The International Education Index: A global approach to education policy analysis,performance and sustainable development

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world struggled to address growing educational inequalities and fulfil the commitment to Sustainable Development Goal 4, which seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. The pandemic has exacerbated these inequalities and changed how education functions, moving to online and hybrid methods. The challenges in global education highlighted and worsened by the pandemic make it necessary to re-evaluate education systems and the policies in place to support access, quality and equal opportunity. This article focuses on analysing education policies at a national level. It tests a pilot policy analysis tool, the International Education Index (IEI), developed as a starting point to begin this reconsideration and create an accessible and comprehensive way to evaluate national education systems to inform decision-making and policies in the new context. This research uses Ireland and Northern Ireland to test the IEI pilot tool. The IEI consists of 54 questions across nine indicators, including institutional frameworks, education strategies, digital skills and infrastructure, twenty-first century skills, access to basic social services, adherence to international standards, legal frameworks, data gathering and availability and international partnerships. Countries can score 108 points to be categorised as having developed, emerging or nascent national education systems. Ireland scored 94 and Northern Ireland 81, indicating that they have developed national education systems.     

Lights,camera, active! appreciation of active learning predicts positive attitudes towards lecture capture

Higher Education - Much has been written about instructor attitudes towards lecture capture, particularly concerning political issues such as opt-out policies and the use of recordings by...     

Medical student attitudes to the autopsy and its utility in medical education: A brief qualitative study at one UK medical school

Attending postmortems enables students to learn anatomy and pathology within a clinical context, provides insights into effects of treatment and introduces the reality that patients die. Rates of clinical autopsies have declined and medical schools have cut obligatory autopsy sessions from their curricula making it difficult to assess medical student perceptions of, and attitudes towards, the educational value of autopsy. Our aim was to investigate these perceptions by designing a brief qualitative study comprising nominal technique and focus group discussions with Cambridge Graduate Course students, all of whom had attended autopsies. Three general themes emerged from the focus group discussions: the value of autopsy as a teaching tool and ways the experience could be improved, the initial impact of the mortuary and the autopsy itself, and the “emerging patient”—an emotional continuum running from cadaver to autopsy subject and living patient. Educational benefits of autopsy‐based teaching included greater understanding of anatomy and physiology, greater appreciation of the role of other health care professionals and an enhanced appreciation of psycho‐social aspects of medical practice. Students suggested improvements for ameliorating the difficult emotional consequences of attendance. We conclude that autopsy‐based teaching represents a low‐cost teaching technique which is highly valued by students and has application to many diverse medical specialties and skills. However, careful preparation and organization of sessions is required to maximize potential educational benefits and reduce any negative emotional impact. Anat Sci Educ 7: 87–96. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

Outreach marketing may be a successful strategy for NHS libraries

This dissertation study investigates the ways that NHS libraries are currently marketing their services within their organisation and was submitted as part of the MA Library and Information Management at the University of Sheffield in 2019. This paper presents the findings from twelve semi‐structured interviews carried out with NHS library managers in the East of England to identify the most and least successful methods, and in comparison with that which is currently in the general marketing literature. The study found that outreach marketing was the most effective and that librarians are currently conducting marketing to the best of their ability, but they lack time and funding to be able to make the most of their promotional campaigns. F.J.     

Efficacy of Skinfold Training Clinics: A Comparison between Clinic Trained and Experienced Testers

Abstract

In an attempt to differentiate more adequately between the terms motor ability and athletic participation in their relationship to some measurable aspects of personality, a group of 167 Pomona College junior and senior male students were classified both as to level of motor ability and participation in athletics and were administered the CPI. Utilizing a total test response derived from the sum of ranks of median scores, low and middle motor ability groups ranked higher in the main effects and within the nonathlete and intramural participation groups, but athletic participation did not appear to have any effect upon the measures studied. The pattern of results suggested an expectation hypothesis wherein higher ratings in the personality inventory might be achieved by groups of subjects who participated at a level which would be “expected” in relation to their motor ability.     

Using lotteries to evaluate schools of choice: Evidence from a national study of charter schools

This paper draws on data and experiences observing and analyzing school lotteries from the National Evaluation of Charter School Impacts (Gleason et al., 2010) to describe the challenges associated with lottery-based research. In that study, covering 36 charter middle schools in 15 states, we found that charter schools did not affect student achievement or behavior on average, although there was substantial variation across schools. In this paper, we discuss the prevalence of oversubscribed charter schools at the time the study was conducted (the 2005–2006 and 2006–2007 school years), which was lower than commonly reported. We then describe how the sample of schools that participated in the study compared to all other charter middle schools nationwide, to provide some insight into the generalizabilty of findings from lottery-based studies. In general, oversubscribed charter schools were more likely to be located in urban areas and serve a higher-achieving population of students than those without excess demand. We also describe common features of school lotteries and waitlists, and examine implications of these features for a school's ability to support a lottery-based study. Finally, we summarize lessons learned for conducting lottery-based research on charter schools, drawing on our observations of the schools’ lotteries and analysis of the data from these lotteries.     

Alleviating the Policy Paradox through Improved Institutional Policy Systems: A Case Study

Institutional policies and policy systems are vital to the well-being of institutions of higher education. While many institutions dedicate time and resources to the development of key policies, the establishment of a well-designed and well-functioning policy system is often neglected. We refer to the discrepancy between the importance of institutional policy systems and the lack of time and resources devoted to them as the policy paradox. This article chronicles Utah Valley University’s policy improvement initiative as a guide for institutions of higher education interested in improving institutional policy systems.     

A Classroom Study on the Relationship Between Student Achievement and Retrieval-Enhanced Learning

Retrieval practice has been shown to produce powerful learning gains in laboratory experiments but has seldom been explored in classrooms as a means of enhancing students’ learning of their course-relevant material. Furthermore, research is lacking concerning the role of individual differences in learning from retrieval. The current study explored the effects of retrieval in a large undergraduate introductory biology course as a function of individual differences in student achievement. Students completed in-class exercises that required them to retrieve course information (e.g., recalling definitions for terms and labeling diagrams) followed by feedback or to simply copy the information without retrieving it. A later quiz over the information showed that high-performing students benefited more from retrieving than copying, whereas middle- and low-performing students benefited more from copying than retrieving. When asked to predict their quiz scores following the in-class exercises, high-performers demonstrated better overall metacognitive calibration compared to middle- or low-performers. These results highlight the importance of individual differences in learning from retrieval and encourage future research using course-relevant material to consider the role of student achievement in classroom-based interventions.