Student Progress in Distance Education: Kember's model re-visited

This investigation replicates Kember's [(1995) Open Learning Courses for Adults: a model of student progress (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Education Technology)] model of student progress, using students enrolled on four business courses at the Open University of the United Kingdom. Kember's model identified four key constructs: social integration, academic integration, external attribution, and academic incompatibility. Kember built these constructs, together with background characteristics, into a causal model of student progress and then tested it using path analysis. He concluded that the model was robust, accounting for 80% of the variance in adult student persistence. However, the empirical findings from the present study showed little internal consistency in the sub-scales for the key constructs in Kember's model. Furthermore, few of the causal relationships achieved statistical significance. These results suggest that Kember's path model did not fit the data derived from the present sample. While Kember's recommendations for reducing student dropout have intuitive appeal, their empirical foundations are questionable.     

Changing spaces of education: new perspectives on the nature of learning

This case study relates to distance learning students on open access courses. It demonstrates the use of predictive analytics to generate a model of the probabilities of success and retention at different points, or milestones, in a student journey. A core set of explanatory variables has been established and their varying relative importance at different milestones identified. The explanatory variables, milestones and reference points when the model is run will be different at other institutions but the approach may be generalised to distance learning institutions and, more broadly, to any HE institution. Institutions, and especially distance education institutions which do not have the advantages of frequently seeing students, need to make full use of any recorded information they hold to try and identify students who are, or become, at potential risk of leaving. The importance of different factors, at different milestones, may help tailor student support to individual students and therefore improve low retention in open access distance education.     

Breaking the Policy Log-jam: Comparative perspectives on policy formulation and development for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties

Many education systems continue to express concerns about an apparently inexorable increase in the number of pupils displaying difficult behaviour in schools and classrooms. Within the English context the government has tried to address and respond to these concerns by undertaking a variety of initiatives and offering guidance and training to schools on the management of behaviour problems. However, we argue that there is a significant danger that by focusing too narrowly on the needs of those pupils with the most obvious and pressing behavioural difficulties the needs of those with emotional problems are overlooked. We highlight the existence of a 'gap' in much of the policy and guidance in England regarding pupils with emotional problems and offer explanations of why this situation has occurred. In support of this we draw from the extensive literature that already exists and also from a recent large-scale survey undertaken in Greece. This survey of teachers' attitudes provides an important comparative dimension in understanding the dangers that exist for policy makers, professionals and teachers in both 'developing' and developed contexts in the face of increasing disruption in schools. The paper concludes with suggestions for policy makers on how this gap might be avoided.     

New Labour and higher education

The essay does not seek to add to the scholarly literature on UK higher education, so much as to give a sympathetic account of the dilemmas confronting a progressive government of almost any political stripe and especially one that faces the constraints of New Labour. It begins paradoxically by pointing out that serious investment in higher education requires an extension of Sure Start rather than Foundation Degrees, accepts that no government can wait 16 years for its plans to come to fruition, and examines some familiar issues about funding, quality management and the nature of ‘mass’ as opposed to ‘élite’ systems of higher education. Like some recent writers (Alison Wolf and Ewart Keep and Ken Mayhew most notably), the author is sceptical of the claimed productivity benefits of an expansion of higher education and even more doubtful than they whether in the long run degree‐level qualifications will retain their value even as a positional good.     

“Troops to Teachers”: implications for the coalition government’s approach to education policy and pedagogical beliefs and practice

On taking power the coalition government embarked on what many commentators believe is a radical programme of public policy reform. Under Michael Gove, education policy has become totemic to those arguing that Britain’s classrooms are mired in academic mediocrity and behavioural failure. One policy response by the government has been to propose fast-tracking ex-armed services personnel into schools in England as teachers, especially in inner-city areas. This paper examines the educational and pedagogical merits of this proposal and the underlying beliefs that underpin it. Based on a critical evaluation of the literature, it argues that rather than representing a genuinely radical and innovative attempt to tackle educational underachievement, the Troops to Teachers initiative is deeply reactionary. One, based on discredited pedagogical philosophies which fail to address what the educational community believes a “good” education is, devalues teaching as a profession and ignores the socio-economic factors that primarily determine academic performance.     

Analysis of Covariance and Randomized Block Design with Heterogeneous Slopes

The authors compared the Type I error rate and the power to detect differences in slopes and additive treatment effects of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and randomized block (RB) designs with a Monte Carlo simulation. For testing differences in slopes, 3 methods were compared: the test of slopes from ANCOVA, the omnibus Block × Treatment interaction, and the linear component of the Block × Treatment interaction of RB. In the test for adjusted means, 2 variations of both ANCOVA and RB were used. The power of the omnibus test of the interaction decreased dramatically as the number of blocks used increased and was always considerably smaller than the specific test of differences in slopes found in ANCOVA. Tests for means when there were concomitant differences in slopes showed that only ANCOVA uniformly controlled Type I error under all configurations of design variables. The most powerful option in almost all simulations for tests of both slopes and means was ANCOVA.     

Australia's Public Library System: Its Needs and Potential

This document is the Introduction to the 8^th annual Directory of Australian Public Libraries. It provides a good overview of the dictionary of library information compiled system by system. The second document (Appendix A) is the survey form sent out to all of Australia's public libraries in order to gather the data which is assembled in the 8^th annual Directory. This document shows the questions that elicit a range of individual library system data. Many readers will want to compare this document with the U.S. equivalent.     

The Effect of Perceived Teacher Burnout on Credibility

This study investigated the effect of perceived teacher burnout on perceived teacher credibility. One hundred eighty-two college students were randomly exposed to a written scenario manipulating the level of perceived teacher burnout (high or low) and responded to a scale measuring perceived teacher credibility in reference to the scenario. Results of one-way multivariate analyses of variance indicated that perceived teacher burnout has a negative impact on perceived teacher competence, caring, and trustworthiness. Low-burnout teachers are perceived as more credible than high-burnout teachers.     

Flirting Competence: An Experimental Study on Appropriate and Effective Opening Lines

An experiment was conducted to examine the appropriateness and effectiveness of five flirtatious opening lines enacted by a male participant to initiate conversation with a female participant. Video messages were constructed to represent the following opening lines: direct introductions, direct compliments, humor attempts, cute–flippant lines, and third-party introductions. Participants were 642 college students who viewed one of these five videos and reported on the appropriateness and effectiveness of an opening line after controlling for perceptions of actor physical attractiveness. Results indicated that participants rated the third-party introduction and direct introduction opening lines as the most appropriate, whereas the third-party introduction was perceived as the most effective. Direct compliments, humor attempts, and cute–flippant lines were rated as equally inappropriate and ineffective.     

Competition between the cable and broadcast industries: A niche analysis

The authors show that although there is increasing competition between cable television, broadcast television, and radio, broadcast television remains a strong competitor and has not yet been displaced by cable television in the advertising market. Radio still remains competitive, but not to the degree of broadcast television. The authors suggest that cable television will not rapidly overwhelm and push broadcast industries out of the market.