Attachment,Well‐Being,and College Senior Concerns About the Transition Out of College

This study examined the relationships among attachment, psychological well‐being (PWB), life satisfaction, and concerns about the transition out of college among a sample of college seniors. A path analysis was conducted predicting that PWB and life satisfaction would mediate the relationships between attachment and 3 types of graduation transition concerns: career, change and loss, and support. Significant mediation effects affecting career concerns and change and loss concerns were discovered. Implications for college counseling are discussed.     

Critical junctures in the development of university high-tech spinout companies

This paper investigates the development of university spinout companies (USOs). Employing a case-based research method, our study found that there are two important elements in their development. First, USOs go through a number of distinct phases of activity in their development. Each venture must pass through the previous phase in order to progress to the next one but each phase involves an iterative, non-linear process of development in which there may be a need to revisit some of the earlier decisions and activities. Second, at the interstices between the different phases of development we found that ventures face “critical junctures” in terms of the resources and capabilities they need to acquire to progress to the next phase. The different phases are critical as these ventures cannot develop into the next phase without overcoming each of the junctures. We identify four different critical junctures that spinout companies need to overcome if they are to succeed: opportunity recognition, entrepreneurial commitment, credibility and sustainability.     

Conceptualising the heterogeneity of research-based spin-offs: A multi-dimensional taxonomy

Research-based spin-offs (RBSOs) have become an important aspect of the technology transfer process. Emanating from what is conventionally a non-commercial environment, RBSOs pose major challenges if they are to realise their potential to meet the objectives of their founders and the parent research organisations (PROs) from which they emerge. An important issue is to understand the heterogeneity of RBSOs. This paper reviews the literature on RBSO typologies to develop a taxonomy of RBSOs. We identify common themes in relation to these typologies in relation to (1) spin-off creation and (2) spin-off development. The dimensions that differentiate between firms are the type of resources, the business model and the institutional link. We identify gaps in current typologies in order to propose avenues for future conceptual and empirical research.     

Conditional cooperators: student prosocial dispositions and their perceptions of the classroom social environment

A common problem in education is getting students to cooperate effectively in groups during learning. Because interdisciplinary research has established that cooperation is sensitive to specific contextual factors such as reciprocity, friendship and benefit, similar factors could be shaping student interactions in contemporary classroom environments. The present article reports an initial investigation of this idea by examining how student perceptions of their classroom environment relate to their willingness to expend energy and resources on classmates (through helping). This was accomplished through the structural equation modeling of survey data collected from 845 undergraduate life sciences students from 41 laboratory classrooms at a research-intensive university. Characteristics of the classroom social environment previously associated with benefits in other contexts also predicted (reciprocity β = 0.576; friendship β = 0.156) the educational benefit that students perceive as coming from their classmates. This perceived benefit in turn was highly associated (β = 0.605) with student willingness to expend resources on classmates (i.e. their prosocial disposition). Also both reciprocity (β = 0.298) and perceived benefit (β = 0.403) concurrently predict a student’s support for enforcing cooperation in the classroom. Potential insights into the contribution of classroom social environment to student dispositions towards cooperation are discussed.     

A sequential analysis of responses in online debates to postings of students exhibiting high versus low grammar and spelling errors

Given that grammatical and spelling errors have been found to influence perceived competence and credibility in written communication, this study examined how a student’s grammar and spelling errors affect how other students respond to the student’s postings in four online debates hosted in asynchronous threaded discussions. Message-response exchanges were sequentially analyzed to identify patterns in students’ replies to arguments and challenges with counter-challenges, explanations, and evidentiary support posted by students that exhibited low versus high number of grammatical and spelling errors. Although no causal inferences can be drawn from this study, the findings nevertheless suggests that: (a) arguments posted by high-error students are more likely to be challenged than arguments posted by low-error students; (b) exchanges between high-error students can amplify the effects of grammar/spelling errors; and (c) higher levels of argumentation can be achieved by placing students into groups that are heterogeneous in writing skills in general. The findings and methods used in this study lay the groundwork for further research on strategies for managing individual differences in students’ grammar and spelling (and other student behaviors in general) and increasing the level of critical discourse in online discussions.     

Forms of support and challenges to developing international-mindedness: a comparative case study within a national and an international school in Turkey

ABSTRACT

This paper uses mixed methods to explore perceptions of international-mindedness within two case study schools in Istanbul, Turkey: a national school with mostly Turkish students and an international school with students from many nationalities. Using a conceptual framework developed by an international education programme, the authors critically analyse pillars of international-mindedness: multilingualism, intercultural understanding, and global engagement. Findings reveal that the national school was striving to overcome limitations of homogeneity, while the international school struggled to address its assumptions that a heterogeneous population alone would be enough to encourage intercultural understanding. Neither school had developed clear conceptual links among multilingualism, intercultural understanding, and global engagement. Thus, deliberate efforts are needed to provide students with experiences that foster international-mindedness. Other researchers and educators can use this framework and associated methods to examine how international-mindedness is implemented in different schools in other regions of the world.     

Higher education regionalization

Is the allocation of higher education resources a means to regional development? Although many governments have approached higher education as part of a wider regional policy, it is still very much an open question whether higher education regionalization really works. The evidence from the most conspicuous Scandinavian example of using higher education for regional development - the creation of Norrland University - indicates that the allocation of higher education resources may be conducive to breaking up traditional patterns of center-periphery interaction, but it also shows that the activities of the periphery play just as crucial a role as the special framing of the policy of the center in determining outcomes.