Higher Education as a Public Good: Means and Forms of Provision

The question of whether or not higher education is a public good is discussed from three perspectives: the economic perspective, the legal perspective, and the normative-political perspective. As these perspectives overlap in many ways, the conclusion is that higher education is best described as a mixed good, one that is both public and private. Its efficiency of delivery would be increased by its being somewhat marketized.     

An Academic Performance Measurement System and its Impact on Quality of Engineering Faculty Work at Middle East Technical University

A system has been developed for measuring the performance of faculty members at Middle East Technical University (METU) in 1998. This system has been designed to provide feedback for improving the quality of academic work. It involves a separate set of criteria and measures for each college within the university. The criteria used for the College of Engineering include publications, editorial work and translation, professional and other research activities, educational activities, memberships and awards, and other activities. Faculty members are recruited based on these criteria. They report their activities and works annually as required by this system, and they can access their measurement results through the university Intranet. These results play a significant role in promotion of the faculty members. Awards are given to faculty members who demonstrate superior performance. This system has also been utilised to measure the efficiency of engineering departments, and guide and support departments in improving their efficiency. Since the beginning of implementation of this system, significant changes have been observed in preferences and activities of faculty members, and their performance. The paper discusses impact of this system on performance of the Engineering College.     

Changing policy contexts and teachers´ work-life narratives: the case of Estonian vocational teachers

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, the work of teachers worldwide has undergone deep change. We have seen that teachers have encountered recent challenges differently and adapted to educational changes to a different extent depending on their personal disposition, but also school leadership and workplace support. This study focuses on the example of Estonian vocational teachers that serves as an interesting case for analysing how the interplay of the transitional context and neo-liberal policy trends adopted since Estonia regained its independence in 1991, after 50 years under Soviet rule, have affected the individual trajectories of teachers’ lives. This paper aims to understand how the interplay of the institutional context and individual (work) lives shapes Estonian vocational teachers’ understandings of their work and professionality. We suggest that certain periods of practice are visible in teachers’ narratives and those periods might be considered as enabling different degrees of agency. However, our interviews also revealed that different reform periods have been perceived and responded to differently. In the context of 25 years of the educational reform process, the policies and requirements introduced have been refracted at different levels (Goodson & Rudd, 2017), including that of the vocational field, the schools and individual teachers. Our results confirm that teachers individual, social, cultural and material resources such as competence, career stage, relations and networks, school leadership and prevailing culture at schools have their role in enabling or hindering the agency of teachers.     

Multivariate Assessment of Middle School Students’ Interest in STEM Career: a Profile from Turkey

Research in Science Education - According to a report by the Turkish Industry and Business Association, Turkey will need approximately 1 million individuals to be employed in Science Technology...     

The Introduction of the ‘Corso di Diploma Universitario’—A Retrospective

In this retrospective we place the introduction of the ‘Corso di Diploma Universi-tario‘ (CDU) in the context of the engineering education in Europe at the beginning of the 1990s. The idea to harmonize the formation of engineers among the countries adhering to the European Union (EU) was still valid. By 1 January 1993 the ‘four freedoms’, free movement of goods, capital, services and people within the EU was to be introduced. In order for an engineer to work in another EU country his formation should be of the same quality as that given to his peers in the host country. In particular, ‘Brussels’ hoped for two types of formation in all EU countries, a practical one dispensed by institutions like Fachhochschulen and a more scientific one given by Technical Universities. (This dichotomy is alternatively known as short-and long-term formation).

Italy decided to form both types of engineers in the same institutions. We look at the Italian project and the first years after its inception from outside the country and attempt a conclusion after a period of five years.     

Kinematic Control of Wheeled Snake—Like Mobile Robot

From a bionics viewpoint,this paper proposes a mechanical model of a wheeled snake-like mobile mechanism.On the hypothesis of the existing non-holonomic constraints on the robot kinematics,we set up the relationship among the kinetic control parameters in the snake-like movement using Lie group and Lie algebra of the principle fiber bundle and provide some theoretical control methods to realize the snake-like locomotion.     

Running a TEMPUS Project: First Experiences

This paper describes the experiences gathered at Aachen University's computer science department while running one of the first TEMPUS projects. An outline of the historical background is followed by a brief introduction to the TEMPUS programme as such. The aims and goals of our project, BASCULE, are then described in more detail. Finally, we discuss the lessons we have learned.     

Of Course Scientists Haven’t Seen Dinosaurs on the Beach: Turkish Kindergartners’ Developing Understanding of the Nature of Science Through Explicit–Reflective Instruction

Although the importance of nature of science (NOS) instruction for learners as young as kindergartners is emphasised in a great number of documents and studies, very little research has been conducted in early childhood contexts. Thus, researchers are still not able to see a comprehensive picture of young children’s understandings of NOS. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate kindergartners’ developmental ability to comprehend tenets of NOS. Using an explicit–reflective approach and activities designed to develop their understandings of NOS, we instructed eight kindergartners for 10 days over the course of a month to document changes in their thinking. To this end, they were interviewed individually using Young Children’s Views of Science before and after instruction. The results indicate that generally, the kindergartners had an inadequate understanding of NOS before instruction but had developed it by the end of instruction. Each child’s understanding of the individual aspects of NOS developed to different degrees, creative NOS improving most substantially. This study corroborates that kindergartners are not developmentally constrained to develop informed NOS understandings. On the contrary, they are able to develop an informed understanding of NOS that can be improved by the implementation of explicit–reflective instruction.