Personal Bias or Government Bias? Testing the Hostile Media Effect in a Regulated Press System

This study examines the hostile media effect in relation topartisans’ perception of the slant of news coverage ina highly regulated press environment—Singapore. We foundthat partisans in Singapore perceived unbiased news to be infavor of the other side, while the nonpartisans perceived thesame news to be neutral. Our findings show that hostile mediaeffects can persist in a restricted press environment wherepeople are aware of the government's control of media coverage.We also found that partisans’ awareness of the government'scontrol of media information contributed to their perceptionof the article slant as well. Received for publication May 9, 2006. Accepted for publication December 5, 2006.     

Infant Neurosensory Development: Considerations for Infant Child Care

Infant brain development is a dynamic process dependent upon endogenous and exogenous stimulation and a supportive environment. A critical period of brain and neurosensory development occurs during the third trimester and into the “fourth” trimester (first three months of life). Disruption, damage, or deprivation in the infant’s social and physical environment can create permanent deficits in the developing neurosensory systems. Implications for infant child care environments are discussed, and a review of quality and standards in infant child care environments leads to a call for improvements to optimize child development.     

Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Inquiry： An Instrument to Assess It and Its Application to High School In-Service Science Teachers

It is argued that the lack of consensus on what constitutes an inquiry-based approach makes the generalization about it difficult, because the concept is relatively unspecific and vague. This problem can partially be solved by constructing a set of activities promoted by inquiry, thus defining the inquiry objectives for classroom and laboratory teaching. Five high school and college Mexican teachers＇ PICK （pedagogical inquiry/content knowledge） was documented and assessed by means of Loughran, Mulhall and Berry＇s （2004） l-CoRe （inquiry content representation） developed by the authors through a proposal of a set of seven inquiry activities. They were also interviewed to construct the professional and pedagogical experience repertoires, a second tool by Loughran et al. （2004） to document PICK. It was observed that all teachers interviewed have used inquiry to modify their students＇ way of thinking, mainly through question posing. Some of them employed research as their main tool to promote scientific inquiry but others mentioned the lack of time to do it. It is interesting to notice that in spite of the fact that inquiry is out of the curriculum in M6xico, the teachers make use of it to improve their teaching practice. According to their answers, their actions in the classroom or the lab were classified within the three general approaches expressed by Lederman （2004）： implicit, historical and explicit. It is concluded that a given teacher cannot be classified exclusively in one of them, because in his/her activities one general approach overlaps the others. The authors conclude that Lederman＇s classification has to be taken into account as an orientation to characterize a given activity of one teacher, even though the same teacher may use another activity characterized by other general approach. That is, Lederman＇s classification applies to characterize activities, not persons     

Private higher education in Australia

In the post World War Two era and prior to the mid 1980s Australia has been characterised by exclusive public provision, financing and regulation of higher education. The 1980s, however, have been marked by considerable turmoil which culminated in the 1988 White Paper. Circumstances provided by the reform of the higher education system, the booming overseas student market and unmet domestic demand have provided a window of opportunity for private providers. This paper charts the growth of private provision, federal and state government responses and the pressures for subsidy and regulation. The paper concludes that the policies of both levels of government are hastening the development of what Geiger (1988) defines as a peripheral private sector of higher education in Australia.     

Relating GTE and Knowledge-based Courseware Engineering: Some Epistemological Issues

The GTE approach to create instruction, as described by Van Marcke, is related with courseware authoring. ITS-approaches such as GTE and conventional courseware authoring may seem diametrical approaches to the generation of instruction. Authoring, if carried out in a principled, systematic, and method-supported way has been called Courseware Engineering. In research on Courseware Engineering the two authors have attempted to extend Courseware Engineering into Knowledge-based Courseware Engineering. This approach to authoring has much in common with GTE. They concern the application of knowledge-based methods and techniques for the generation of instruction. There are basic differences in viewpoints though and an epistemological analysis is applied in order to make correspondences and differences with respect to shared problem issues visible. The analysis shows that from a technical point of view a symbiosis of both approaches might be feasible and worthwhile to attempt. Differences in vision on the role of the human in authoring remain though.     

A Structural Model of Educational Aspirations

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a model to predict educational aspirations of Canadian adolescents. Participants were a national sample of 4,034 students from grades 8–13 (2,037 males, 1,973 females). Results of a modified structural model included three sets of influences: a) a background factor comprised of parental occupation and education; b) a family involvement factor consisting of parental personal and school-based involvement with adolescents; and c) a personal factor with school marks, school and course perceptions, extracurricular reading and parental educational expectations as indicator measures. Educational aspirations was the main outcome variable. Results indicated that the personal factor had a strong direct influence on educational aspirations ( = 1.17, p < .001, R² = .76). The effects of the background and family involvement factors on educational aspirations were mediated through the personal factor. Additional analyses performed in order to test the relationships obtained in the model, revealed several significant interactions amongst the three predictor factors and educational aspirations. The findings emphasize the importance of efforts to enhance the educational aspirations of adolescents through targeted change of modifiable environmental and personal factors.     

Show me the money! An empirical analysis of mentoring outcomes for women in academia

This paper discusses and comprehensively evaluates a mentoring scheme for junior female academics. The program aimed to address the under‐representation of women in senior positions by increasing participation in networks and improving women’s research performance. A multifaceted, longitudinal design, including a control group, was used to evaluate the success of mentoring in terms of the benefits for the women and for the university. The results indicate mentoring was very beneficial, showing that mentees were more likely to stay in the university, received more grant income and higher level of promotion, and had better perceptions of themselves as academics compared with non‐mentored female academics. This indicates that not only do women themselves benefit from mentoring but that universities can confidently implement well‐designed initiatives, knowing that they will receive a significant return on investment.     

Coupling Admissions and Curricular Data to Predict Medical Student Outcomes

The relative impact of admissions factors and curricular measures on the first medical licensing exam (United States Medical Licensing Exam [USMLE] Step 1) scores is examined. The inclusion of first-year and second-year curricular measures nearly doubled the variance explained in Step 1 scores from the amount explained by the combination of preadmission demographic characteristics and admissions factors. In addition, the relationship between the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) and Step 1 scores becomes counterintuitive in models that include curricular measures, where students with the lowest combined admissions metrics (MCAT, grade-point average) score higher, on average, than those with some of the highest admissions metrics. Overreliance on traditional metrics in admissions decisions can exclude students from medical school who have the ability to succeed.     

The relationship between student-generated learning issues and self-study in problem-based learning

A major assumption of problem-based learning (PBL) is that learning issues, generated by students while discussing a problem, are used as guides for self-directed learning activities. This assumption, though basic to PBL, has never been tested. At the University of Limburg, the Netherlands, two procedures have been developed that reflect the extent to which students are able to identify important learning issues given a particular problem, and whether subsequent, independent, learning corresponds with these learning issues. The focus of the present article will be on the relationship between the two. We have explored to what extent student-generated learning issues are a major factor influencing the nature of students' self-study, or whether other factors may be involved in decisions on what to study and how much time to spend on topics selected. First, the production of learning issues was studied and represented as the percentage of overlap between learning issues raised by students and pre-set faculty objectives for each problem. The second procedure consisted of the administration of a Topic Checklist (TOC) which purports to measure students' actual self-directed learning activities. The TOC consists of a list of topics specifying the intended course content. Students were asked to indicate on a five-point Likert scale how much time they had spent studying each topic and to what degree they had mastered that topic. Third, learning issues and TOC topics were compared directly in a qualitative sense. Comparisons between the procedures revealed that a low proportion of variance of TOC scores could be predicted from the percentage of faculty objectives identified for each problem and the direct match between learning issues and TOC scores. It is concluded that scrutinizing student-generated learning issues and topics covered during self-study may provide information about what content is covered by students in tutorial groups. The discrepancy between the results of the measurements suggests, however, that learning issues produced during group discussion are not the sole source on which students base self-study decisions. Several other factors may be involved, such as tutor guidance, content already covered in previous units, issues raised during sessions with resource persons, and the nature of the learning resources available. Therefore, the relationship between learning issues and content covered during self-study is not as straightforward as is suggested.     

Restructuring of mainstream sociometry with learning disabled and nonhandicapped students

Sociometric ratings assigned by and to 50 elementary school students with learning disabilities and 50 nonhandicapped elementary school students (in matched pairs) were compared in this study. In addition, traditional sociometric status applied to social impact and social preference was also examined. Results showed that the matched pairs did not differ significantly in assigned status to their peers, but differed significantly in acceptance and rejection received from their shared classmates. Students with learning disabilities and nonhandicapped students differed significantly in social preference, but not in social impact.