Anchoring effects in world university rankings: exploring biases in reputation scores

Despite ongoing debates about their uses and validity, university rankings are a popular means to compare institutions within a country and around the world. Anchoring theory suggests that these rankings may influence assessments of institutional reputation, and this effect may be particularly strong when a new rankings system is introduced. We test this possibility by examining data from the first 3 years of the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) world university rankings. Consistent with an anchoring hypothesis, the initial THES rankings influenced peer assessments of reputation in subsequent surveys, but second-year rankings were not related to changes in reputation in the third year. Furthermore, as expected, early peer assessment ratings were not associated with changes in future rankings. These findings provide strong evidence for an anchoring effect on assessments of institutional reputation. We discuss the usefulness of these peer assessments, along with ways in which reputational surveys can be improved.     

Academic accountability and university adaptation: The architecture of an academic learning organization

Over the last decade universities have been subjected to various forms of academic accountability designed to maintain or improve the quality of their teaching and learning. A shared perspective of many of these accountability processes is that universities should become skilled at creating knowledge for the improvement of teaching and learning, and at modifying their behavior to reflect this new knowledge. In short, that universities should become “learning organizations.” What are the organizational characteristics of an academic learning organization? The paper will address this question by reviewing the adaptations in organizational structure and governance reported by universities attempting to improve the quality of their teaching and learning processes.     

Ethnic stigma, academic anxiety, and intrinsic motivation in middle childhood

Previous research addressing the dynamics of stigma and academics has focused on African American adolescents and adults. The present study examined stigma awareness, academic anxiety, and intrinsic motivation among 451 young (ages 6-11) and diverse (African American, Chinese, Dominican, Russian, and European American) students. Results indicated that ethnic-minority children reported higher stigma awareness than European American children. For all children, stigma awareness was associated with higher academic anxiety and lower intrinsic motivation. Despite these associations, ethnic-minority children reported higher levels of intrinsic motivation than their European American peers. A significant portion of the higher intrinsic motivation among Dominican students was associated with their higher levels of school belonging, suggesting that supportive school environments may be important sources of intrinsic motivation among some ethnic-minority children.     

Path analyses of the relations between self-efficacy, anxiety and academic performance

Differences in academic performance can surely be explained by differences in cognitive aptitudes, but cognitive-affective variables like self-efficacy or anxiety may also intervene. This paper is partly based on Bandura’s social cognitive theory and several assumptions relative to the systemic organisation of the cognitive-affective variables just mentioned with academic performance are tested. 505 students in the 4th and 5th grades were invited to participate in the study. Anxiety and self-efficacy are measured by self-report questionnaires at two levels of generality: dispositional (trait-like variables) and situational (state variables). Performance refers to the scores obtained at an usual French exam. Path analyses replicate the same functional relation between self-efficacy and anxiety. But when one aims at explaining performance, Bandura’s general hypothesis of an effect of self-efficacy on performance directly and indirectly via anxiety doesn’t hold anymore when individual differences in the level of knowledge are taken into account. Interesting enough is the finding of rather different models when the level of knowledge is considered. Indeed, it seems that cognitive affective variables play a more important role to explain performance when the students’ level of French knowledge is low.     

Implementation intentions and test anxiety: Shielding academic performance from distraction

College students whose test anxiety was measured completed a working memory-intensive math exam with televised distractions. Students were provided with implementation intentions (if–then plans; Gollwitzer, 1999) designed to either help them ignore the distractions (i.e., temptation-inhibiting plans) or focus more intently on the math exam (i.e., task-facilitating plans). Regression analyses showed that as test anxiety increased, the effectiveness of temptation-inhibiting implementation intentions increased, whereas task-facilitating implementation intentions increasingly harmed performance as test anxiety increased. In addition, the consequences of these plans differed significantly for those high in test anxiety. Implications for effective self-regulation by test-anxious students are discussed.     

Putting bureaucratic accountability into a perspective in terms of academic achievement

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - This research aims to understand the perceptions of a group of secondary school teachers and principals regarding the place of academic...     

Researching academic stress and anxiety in students: some methodological considerations

Despite a long history of interest in North American and Western European literature, researchers in the UK are only now beginning to turn attention to the issue of academic stress in schoolchildren and how it may affect emotional well‐being, health and performance on school assessments. Based on the author's experiences of designing an extensive research project, this article explores the conceptual and methodological difficulties encountered when designing and conducting research in this area. First, there is a lack of precision in terminology used. The terms ‘stress’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘worry’ are used interchangeably in the literature as if they referred to the same phenomenon, and the domains of ‘examination stress’ and ‘academic stress’ are not clearly defined. As a consequence, it is not clear exactly what phenomenon the literature is actually referring to. Second, it is not always clear in the literature what the term ‘stress’ is referring to. In some cases, it is being used to refer to the properties of a stimulus (e.g. an examination) and in other cases to the subjective experience of distress. Assuming a subjective experience of distress will necessarily follow from a particular stimulus is problematic as it fails to account for the interpretation of that stimulus to the student involved. The much ignored construct of test anxiety may offer some advantages to the researcher by having a clearly defined domain and referent. Third, there is an overwhelming bias in the research towards quantification and ways of ‘measuring’ stress and anxiety in students. The usefulness of this approach is considered along with the potential advantages of alternative approaches.     

Children's over- and underestimation of academic competence: a longitudinal study of gender differences, depression, and anxiety

A total of 807 third and sixth graders completed questionnaires about their academic competence, feelings of depression, and symptoms of anxiety, every 6 months for 3 years. Teachers provided objective measures of academic competence. Compared to teachers' ratings, boys overestimated and girls underestimated their academic competence. Gender differences first emerged in fourth or fifth grade and increased through eighth grade. Symptoms of depression and anxiety were negatively associated with academic overestimation. Furthermore, controlling for depression and anxiety eliminated most of the gender differences in academic over- and underestimation. Finally, self-reported depression and anxiety predicted changes in the tendency to overestimate academic competence over time. Evidence of the reverse relation was much weaker.     

The regulation of public research universities: changes in academic competition and implications for university autonomy and accountability

The changing context of higher education is altering the traditional means by which governments regulate their “research” universities. In a number of countries universities, which are increasigly subject to a global market, have discovered that they require greater management flexibility in order to compete effectively and are therefore seeking relief from traditional government regulations affecting both substantive and procedural matters. At the same time governments wish to assure that the actions of publicly funded universities are consistent with the social values of efficiency, equity, and academic quality. Designing public policies that effectively balance the competitive needs of the university sector with the public interest is a complex issue. The paper presents a general framework for analyzing these regulatory policy issues and illustrates the framework with policies from Europe and the US.     

Reducing statistics anxiety and academic procrastination among Israeli students: A pilot program

Many college students consider statistical courses as frightening and demanding, yielding high anxiety and low competence, and correlating with maladaptive academic behaviors and low achievement. With undergraduate students, the present pre-post study compared a supportive online teaching program utilizing mandatory statistical exercises (n = 37) with a no intervention, optional exercise statistics class (n = 32). We evaluated whether our statistics teaching intervention decreased test anxiety and academic procrastination and increased academic self-efficacy and academic achievements. Results indicated a decrease in academic procrastination and test anxiety at course end for intervention group and an increase in test anxiety for control group. At the end of the course intervention group reported higher academic self-efficacy and achievements. Teaching statistics using mandatory supportive activities might contribute to more positive psychological outcomes (eg, higher academic self-efficacy and lower academic procrastination) and higher academic achievements.     

权力下放、绩效责任与学校自我评估

权力下放与校本管理运动赋予了学校一定的自主权,但权力和责任必须相称.享有一定自主权力的学校,必须承担起学校发展成败和教育品质高低的责任.但有了权力,又具备绩效责任意识的学校并不必然就是一个不断提升自我能力而创造未来的组织,它还必须拥有自我评估、自我完善的机制与能力.赋权、问责与增能的有机结合才是学校转变为学习型组织和实现可持续发展的动力和途径.