Quality Assessment in Initial Teacher Education: Lessons from the 1993/94 OFSTED Experience

Different interest groups define quality in different ways. Enterprises such as education, and, specifically, teacher education, serve many interest groups including funding bodies, employers and students as consumers. Assessment of quality in this context has to take account of the priorities of such groups if the process is to have credibility. Processes involved also have to take account of the purposes to which such assessments might be put. Issues related to the recent cycle of inspections of secondary initial teacher education courses are discussed in the light of these factors. The process is fairly robust and comprehensive and is thus well equipped to inform various stakeholders and to bring about improvement through inspection. Because of a range of variables which have the potential to influence the outcome of an inspection, the process is less valid as a mechanism for influencing resourcing or as a means of comparing quality in initial teacher education with that in other areas of higher education.     

Predictive validity of teacher ratings of creativity over 2 years

Fifty white, suburban middle-class children were tested in the fourth grade with six divergent thinking tests developed from Guilford's SOI model and in the sixth grade with the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, Verbal Form A. In the fourth grade, these students' classroom teachers completed for each of them the Scale for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students. With IQ and reading and math achievement controlled via partial correlations, Guilford-like and Torrance measures were significantly correlated over 2 years but only teachers' rating of students as “sensitive to beauty and the aesthetic characteristics of things” was significantly related over 2 years to creativity measures. This characteristic appeared to be most crucial in the prediction of creativity for boys.     

The Internationalisation of Higher Education: the Case of Medical Education

The most visible aspect of the internationalisation of Higher Education is foreign students and this article outlines the factors which influence patterns and trends in international student mobility. Using the case study of undergraduate medical education, insights are provided on the issues which determine a student's choice of host nation and institution. Students who opt to study overseas to gain an award (the basic qualification to practice medicine) are the focus of this study, and the views expressed by them and individuals associated with international education, shed light on country and institution specific aspects which make the experience abroad either magic or misery.     

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Intensive Interactive Teaching with Pupils with Profound and Complex Learning Difficulties

Judith Watson, lecturer and Anne Fisher, teacher, present encouraging results from two research studies which evaluated the effectiveness of Intensive Interactive teaching with pupils who had profound and complex learning difficulties. The method is compared with the effects of other classroom experiences over the course of one school year.     

Contribution of the doctoral education environment to PhD candidates’ mental health problems: a scoping review

ABSTRACT

Recent research into the mental health of PhD candidates suggests that their high levels of stress could be caused in part or exacerbated by aspects of the doctoral education environment. However, the particulars of this environment have not been explored in consistent enough ways to provide a clear way forward for universities to respond to this issue. This article presents a systematic scoping review of the recent literature on this topic with the aims of collecting and consolidating the heterogeneous range of findings therein and providing a framework to coordinate further research and inform intervention design. Factors shown by the literature to contribute to stress in doctoral settings are presented, including problems in the supervisory relationship, lack of transparency of university processes, workload, role conflict, financial insecurity and uncertain career prospects. Analysis of the review sample indicates four main themes in this body of literature: shifting ideas about the range of environmental stressors and the relationships between them, a paucity of trialled interventions that target the range of known stressors, a lack of standardisation in instruments used for capturing the effects of stressors and evaluating interventions and finally, a need for comprehensive, agreed upon typologies – to integrate what is known about the issue and prioritise interventions. This article proposes guidelines to address these deficiencies, based on an ecological understanding of the doctoral research setting.