Special education classification and program success: Is there a relationship?

This study analyzed the relationship between students' pre- and postprogram special education classification status and success in a level-system program. Records of students identified as Severe Behavior Handicapped (the Ohio equivalent of Seriously Emotionally Disturbed) enrolled in a special school over an 11-year entrance period were reviewed. Findings indicate no significant relationship between student outcomes and pre- or postclassification status. However, a relationship approaching significance was found between pre- and postprogram labeling. These results suggest that, at most, program outcomes had minimal influence on postprogram special education classification decisions. In addition, the seemingly unsystematic distribution of postprogram classification labels suggests that exit placements were largely a function of availability. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Aversiveness of teacher-chosen interventions and student problem characteristics: Is there a relationship?

There is limited empirical evidence regarding teachers' decisions about interventions to change the behavior of students with emotional and behavioral problems. This study examined whether teachers considered such salient student characteristics as age and type of problem behavior when selecting interventions that they perceived as likely to be effective in managing students' behavior. The results suggest that both regular and special education teachers take student characteristics into consideration when making such intervention choices.     

ADHD and reading disability in male adults: is there a connection?

The present study examined the comorbidity between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disability (RD) in male adults. Participants were 120 men, of whom 24 were classified as having ADHD. The basis for the diagnosis was two self-report scales validated by interviews and background data. An extensive battery was used to assess phonological abilities and various aspects of reading skills. No differences were obtained between adults with and without ADHD on measures of either phonological processing skills or word decoding, indicating a low comorbidity with RD. This finding was valid even when different criteria were used to diagnose RD. However, the two groups differed in reading comprehension, with individuals with ADHD performing poorly in tests of reading comprehension. These results are compatible with the view that reading comprehension involves many of the higher cognitive control functions assumed to be impaired in ADHD. However, these attentional control functions are not critical to word recognition, which is determined by a more encapsulated phonological processing module. The pattern of associations between ADHD and RD observed in the present study is explained with reference to the differential attentional demands of the two aspects of reading.     

Quality assurance and evidence in career guidance in Europe: counting what is measured or measuring what counts?

Quality assurance (QA) and Evidence in career guidance are increasingly seen as an indispensable part of explaining and even legitimising career guidance activities and policies. It is no longer sufficient to assume that career guidance or career education has an impact. This has to be demonstrated. This paper provides an overview of how and why QA approaches are featuring ever more significantly on the agenda of many European Countries. A particular focus is the link between particular quantitatively oriented QA approaches and the effects that this has upon guidance policies and practices. The paper concludes by raising some of the wider QA issues that need to be addressed.     

Research collaboration and productivity: is there correlation?

The incidence of extramural collaboration in academic research activities is increasing as a result of various factors. These factors include policy measures aimed at fostering partnership and networking among the various components of the research system, policies which are in turn justified by the idea that knowledge sharing could increase the effectiveness of the system. Over the last two decades, the scientific community has also stepped up activities to assess the actual impact of collaboration intensity on the performance of research systems. This study draws on a number of empirical analyses, with the intention of measuring the effects of extramural collaboration on research performance and, indirectly, verifying the legitimacy of policies that support this type of collaboration. The analysis focuses on the Italian academic research system. The aim of the work is to assess the level of correlation, at institutional level, between scientific productivity and collaboration intensity as a whole, both internationally and with private organizations. This will be carried out using a bibliometric type of approach, which equates collaboration with the co-authorship of scientific publications.

Research League Table: is there a better way?

The results of the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise were presented in several places, notably in The Higher, in the form of a league table. The article discusses how this table was compiled and points to a number of fundamental problems in the way in which the data were handled. It goes on to discuss some more general issues in the calculation of league tables and shows the extreme sensitivity of the RAE data to certain arbitrary assumptions that have to be made. It concludes by urging caution on any who may be tempted to draw conclusions from such tables as well as on those who might compile such tables in the future.     

Opportunity or exploitation? Women and quality assurance in higher education

Based on interviews with 18 UK women academics and managers on quality and power in higher education, this article interrogates the impact of quality assurance discourses and practices on women in higher education. Micro‐level analysis of the effects of audit and the evaluative state seem to suggest that hegemonic masculinities and gendered power relations are being reinforced by the emphasis on competition, targets, audit trails and performance (Morley, 2003a Morley, L. 2003a. Quality and power in higher education, Buckingham: Open University Press.  [Google Scholar]). Furthermore, pedagogic space for exploring social justice issues is closing with the emphasis on learning outcomes and student consumerism (Morley, 2003b Morley, L. 2003b. “Reconstructing students as consumers: new settlements of power or the politics of assimilation?”. In Higher education and the lifecourse, Edited by: Slowey, M. and Watson, D. Buckingham: Open University Press.  [Google Scholar]). Yet women are also gaining new visibility as a consequence of the creation of a new cadre of quality managers. Quality assurance, as a regime of power, appears to offer both repressive and creative potential for women. This article will explore whether quality signs and practices are gendered and whether these represent opportunity or exploitation for women in the academy.     

Shared misunderstandings? Competing and conflicting meaning structures in quality assurance

This article shows how the professional discourse on quality assurance in higher education is building on latent meaning structures that can be competing with each other and even subvert the messages on the manifest level. Taking the case of the Austrian higher education system as an example and employing a reconstructive-interpretative approach rooted in social science hermeneutics, five different meaning patterns are presented: a consumer protection pattern, an educative pattern, an entrepreneurial pattern, a managerial pattern and a quality engineering pattern. By analysing and comparing these patterns, the study argues for paying more attention to latencies and implicit meanings that might be overlooked by focusing on the manifest level of the discourse, in order to not lose track of important contradictions and sources of potential conflict.     

Diverse Expectations and Access to Opportunities: is there a Graduate Labour Market?

Restructuring of the labour market has led to changing demand for skills and concern about potential mismatch between needs of employers and competences developed in higher education courses. This paper extends analysis of the Great Expectations survey of UK final-year undergraduates in 1996 to explore the development of skills and competences in different disciplinary areas and the anticipated career trajectories of students. A detailed assessment is undertaken of the extent to which respondents appear prepared, both in terms of the employment-related skills they consider they have developed as undergraduates and in their expectations, for the changes which have taken place in the labour market in the latter part of the twentieth century. While findings from transitional early careers need to be interpreted cautiously, it does appear that expectations varied less than emerging outcomes for this cohort in the vanguard of mass higher education. Subject and gender differences in expectations and outcomes were significant and 'non-traditional' graduates were more likely than others to report that they were experiencing difficulties in the transition from education to employment. The graduates themselves had a flexible approach to the labour market but it seems that employers may have more inflexible recruitment graduate practices. Further research is required but there is clearly a danger that wider access may not lead to correspondingly wider career opportunities.     

University administrators’ conceptions of quality and approaches to quality assurance

As the quality of university education garners increasingly more interest in both the public and in the literature, and as quality assurance (QA) processes are developed and implemented within universities around the world, it is important to carefully consider what is meant by the term quality. This study attempts to add to the literature empirical data from interviews conducted with senior administrators within Canada’s province of Ontario. A quality assurance framework was developed by the Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents in response to international trends in QA and implemented by all 21 Ontario universities in 2011. This phenomenographic study explored the conceptions of quality held by senior university administrators and their strategies for implementing QA processes. Results revealed a range of QA approaches that are employed within Ontario’s universities. Rather than the two categories of retrospective QA and prospective QA that Biggs (High Educ 41:221–238, 2001) postulated, results indicate a more complex spectrum that involves three main approaches to QA: an approach aimed at defending quality, an approach aimed at demonstrating quality, and an approach aimed at enhancing quality. These approaches are considered in relation to Biggs’s (High Educ 41:221–238, 2001) ideas about quality enhancement and a revision to his model is proposed.     

Internal quality assurance: A new culture or added bureaucracy?

This paper analyses teaching and non-teaching staff perceptions on the implementation of internal quality assurance (QA) practices at their higher education institutions. The aim is to understand how far different perspectives on quality – as culture, as compliance or as consistency – are reflected in the views of these two groups on such practices. Data from a survey sent to all Portuguese institutions show that, to some extent, the perspectives of quality as culture and quality as compliance seem to permeate both groups’ views. This is evident in regard to the factors identified as supporting the development of internal QA, the main features underlying the implementation of such practices and their main effects. As the study allows for a better understanding on how these practices are perceived by teaching and non-teaching staff, it can contribute to promoting the critical reflection of institutions about QA and the way it can be both more effective and aligned with academia’s needs and expectations, contributing to influencing institutional practices.     

Reading and writing: what is the relationship with anxiety and depression?

Learning can be considered a function of synthesis in which both cognitive functioning and the domain of affectivity convey. The aim of the present study was to investigate how specific literacy skills, i.e., reading and writing, relate to two main dimensions of negative affectivity, i.e., anxiety and depression. Study 1 was conducted on third grade children (72), while Study 2 focused on first grade children (43). Two groups of participants selected because they had been deemed ‘at risk’ for the development of anxiety or depression and a control group were compared in reading and writing tasks, which included both word and non-word lists. The assessment included also the evaluation of Verbal, Nonverbal and Composite IQs. Results indicated that children ‘at risk’ for depression made more spelling errors in dictation of words in comparison to the control group. No differences emerged in reading tasks or with reference to the group of children ‘at risk’ for anxiety.

Quality assurance policies and practices in Scandinavian higher education systems: convergence or different paths?

Because there is close cooperation on quality assurance in the Scandinavian countries, one would expect there to be convergence of quality assurance policies and practices in Scandinavian higher education. Few studies have analysed these quality assurance policies and practices from a comparative viewpoint. Based on empirical evidence produced in connection with studies of recent quality reforms in Scandinavia and an approach based on linking diffusion and translation theories with institutionalist perspectives focusing on path dependency, the paper contributes to the current debate on Scandinavian quality assurance. The debate is compelling with regard to the Swedish case in particular, with its ‘one size fits all’ approach and exclusive focus on outcomes which has been heavily criticised by the higher education institutions and has turned out to be controversial from the European viewpoint.     

Mapping government reforms in quality against higher education theory: is the relationship symbiotic?

In Australia, a review of the higher education sector is usually triggered by a change in government leadership, followed by the development and implementation of the government’s response in the form of a reform package to enact change. The aim of this study was to conduct an independent evaluation of a large-scale national government policy implementation. This article concludes that the 2003 Government Reform Package was successful in bringing attention to learning and teaching practice in the Australian higher education sector through three national initiatives: (1) Learning and Teaching Performance Fund; (2) Australian Learning and Teaching Council; (3) Australian Universities Quality Agency. These initiatives were implemented with the full delivery of the initial funding cycle, each initiative applied a different model of quality and these models were found to be aligned to Bigg’s theoretical model of teaching and learning and to have a symbiotic relationship.     

Is there a specific relationship between childhood sexual and physical abuse and repeated suicidal behavior?

OBJECTIVE: Studies show that childhood sexual and physical abuse predict repeated suicide attempts and self-mutilation. Little is known about the importance of sexual and physical abuse when compared to other severe childhood adversities with respect to chronic suicidal behavior. METHOD: Seventy-four subjects, 65% of whom were women, consecutively admitted to a general hospital after having made a suicide attempt, were interviewed as part of the intake interview about prior suicide attempts and self-mutilation and received DSM-IV diagnoses. Sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, antipathy from parents, loss of parents, and severe discord in the family before the age of 18, were covered by the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse (CECA) interview schedule. RESULTS: The prevalence of severe sexual abuse was 35%, severe physical abuse 18%, neglect 27%, antipathy 34%, loss of caregiver 37% and exposure to family violence 31%. Physical and sexual abuse were independently associated with repeated suicide attempts when controlling for the effects of the other childhood adverse factors. No other childhood adversity was related to chronic suicidal behavior. The odds ratio of exposure to sexual or physical abuse was highest among those who both repeated suicide attempts and self-mutilated. CONCLUSION: Physical and sexual abuse are significantly and independently associated with repeated suicidal behavior.     

Citation analysis and Northern Ireland: a quality measure?

Research evaluation is used to identify “success” and relate this to funding. Citation analysis is one of many performance indicators but has been largely set aside in the U.K. This paper describes the use of bibliometric data and examines the “parochialism” of Northern Irish research. Papers produced in Northern Ireland between the years 1981 to 1994 and listed with the ISI are used to exemplify the issues. The analysis indicates that some fields are underrepresented in the ISI database. Small research systems can also be significantly influenced by one or two individuals. Publication in a highly visible, Anglo-American, internationally refereed journal will enhance the citation rate. Northern Irish research has a relative lack of international impact, seemingly a function of topics and the journals used. While there is an increasing amount of joint authorship, particularly with the rest of the U.K., relatively little collaboration has taken place with colleagues in the rest of Europe. Citation analysis is an important initial indicator of research impact, useful to establish questions and narrow an overall field of inquiry.