Implementing and sustaining educational reforms: the case for little “r”

The increasing importance of schools and learning in the changing patterns of work and society is widely recognized. However, implementing and sustaining educational reforms pose major problems in all countries. This paper briefly: (1) summarizes conceptual trends in implementing educational change, (2) reviews the complexities of educational policy and the changing patterns of educational governance and management common to many countries, (3) discusses the evolving roles of researchers in this shifting environment, and (4) makes an argument for the utility of certain kinds of research and evaluation or what the author calls ‘little r,’ with particular attention directed toward the contribution of little r in developing schools as learning organizations.

Problem Solving Academic Workloads Management: A University Response1

Universities are challenged to maintain a work environment where academic staff fulfil traditional academic duties while responding to a diverse student population, a competitive research environment, and an escalation of administrative tasks within an accountability‐based climate. This paper analyses the development and implementation of a workloads policy at a New Zealand university through a joint university management and staff union initiative. The workloads policy was built on the principles of equity, transparency, reasonableness, safety and acceptability to staff. The integrity and effectiveness of adoption is evaluated through analyses of work requirements, workloads models and the findings from case studies of implementation by six diverse units from across the university. Based on our evaluation, we highlight aspects of the policy and procedures that have promise and suggest modifications where particular processes and outcomes fell short of stated goals for institutional change.     

Student audiences for international broadcasts

This field experiment identified two types of television programmers—High Risk and Low Risk. Information processing differed in judgment‐formation and decision‐making conditions.     

Attaining information literacy: An investigation of the relationship between skill level,self-estimates of skill,and library anxiety

Competency theory predicts a miscalibration between students' self-assessments of their information literacy skills and their actual skill level. This study investigates whether such a disparity is evident among incoming freshmen who test as non-proficient on a standardized test of information literacy. In addition, this study analyzes Information Literacy Test scores and library anxiety test scores to provide preliminary data on whether library anxiety is related to information literacy skill attainment. Findings reveal that the relationship between information literacy skills and self-assessments predicted by competency theory are evident in the domain of information literacy. This study did not find an association between information literacy skill scores and total library anxiety scores. However, a significant negative correlation between information literacy scores and the subscale “knowledge of the library” indicates that as information literacy scores rise, anxiety scores related to a lack of knowledge of the library fall. The findings suggest that traditional information literacy instruction may not be effective with non-proficient students, who are unlikely to see themselves as needing or benefiting from such instruction.