How many universities are there in the United Kingdom? How many should there be?

While the first of the questions posed in the title of this article may seem to involve a simple matter of enumeration, it is more complex than that, as the number of institutions in the United Kingdom that perform at least some of the functions of a university has grown significantly in recent years. The answer given (for the end of the year 2010) is 108, 138 or 162, depending upon the definitions adopted. The second question involves more judgement, and is explored comparatively—both within the United Kingdom and internationally—geographically, economically and historically.     

Sampling knowledge and understanding: how long should a test be?

Many academic tests (e.g. short‐answer and multiple‐choice) sample required knowledge with questions scoring 0 or 1 (dichotomous scoring). Few textbooks give useful guidance on the length of test needed to do this reliably. Posey's binomial error model of 1932 provides the best starting point, but allows neither for heterogeneity of question difficulty and discriminatory power nor for students' uneven spread of knowledge. Even with these taken into account, it appears that tests of 30–60 items, as commonly used, must generally be far from adequate. No exact test length can be specified as ‘just sufficient’, but the tests of 300 items that some students take are not extravagantly long. The effects on reliability of some particular test forms and practices are discussed.     

Cultural Distance:How is it defined,how is it measured,and what is its relevance to international marketers?

This essay analyses the meaning of culture and in particular aims at reviewing different tools to measure differences be?tween cultures—the so-called cultural distance. Two major tools are considered i...     

Trekking back to mainstream for inclusive education,is it there?

This paper explores the ecosystemic management strategies for inclusive schools due to challenges faced by the schools in the mainstream school where learners from the specialised institutions are referred back to mainstream for inclusive education. Ecosystemic perspective on inclusive education, ecological theories and systems theories underpin this paper. The study was done through interviews, field notes and observations of 120 participants comprising the SMTs, educators and parents. The findings indicate that schools face great challenges in managing inclusive schools. A lot has been published on inclusive education, but none of them offers ecosystemic management strategies for the school management to follow. The article concludes by offering ecosystemic management strategies for successful implementation of inclusive education.     

Cultural sensitivity: How important is it for effective home visits?

The implementation of home visits as a technique for involving parents has recently resurfaced. This educational trend has received additional emphasis as the nation attempts to meet the national education goals — particularly the first goal, which states, By the year 2000, all children will enter school ready to learn.Sally A. LaPoint is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort. She also administers the At Risk Early Childhood Family Initiative, located at the historic Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. Gloria S. Boutte is an Assistant Professor, Kevin J. Swick is a Professor, and Mac H. Brown is an Associate Professor, Early Childhood Education, at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.     

Feedback as an assessment for learning tool: How useful can it be?

This study investigates the feedback practices and perceptions of lecturers and students in a UK university setting. To assess how lecturers give feedback in practice, 47 pieces of lecturer-written feedback were categorised into a total of 571 analytical points. Analysing the feedback from lecturers’ perspectives in terms of the value of feedback, the role of feedback and the effectiveness of feedback helps in an understanding of the rationale for and effects of feedback provision. The results of feedback analyses from students’ perspectives show the impact of individual background and intercultural communication barriers on the effective reception of feedback. Differences were identified between students and lecturers’ views of feedback as an assessment for learning tool.     

Educational attainment in the short and long term: was there an advantage to attending faith,private, and selective schools for pupils in the 1980s?

ABSTRACT

This paper asks whether private, selective, and faith schools in England and Wales in the 1980s provided an academic advantage to their pupils, both in the short and longer term. Using longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study, we examine academic outcomes in compulsory schooling and further education, and the highest qualification gained by age 42. School sector differences are substantially attenuated by controlling for prior pupil characteristics. Nevertheless, a residual effect of private, grammar, and secondary modern schooling remains, both in the short and long term, controlling for both pupil and school characteristics. In the case of faith schools, however, the apparent advantage is restricted to the short term once pupil characteristics are controlled. A unique feature of our analysis is that we control for the individual’s faith of upbringing, which is important in reducing what could otherwise be seen as a distinctive Catholic school advantage.     

Overeducation in developing economies: How can we test for it, and what does it mean?

A worker is said to be overeducated if he/she has acquired more education than is required to perform his/her job. In the absence of data measuring the number of years of schooling required to perform particular jobs, we propose a new approach to testing for overeducation. Overeducation is confirmed if we observe that education levels rose in jobs that offer very low returns to education and that underwent little technological change. Using labor force surveys from four developing countries, we find evidence of overeducation in unskilled jobs in the Philippines, mild evidence in Mexico, and little evidence in India and Thailand. We show that a job's mean and modal years of schooling are poor proxies for required education. We also show that overeducation sometimes increases within unskilled jobs, even while a growing share of educated workers enter skilled jobs. This may be because the quality of education segments the labor market.     

High-level co-regulation in collaborative learning: How does it emerge and how is it sustained?

This article examines the nature and process of collaborative learning in student-led group activities at university. A situative framework combining the constructs of social regulation and content processing was developed to identify instances of productive high-level co-regulation. Data involves video footage of groups of science students working on a case-based project. Striking group differences in types of interactions were revealed. Regularities in the emergence of high-level co-regulation and features of interactions that contributed to the maintenance of productive collaboration were also identified. The importance of fostering students' development as co-learners is highlighted.     

What is play fighting and what is it good for?

Play fighting is a common form of play reported among species of mammals, birds, and some other taxa. The competition present in play fighting revolves around gaining some advantage, such as biting a partner without being bitten. The behavior simulated during play fighting need not be restricted to that present in adult serious fighting, but can involve competitive interactions derived from amicable behavior, such as sex and social grooming, or from nonsocial competition, such as predation. What unifies play fighting, irrespective of the functional behavior being simulated, is that it involves some degree of reciprocity, or turn taking, that requires that the competition be attenuated by cooperation. However, there are several different ways in which cooperation can be inserted into playful interactions, and these vary in use across different species. The moderation of competition with cooperation forces animals to monitor their own actions and those of their partners, and this common feature appears to be one vehicle through which the experience of play fighting in the juvenile period can train animals for greater psychological resilience. The monitoring and contextual adjustment of actions influences the development of executive functions of the brain, which, in turn, leads to the development of more adaptable adults.     

Teacher knowledge: What is it? How do we uncover it? What are its implications for schooling?

This paper follows the ways in which publications in TATE, that focus on teacher knowledge, provide insights into the development and growth of scholarly understanding of teacher knowledge. Relevant questions are: How is teacher knowledge defined? What modes of inquiry are adopted by the researchers? What are conceived as the implications of teacher knowledge for schooling? In order to answer these questions, nine papers were chosen from TATE according to the following criteria:

1.

distributed over a period of 20 years from 1988 to 2009

2.

representing an international group of scholars

3.

reflecting modes of inquiry

4.

focusing on a variety of themes related to teacher knowledge

These papers were analyzed according to the following aspects:

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Definition of teacher knowledge

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Mode of inquiry

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Emphasis on one or more of the commonplaces of education - subject matter, learner, teacher, milieu (Schwab, 1964)

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Emphasis on one or more of the kinds of teacher knowledge suggested byShulman (1986)

The analysis of each paper is presented followed by a discussion.Several tendencies in the development of the concept of teacher knowledge are noted. There is the extension of the term to include societal issues. As well, one finds a growing focus on the personal aspects of knowledge. The role of context in shaping teacher knowledge plays a crucial role in the analyzed papers, reflecting changes in the milieu of schooling. The main mode of inquiry in the analyzed papers is qualitative, interpretative. The authors of the various papers were interested in the concrete experiences and views of student teachers, and teachers, concerning their knowledge and its acquisition. This approach yields important insights but leaves open several questions. First, the curricular question: what concrete opportunities for gaining knowledge are offered to student teachers? Another question concerns the modes of teachers’ use of their professional knowledge. This question requires detailed observations and documentation of teachers’ actions in classrooms, trying to link their knowledge and practice.The papers analyzed in this review share a common scholarly language and are based in Western culture. It is important to see, as well, studies conducted in other cultures, which might have a different view of teacher knowledge.     

‘Time: What is it That it can be Measured?’

Experiments with the simple pendulum are easy, but its motion is nevertheless confounded with simple harmonic motion. However, refined theoretical models of the pendulum can, today, be easily taught using software like CALCODE. Similarly, the cycloidal pendulum is isochronous only in simplified theory. But what are theoretically equal intervals of time? Newton accepted Barrow’s even tenor hypothesis, but conceded that ‘equal motions’ did not exist – the refutability of Newtonian physics is independent of time measurement. However, time measurement was the key difficulty in reconciling Newtonian physics with electrodynamics. On Poincaré’s criterion of convenience, equal intervals of time ought be so defined as to make the enunciation of physics simple. Hence he postulated constancy of the speed of light. (The Michelson–Morley experiment was not critical.) The theory of relativity followed. But does there exist a proper clock?     

A new age for child protection--General Comment 13: why it is important, how it was constructed, and what it intends?

Children continue to be subjected to high levels of violence (i.e., physical, psychological and sexual maltreatment) throughout the world. International concern about violence against children has increased significantly during the last decade. A Study on Violence Against Children, encouraged by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Secretary General and reported in 2006, has become a rallying call to improve child protection. Child protection practices and systems have been judged to be generally inadequate and, in some cases, destructive. It is widely recognized that business as usual—more of the same—will not do. A General Comment (guide to fulfilling obligations) for Article 19, the central conceptualization of child protection of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, has the potential to promote a worldwide reformulation of child protection priorities, policies, and practices by virtue of the infusion of a child rights approach. It can be a mechanism for framing and promoting the transformational change needed – for a genuine paradigm shift. Here, explication is given for the historical context, rationale, centrality of child rights, process of development, holistic nature, and primary elements of General Comment 13 (GC13): The child's right to freedom from all forms of violence. GC13 embodies and champions a child rights approach to child protection entailing strong support for proactive primary prevention, promotion of good child care, and a commitment to secure the rights and well-being of all children. A child rights-based, comprehensive coordinating framework is recommended for the implementation of GC13.     

How should unresponsiveness to secondary intervention be operationalized? It is all about the nudge

In the fourth session of the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities Responsiveness-to-Intervention Symposium in 2003, Good, Vellutino, and Torgesen presented papers that addressed the question, How should unresponsiveness to secondary intervention be operationalized in an RTI approach to LD identification? In this commentary, I highlight important areas in which ideas converge across the three presentations. I argue that it will be important, as the field begins to grapple with a definition of unresponsiveness to secondary intervention, that we also specify who should get the intervention, what the intervention should consist of, when the intervention should occur, how long the intervention should last, and by whom the intervention should be applied. Only then can we accurately assess the merits of competing definitions of unresponsiveness.