What's in a name? The impact of reputation and rankings on the teaching income of English universities

This study examines the impact of universities’ reputation on teaching income and demonstrates how strongly reputation may affect the fees that they can charge. Higher Education is increasingly competitive and international, and institutions are preoccupied with national and international prestige. Research output is demonstrably central to reputation and, specifically, to global rankings, but less has been written about the benefits of high prestige for teaching income and the ability to charge high fees. This article uses English data to show the impact when fees are partially deregulated. Public universities with high rankings in global league tables and on domestic measures can command teaching income per student which is very much higher (in this case typically more than a third) than lower‐prestige institutions. This financial return to prestige further increases universities’ incentives to seek high positions in league tables and establish a reputational brand.     

THE BORDER CROSSED US: EDUCATION, HOSPITALITY POLITICS, AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE "ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT"

In this essay, Dennis Carlson explores some of the implications of Derrida's "hospitality politics" in helping articulate a progressive response to a rightist cultural politics in the United States of policing national, linguistic, and other borders. He applies the concept of hospitality politics to a critical analysis of the social construction of the "problem" of "illegal immigrants" in U.S. public schools. This entails a discussion of three interrelated discourses and practices of hospitality: a universalistic discourse of philosophical and religious principles, a legalistic-juridical discourse, and a discourse and practice grounded in the ethos of everyday life. Derrida suggested that a democratic cultural politics must interweave these three discourses and also recognize the limitations of each of them. Moreover, a democratic cultural politics must be most firmly rooted in the praxis of ethos, and in the ethical claims of openness to the other.     

‘I’m not a “maths‐person”!’ Reconstituting mathematical subjectivities in aesthetic teaching practices

In this study I have investigated how alternative ways of teaching mathematics influence and affect Early Childhood Education (ECE) students’ attitudes towards maths and how they understand their own subjectivities as more or less mathematical during a 10‐week alternative maths course. The investigated course adopts a feminist post‐structural approach based on critical pedagogy and deconstructive theory and includes an interdisciplinary approach to investigative mathematics. The data used include the memory/narrative writings and process‐writings of 75 female teacher‐education students, collected from three different cohorts, in which the students describe their learning processes throughout the maths course. The study shows that, in the main, the students became much more positively inclined to the subject of mathematics after the maths course and agreed that this course had changed their understanding of their own mathematical subjectivity, albeit in different and varying ways.     

Integrating Religion and Spirituality Into Counselor Education: Barriers and Strategies

Despite a professionally recognized need for training in religion/spirituality, literature indicates that religious and spirituality issues continue to be inconsistently addressed in counselor education. Ten experts were asked to identify potential barriers to integrating religion and spirituality into counselor education and indicate strategies for overcoming these obstacles. Barriers included a lack of information and a lack of personal interest or relevance, and strategies included continuing education, heightened awareness of self and others, and curriculum‐specific recommendations. Implications for counselor training and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Child Sleep and Socioeconomic Context in the Development of Cognitive Abilities in Early Childhood

Despite a robust literature examining the association between sleep problems and cognitive abilities in childhood, little is known about this association in toddlerhood, a period of rapid cognitive development. The present study examined the association between various sleep problems, using actigraphy, and performance on a standardized test of cognitive abilities, longitudinally across three ages (30, 36, and 42 months) in a large sample of toddlers (N = 493). Results revealed a between-subject effect in which the children who had more delayed sleep schedules on average also showed poorer cognitive abilities on average but did not support a within-subjects effect. Results also showed that delayed sleep explains part of the association between family socioeconomic context and child cognitive abilities.     

Peak Power Assessment of Isokinetic Knee Flexor and Extensor Tests – Pitfalls of a Dynamometer-based Assessment

ABSTRACT

Many sports demand high forces at high movement speeds. Joint power combines these two measures and is frequently analyzed by isokinetic tests. However, various concepts of assessing joint power lead to conflicting results. The aim was to examine different methods to calculate peak power during isokinetic knee tests of sixty-one healthy male participants (20 y, 182 cm, 76 kg). Unilateral movements of the eccentrically working hamstrings and the concentrically working quadriceps at 150°/s were captured by high-speed cameras. Peak power derived from isokinetic data was significantly higher (p < 0.01, d > 1.54) compared to the camera-based kinematic procedures. To achieve best accuracy, peak power should be derived from the camera-based joint angular velocity and the measured moment at time of peak power during the dynamometer’s isokinetic range of motion. A meaningful assessment of isokinetic joint power should incorporate a camera-based kinematic analysis to account for potential measuring inaccuracies owing to anatomical features, axis misalignment, and tissue deformation.     

The Effects of Passage of Time on Alumni Recall of ‘Student Experience’

‘Student experience’ has become a popular term with higher education managers but is theoretically under‐developed. This paper conceptualises student experience as a construction from memory and advances previous discussion within the higher education sector by distinguishing between recalled academic and social experience. The results of a predominantly quantitative survey of 883 alumni indicated that recalled academic experience had greater effect on subsequent loyalty attitudes and behaviours than recalled social experience. Cluster analyses indicated that alumni having strong ties with their university were more likely over time to identify with the recalled academic experience of their university, while those with weak ties were more likely to identify with recalled social experiences. Implications for development of alumni associations are made based on targeting groups with different levels of ties with the university.