The impact of information skills training on independent literature searching activity and requests for mediated literature searches

Background: Most NHS library services routinely offer both mediated searches and information skills training sessions to their users. We analyse the impact of these two services on the amount of literature searching demonstrated by users of hospital‐ based library services in the north‐west of England. Methods: Data for (1) mediated literature searches, (2) number of library users attending information skills training sessions, (3) amount of library staff time devoted to information skills training, and (4) number of Athens‐authenticated log‐ins to databases were obtained from statistical returns for 2007, and analysed for significant correlations. Results: There was evidence of quite strong correlations between the two measures of training activity and the number of mediated literature searches performed by library staff. There was weaker evidence of correlation between training activity and total literature searching activity. Discussion: Attending training sessions may make some library users aware of the difficulty of complex literature searches and actually reduce their confidence to perform their own complex searches independently. The relationships between information skills training, mediated literature searches, and independent literature searching activity remain complex.     

PISA 2015: how big is the ‘mode effect’ and what has been done about it?

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an important cross-national study of 15-year-olds’ academic knowledge and skills. Educationalists and public policymakers eagerly await the tri-annual results, with particular interest in whether their country has moved up or slid down the international rankings, as compared to earlier rounds. In 2015 a major change was implemented in PISA, with the introduction of computer-based assessment. This has the potential to reduce comparability of PISA test scores across countries and over time. We investigate this issue using PISA 2015 field trial data for three countries: Germany, Sweden, and Ireland. We show how, if left unaccounted for, the change to computer-based testing could limit the comparability of PISA test scores. We then describe the methodology the study organisers have used to account for such mode effects. Our key conclusion is that although the adjustment made is unlikely to overcome all the potential challenges of switching to computer-based tests, it represents an improvement over the alternative of making no adjustment at all.     

Strategic alignment of participant motivations in e-government collaborations: The Internet Payment Platform pilot

Large-scale information technology implementations are risky projects, and the challenges and risks multiply when multiple organizations are involved, as is often the case in e-government initiatives. Some of the risk can be addressed by carefully aligning the partners' motivations, which are affected by each organization's internal and external operational and information technology strategies. In this paper, we propose a strategic alignment framework and use it to examine the motivations of a set of collaborating government agencies and businesses in the pilot implementation of the Internet Payment Platform, an interorganizational, third-party hosted, e-procurement system. As we predict, the partners in this study had varied technical, political, economic, and operational motivations for participating in the project. Even so, the participating agencies reported positive outcomes from the project, and look forward to further collaboration on the next iteration of this e-procurement system.     

“How to Strike the Right Balance Between Quality Assurance and Quality Control in the Perceptions of Individual Lecturers”: A comparison of UK and Dutch higher education institutions

Tertiary Education and Management - This paper focuses on the way lecturers observe, feel restrained by and cope with quality management systems that have been implemented in the higher education...     

New regimes of truth: The impact of performative school self evaluation systems on teachers' professional identities

The revised inspection system in England requires schools to maintain a web-based self-evaluation, which is then used as the basis for high-stakes external inspection. This paper develops a Foucauldian analysis of interview data from a single case study site to illustrate the ways that new regimes of truth are created within schools and to consider the impact of disciplinary systems on teachers' professional identities.     

Lexical processing skill in college-age resilient readers

Despite an extensive literature linking individual differences in phonological processing to reading ability, some adults show normal text comprehension abilities despite poor pseudoword reading (Jackson & Doellinger (2002). Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 64–78). This study was undertaken to investigate differences between these individuals, termed resilient readers, and proficient readers in performance and degree of lateralization on a variety of single word processing tasks. Participants completed seven divided visual field tasks investigating various aspects of reading. Resilient readers performed less accurately on basic word recognition tasks, but not on the tasks involving semantic access. Resilient readers did not differ from proficient readers on reaction time or lateralization on any of the experimental tasks. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that skilled phonological decoding is not necessary for reading for meaning in a college population. It is proposed that higher-level semantic information and general world knowledge may allow some readers to compensate for deficiencies in lower-level word recognition processes.

An explicit and reflective approach to the use of history to promote understanding of the nature of science

Monk and Osborne (Sci Educ 81:405–424, 1997) provide a rigorous justification for why history and philosophy of science should be incorporated as an integral component of instruction and a model for how history of science should be used to promote learning of and about science. In the following essay we critique how history of science is used on this model, and in particular, their advocacy of a direct comparison of students’ conceptions of scientific phenomena with those of past scientists. We propose instead an alternative approach that promotes a more active engagement by inviting students to engage in the sort of reasoning that led past scientists to reach insights about scientific phenomena. As an example we describe in detail two lesson plans taken from an eight-class unit developed with reference to the history of research on sickle-cell anemia. These lessons demonstrate how an open-ended, problem-solving approach can be used to help students deepen their understanding of science. Throughout the unit students are invited to explicitly and reflectively consider the implications of their reasoning about the disease for their understanding of nature of science issues. The essay draws attention to how this alternative approach actually more closely aligns with the constructivist rationale Monk and Osborne have articulated. It concludes with a brief summary of empirical research demonstrating the efficacy of this approach.