A cross-cultural investigation of teachers’ and reporting officers’ self-ratings on teaching and leadership skills across Singapore and Bahrain

Self-rating bias is particularly likely in organizational behavior research as individuals tend to inflate their expertise, skills and character. This study aims to examine how two culturally diverse groups of teachers and their reporting officers respond to self-ratings of their own teaching skills and leadership skills respectively. It is posited that such response may be culturally based. To ensure validity of comparisons, analyses were done using linear Rasch measures in logits rather than the non-linear raw scores. No significant differences were found between the perceptions of Singaporean teachers and their reporting officers on teaching and leadership skills. The Bahraini data however revealed teachers’ perceptions of own teaching skills were significantly higher than that of their reporting officers. The opposite is true for the Reporting officers’ perceptions of our leadership skills. Bahraini teachers’ perceptions of their own teaching skills were also found to be significantly higher than that of their Singaporean counterparts. The findings support the notion that individuals’ thinking and behavior is influenced by how they process social and cultural information.     

Lifelong Learning for Employment and Equity: the Role of Part‐time Degrees

The last few years have seen a growing debate and new initiatives by government and other agencies on the concept of lifelong learning. The objectives of these have been to provide better access to a broad knowledge base and to develop individuals' employability and economic success. But lifelong learning is not a new phenomenon. In the UK and elsewhere many adults have always studied for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways. Study through part‐time degrees has long been one option for many adult learners. This paper draws on data from a study undertaken for the Department for Education and Employment on the employment of part‐time students and considers whether part‐time study benefits people's careers and whether some people benefit more than others.     

Informing in-season tactical periodisation in team sport: development of a match difficulty index for Super Rugby

In team sports, tactical periodisation refers to the planned manipulation of training loads with the aim of prioritising athlete readiness for matches of greatest importance. Although monitoring of athletes’ physical condition is often used to inform this planning, the direct influence of external factors on match difficulty has not been well quantified. In this study, a ‘match difficulty index’ (MDI) for use in Super Rugby was developed, based on the influence imparted by five external factors on previous match outcomes. Specifically, information relating to match location, days break between matches, time-zone change and opposition ladder position (both current and previous year) were collected for matches played during the 2011–2013 Super Rugby seasons. Logistic regression analyses were used to assess the importance of each of these factors with respect to match outcome (win/loss), with opposition ladder position and match location (home, domestic away or international) exerting the greatest influence on match difficulty. Three separate cross-validated models were constructed, with match outcome classification performance reported as 66.2%, 65.5% and 63.7% respectively. The three MDI models emanating from this study can each be used to inform tactical periodisation program design both prior to and during the regular season.     

Fish-out-of-office: How managerialised university conditions make administrative knowledge inaccessible to academics

Academics report feeling unable to cope in the managerialised university. To confirm these feelings are symptoms of managerialism's tightening grip, we use Bourdieusian concepts of field and capital to compare academics and professional staff experiential statements in an Australian university. We compare their field conditions and examine how their differences enable or hinder the accumulation of capital that defines their field. Findings show that managerialism requires professional staff to share work tasks and be on-campus, which enables them to accumulate the capital they require. Managerialism also permits and resources academics to working out-of-office to accumulate their required capital. Consequentially though, university operational knowledge becomes informal and only accessible to professional staff who accumulate the required social capital to access it. Professional staff are thus fish-in-water; easily accumulating social capital through day-to-day activities. But academics become fish-out-of-water (office); they flounder to access operational knowledge, which leads to feelings of not coping.