Attitudes to diversity: a cross‐cultural study of education students in Spain,England and the United States

This study explores the beliefs and attitudes that university students enrolled in teacher education programmes in Spain, England and the US (Texas) hold about individuals who differ. A beliefs and attitudes toward difference scale (BATD) was constructed using nine dimensions of diversity; culture, language, socioeconomic status/social class, religion, gender, sexual orientation, political ideology, disability and special talent. A two‐way factorial analysis of variance indicated significant main effects due to the respondent groups on culture, religion and sexual orientation; significant main effects of worldview of difference on political ideology; and no interaction between the two factors on each of the nine domains of difference. An exploratory factor analysis was also performed in order to explore the viability of the theoretical model. The data suggest that attitudes towards people who differ include etic, emic and individual properties. These are discussed in terms of the uses of cross‐cultural data and further research opportunities.     

The decentralisation of the school system in post‐communist Romania

Following the fall of the Iron Curtain in December 1989, the Romanian system of education has started a deep process of reconstruction that asked for a comprehensive package of reforms among which decentralisation. Broadly the paper aims to make a contribution to the emerging knowledge base about the realities of restructuring of post‐communist education systems and the impact that governance through markets is having on public services. The paper focuses on presenting and discussing the attempts to decentralise pre‐higher education in Romania in considering the role of the state and governance in the provision of public services and the introduction of market mechanisms in education. The decentralisation of education has been proposed by the then Minister of Education Andrei Marga. Although decentralisation in pre‐higher education has been piloted for three academic years and the policy documents that introduced it have been permanently amended and updated, more than a decade later, this reform has not reached its aims mainly due to the various changes on the political scene. However, provided that no major amendments will be made to the Laws of National Education (2009), decentralisation in pre‐higher education will be a reality from 2010–11.     

The relationship between drawing and oral language in deaf students aged three to five

This study examines the relationship between drawing and oral language acquisition in deaf students aged three to five. The sample is made up of one hundred participants: fifty deaf and fifty hearing children. Goodenough's Human Figure Drawing Test and the WPPSI Scale of Intelligence geometric design subtest have been used to evaluate graphic representation. The deaf participants' oral language has been assessed using the GAEL-P test. The main findings were that there were no significant differences between the populations studied in terms of graphic representation. The oral language level of the deaf population does not correlate with the level of their geometric designs, but does with the complexity of the drawing of the human figure at the age of 5. The main conclusion with respect to the relationship between oral language and figurative drawings suggests that different representations of symbolic functions should be integrated into children's education, especially in the case of deaf children.     

Lexical effects on children’s pseudoword reading in a transparent orthography

The present study investigated the involvement of lexical knowledge in pseudoword reading by Italian children aged 8–10. In both lexical decision and reading aloud tasks, inhibitory effects were found on pseudowords derived from high-frequency words in comparison to pseudowords derived from low-frequency words. A group of adult readers showed inhibitory effects on pseudowords based on high-frequency words only in lexical decision. The inhibitory effects were interpreted as due to interference on pseudoword processing caused by lexical activation of a high-frequency base-word. The results support the view that lexical information is exploited even in the development of reading of a transparent orthography.     

One decade of environmental education research in Brazil: trajectories and trends in three national scientific conferences (ANPEd,ANPPAS and EPEA)

Abstract

This article discusses the scientific research work on environmental education presented during the last decade in three Brazilian conferences: the meetings of the National Association of Graduate Research on Education (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação, ANPEd), the National Association of Graduate Research on Environment and Society (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Ambiente e Sociedade, ANPPAS), and the Environmental Education Research Meetings (Encontros de Pesquisa em Educação Ambiental, EPEA). It analyzes the authors, institutions, and regions whence the studies came from, as well as their main research subjects. Our findings indicate the prevalence of women in all academic degree segments; of PhD holders and candidates; of professors in public higher education institutions located in the Brazilian Southwest and South regions; and of environmental education in formal teaching as the main subject in all three conferences. Based on these results, we discuss how this body of research relates to the development of Brazilian academic and educational policies, and indicate some of the challenges involved in building a research tradition in this field, in close dialogue with the arduous political and pedagogical path of environmental education in Brazilian schools.     

How knowledge brokers emerge and evolve: The role of actors’ behaviour

This article investigates how actors positioned in a network can evolve as knowledge brokers, as well as how they act to develop new brokerage roles. Our focus is on actor's behaviour while previous studies concentrate more on the structural and positional determinants of brokerage roles. This research combines brokerage roles with a broker's functions in an exploratory study of a small Italian comics publishing house. Over 20 years, the firm played different brokerage roles involving different actors at national and international levels. We find that if all brokerage roles involve transcoding functions, the ability to overcome transcoding obstacles, through the use of shared imprinting with receiving partners, could be useful for developing any brokerage role. Moreover, heterogeneity in the competences and industry experience of hired members of the management team could support the development of new brokerage roles, with differentiated effects on various brokers’ functions. If a brokerage role involves new actors with no previous allegiance, the status of the broker, signalled through network relations, can have significant impacts by indirectly communicating its superior knowledge. The proposed, emerging theoretical framework has direct implications for studies of knowledge brokers and innovation in social networks, as well as for entrepreneurship research.     

The impact of polytechnic institutes on the local economy

Tertiary Education and Management - Higher education institutions and, particularly, polytechnic institutes in Portugal are, generally speaking, recognized as the key stakeholders in regional...     

Physicians’ willingness to share: a TPB-based analysis

Physicians’ willingness to share knowledge is a central antecedent of effective knowledge sharing within hospitals. This paper aims at supporting the micro-foundation of knowledge sharing with the identification of the factors that affect willingness to share and their classification according to a behavioural model grounded in the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). The identification of antecedents and their classification is based on the review of the major contributions published on top tier and specialist journals. This study identifies 22 factors that affect physicians’ willingness to share. These factors are classified according to the TPB framework, which identifies three behavioural antecedents: attitude, subjective norm and perceived behaviour control. The organization of the factors allows appreciating the diffusion of knowledge-sharing behaviours as the result of three concurring perspectives: raising attention to the benefits of knowledge sharing, building up social pressures from relevant actors and designing appropriate organizational contingencies.     

When talking less is more: exploring outcomes of Twitter usage in the large‐lecture hall

This article employs a mixed‐method approach to examine the outcomes produced by using Twitter in a large‐lecture course as a means to assess the pedagogical impact and potential of Twitter’s contribution to large‐lecture course dynamics. In doing so, it seeks also to explore the broader relationship between methodologies and outcomes. Exploratory in nature and design, this study proceeds from the recognition of the inherent limitations and unpredictability in investigating how new technologies transform social patterns. Such an approach allows us to question how the mode and design of our research ultimately frame the interpretation and understanding of how social media intersect and impact classroom dynamics and their potential contributions for developing more effective pedagogical strategies and outcomes.     

Autistic traits and self-conscious emotions in early childhood

Self-conscious emotions arise from evaluating the self through the eyes of others. Given that children with autistic traits may experience difficulties with understanding others' minds, they might show less attuned self-conscious emotions. Two-to-five-year-old children's (N = 98, M_age = 48.54 months, 50% girls, 92% White) self-conscious emotions (guilt, embarrassment, and shame-like avoidance) were observed after children “broke” the experimenter's favorite toy. Data were collected from March 2018 till June 2019. Children with more autistic traits showed less theory of mind (ToM), and more shame-like avoidance, but associations were not mediated by ToM. This provides initial evidence that children with more autistic traits may show disturbances in some but not all self-conscious emotions, which could hinder their social functioning.