The Czech Republic Between Studentocracy,Academic Oligarchy and Managerialism: Are students powerful or powerless?

Tertiary Education and Management - In this article, we will argue that students played an important role at several crucial junctures of modern Czech history, which secured them a central position...     

Reading Rescue: A follow-up on effectiveness of an intervention for struggling readers

The authors examined whether Reading Rescue continues to be an effective literacy intervention and factors that impact its effectiveness. Data were collected on 143 first-grade students, tutored by 104 tutors at 38 schools. There was significant growth on all foundational skills (ps?ps?d?=?1.62 sight words, d?=?1.68 oral reading/comprehension). Student-level factors of Individualized Education Program status, program completion, number of session, and invented spelling; tutor-level factors of sessions delivered and years of experience; school level factors of school size and percentage of language minority students all predicted grade-level passage or word reading (all ps?2007 Ehri, L. C., Dreyer, L. G., Flugman, B., &; Gross, A. (2007). Reading rescue: An effective tutoring intervention model for language-minority students who are struggling readers in first grade. American Educational Research Journal, 44(2), 414–448.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) study. Efforts should focus on ensuring program completion and increasing program exposure in neediest schools.     

Metaphors we’re colonised by? The case of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article discusses issues concerning the spread of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. Here, as elsewhere, educational technology continues to be promoted optimistically as the bearer of a panacea for historically-rooted social problems. Whilst some of these technologies have indeed contributed to important widening-participation programmes in the last two decades, widespread advocacy of technological ‘solutionism’, reflected in gradually stronger policy demands for efficiencies to be improved through ‘innovation’, has supported a relentless marketisation of the country’s educational systems. As transnational corporations position themselves to take control of key areas of these systems, threatening to restructure the whole sector, data-driven educational technologies provide the latest example in a series of ‘new’ ideas offered in an ever-expanding market. Based on the notion of ‘conceptual metaphors’, which encapsulate specific ways of perceiving, thinking and relating with the world, this article examines key metaphors underpinning discourses surrounding data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. In particular, the article analyses ways in which these specific metaphors may be promoting perspectives that ignore difference and obscure broader questions concerning education, thus contributing to the reproduction of previously existing problems and supporting new forms of colonisation.     

Validation of a self-perceived media competence instrument for pre-service teachers / Validación de un instrumento de autopercepción de competencia mediática para docentes en formación

Abstract

Key to guaranteeing the fundamental human rights of freedom of expression and information is the development of media competence, particularly in schools. Training teachers in the area of media competence is particularly important for developing these skills in the broader citizenry. In order to provide educators and educational policymakers with a useful diagnostic tool, we have designed a self-perception questionnaire. The questionnaire was applied to a sample of Peruvian education students (N = 501). On the one hand, the results confirm the construct’s coherence, validity and instrumental reliability. On the other hand, they allow us to propose a theoretically based update to the way in which this construct is interpreted and applied, confirming the multidimensionality of media competence. Finally, we use this empirical evidence to discuss the integral, transversal and ecological status of media competence.     

The effects of college grade adjustments on the predictive validity and utility of SAT scores

Regressing adjusted grade-point averages on freshman SAT scores and high school grade-point averages results in large increases in the incremental predictive validity of the SAT. Even so, the SAT still changes no more than a small proportion of admissions decisions and does not result in substantively important increases in freshman grades. The test does, however, change the composition of the freshman class by altering acceptances to some major areas of study and by limiting the access of women and blacks.     

Books and articles of academic interest

Books and articles of academic interest     

Bringing Inquiry to the First Two Years of College Mathematics

Abstract

In this editorial, we provide an introduction to the special issue on Inquiry-Based Learning in First and Second Year Courses. We also discuss the essential features of inquiry-based learning and provide a brief overview of the literature and evidence for its effectiveness.     

Locus and nature of perceptual phonological deficit in Spanish children with reading disabilities

The aims of this study were (a) to determine whether Spanish children with reading disabilities (RD) show a speech perception deficit and (b) to explore the locus and nature of this perceptive deficit. A group of 29 children with RD, 41 chronological age-matched controls, and 27 reading ability-matched younger controls were tested on tasks of speech perception. The effect of linguistic unit (word vs. syllable) and type of phonetic contrast (voicing, place and manner of articulation) were analyzed in terms of the number of errors and the response time. The results revealed a speech perception deficit in Spanish children with RD that was independent of the type of phonetic contrast and of linguistic unit.     

Editorial H-score as a metric of inner authenticity for national scientific journals—Pilot study for the field of pedagogy

There is evidence that national scientific journals are important for local communities despite their limited audience due to national languages and topics, like in pedagogy. However, it is not easy to assess the level of scientific rigour of local journals, as most do not have available scientometric data and are often published in minority languages. We hypothesize that a possible manifestation of a latent trait of inner authenticity of the scientific journal (meaning the journal is accepted by a community interested in developing the field which conducts internationally accepted research) could be H-index of the editorial board members. To test this approach, we evaluated H-index and gender of editorial board members (n = 490) from 17 Czech and Slovak national science-oriented scientific pedagogical journals which were not indexed or indexed in Erih+ or Scopus, and compared this with the five lowest-rated journals from the same field indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The H-index of editorial board members was somewhat higher in indexed journals with those from WoS showing higher scores, and the number of board members with no discernable H-index was far greater in non-indexed journals. Editorial boards of journals indexed in WoS were mostly male, compared to a dominance of women on boards of non-indexed journals. Acknowledging the limited sample, it appears that the H-index of editorial board members may be a way to value national scientific journals.