ACCREDITATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN UKRAINE

The article describes the system of evaluation and accreditation of higher education which is being developed in Ukraine. Although the activities of quality control and accreditation are centralized around the activities of the Inter‐branch Accreditation Commission (IAC), the intention is to decentralize them as soon as possible. The results so far have been positive. The Ukrainian government wishes to create a higher education system fully compatible with the higher education systems of other European countries and therefore wishes to develop its evaluation and accreditation system in co‐operation with similar activities in other countries.     

Predicting multicultural effectiveness of international students: the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire

The present study considered the reliability and validity of the 78-item revised version of the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire, a multidimensional instrument aimed at measuring multicultural effectiveness of expatriate employees and students. The questionnaire includes scales for cultural empathy, open-mindedness, emotional stability, social initiative and flexibility. Participants were native and foreign students of an international business school (N=171) in the Netherlands. The MPQ scales appeared to be more strongly predictive of adjustment of international students as compared to native students. Moreover, the instrument was able to explain variance in students’ adjustment beyond self-efficacy.     

How Do Profoundly Deaf Children Learn to Read?

Reading requires two related, but separable, capabilities: (1) familiarity with a language, and (2) understanding the mapping between that language and the printed word (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000; Hoover & Gough, 1990). Children who are profoundly deaf are disadvantaged on both counts. Not surprisingly, then, reading is difficult for profoundly deaf children. But some deaf children do manage to read fluently. How? Are they simply the smartest of the crop, or do they have some strategy, or circumstance, that facilitates linking the written code with language? A priori one might guess that knowing American Sign Language (ASL) would interfere with learning to read English simply because ASL does not map in any systematic way onto English. However, recent research has suggested that individuals with good signing skills are not worse, and may even be better, readers than individuals with poor signing skills (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000). Thus, knowing a language (even if it is not the language captured in print) appears to facilitate learning to read. Nonetheless, skill in signing does not guarantee skill in reading—reading must be taught. The next frontier for reading research in deaf education is to understand how deaf readers map their knowledge of sign language onto print, and how instruction can best be used to turn signers into readers.     

SYSTEM ACTIVITIES AND EDUCATION

A paradoxical situation has emerged as new conditions of human interaction affirm themselves. Even though precise knowledge is available, we seem to be unable to put it to efficient use and to invest it in practical undertakings. The professional incompetence and functional illiteracy of otherwise educated people, decision‐makers included, have reached massive proportions.     

Content Validity Studies of Licensing Examinations

Can measurement specialists’current ideas about content validation be implemented with licensure examinations? Does pressure of litigation facilitate or inhibit conducting validity studies?