Designing effective educational policies: what can we learn from an Italian case study

We discuss the design and implementation of educational programmes aimed at increasing university enrolment. We focus on a means-test policy introduced in the Italian province of Trento, which consists of a monetary incentive in the form of a grant. To reduce inequalities in access to higher education, aid is awarded according to merit and financial need. Previous research has shown that this programme has no effect on the university enrolment. Therefore, our aim is to understand, through examination of a unique data set, why the policy failed; we also argue that the most effective design of educational policies considers the targeted population's demand for higher education, as well as socioeconomic context. In this way, we provide insight into the formalisation and efficacy of the eligibility conditions. Though our research is concerned with a province, our findings have important implications for how educational programmes should be designed and implemented nationwide and abroad.     

Factors contributing to university image: the postgraduate students’ points of view

Despite several studies having been conducted to examine organizational image from a business perspective, there has not been adequate research in the area of perceived image in nonprofit organizations such as universities. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the factors contributing to university image, from the postgraduate students’ point of view. In addition, the impact of the students’ perceived university image on their organizational trust was examined. The population of this study consisted of postgraduate students in 10 of the top Iranian universities. Questionnaires were used to collect the required data. The findings indicated the difference between current practices and ideal values of the factors contributing to the university image. Based on our findings, the factors contributing to university image range from internal and international reputation, university members, and academic planning, to university environment. Furthermore, we found that university image has a significant impact on students’ trust in their university.     

Designing for Critical,Relational, Practice-Immersed Teacher Preparation: Weaving Threads into Tapestry in a Critical Project-Based Literacy Partnership

As teacher educators located in K–12 and university contexts, we had experienced the often-highlighted disconnections between university teacher education and preservice apprenticeships in schools. Thus, calls for innovations in preparation programs aimed at deeper immersion in practice spoke to our desires to move literacy methods preparation into schools in ways that allowed teacher candidates, children, classroom teachers, and university instructors to be together in practice. A central goal of our work was to use our partnership as a path toward deeply intertwining practices of literacy teaching with critical lenses and pedagogies centered on justice. In this article, we situate our partnership in the landscape of research on practice-based teacher preparation and critical scholarship in teacher education. We describe our partnership, including its layers of contexts, relationships, and opportunities for critical, mediated practice, and our methods of studying our work over time. Our findings illustrate how the design of our partnership has afforded opportunities to (a) trace how critical ideas and practices thread across contexts of participants’ learning and (b) critically reframe problematic language, policies, and practices with novice teachers. We end by highlighting implications of our work for others invested in critical project-based partnerships.     

大学理想和理念断想--为赵婷婷《大学何为》一书而作

大学理想和理念的研究是近年来在我国兴起的一个热点问题。与西方大学理想和理念的研究相对比,这一研究领域中存在着诸多有趣的现象,涉及这一研究兴盛的背景、研究者的特征和立场、未来这一研究的走向等等。任何一种大学制度的背后,都有相应的大学理念作支撑。我国社会正处于转型时期,应将大学理想和理念的研究推向深入。     

谁来主导中国大学的制度改革

我国大学长期坚持的行政化体制,使大学活动在一定程度上背离自己的本质和规律。对大学精神和品格进行拯救的工作,对于中国大学以及教育发展的意义,无异于"废科举、兴学校"的历史性影响,它意味着中国大学制度将发生革命性变化。然而,无论是大学自身,还是主管大学的政府教育行政部门,都无力完成这项活动,因而只能寄希望于出现"卡里斯玛"式的人物。     

Changes in intellectual property statutes and policies at a public university: Revising the terms of professional labor

In this paper, we look at the way the state has helped shape the climate for the commercialization of science in a public university, and at how this has shaped the terms of professional labor for faculty. We examine patent policies of a public research university and of its Board of Regents, and the relevant state statutes from 1969–1989. Policies and statutes moved from an ideology that defined the public interest as best served by shielding public entities from involvement in the market, to one that saw the public interest as best served by public organizations' involvement in commercial activities. Claims to the ownership and rewards of intellectual property shifted dramatically in that time, from faculty owning their products and time to complete ownership by the institution. The contract between the university and faculty became increasingly formalized and specified. We believe that such developments augur significant changes in professional labor and in the relationship between the state and higher education. Such changes can best be understood from a post-structuralist perspective that moves beyond the structural dichotomies of public and private, state and higher education administrator and professional, and points to new forms of organization and of professional stratification and interest formation.Despite the changes in intellectual property policies at our university, one of the ongoing terms of our joint professional labor is that we share equally in the research and writing of our work products, which lack commercial relevance but not, perhaps, some value.     

The role of mentorship in the preparation and success of university presidents

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of mentoring and how it shapes university presidents in higher education. Using phenomenological case studies to understand the lived experiences of university presidents, we analyzed data from eleven interviews. Drawing on tenets of Zachary’s Four Phases of Mentoring, this study reflects the ways in which university presidents were mentored including the effect that mentoring has on executive leadership preparation and success. This study’s findings can inform our understanding of mentoring and the importance of graduate preparation programs, executive leadership programs and organizations, and professional associations for the university presidency.     

Towards the Idea of a World University

Could anyone reasonably oppose the idea that quality and excellence are essential to the university? However unlikely it seems, that is exactly what we would like to do in this article: we would like to reject the demand for quality and excellence in the university. We would like to arrive at a point at where the need for quality is no longer necessary. In this article, such a refusal will direct us to a proposal for using the spaces offered by the university and its teaching and research in a different way; in a way that transforms the university into a world university. This paper will argue that a world university is concentrated around attentive pools of worldly study. It is a university that has to invent new languages in order to answer the question “How can we live together?” In order to answer this question, and to be “present in the present,” we will clarify our argument that both acceptance and attention are needed in the world university. This position implies a kind of curiosity that is not driven by the “will to know” but by a caring attitude to what is happening now.     

Meeting in the circle: examining identity,attitudes, and pedagogy in the context of an early childhood teacher education program in the United States

As a team of teacher educators at a university in the United States, we engage in participatory action research to reflect on how reflective tools which we design engage teacher candidates (TCs) in their reflecting on teaching. In this paper, we describe how we invite TCs to write in-class reflections, respond to self-assessment probes, and practice problem-solving processes. We critically analyze our approaches and identify further intentional approaches to promote university students’ understandings of (1) links between the self and working with children and families and (2) connections between attitudes and pedagogy towards social justice and inclusion. We conclude that we must continue to explore how the teaching practices we use affect students’ understandings of social justice in education. Doing so demands our focus on examining attitudes through self-reflection among and between faculty and university students so that identity, relationships, attitudes, inclusion, and social justice are prioritized as pillars of curriculum in early childhood education at all levels of schooling.     

Exploring The Issues of Incorporating Cultural Differences in Education: A Curriculum Journey in Playwriting

In response to a mandate to develop a more welcoming university for students, especially those of Aboriginal inheritance, we set out on a journey for ways of accommodating cultural differences in our university classrooms. Over the course of a year, we met regularly and audiotaped our conversations. By talking, transcribing, writing, and rewriting, we carried our understandings forth in a recursive manner. In our efforts to represent the ideas that arose in our conversations, the conceptual movements in our thinking, and the insights that evolved, a play took shape. In the play, three characters evolve their understandings over the course of four acts. In this article, we reflect on the conditions that produced the play; we comment on the process of writing the play; and we share the understandings, insights, and transformations that occurred in our desire to live well amidst differences.     

金融危机影响下我国高等教育面临的机遇与挑战

国际金融危机分别从高校融资、教育需求、大学生就业和教育结构等诸多方面间接地对我国高等教育产生了重大影响。为了更好地应对此次危机带来的机遇和挑战,我国高等教育应积极发挥自身的科教人才优势,扩大对外销售和服务收入来源,以寻求高校融资之突破口。同时要以人才需求为导向调整专业结构,创新高校人才培养模式。     

新时期高校就业指导工作的几点思考

大学生就业已成为社会关注的热点问题。增加就业需要社会各方面的共同努力。从学校就业指导工作的角度,必须适应社会经济发展的新形势,转变观念,加强队伍建设,改进工作策略和模式,从而为大学生就业提供更为积极有效的指导。     

Using Interactive Journal Writing as a Strategy for Professional Growth

In recent years journal writing as a tool for reflective practice has gained prominence in teacher education programs. This paper reports the investigation of journal writing as a means for student teachers and university to better understand the process of learning to teach. The aims of the study were to examine how journals are used; to explore what students learn and what university teachers learn; and to identify which strategies work best. Survey and interview data were collected from the student authors of the journals. Analysis of the data contributed to our understanding of the process of interactive journal writing and the strategies we used as university teachers. Students used the journals in a number of ways. They used the journals to get direction on practice and planning, as a tool for analysis, as an emotion release, and as a way of 'sorting things out'. Students identified a number of strategies used by the university teachers as journal respondents which contributed to students' learning about teaching. This research focused our attention on interactive journal writing as a strategy that has the potential to promote reflective practice.     

A Predictive Model of Inquiry to Enrollment

The purpose of this paper is to build a predictive model of enrollment that provides data driven analysis to improve undergraduate recruitment efforts. We utilize an inquiry model, which examines the enrollment decisions of students that have made contact with our institution, a medium sized, public, Doctoral I university. A student, who makes an inquiry to our university such as by returning a request for information form, often provides far less information than is available from applicants. Despite this fact we find that characteristics of the student, as well as geographic and demographic data based on the student’s zip code are significant predictors of enrollment. Accounting for uncertainty in our model’s specification, we find that we are able to predict out of sample the enrollment decision of 89% of student inquiries. We also demonstrate how these findings can be used to improve marketing efforts.     

Promoting a participatory convergence in a Spanish context: an inter-university action research project using visual narrative

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the deconstruction of an inter-university action research project that has allowed us to rethink our teaching and research, questioning the social, political and ethical dimensions of the university. Following the pre-assembly proposal to promote participatory convergence, organized within the framework of the 1^st Global Assembly for Knowledge Democracy (2017), an action research process was implemented in order to generate systematic inquiry around the current situation of the university and the need to act and rethink our commitment to promoting changes in this context. We have reflected on the meaning of democratization, rethinking the pedagogical relationship with our students and how we critically commit them to promote activism. We generated an environment where we look for the meaning of our practices by means of a visual narrative which has enabled us to weave and identify our own biography and become aware of where we are and why we act in one way or another. We have also focused on the search for the meaning of our actions in relation to the community we belong to and how to deal with the challenges of social justice, encouraging collaboration with other networks in a wider inter-university framework.     

Decolonising the curriculum: using graduate qualities to embed Indigenous knowledges at the academic cultural interface

The context of this paper is a strategy at a large Australian university that involves embedding a new graduate quality ‘cultural competence’ and lifting the profile of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, experiences and histories. It has been argued that the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges is essential for the decolonisation of our higher education institutions. Decolonisation involves removing the barriers that have silenced non-Western voices in our ‘multi-cultural’ higher education system and combatting the epistemic injustices of a system dominated by Western thought. In this paper, we suggest that our university’s suite of graduate qualities can provide a locus for work at the cultural interface between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges. While these qualities may be firmly embedded within Western ways of knowing, being and doing, they can nonetheless be used to interrogate and revisit Western disciplinary knowledge construction and pedagogy so as to help bring about institutional change.     

对社会转型时期高校贫困生问题的再思考

自我国进入社会转型时期以来,高校贫困生问题日益成为人们关注的热点问题.在对高校贫困生界定的基础上,深入探讨了高校贫困生问题对学生、高校、社会带来的影响,最后提出了一些在新时期解决高校贫困生问题的新思路：高校管理要坚持校园公正的原则、构建新的高校贫困生认定体系、切实保护高校贫困生的隐私、积极探索新的扶贫路径。     

Student Graduation in Spain: To What Extent Does University Expenditure Matter?

Graduation rates (GRs) remain one of the most frequently applied measures of institutional performance. This paper analyzes the relationship between university characteristics and GRs in Spain, using a dataset for the entire public university system over the period 1998–2008. Since we observe the same university over several years, we address the problem of institutional unobserved heterogeneity for the first time. The main findings that can be drawn from our results are that university features, such as expenditure, student–teacher ratio and financial-aid to students are important in accounting for GRs. Surprisingly, student ability has no significant impact explaining graduation, a result that can be justified given the features of the Spanish university system.     

武夷学院依法治校工作中存在的问题及对策

专科学校升本以后,管理工作的总体进展往往滞后于教学和科研,依法治校的意识和水平还处于较低层次,成为制约学校建设海西绿色强校的瓶颈。当前要深刻认识依法治校的重要意义和目标要求,加快构建完善的依法治校运行机制体系,促进管理工作实现科学化、规范化、法制化。     

An Ecological Approach to a University Course that Develops Partnerships Impacting Health and Wellness in K-12 Schools and Communities

Over the past several decades, there has been an increased focus on health promotion as opposed to individual health determinants and disease prevention. Given the association between health and academic success, health promotion is a vastly overlooked lever for establishing effective K-12 schools. Student, organizational, and community well-being are intricately linked, and thus, focusing on any one of these alone will not eliminate achievement gaps and health disparities. We assert that university–community collaboration is instrumental in promoting student and family well-being. Moreover, employing an ecological systems lens to inform partnership and health promotion practices facilitates collective action and magnifies results. In this article, we describe the philosophical and theoretical orientations that guide our teaching, service, and scholarship. We explain how a university undergraduate course that utilizes service-learning has leveraged theory to build university–community collaboration. Using illustrative examples of several service-learning projects, we show how an ecological systems orientation has enhanced the course; supported a systemic approach to health promotion in schools and communities; and facilitated strategic, mutual, and sustained partnerships. We conclude by highlighting the implications of an ecological approach to university–community collaboration, including organizational capacity building, implementation of evidence-based practices, and the need to enhance preservice teacher education.