Higher Education and Assessment: Terms & Concepts

From The Social Science Jargon-Buster
A group of people who share a sense of belonging based on commonalities such as residential area, culture, race, religion, profession or interests.

From The SAGE dictionary of leisure studies
This is a term used to describe the organization of localized direct collective action, which sets out to achieve change through organization, mobilization and negotiation, in ways that can be both unconventional and unconstitutional.

From Collins Dictionary of Sociology
A distinct movement aimed at stimulating local schemes for development, particularly of education, which started in colonial societies in the aftermath of World War II.

From Business: The Ultimate Resource
programs through which organizations aim to make a positive contribution to the local community by identifying problems and initiating practical action in order to address them in partnership with local people.

From Dictionary of Youth Justice
Mentoring provides a popular means of working with ‘disaffected’ young people that typically involves a relationship between an older, more experienced mentor and an unrelated young protégé (mentee).

From Key Concepts in Education
Responsibility is a concept and a value with multiple but intuitively well-understood meanings.

From The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology
Social change is any alteration in the cultural, structural, population, or ecological characteristics of a social system such as a society.

From The Macquarie Dictionary
someone who enters into any service of their own free will, or who offers to perform a service or undertaking for no financial gain.

From Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
Critical self-reflection: a fundamental requirement of all genuinely critical and reflexive investigations. To make autocriticism a normal feature of intellectual life requires the production of texts, discourses and forms of instruction that admit their own contingent status, that encourage dialogue and insist on being superseded.

From Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia
Civic education refers to education that is concerned with the development of citizenship or civic competence.

From Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
Forms of cooperative or collaborative learning have been used for centuries and a variety of peer learning techniques have emerged. The underlying premise of these techniques is that learning is enhanced by peer interaction.

From Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
Dialogic (or dialogical) reflexivity is self-reflection and reflexive transaction occasioned by the reciprocal encounter of self and other, particularly in the mutual argumentative disclosure characterizing reflexive communication and interpretive interaction.

From The Social Science Jargon-Buster
The process by which a theory becomes part of lived experience and empowers individuals to become critically conscious beings.

State of dependence caused by frequent and regular use of drugs, alcohol, or other substances. It is characterized by uncontrolled craving, tolerance, and symptoms of withdrawal when access is denied.

Disease characterized by impaired control over the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

The deliberate injury of a child. Child abuse can take several forms: neglect (including failure to provide adequate shelter, food, or medical treatment), physical abuse (including beating and poisoning), emotional abuse (including verbal abuse), and sexual abuse.

Services provided for the care of disadvantaged children. Foundling institutions for orphans and abandoned children were the earliest attempts at child care, usually under religious auspices.

Depression is commonly used as a definition of an emotion like despondency, dejection or gloom. As a diagnosis, depression is part of a cycle or syndrome (also called a depressive illness) which used to be called melancholia because of its association with low spirits.

Movement to protect the quality and continuity of life through conservation of natural resources, prevention of pollution, and control of land use.

Homelessness is the lack of residential shelter or the prevalence of that lack within a population. Homelessness has conventionally been conceived of as distinct from indigence.

In general, living accommodations available for the inhabitants of a community. Throughout the 19th cent., with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, housing as a problem worsened as urban populations expanded.

Inability to meet a certain minimum criterion of reading and writing skill.

Well-being and soundness of mind, not only in terms of intellectual abilities, but also in terms of the capability to deal with everyday problems, and the capacity to get on well with other people and to form and sustain relationships.

Condition resulting from excessive storage of fat in the body. Obesity has been defined as a weight more than 20% above what is considered normal.

Condition in which the basic needs of human beings (shelter, food, and clothing) are not being met.

Act of granting sexual access for payment. Although most commonly conducted by females for males, it may be performed by females or males for either females or males.

Or public charity, organized provision of educational, cultural, medical, and financial assistance to the needy....

Level of consumption that an individual, group, or nation has achieved. The evaluation of a standard of living is relative, depending upon the judgment of the observer as to what constitutes a high or a low scale.

Lack of paid employment. The unemployed are usually defined as those out of work who are available for and actively seeking work.

In law, term applied to the offense of persons who are without visible means of support or domicile while able to work.