I offer concise reflections on the literature from critical human geography research with subaltern social groups.

The practice of assessing students on what they can produce at the end of a higher education course as a credible proxy for learning has been steadily devalued for years. It will be given a final push with the embedding of generative AI into ubiquitous productivity suites such as those of Microsoft and Google. The design of learning in higher education has also been given a push by the pandemic, with the focus moving from the blunt instrument of blended learning to approaches more grounded in theory such as networked learning. Both of these trends mean that attention has been turning to the assessment of the processes of student learning, rather than a final product. The current language of assessment is still very much derived from the vocabulary of cognition – primarily Bloom’s cognitive domain taxonomy. Cognition is of course an important aspect of learning, but in order to track the development of student understanding, ability to apply knowledge, to analyse and evaluate situations as they move through their learning experiences, we need language that can describe their response to their learning experiences. Bloom’s team of educational psychologists recognised this over fifty years ago, and developed a taxonomy of educational objectives in the affective domain that would do just that. In this paper I elaborate on how Bloom’s affective taxonomy can be used to assess such things as learning processes, and to make visible to students and educators the forming of connections that underpin networked learning. I illustrate this with an example drawn from a networked learning course. In this course students were asked to write short weekly reflections on their learning experiences. The act of writing the reflections was given a small mark, but the content was not assessed. Post hoc evaluation of the content of these reflections using the affective taxonomy showed a wide variety of affective response by students to learning experiences. A preliminary analysis shows a correlation between the depth of affective response and a student’s final mark. This approach shows great promise in not only designing assessment of learning processes, but in developing student efficacy in building connections and evaluating their own processes of learning.

Taxation undergraduate students in Wales, Singapore and China experienced virtual reality (VR) in their learning of taxation, where a real-world capital allowances scenario supported student learning of the topic. Experiential learning can help students improve their understanding of the subject and gain valuable skills for employment or further studies e.g. professional qualifications. Virtual reality is an immersive learning experience that can help students improve their understanding. As a visual learning approach, students are more likely to be able to recall their visual experiences. VR has the benefit of participators experiencing “presence” in their learning, putting themselves in the virtual world making it a memorable and often an enjoyable experience. This study compares student perceptions from students at each of the three universities using a voluntary questionnaire, accessed via a QR reader, before the VR session to capture their knowledge and use of technology plus their thoughts on using VR for learning. A further questionnaire after the VR session captured student’s thoughts on their VR learning experience, did they enjoy the experience, did it help their understanding, and would they like to use it more in their studies? A summary of the results demonstrates the majority of students indicated: they were positive about using VR for learning; VR enhanced their learning experience; VR improved tax understanding; They enjoyed using VR; and they would like to see more VR in their studies.KeywordsVirtual realityExperiential learningTaxationCapital allowancesImmersive technology

Purpose – This study describes implementing the experiential learning-based spiritual learning model for high school students. Design/methods/approach – This research adopts a qualitative methodology with a narrative approach, focusing on thirteen Islamic religion teachers from both public and private high schools in Indonesia and Malaysia. Findings – This study divides the findings into three, namely teacher understanding, forms of application and constraints in experiential learning. Teachers' understanding of experiential learning based on this research is not evenly distributed. meaning that the teacher in theory does not know much but some have practiced it. the application of learning is carried out using online media. while the constraints faced came from internal and external factors. Research implications/limitations – This research recommends the use of experiential learning to enhance religious education. Teachers need to develop innovative learning strategies, while students should actively participate in the learning process and apply their experiences. The study also suggests that schools should incorporate experiential learning methods in their curriculum to enhance the effectiveness of religious education. These recommendations provide practical insights into developing religious education based on experiential learning. Originality/value – The study found similarities in the application of experiential learning in religious education between Indonesia and Malaysia, including the use of video media to increase students' interest in the material. However, both countries face similar obstacles, such as the need to increase teacher competence in innovative learning strategies, the presence of noise in new learning, and the need for standard syllabi.