Conceptual boundaries and distances: Students' and experts' concepts of the scale of scientific phenomena

To reduce curricular fragmentation in science education, reform recommendations include using common, unifying themes such as scaling to enhance curricular coherence. This study involved 215 participants from five groups (grades 5, 7, 9, and 12, and doctoral students), who completed written assessments and card sort tasks related to their conceptions of size and scale, and then completed individual interviews. Results triangulated from the data sources revealed the boundaries between and characteristics of scale size ranges that are well distinguished from each other for each group. Results indicate that relative size information was more readily understood than exact size, and significant size landmarks were used to anchor this relational web of scales. The nature of past experiences situated along two dimensions—from visual to kinesthetic in one dimension, and wholistic to sequential in the other—were shown to be key to scale cognition development. Commonalities and differences between the groups are highlighted and discussed. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 282–319, 2006     

THE ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION OF 80% OF YOUTH IN THE YEAR 2000

This article explores some of the probable consequences of the objective, elaborated throughout the French political spectrum, in favour of expanding French higher education enrollments such that by the year 2000, 80 percent of each age cohort will hold the baccalauriat and 90 percent of the latter will enroll in higher education. So far, the consequences of this objective have not been faced, particularly the tremendous changes required so as to make higher education in France universal. Certainly they will bring an end to the traditional elite nature of the French university with its emphasis on research and on the imparting of theoretical knowledge. Ineluctably, the emphasis will have to shift to practical courses and to career preparation. The author therefore suggests that the move to universality might best be accomplished by the development of numerous short‐term and vocationally oriented courses to be offered in distinct institutions to provide training to the bulk of the new entrants who will, for the most part, have completed high school in technical baccalaur éat sections. A traditionally oriented core within the university system will continue to offer long‐‐cycle courses admitting only the cream of the traditional general education baccalauriat holders and the best graduates of the new short‐cycle institutions. All the enrollees in the latter institutions should be encouraged to avoid over‐specialization so as to guarantee their professional flexibility with respect to future employment.

     

Information, cooperation, and the blurring of boundaries – technology transfer in German and American discourses

The aim of this paper is to examine changing discursive conceptualizations of technology transfer mechanisms for speeding up innovation in Germany and the US since World War II with particular emphasis on universities. According to our analysis, the concepts of technology transfer are getting more and more complex, taking off from a linear model of innovation to a more complex model allowing for networking and entrepreneurial activities of the universities themselves. We suggest that the discourses in both countries can be framed employing three ideal-typical models: the information and documentation model, the cooperation model, and the blurring of boundaries model. In addition to these similarities, we also discuss differences that can be traced back to broader political cultures in which technology transfer is embedded. Both similarities and differences allow for a comparative perspective which is not limited to the countries analyzed here.     

Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: spanish, dutch, French, hebrew, italian, korean, and american english

The composition of young children's vocabularies in 7 contrasting linguistic communities was investigated. Mothers of 269 twenty-month-olds in Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, the Republic of Korea, and the United States completed comparable vocabulary checklists for their children. In each language and vocabulary size grouping (except for children just learning to talk), children's vocabularies contained relatively greater proportions of nouns than other word classes. Each word class was consistently positively correlated with every other class in each language and for children with smaller and larger vocabularies. Noun prevalence in the vocabularies of young children and the merits of several theories that may account for this pattern are discussed.     

Higher Education in Latin America

This article presents an analysis of, and proposals for, international co-operation in higher education. It focuses on Latin American higher education, its current situation, and the expected transformation of the goals of higher education in the context of international co-operation. Education in the Twenty-First Century must be part of the world economic order. As such, it must attend to human necessities. One of the most important goals of the Twenty-First Century should be the building of a new kind of solidarity among human beings, one in which higher education systems will play an important role. The author describes the challenges that globalization poses to Latin American higher education.     

Does School Admission by Zoning Affect Educational Inequality? A Study of Family Background Effect in Estonia,Finland, and Sweden

We indicate the size of family background effects in Sweden, Finland, and Estonia – countries that differ in both the rhetoric and extensiveness of the system-level school choice policies. Family background effect is defined as the dependence of student achievement on family background characteristics, such as parental education, income, and social status. The number of books at home is used as a proxy when operationalising family background, and its effect is measured as a percentage of individual-level PISA scores. Fixed-effect regression results reveal that family background remains a powerful determinant in the educational results of 15-year-old students in all three cases, being largest in Sweden. Furthermore, we show how the family background effect is moderated by school-level choice policy, that is, how students and schools are matched. The analysis reveals that zoning policies have statistically significant negative effects on the impact of the family background effect, independent of country-level policies.     

Comparative Research in Education: a mode of governance or a historical journey?

This text is not a research paper, nor an epistemological reflection about the field of comparative education. It is an essay in the literal meaning of the word—‘an attempt, trial, that needs to be put to test in order to understand if it is able to fulfil the expectations’—in which we introduce an interpretation of the current condition of the field of comparative education. In the introduction to this essay we discuss the current phenomenon of a regained popularity of comparative educational research. We believe that this situation has both positive and negative consequences: it can contribute to the renewal of the field or it may be no more than a brief fashion. Our reflections focus on the uses of comparative research in education, not on any precise research question. Even so, only for illustrative purposes, we present some examples related to the European Union. We then go on to discuss current comparative practices, arguing that comparative educational studies are used as a political tool creating educational policy, rather than a research method or an intellectual inquiry. In the two main sections of this text we define two extreme positions: comparison as a mode of governance and comparison as a historical journey. We do recognise that between these two extremes there is room enough to imagine different positions and dispositions. But our intention is to separate very different traditions of the comparative field analytically. Throughout the article we build a case in favour of a comparative-historical approach. Nevertheless, we argue that the reconciliation between ‘history’ and ‘comparison’ will only be possible if we adopt new conceptions of space and time, and of space-time relationship. This is a condition required for the understanding of comparative research in education as a historical journey.     

The career development of black and white South African university students

This study investigates the possible influence of gender and culture on the career maturity and study and work role salience of South African students. Responses to the Life Role Inventory and Career Development Questionnaire of 260 first-year university students (137 white, 123 black) were analyzed. Culture was found to have a significant effect on both career maturity and study and work role salience while gender had no significant effect. Results are related to previous findings from international and South African literature. Implications for counselling are discussed.Paper presented at the International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling Conference, held at the University of Oporto, Oporto, Portugal, 2–5 April 1991.     

At home,song, and fika – portraits of Swedish choral initiatives amidst the refugee crisis

ABSTRACT

With the unprecedented worldwide refugee crisis, to what extent can music play a role in welcoming? In particular, how does choral music have a role in mobilising communities, generating intercultural understanding, and lifting some of the barriers that confront refugees and asylum seekers? How can such activity be seen as a benefit to the welcomers rather than only the outsider others? The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to study how selected Swedish choral directors seek to include refugees into their choirs or musical groups. Additionally, the study seeks to understand how such efforts at inclusion are received, understood, and enacted. In other words, ‘What does it mean to refugees to sing choral music in a Swedish context, how is this perceived by the Swedish musical leaders, and how is this contextualized against Swedish government policy?’ We interview five Swedish choral directors and use the data to dig deeper into the multilayered and complex matter of welcoming refugees through community music. We contend that the work of these choral directors, as genuine acts of goodwill, is a powerful way to welcome new arrivals. However, the medium of the Western European choir may be culturally remote for refugees, and these initiatives may need new models of community music engagement.     

Globalization and Catholic Higher Education: A Dialogue for Harnessing the Impact of Globalization

The position and the role of Catholic higher education in the ongoing globalization of higher education are discussed. The author, the Secretary-General of the International Federation of Catholic Universities (FIUC/IFCU), presents a number of arguments in favour of the participation of Catholic universities in the processes of globalization while, at the same time, remaining true to their basic Christian values. The axis of this participation should be one of striving to humanize the phenomenon by serving "as the voice of those who have no voice".