Placement Evaluations and Remedial Education: Are Students Shopping for Bargains?

The purpose of this study is to provide evidence that students may be doing comparison shopping when it comes to community college placement in English and mathematics courses. Comparisons may occur because of the difference in the placement process across campuses and the variation in the levels of developmental education offered. The implications of students’ course shopping are discussed in terms of state policy.     

Mentorship Matters: Does Early Faculty Contact Lead to Quality Faculty Interaction?

This study seeks to understand the factors that contribute to a type of student–faculty interaction known to have particular benefits for students, faculty mentorship. Using three-time-point data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, this study employed structural equation modeling to investigate the relationship between contact and communication with faculty in the first year of college and faculty mentorship in the senior year. Results suggest that early interaction with faculty serves as a socialization process in college that leads students to have more meaningful interactions with faculty later in college, in the form of mentorship. The study extends the field’s understanding of faculty mentorship and offers important implications for institutional practices.     

Professor or Knowledge Worker? The Politics of Defining Faculty Work

To define “contractual regulations and institutional practices” for university faculty we need to consider significant changes in academic work in the last two decades. On the one hand, there persists the traditional view of disciplinary knowledge as valuable for its own sake; on the other, universities are a driving force in providing intellectual capital for the new knowledge society. While academic contracts have traditionally focused on defining work regulations and guidelines, faculty freedoms, tenure and so on, within the disciplinary framework, today these issues are deeply dependent on how the university's post‐Fordist organizational model (centralized controls, disaggregated models for managing knowledge) delivers knowledge in which symbolic and exchange values can play conflicting roles.     

Faculty: Thy administrator's keeper? Some evidence

Colleges and universities face a principal-agent problem. There are information asymmetries over the actions chosen by administrators. Because non-profit constraints limit the financial stake of trustees there may be insufficient monitoring of administrators and, consequentially, shirking. It is conceivable that faculty will serve as “delegated monitors” given the proper incentives. Faculty monitoring will most likely benefit a university when: (1) monitoring costs are low and (2) administrators cannot impose significant punishment costs on faculty. The practices of organized faculty participation in governance and tenure naturally achieve such ends. Empirical evidence from a sample of colleges and universities in the United States supports the hypothesis that features of a faculty's employment have significant effects on a university's financial performance.     

The National Grid for Learning: Panacea or Panopticon?

Although not fully established, the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) initiative is already being presented by both government and industry as offering students, teachers and school extensive freedom and autonomy in their day-to-day work. However, this paper argues that the official discursive construction of the NGfL in this way, as a 'panacea' to educational problems, obscures vital issues of power and control that may only become apparent once the initiative is fully integrated at the classroom level. Drawing initially on the work of Foucault, and then Poster's more recent conception of the electronic 'SuperPanopticon’, this paper re-examines the basis of the NGfL and its role in extending and reinforcing existing power configurations in education. The paper concludes by considering directions for future research into the NGfL, and educational use of the Internet in the light of this analysis.     

Tenure: An Important Due Process Right or a Hindrance to Change in the Schools?

Teacher tenure is a hotly contested concept in today’s’ school reform battles. Many discussions of tenure, however, use the term in incorrect ways that add little to the concepts that should be debated. Historically, tenure represents due process rights teachers acquire after several years of successful service. Other procedures, such as teacher credentialing, the granting of tenure, and teacher evaluation, if successfully applied, would offer the public adequate protection from less than competent teachers. Future implications and recommendations for legislatures considering reworking tenure laws are given, including extending the term necessary to gain tenure, revamping teacher evaluation procedures, increasing expenditures for supervision, and focusing reform efforts on desired outcomes.J. Coleman, L. Molinaro, M. Green, S. T. Schroth have equal contributions to the finished paper.     

Futures for Children's Literature: Evolution or radical break?

As electronic media increasingly dominate narratives for children, not merely the form or the content but the very nature of narrative is changing. Future narratives for the 'computer reader', using the Internet and multimedia may seem to be no more nor less than individual, unassessable chaos. But these readers still need to subsist in a linear educational system and teachers will have to negotiate the profound intellectual shift that the mediation between old and new narratives implies. At the most basic level this will involve revising what we mean to be 'literate' and to be a 'good reader'.     

Recurrent Education: Strategy for Change,or Cooptation?

Abstracts

English

Is recurrent education a practical strategy for change? This research paper reports some of the reactions of the Australian legal profession to recurrent education and suggests that a covert alliance between the profession and its educators results in a strong resistance to this rather radical approach to education.     

Tools for the classroom? An examination of existing sociometric methods for teacher use

Despite the recent technical and theoretical advances in the investigation of children's social relations, the inherent complexity of these methods may prevent their easy integration into the classroom. A simple and effective tool can be valuable for teachers who wish to investigate students' social realities in the classroom. Therefore, the present study aims to identify an effective sociometric method for educator's use in the classroom. Nine separate sociometric categorisations were created from peer reports of grade one students (N = 748). Methods that have different collection methods (nominations or ratings) show surprisingly low agreement, unlike those with the same collection method. Methods based on peer nominations showed the strongest correlations with students' behavioural traits. Based on these results, we discuss the relevance and usefulness of such methods for use by classroom teachers in identifying students' social realities.     

Educating all for positive peace: Education for positive peace or oppression?

The absence of indirect or structural violence is termed positive peace. In this paper the author attempts to apply the concept of positive peace to the concept of education for all, the way this concept was defined at the World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA) in Jomtien, Thailand, in March, 1990. The discussion focuses on three points raised at the Jomtien conference by countries from the South: the effects of the structural adjustment policies (SAP) on the education sector; the effects on higher education of a concentration of resources on basic education and the effects of EFA on the possibilities of strengthening indigenous culture. The discussion shows, through new research results and concrete examples, that the effects of SAPs like the reintroduction of school-fees in a poor country like Tanzania lead to greater inequalities and greater structural violence against the poor, especially the girls from the poorer homes. It further shows that there is a process going on in African countries of undermining local curriculum development and the local textbook industry thereby threatening the indigenous culture. An example from Zimbabwe of sustainable education which does not rely on external sources is given.     

Imported or Important Theory? Sociological interrogations of disablement and special education

Drawing from sociologies of disablement this discussion affirms the importance of such theorising for identifying the epistemological basis, and therefore the implications for policy and practice, of special education. The discussion is both timely and necessary as professional resilience reinvents special education as consistent with inclusive education. This has been achieved through linguistic adjustments which eschew challenges to underlying assumptions about difference and schooling. Unless a sociological analysis is applied to educational practices to frame inclusive education as a project in cultural politics, special educational theory will reduce inclusive education to the functionalist endeavour of assimilation. This paper extends the discussion with Clark, Dyson, Millward and Skidmore (1995) to suggest that applying sociology to special educational needs is not an importation of theory to force intellectual closure by reducing educational complexities. Rather, sociologies of disability expose exclusions as mediated through curriculum, pedagogy and organisational practices to extend the possibilities for generating inclusive educational cultures.     

The University Presidency: Do Evaluations Make a Difference?

High turnover and short tenures are the norm for state university presidents in the last part of the twentieth century. Depending on the type of institution, the average state university president stays in office about four years, some three years shorter than the national average of seven years for all higher education institutions. The article discusses this trend and relates length of tenure to the formal and informal evaluations of presidents. Beginning with a presentation of presidential tenure (time in office) data and a discussion of the benefits of longer terms, the article continues with a dialogue on the role of the president in state institutions of higher education. It is argued that the position of president necessitates constituent leadership with presidents often expected to please all constituencies. Included in this discussion are the nature, role, and effectiveness of evaluations of university presidents. The authors conclude that evaluations of presidents make little difference in decisions to retain or remove presidents. Even a good or great evaluation does not offset the impact of the unforseen event or changes in political leadership within a state or on a board. The authors agree that annual reviews or reports are valuable in improving a presidents performance and leadership. Evaluations make a difference when they are supervised by individuals with direct knowledge of the job, are fair in terms of expectations from often divergent constituent groups, and focus on maximizing the ability of the president to improve the institution.