Emerging systems of recurrent education

Author ofRecurrent Education: Earnings and Well-being (1989) and several articles on the economics of education.     

Munchausen syndrome by proxy: A family affair

Munchausen syndrome by proxy is an unusual form of child abuse: a child presents with an illness that has been factitiously produced by a parent, typically the mother. A case of chronic illicit insulin administration to a one-year-old girl is described. Despite temporary separation of the child from the mother and long-term psychiatric intervention, factitious illnesses continued, including urine specimen contamination, laxative-induced diarrhea, suspected bladder catheterization, and suspected poisoning. Retrospective review of the medical records of the mother and two siblings demonstrated previously unrecognized evidence of factitious illnesses. The medical records contained evidence of 30 separate episodes of suspected or documented factitious illness in these four members of the same family. This unique family illustrates the significant morbidity of Munchausen syndrome by proxy and a poor response to psychiatric treatment.     

Market Concentration Levels in the U.S. Consumer Book Industry: 1995–1996

While many scholars have studied the impact mergersand acquisitions have had on market concentrationlevels in various industries, few have addressed theconsumer book market, an important U.S. culturalindustry. This paper: (1) defines the consumer bookmarket; and (2) using consumer book mergers, salesdata, the U.S. Department of Justice's 1992 mergerguidelines, the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index, andfour-firm and eight-firm concentration ratios testswhether an illegal level of market concentration or aviolation of Justice's antitrust guidelines wereevident in 1995 and 1996. Data on market entrybarriers, outputs, and prices are also analyzed.     

Adaptive research supervision: exploring expert thesis supervisors' practical knowledge

Several researchers have suggested the importance of being responsive to students' needs in research supervision. Adapting support strategies to students' needs in light of the goals of a task is referred to as adaptivity. In the present study, the practice of adaptivity is explored by interviewing expert thesis supervisors about diagnosing student characteristics in order to determine students' needs and concurrent adaptive support strategies. The findings suggest that next to competence, supervisors also diagnose elements of students' determination and context. With respect to support strategies, it is suggested that supervisors adapt to student needs in terms of explicating standards, quality or consequences, division of responsibilities, providing more/less critical feedback and sympathising. The complexity of the relationship between diagnosing student characteristics and adapting support strategies is illustrated and needs further study.     

Principal evaluation – linking individual and building-level progress: making the connections and embracing the tensions

The article examines the tensions one superintendent in the USA experienced as he evaluated principals in a high-stakes environment that had undergone numerous transformations at the central office. Using qualitative methods, primarily, shadowing techniques, observations and debriefing, the following tensions emerged and were examined in light of the work of the superintendent evaluating principal performance: (1) discrepancies between principal performance when compared to performance data, (2) length of time in the principalship compared to results, (3) finding the right balance between student achievement data and other indicators of principal performance, (4) what types of achievement data are important and when these data are made available, (5) credence paid to complaints about structural changes implemented by the principal, (6) balancing the principal self-evaluation rating scores with the final evaluator scores and (7) accounting for personal factors such as relationship to principals and knowledge about principal capabilities. Each of these tensions contributes to the difficulty a superintendent may feel when conducting the principal evaluation process.