Social media use in the career development of graduate students: the mediating role of internship effectiveness and the moderating role of Zhongyong

This paper proves that social media use can contribute in important ways to employability outcomes. Specifically, results from a survey of 196 recent graduate students in China indicate that social media use is positively related to employability skills. Internship effectiveness serve as a mediating mechanism through which social media use affects employability skills. Zhongyong has a moderating effect on the social media use-internship effectiveness relationship. In addition to the direct moderating effect, Zhongyong is found to moderate the indirect relationship between social media use and employability skills. We discuss implications of these results for research and practice.     

Foresight analysis in research funding agencies: A UK experiment

Strategic planning and priority-setting have become inevitable for UK research funding agencies in the 1990's. But it is an activity which is viewed with some suspicion by the scientific community, in which it is an aphorism that discovery cannot be planned. There is considerable interest therefore, in the promise offoresight analysis as an alternative to conventional strategic planning. Most previous experience with foresight has been at a macro level, with a focus on national direction-setting. But what role can foresight have at amicro level; how can it help individual funding agencies develop strategies for specific scientific fields? This paper explores the problem by describing an experiment, supported jointly by three UK funding agencies, to apply foresight techniques in a review of a single field (cardiovascular research). The methodology developed for objective consultation with scientists and users is described, and preliminary results presented. Science-push and demand-pull factors emerged clearly, aa did a desire within the scientific community for a number of infrastructural changes to strengthen the future of the field. The study has shown that systematic surveys of users and researchers are capable of detecting coherent views on a number of issues that are relevant to forward planning in research funding agencies. The paper concludes by summarising the limitations of this approach to strategic planning, and presenting some general lessons that may be useful for consideration in other micro-level foresight exercises.     

Localized Representation of Formative Assessment in China: A Regional Study from a Sociocultural Perspective

Formative assessment originated and developed in a Western context. With its function of learning improvement being evidenced in research, formative assessment has been adopted in assessment initiatives in multiple contexts including that of China. Research, however, reveals that formative assessment as implemented in Chinese contexts is by no means equivalent to what is understood and implemented in the West; rather, in many cases, it is decontextualised and recontextualised, or culturally appropriated. This paper presents findings of a study which examined the culturally appropriated representation of formative assessment within eight universities in a mid-western province of China. Senior administrators in each university were interviewed face-to-face and individually to fulfill three purposes: (1) To clarify understandings of formative assessment in the area of college English education; (2) To explore the existing gap between formative assessment principles and their representation in College English Curriculum Requirements (CECR), and the gap between formative assessment initiatives at the national level and local contexts; and (3) To distill implications for policy-borrowing and effective implementation in the Chinese context.     

Why are there virtually no mandatory open access policies at American universities?

Key points

• U.S. university OA policies are far less mandatory than those in the U.K.
• The waiver clauses in U.S. university policies make it easy for authors to decline making their articles OA.
• The relative autonomy – and competitiveness – of U.S. universities may be the reason for weaker OA policies.
• OA in the U.S. is likely to be driven by government funding agency policies rather than by academia.

     

‘Social Skills’: Following a Travelling Concept from American Academic Discourse to Contemporary Danish Welfare Institutions

The article traces the origin and development of the concept of social skills in first and foremost American academic discourse. As soon as the concept of social skills was coined, the concern for people lacking such skills started and has been on the increase ever since (now sharing public attention with related concepts such as self-control, emotional intelligence and empathy). After the analysis of the academic history of the concept follows an examination of the implementation of a range of assessment instruments and training programmes related to social skills (and lack hereof) in contemporary Danish welfare institutions (more specifically, day nurseries and schools, employment and penal services). The analysis forwarded in the article thus demonstrates how an intellectual idea may develop and travel - and on its journey connect to pre-existing cultural logics and societal concerns. The idea of social skills has through its development been made uncontroversial – everybody wants to be skilful. The concept does, however, convey an individualistic view on social life and imposes a reflexivity over own performance on the participants. Further, its normative character contributes to a problematization of those who are perceived to lack these skills.