Reviews

The shift from a centralized to a decentralized school system can be seen as a solution to an uncertain problem. Through analysing the displacements in the concept of equivalence within Sweden’s decentralized school system, this study illustrates how the meaning of the concept of equivalence shifts over time, from a more collective target achievement for the educational system as a whole to a more individually interpreted goal‐fulfilment.     

Development of Phonological Constancy: 19‐Month‐Olds,but Not 15‐Month‐Olds,Identify Words in a Non‐Native Regional Accent

By 12 months, children grasp that a phonetic change to a word can change its identity (phonological distinctiveness). However, they must also grasp that some phonetic changes do not (phonological constancy). To test development of phonological constancy, sixteen 15‐month‐olds and sixteen 19‐month‐olds completed an eye‐tracking task that tracked their gaze to named versus unnamed images for familiar words spoken in their native (Australian) and an unfamiliar non‐native (Jamaican) regional accent of English. Both groups looked longer at named than unnamed images for Australian pronunciations, but only 19‐month‐olds did so for Jamaican pronunciations, indicating that phonological constancy emerges by 19 months. Vocabulary size predicted 15‐month‐olds' identifications for the Jamaican pronunciations, suggesting vocabulary growth is a viable predictor for phonological constancy development.     

The social impact of open government data in Hong Kong: Umbrella Movement protests and adversarial politics

While there has been much anticipation that open government data (OGD) would increase the inclusion of marginalized groups in government decision-making processes, researchers have found little evidence of it. Such findings or lack of findings of social impact have led researchers to call for critical review of present notions of OGD’s impact and also for better theoretical frameworks. In response to these calls, we develop a theoretical framework based on an ethnographic study of civic use of OGD in Hong Kong. We argue that constrained by the deliberative democracy models that focus on existing mechanisms of political participation, researchers have tended to overlook the use of OGD for protests, contestation, and other expressions of adversarial politics, which also produce a use of OGD for social impacts.     

THE INFLUENCE OF A DESIRABILITY HALO EFFECT ON RATINGS OF INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

A rationale is provided for hypothesizing that a counterpart of the social desirability variable influences environmental ratings based on student perceptions, and a test is made of the hypothesis. The High School Characteristics Index was administered to 2819 high school seniors from 11 high schools. Social desirability scale values for the 300 items and 30 scale scores of the HSCI were obtained from 85 students in Education, and these values were correlated with the endorsement percentages and average scale scores for the students in each of the 11 high schools. Results indicated an appreciable "desirability halo" effect for some student bodies, with wide differences among student bodies with respect to the strength and direction of that effect. The results are interpreted as a serious challenge to the validity and discriminative capability of environmental assessment techniques based on student perceptions.     

Editorial: the Salamanca Statement: 25 years on

ABSTRACT

June 2019 saw the 25th anniversary of the World Conference on Special Needs Education, which was co-organized by UNESCO and the Ministry of Education and Science of Spain, and held in the city of Salamanca. It led to the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education, arguably the most significant international document that has ever appeared in the field of special education. In so doing, it endorsed the idea of inclusive education, which was to become a major influence in subsequent years. The articles in this special issue illustrate the ways in which the Salamanca Statement has and still is influencing the development of policies and practices across the world. In this editorial, we provide readers with some relevant background to these developments.