Summary of an Extended Comparative Analysis on European Private Higher Education1

In November 2005, UNESCO‐CEPES organized a conference on Private Higher Education in Europe and Quality Assurance and Accreditation from the Perspective of the Bologna Process Objectives. Thirteen country reports and a comparative analysis study were commissioned for this specific initiative. The countries included in the project were: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the Ukraine. This article provides a brief summary of several main points of the comparative analysis study. The data referred to in this summary is taken solely from the sources cited in the full text study.     

Generalization decrements: further support for flexibility in stimulus processing

Thorwart and Lachnit (2009) found reliable symmetrical decrements in two generalization tasks: Removing an already trained component from a compound did not result in larger decrements than adding a new one did. In two contingency learning experiments, we investigated first whether time pressure during stimulus processing, as well as the degree of perceptual grouping, was effective in controlling the symmetry of the decrements (Experiment 1); and second, whether the symmetry was affected by the causal versus predictive nature of the relationship between the cue and the outcome (Experiment 2). The experiments generated unexpected results, since both revealed asymmetrical decrements independent of the manipulations introduced. They therefore demonstrate that more research is needed in order to understand the variables influencing stimulus representation in human associative learning.     

‘Gender games’: a post-structural exploration of the prospective teacher, mathematics and identity

In this article, I draw on post-structural and feminist epistemologies to analyse interview data from two prospective teachers on a primary education degree. Specifically I use Foucauldian critical discourse analysis to discuss the competing discourses of the masculine mathematician and the feminine primary school teacher. The initial purpose of the article is to deconstruct the themes of control, choice and confidence, which I argue are prevalent within mathematical discourses within our current neoliberal society. A further aim of the article is to explore the representation of discourse and data within educational texts, which I do by experimenting with the language used throughout.     

Physically abused children's regulation of attention in response to hostility

The present study examines the effects of early emotional experiences on children's regulation or strategic control of attention in the presence of interpersonal hostility. Abused children's reactions to the unfolding of a realistic interpersonal emotional situation were measured through multiple methods including autonomic nervous system changes and overt behavioral performance. Although physically abused and non-physically abused 4-year-old children did not differ in terms of their baseline levels of arousal, marked differences in physically abused children's regulatory responses to background anger emerged. These data suggest that the emergence of anger leads to increases in anticipatory monitoring of the environment among children with histories of abuse. Results are discussed in terms of risk factors in the development of psychopathology.