Absenteeism in Undergraduate Business Education: A Proposed Model and Exploratory Investigation*

One issue in undergraduate business education remaining underexamined is student absenteeism. In this article, the literature on undergraduate absenteeism is reviewed culminating in a proposed conceptual framework to guide future research, and an exploratory investigation of management students’ attitudes about absenteeism is conducted. Implications for research practice are discussed.     

About looking: Vision,transformation, and the education of the eye in discourses of school renewal past and present

This article reports the interim findings of historical research, funded by the British Academy (2007), which is exploring the possibilities of prosopography (the study of biographies linked through a common purpose, philosophy or practice) in researching the relationship between educational thought and school design since World War Two. Through oral history and archival research, the lives of leading figures in the post‐war period of English school design have been examined in relationship with one another. The research has uncovered networks of individual architects and educationists who together constructed a particular vision of education and subsequently a process of school design during the third quarter of the twentieth century. The research suggests that current efforts to visualise school as a transformational and transformed learning environment might profit from the notion of prosopography in the sense that it may help to expand our understanding of contemporary networks that are engaged in constructing a common vision of school for the twenty‐first century. The article begins with a brief discussion of discourses of educational vision set in the context of the contemporary UK government Building Schools for the Future (BSF) and Primary Capital Building programmes. It then moves on to demonstrate how a network of individuals, linked to three key protagonists in school/education design, developed in England during the post‐war period of reconstruction a collective vision of school which gave a special significance to what came to be understood as the education of the eye. This research suggests that while vision is important, the history of visualising school offers another still relevant set of references to those generally chosen today.     

How effective are international copyright conventions in the music industry?

The paper is concerned with the issue of whether international copyright legislation is effective in curbing audio software counterfeiting. The paper finds that copyright conventions have not been effective in reducing audio counterfeiting to comparatively low levels. This result holds even when allowances are made for the duration of copyright convention membership and the specificity of the articles of the convention. Economic development is found to be the main determinant of low counterfeit levels. This would tend to support anecdotal evidence which indicates that economic development is a necessary condition for the active recognition of audio property rights by the general public, judiciary and police. It is also consistent with a view that pirate audio software, being an inferior good, has a more buoyant market in less developed economies. From a policy perspective the research would seem to suggest that the extensive efforts and copious attention to detail by legal experts has made little impact on counterfeit activity and is secondary in importance to the socio-economic environment in which these laws are being applied.     

Program Readings

Richard C. Burke Instructional Television: Bold New Venture (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1971—$5.95)

Harold S. Davis (ed.) Instructional Media Center: Bold New Venture (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1971— $7.50)

Ralph J. Amelio, Film in the Classroom: Why to Use It How to Use It (Dayton, Ohio: Pflaum/Standard, 1971—$4.50, paper)     

Hands-on history: towards a critique of the ‘everyday’

The modern Turkish state and society have been greatly influenced by reforms of the education system. Second Constitutional Period reforms can be viewed as the preparatory stage of Republican reforms and a time when many of the later reforms were planned and given limited application. In this way both periods contributed to the foundation of modern Turkey. The innovations pioneered by Late Ottoman intellectuals stemmed from various origins, mostly European positivists and materialist philosophers. American pragmatism was added as an ideological source during the foundation of the Republic. It can be observed that ideological trends took root from Ottoman times according to the degree that intellectuals were affected by them. In this paper, the ideological origins of educational reforms during the Second Constitution Period have been studied in relation to the influence of European philosophers on Ottoman intellectuals of the time and their ideological environments. Late Ottoman intellectuals were found to have been largely affected by France’s positivism, German’s materialism and Comte, Durkheim, Büchner and Spencer. The paper reveals how modern Turkey’s educational philosophy parameters have been shaped by these intellectuals’ ideas.     

The Steward Street School experiment: a critical case study of possibilities

This article presents a critical case study of an inner city state school that for a decade (1940s–1950s) attracted the interest of a wide contingency of educationalists, policy makers, researchers, artists and various press and film media. It has been argued that if we are to progress ‘social alternatives’ in education, researchers need to construct ‘critical case studies of possibilities’ drawing inspiration from traces of experimental and utopian practice in schools from the past as well as the present. The article demonstrates how this might be achieved through research that questions dominant narratives, goes beyond the public accounts of particular sites of experimentation and explores multiple‐narratives embedded in the records of past practice. The authors argue that such situated counter‐currents in the history of education are necessary both to inform our collective notions of past experience and enrich our regard for future possibilities.