Academics or executives? Continuity and change in the roles of pro‐vice‐chancellors1

The leadership roles of pro‐vice‐chancellors (PVCs) in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have evolved markedly over the last three decades while universities have been encouraged to shift towards more executive styles of leadership and decision‐making. The change does not only reflect changing institutional needs, however, but an accommodation of deeper historical continuities around institutional autonomy and academic values. Most PVCs are drawn from the ranks of professors; typically have an Oxbridge, London or big civic background; and most are male. The role gains authority through influence, rather than command, and depends on academic experience and credibility to be effective. PVCs maintain a complex corporate‐academic web balancing two, sometimes contradictory, roles: one firmly academic, concerning cross‐institutional responsibility for core academic values and mission; the other more bureaucratic or executive, focusing on the burgeoning demands of accountability. The research cautions against a simple model of executive leadership. Understanding the needs of academic leadership and the contours of its practices remains paramount.     

中国近代大学校长成为教育家的当代意义

当前,国家对教育家办学有着急切的呼唤。在教育领域,大学校长是最有条件成长为教育家的人物,然而,是大学校长并不一定就能成为教育家。因为教育家是那些在前人教育实践的基础上进行过富有成效与特色的教育实践并为其所处时代培养出许多有用之才的人,以及那些在前人教育思想的基础上提出过独到的教育理论并产生过一定社会影响的人。在近代大学校长群体中,那些优秀的校长是当之无愧的教育家。他们之所以成长为教育家,与近代社会转型对教育提出的新要求、国家民族危机赋予教育的新使命、政治管理相对松驰为教育改革提供的新环境、思想文化解放运动给教育变革注入的新活力以及中西文化教育的交流碰撞为教育发展提供的新借鉴有密切的联系,但根本是由这些校长多方面的能力、中西兼容的知识结构、优良的性格和堪为人世楷模的道德品质决定的。当代大学校长如何实现向教育家的转变,近代一些大学校长成长为教育家的历程具有丰富的启示。     

Secondary school vice‐principals: Commitment,challenge, efficacy and synchrony

The study sought to investigate Hong Kong secondary school vice‐principals’ job facets leading to overall job satisfaction, and to differentiate the satisfaction of vice‐principals of different career orientations and gender groups. The findings indicated that there are four main facets of satisfaction, in rank order of influence on overall satisfaction, ‘professional commitment’, ‘level of personal challenge’, ‘sense of efficacy’ and ‘sense of synchrony’. The study also found that vice‐principals who aspired to the principalship exhibited a higher degree of professional commitment, a stronger sense of efficacy, and experienced lower levels of stress associated with personal challenge than vice‐principals who did not aspire to a principalship.     

高等院校在科学教育中的功能与作用

高等院校具备生产新的科学知识和传播科学理念的功能;具有培养人的科学素养和将科技知识运用于实践并推动社会生产力发展的作用。努力发挥高校的这种功能与作用,有助于提高全体公民的科学素养,从而推动社会文明的进步。     

解析拓展训练在大学体育教学中的发展趋势

作为现代人和现代组织,拓展训练是全新的学习方法和训练方式,它的课程重点就是培养群众的合作意识和进取精神。在学校教育中,体育占有着极其重要的地位,而在学校体育中,大学体育是最后阶段,也是促进学校体育和社会体育关系的最佳方式。大学体育阶段,是学生树立终身体育思想、形成终身体育锻炼能力的重要时期。本文通过分析拓展训练与大学体育教学的关系,引伸出拓展训练在大学体育教学中的发展趋势。     

社会公正与大学角色

社会公正是人类社会重要的道德法则,是全部社会制度的首要价值。作为一个典型的公共领域,大学负载着实现公共利益的办学目的,在体现、维护和促进社会公正方面扮演着重要角色。培养具有社会公正意识的人是大学的一项重要使命;大学传播、倡导社会公正观念,有利于促进大众的社会公正意识的形成;实现社会公正,还要求大学自身在程序上努力体现和维护公正。     

大学教师社会角色论

大学教师作为社会的一个特殊群体 ,具有特定的社会角色。本文从大学教师的社会活动和社会关系出发 ,在分析大学教师的社会地位和作用之后 ,认为大学教师的社会角色是研究者、教育者、知识分子三者的统一体。作为研究者 ,其根本特性是为学术而学术 ;作为教育者 ,其根本特性是热爱学生 ;作为知识分子 ,其根本特性是深刻的社会关怀     

高校贫困生资助体系及其执行偏差

目前我国形成了比较完备的家庭经济困难学生资助体系,建立了国家助学贷款为主体、国家助学金和勤工俭学为辅助的资助框架,在一定程度上实现了对贫困生的资助,但是在实施过程中,仍需要进一步完善认定机制以及资助体系,以期对贫困生形成多元综合原则,采取多渠道、多种资助方式对不同目标群体进行全方位、立体式的资助。     

Assessing executive functions: A life‐span perspective

Despite many disagreements on the utility of neuropsychological applications in schools, executive function measures have been found to be useful across a variety of areas and ages. In addition, many disagreements are extant in discussions of the maturational course of the development of executive functioning abilities that are dependent on functional capacity of the human brain, including the frontal lobes, among other brain areas. In part, these controversies are related to a dearth of standardized functional assessments of executive functioning abilities across wide age spans. This article describes several recent measures of executive functioning and uses life‐span data from these assessments to project maturational periods of specific executive functions. Clinical implications of these results for school psychology assessment, rehabilitation of brain‐injured school‐aged children, and forensic practice of school psychology are posited. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

网络化进程中高校图书馆员的角色转换

文章分析了高校图书馆在网络化进程中的运作理念和职能转换,着重讨论了网络化进程中高校图书馆员的心理素质和能力要求,并且指出了高校图书馆适应网络化工作环境的有效途径。     

The roles of the cooperating teacher and university supervisor in learning to teach

This paper examines “guided teaching” relationships between student teachers and their university supervisors and cooperating teachers, and the influence of these relationships on learning to teach. With few exceptions, the cooperating teachers and university supervisors in the study played limited roles in the process of learning to teach. Exceptions were a small number of cooperating teachers who believed that they could and should play and active role in student teachers' learning, conducted longer and more frequent conferences with their student teachers, and provided more extensive feedback. Based on these findings, we suggest changes in the roles of the university supervisor and cooperating teacher designed to maximize the likelihood that student teaching will be teacher education and will help student teachers explore new ways of teaching.     

The entrepreneurial university and academic discourses: The meta‐synthesis of Higher Education articles

The innovative teaching, knowledge and technology production and societal service activities of academics are largely discussed within the entrepreneurial university discourse in Higher Education journals. Therefore, this research focuses on a meta‐synthesis of Higher Education articles to better understand the concepts of the entrepreneurial university and entrepreneurial academic. After the systematic elimination based on keywords and titles, 25 articles have been selected from the top 10 Higher Education journals in the SCImago Journal Rankings. Content analysis was performed on these articles to highlight the common operational areas in entrepreneurial universities and activities of entrepreneurial academics. The meta‐synthesis shows that, both for universities and academics, entrepreneurship is overwhelmingly characterised by the commercialisation of scholarly activities that enrich institutional income revenue as well as academics’ personal income. However, such an approach can distance universities from their mission of public good; so Higher Education administrators should create mechanisms that would allow both to take place in a balanced way.     

高等教育扩张背景下大学文化建设的和谐要求与对策

近年来,高等学校急剧扩张,在扩张过程中出现了一些新的矛盾和问题,要实现科学、可持续的发展必须大力加强和谐的大学文化建设。在高校扩张背景下,加强和谐的大学文化建设首先要确立"和谐"的大学文化建设的理念,把"以人为本"作为大学文化建设的核心。     

Extra‐credential experiences and social closure: Working‐class students at university

Human capital theorists perceive of educational expansion as beneficial to individuals, corporations and national economies, while social closure theorists have claimed that inflation of credential requirements maintains traditional status inequalities. In this paper I argue that status inequalities are not only maintained by credential inflation, but also the inflation of extra‐credential experiences. As undergraduate degrees become more common, access to employment and further education opportunities increasingly depend on extra‐curricular and ‘enriching’ educational experiences. Using qualitative data from a longitudinal study of working‐class university students in Canada, I will address the mechanisms by which they have gained or were denied access to such experiences. The data suggest that working‐class students’ relative lack of financial resources and social networks are barriers to the development of extra‐credential experiences, which in turn leads to the change of educational and career plans for some.     

The roles of a university professor in a teacher study group

The opportunities in which university professors collaborate with the practicing school teachers in a teacher study group are few. This study investigated how a university professor facilitated a collaborative teacher study group to enhance teachers?? professional growth. Five primary school teachers and a university professor collaborated on incorporating Reader??s Theatre into the design and revision of the curriculum in a teacher study group. This study not only identified the roles of the university professor but also highlighted how this outside stimulus facilitated the process of teachers?? professional dialogues in this teacher study group. Five roles of the professor in the teacher study group were identified, including content expert, information provider, thought challenger, discussion facilitator, and caring listener. The discrepancies toward the roles that the professor in the teacher study group should serve between the elementary school teachers and the university professor were analyzed and reported. Implications were drawn for both classroom teachers and university professors.     

Inter‐professional work and expertise: New roles at the boundaries of schools

The findings discussed here are based on five case studies and a small survey (n = 46) of how secondary schools are responding to demands that they collaborate with other services to intervene to prevent the social exclusion of children and young people. The case studies revealed a new space of action opening up around schools where practices were being shaped by ‘welfare managers’ who were employed by schools and were undertaking responsive work with vulnerable children and young people and the other services who were also supporting them. At the same time heads of year and/or heads of school and form tutors were increasingly focusing on children's achievement in school. The changes in roles and responsibilities were encouraged by workforce remodelling and changes in criteria for teachers’ salaries. However, focusing primarily on the work undertaken by the welfare managers, the article draws on cultural‐historical activity theory analyses of relational agency and distributed expertise to question whether welfare managers can undertake the work required in the new space of action without attention to the development of their core expertise.     

From organised anarchy to de‐coupled bureaucracy: The transformation of university organisation

Based on key governance and organisational characteristics from the 1970s universities have been conceptualised as organised anarchies and loosely coupled systems. More recently, a number of studies have argued that universities have been changing their internal governance and organisational structures leading to tighter vertical steering and the emergence of more integrated organisations. In this article, it is argued that while tighter vertical integration indeed might be observed, this does not necessarily imply greater horizontal integration in university organising as well. By drawing on case studies of five research‐intensive universities in five different countries, we discuss how strengthened hierarchical governance is driving increased organisational specialisation and professionalisation, but that this also may result in horizontal de‐coupling within universities. The article ends by a discussion of the positive and negative implications of coupled, de‐coupled and loosely coupled organisations.     

Internalizing and externalizing in adolescence: the roles of academic self‐efficacy and gender

This study examines academic self‐efficacy and gender as predictors of internalizing and externalizing behaviors in adolescence. In addition, the role of gender was considered as a moderator in the relationship between academic self‐efficacy and internalizing/externalizing difficulties. Participants were 4,318 predominantly African American, low‐income high school students who completed self‐report measures on the constructs of interest. Academic self‐efficacy and gender were both significant predictors of risk for internalizing problems, whereas only academic self‐efficacy predicted risk for externalizing (hyperactivity/distractibility) problems. Gender did not predict externalizing difficulties, nor did gender serve as a moderator in any analysis. Implications include focusing on academic self‐efficacy in the development of strategies for prevention and intervention of internalizing and externalizing problems.