Enhancing postgraduate supervision through a process of conversational inquiry

This paper argues for, outlines and begins to evaluate a process of building a critical and reflective community of postgraduate supervisors who can develop their supervision practice through reflective conversations, with the sharing of best practice and reference to research-based evidence. In 2009, the initiative of the Postgraduate Supervisors' Conversations was set up through the collaboration of the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Postgraduate) and the Teaching Development Unit at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. This initiative was designed to complement the compulsory workshops for postgraduate supervisors that are intended to provide foundation skills. We aimed to create a professional development opportunity that could meet institutional requirements as well as enhance supervisors' capacity to manage the ongoing interpersonal and academic complexity of the supervision process and its dynamic character. This paper outlines the rationale for the Postgraduate Supervisors' Conversations, describes its implementation and discusses the implications of an initial evaluative focus-group discussion with attendees.     

Using Twitter for Promotion and Branding: A Content Analysis of Local Television Twitter Sites

A content analysis examined the Twitter sites of 488 local television stations in the United States, based on a strategic and tactical model of media promotion. One finding of the study was that news stories were the most frequently occurring items on the sites. However, stations that offered news items also seldom promoted their regular newscasts. Overall, stations did not appear to use Twitter to direct viewers to the station's on-air programming.     

Book reviews

Zillmann, D., Bryant, J., & Huston, A. C. (Eds.). (1994). Media, children, and the family: Social scientific, psychodynamic, and clinical perspectives. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 351 pages.

Grant, A. E. (Ed.). (1994). Communication technology update (3rd Ed). Boston: Focal Press. 389 pages.

Jankowski, C. F., & Fuchs, D. C. (1995). Television today and tomorrow: It won't be what you think. New York: Oxford University Press. 237 pages.

Braun, M. J. (1994). AM stereo and the FCC: Case study of a marketplace shibboleth. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. 206 pages.     

Full Text Ejournal Packages East and West:CJN and JSTOR

In libraries,full text ejournal packages are among themost unique aspects of the digital revolution.They challengemany of the basic concepts that librarians have held close totheir hearts:The journals themselves come in packages-thatis,unlike their print counter parts,they are bought as apackage and not one at a time.Many librarians who havelooked with pride at their journal collections because theywere selected one-by-one,on the basis of local needs,     

Editor's Remarks

Radio is at its highest revenue levels ever while some of the industry's major mass formats are in flux. The Country boom of the early 90s has quieted, News/Talk and Alternative Rock formats are on the upswing. The changes in America's popular radio formats reflect changes in America itself The aging of the Baby Boom generation and the demassification of all media have changed radio in dramatic ways in just a few years. This paper studies where modern radio formats are today and how they got to this point.     

Mentoring the mentors: student teachers' contributions to the middle school classroom

This study presents three case studies of teacher candidates in a Masters in Teaching (MIT) Program who interned in a well‐established middle school Professional Development School (PDS) in Washington State. Each of the three portraits reveals how student teachers can positively influence the learning outcomes of middle school students by bringing intellectual excitement and teaching renewal into the literacy classrooms of mentor teachers. Teacher interviews, teacher candidate reflections, and observations document the strengths brought to the classroom by teacher candidates, as well as the challenges they and their mentor teachers faced. The researchers conclude that flexibility and openness to learning on the part of mentor teachers are conditions that provide optimal support to teacher candidates and increase the opportunities for learning to occur for both mentor and mentee. This study also investigates outcomes for mentor teachers involved in collaborative inquiry with student teachers during an internship within the larger context of a partnership with education faculty at a university. The intention was to extend preliminary research by exploring more deeply the potential benefits of collaborative inquiry for the mentor teachers involved in partnership with a university.     

A Disability Rights in Education Model for evaluating inclusive education

Current models for evaluating inclusive education programs tend to examine surface‐level stricture of day‐to‐day practices in the organization and operation of schools and also lack significant input from disabled people. In response, the authors have developed a DRE Model to understand and evaluate effective Inclusive Education that is derived from reports of international consumer organizations such as Disabled People’s International, Inclusion International, and the World Institute on Disability. The DRE Model draws from the interdisciplinary field of disability studies and is based on the philosophy that disability must be approached in its full social dimension as one of the central elements in every culture’s response to the full range of human difference. Conceptually, the DRE Model allows people to look at developments in Inclusive Education across widely disparate local and international contexts. An inclusive education project in Lesotho is described and analysed to explain the DRE Model’s dynamic processes more concretely, and to demonstrate its potential utility for evaluation and future planning.     

Reliability of the Draw‐a‐man Test

The study reported in this paper was designed to examine three reliability characteristics of the Harris revision of the Goodenough ‘Draw‐a‐man’ Test when used with five‐year‐old school entrants. The test was individually administered to each of 90 children on two occasions, with an average time‐separation of two weeks. Three persons undertook the administration and scoring of the drawings, and the investigation examined the reliability coefficients associated with i) temporal stability (same tester); ii) temporal stability (different testers); iii) marker error. The results indicate that when experienced testers are used, the reliability of the ‘Draw‐a‐man’ scale is of the same magnitude as that reported in previous studies involving older children as subjects. It is also suggested that with school entrants, the influence of different trained testers on the final rank order of scores is probably quite small. The present study shows too, that with the drawings of five‐year‐old children there is less likelihood of the scorer developing a consistent subjective marking standard than is the case with the drawings of older children. Scoring errors tended to be random rather than systematic due probably to the relatively greater number of occasions when uncertainty exists over the interpretation or naming of basic features of immature drawings. It is suggested that the test is more useful for the comparison of groups rather than individual school entrants.     

Advancing innovation in the public sector: Aligning innovation measurement with policy goals

There is sufficient evidence, drawn from surveys of innovation in the public sector and cognitive testing interviews with public sector managers, to develop a framework for measuring public sector innovation. Although many questions that are covered in the Oslo Manual guidelines for measuring innovation in the private sector can be applied with some modifications to the public sector, public sector innovation surveys need to meet policy needs that require collecting additional types of data. Policy to support public sector innovation requires data on how public sector organizations innovate and how a strategic management approach to innovation can influence the types of innovations that are developed. Both issues require innovations surveys to delve deeply into the innovation processes and strategies that are used by public sector managers. Implementation of the measurement framework proposed in this paper would open up opportunities for a new, policy-relevant research program on public sector innovation.