Leadership identity in a small island developing state: the Jamaican context

While the role of leadership in improving schools is attracting more worldwide attention, there is a need for more research investigating leaders’ experiences in different national contexts. Using focus-group and semi-structured interview data, this paper explores the background, identities and experiences of a small group of Jamaican school leaders who were involved in a leadership development programme. By drawing on the concepts of culture, socialisation and identity, the paper examines how the participants’ journeys of becoming and being school leaders are influenced by national-level societal and cultural issues, experienced at a local level. The findings suggest that in becoming school leaders, the participants perceived that they had a strong sense of agency in attempting to change the social structures within the institutions they lead and in the surrounding local communities, which in turn, they hope, will have a lasting effect on the nation as a whole.     

The relationship of campus crime to campus and student characteristics

This research draws upon merged national databases containing federal crime statistics, community demographic data, and campus characteristics. The study displays the trends in campus crime since 1974, and using 1990 data, examines the relationships between three measures of campus crime and 23 predictors developed for this study. The results show that campus rates of both violent crime and property crime are falling, especially since 1985. Moreover, students are considerably safer on campus than in the cities and communities surrounding them. The lowest average crime rates are found at two-year colleges, while the highest overall rates are at medical schools and health science centers. None of the community characteristics, including community crime and poverty rates, are significantly associated with campus crime. While campus organizational measures in general are more highly related to campus crime than are student characteristics, we find differences in the patterns of variables associated with violent crime versus property crime. Factors associated with property crime are partially consistent with existing theory on criminal activity. Factors associated with violent crime are more complex and difficult to predict.An earlier version of this paper was the winner of the regional Best Paper Award from the North East AIR annual meeting in Bolton Landing, N.Y., November 1993. It was presented again at the Association for Institutional Research Forum, New Orleans, Louisiana, May 1994.     

Effects of varying trial distribution,intra- and extramaze cues,and amount of reward on proactive interference in the radial maze

Rats are typically less accurate in their arm selections in the radial maze over successive trials in a session (Roberts & Dale, 1981). In the present study, rats’ choice accuracy declined when such trials were separated by 2-min (massed) but not by 2-h (spaced) intertriai intervals. Changing intramaze visual/tactile arm stimuli (Experiments 1 and 3) or extramaze landmark stimuli (Experiment 4) between trials weakened the massed-trials effect, but changing the number of food pellets per arm, either alone or in conjunction with changes in intramaze cues (Experiments 2 and 3), did not. The rats also tended to avoid the spatial locations of their last four choices on a previous trial during their first four choices on a current trial, and more so with massed than with spaced trials. These findings indicate that intertriai proactive interference (PI) occurred only with massed trials and was weakened by changing intra- and extramaze cues between such trials.     

How young people respond to learning spaces outside school: A sociocultural perspective

This article focuses on educational enterprises outside the formal sector, such as museums, botanical gardens and interactive science centres. International research is drawn on to illuminate how design, culture, educational strategies and settings combine to affect the way in which young people respond to experiences on offer, leading to analysis of the impact of such settings in promoting learning, and the likely implications for those who staff such venues. Aikenhead’s concept of the educator as ‘culture broker’ is developed to suggest ways in which learning might be best supported. It envisages a shift from ‘delivery’ strategies targeted at large groups towards approaches which focus on what learners choose to know about using dialogue between children and ‘known and trusted people’. Analysis of observed responses in various settings is undertaken from a sociocultural perspective using the notion of communities of practice. Implications for the roles of education managers and their staff in further research are developed.