Region,Locality Characteristics,High School Tracking and Equality in Access to Educational Credentials: the case of Palestinian Arab communities in Israel

A limited number of studies attempted to account for regional and community‐level variables in exploring the mediating mechanisms conditioning the structure of educational opportunities. As a result, contextual dynamics of social stratification remain largely obscure. The aim of the present paper is to examine the relative effects of regional, locality (community level) and high school variables on access opportunities of Palestinian Arab high school pupils in Israel to educational credentials. The analysis is based on the aggregate data of 46 Arab localities. Findings reveal that while high school tracking patterns are affected by high school variables at community level (such as average allocation of teaching‐time per class and gender enrolment ratios), access to educational credentials (high school matriculation certificates) is determined by community‐level SES and the locality's geographic location (region). The implications of these findings for the broader study of issues related to equality in educational opportunities are discussed.

     

Academic analytics: Anatomy of an exploratory essay

Investment in technological subsystems to support the activity of teaching and learning and the various areas of the life of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) is of increasing importance in the implementation of the policy and strategy of these organizations. Each of these subsystems collects a huge amount of data that, if properly organized, can provide useful information for decision making and informed action, which results in the need to articulate the strategic vision with Information Systems. This study aims to identify the technological requirements and understand the technical difficulties in accessing data sources of different technological subsystems in order to facilitate dialogue between the departments which hold the data to build a future Academic Analytics in a HEI. To achieve these goals a prototype was conceived which involved the aggregation, cleansing and standardization of data sources and resulted in a database that integrates records from three data sources—the LCMS (Learning Content Management System), academic management services and quality management services. This prototype allows reports and analysis to be made. Future studies for the development and implementation of Academic Analytics that can produce information to support decision making and control of the HEI’s activity are also possible.     

Self-assessment of diversity competence as part of regular teaching evaluations in higher education: raising awareness for diversity issues

Tertiary Education and Management - Higher education institutions face the challenge to promote diversity competence. We suggest a procedure which can help raise awareness for diversity issues...     

Referential perspective and instruction: A study on teacher-student interaction and text remembering

The aim of this paper is to study the role ofteacher-student interaction, in the acquisitionof text comprehension and memory skills from asocio-cultural approach. In our view, one ofthe most important areas of neglect in cognitive research in this field is the interactional nature of that development. We intend to establish the way in which teacher-student interaction and, specially, the use of some specific semiotic means mayfacilitate the acquisition and internalizationof general strategies for understanding andremembering expository texts. The role ofreferential perspective (Wertsch, 1989) in theinternalization of complex text study actionsis analysed.The task was to study three expository textsthat were similar in their structure. Thecontent of the texts was analysed in terms ofidea-units (Meyer, 1984). Each text was formedby idea-units from three different levels: mainideas, secondary ideas and details. A categorysystem for the analysis of study and recall ofthe text is developed. In the study phase theanalysis proceeded in two steps: study actionsand text ideas. In the recall phase, two types ofindexes (number of ideas and degree ofclustering) were considered. For the analysisof instructional actions, both the nature ofinstruction and referential perspective wasrecorded.     

Hybrid heuristic and mathematical programming in oil pipelines networks： Use of immigrants

We solve the problem of petroleum products distribution through oil pipelines networks. This problem is modelled and solved using two techniques: A heuristic method like a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm and Mathematical Programming. In the multiobjective evolutionary algorithm, several objective functions are defined to express the goals of the solutions as well as the preferences among them. Some constraints are included as hard objective functions and some are evaluated through a …     

University entrepreneurship in a developing country: The case of the P. Universidad Católica de Chile, 1985–2000

Privatization in higher education is usually understood either as the surge of private institutions or as universities’ growing reliance on private sources of funding or otherwise operating more like firms. Joining the growing literature on university entrepreneurship, this is a case study on the less examined problem of entrepreneurial universities in developing countries. In a period of roughly 15 years, the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile, founded in 1888, turned itself from a mostly teaching institution to a research-oriented university, responsible for one-fourth of the Chile’s mainstream scientific output and 40% of all Ph.D.s awarded nationally. Yet, public funding represents today only 17% of its revenues, down from almost 90% in 1972. How such academic development could have occurred as the State withdrew and the market took hold of Chilean higher education after the reforms introduced by the military rule of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) is the theme of this work. Universidad Católica’s policies and strategies are described, and the factors contributing to its success, together with their limitations, identified. The case suggests that orientation to the market can be more a means for survival and growth under the pressure of privatization, than a result of a ‘Triple Helix’ strategy of universities, government and industry to generate innovation out of academic knowledge. Secondly, while in the industrialized world, higher education entrepreneurship is associated with knowledge production for economic development (‘Mode 2’), entrepreneurial universities in the context of developing countries may just be finding their way to the academic, disciplinary mode of research.     

Metacognitive Realism: a cognitive style or a learning strategy?

Learning implies the learner's ability to make a series of decisions and, in particular, the capacity to assess the quality and reliability of one's own knowledge incapsu‐lated in the question: “How far do I already know the content I am supposed to learn?” The authors address the following issues: (1) Is realism in metacognition a stable trait in learners?; (2) If not, by what is it influenced?. After a short review of the literature on the topic and the examination of experimental evidence, metacognition is considered as both a style and a strategy. The need for a taxonomy of metacognitive realism is demonstrated in order to clarify the topic and to facilitate applied research.     

Carbohydrate mouth rinse does not affect performance during a 60-min running race in women

This study examined the effect of carbohydrate mouth rinsing on endurance running performance in women. Fifteen female recreational endurance runners, who used no oral contraceptives, ran two races of 1-h duration on an indoor track (216-m length) at 18:00 h after an 8-h fast with a 7-days interval between races, corresponding to the 3^rd-10th day of each premenopausal runner’s menstrual cycle, or any day for the postmenopausal runners. In a double-blind random order, participants rinsed their mouth with 25 ml of either a 6.4% carbohydrate (RCHO) or a placebo solution (RP). No fluid was ingested during exercise. Serum 17β-Εstradiol (P = 0.59) and Progesterone (P = 0.35) did not differ between treatments. There was no difference in 1-hour running performance (RCHO: 10,621.88 ± 205.98 m vs. RP: 10,454.00 ± 206.64 m; t = 1.784, P = 0.096). Furthermore, the mean percentage effect (±99%CI) of RCHO relative to RP, 1.67% (?1.1% to 4.4%), and Cohen’s effect size (d = 0.21) support a trivial outcome of RCHO for total distance covered. In conclusion, carbohydrate mouth rinsing did not improve 60-min track running performance in female recreational runners competing in a low ovarian hormone condition, after an 8-h fast and when no fluid was ingested during exercise.     

Curiosity and openmindedness in open and traditional classrooms

In an attempt to determine if an open classroom environment encourages greater curiosity and/or openmindedness than does a traditional classroom environment, 41 open classroom children and 42 traditional classroom children completed an openmindedness scale and 5 subtests of a curiosity scale. Sex was included as a factor and IQ was included as a covariate in all analyses. No significant sex differences were found. The significantly higher mean curiosity score for the open classroom group was primarily due to significant differences between classrooms on 2 of the subtests: those measuring preference for novelty and change (p <.05). The results were interpreted as an indication that the open classroom may encourage some aspects of curiosity to a greater extent than does the traditional classroom.     

Molecule matters

Divalent carbon compounds which were once considered as highly reactive organic intermediates have been tamed by the modern day synthetic chemist in the form of N-heterocyclic carbenes. The land marks in the history of development of these compounds and their applications as ligands in the Nobel Prize winning work on olefin metathesis catalysts are described. Anil J Elias is a professor at the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.