Degrees of value: comparing the contextual complexities of UK transnational education in Malaysia and Hong Kong

This paper reveals the complex diversity that underpins ostensibly similar transnational education programmes (TNE), through a comparison of UK TNE in Malaysia and Hong Kong. It draws on data from two different yet cognate studies on the role of UK universities in delivering higher education in Asia. Some fine-grained and informative differences between the ways in which ‘value’ in TNE is constructed in different host contexts is revealed. The paper brings to light the ‘voices’ of TNE students and graduates, which are very seldom heard. The arguments adapt and extend the concepts of education as a positional good, and as cultural capital. For various instrumental, intrinsic and personal reasons the authors discuss in detail, UK TNE is more highly valued in Malaysia than in Hong Kong. The paper makes a wider contribution to knowledge on the changing landscape of international higher education and the impact on social and personal (dis)advantage.     

PÄdagogische Zeitschriften Westdeutschlands

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Gender differences in the academic career

This study examines sources of satisfaction, indicators of stress, academic performance, and reward structure in the academic careers of male and female faculty at a major midwestern state university. Faculty pairs were selected from five academic divisions. A total of 58 matched pairs were identified. Of these, 63 faculty responded, yielding data for 23 matched pairs. Subjects were mailed the Academic Career Development Survey, consisting of 144 items. Results indicated that self-reported physical and mental health, and professional and personal life satisfaction were high for both males and females. Both males and females placed high importance on their career and on marriage/other intimate relationships; however, both reported high levels of dissatisfaction with these factors. Gender differences were found in both satisfaction and type of stress reported; no gender differences were found in composite teaching and research performance indices. Salary data, obtained for 42 matched pairs, indicated similar salary levels for men and women. Results were discussed with respect to prior research on gender differences and the academic career.     

Grasping in the pigeon (Columba livid): Stimulus control during conditioned and consummatory responses

Control of beak opening (gape) and peck location was examined in pigeons. Feeding pecks showed accurate guidance that positioned the seed between the beaks. At the moment of contact with the seed, gape was proportional to seed diameter, although pecks with gape less than seed diameter were more frequent following an increase in seed size during a meal. There were no substantial differences between pigeons trained to keypeck with autoshaping and those trained with operant conditioning procedures. With either procedure, water reinforcement produced keypecks with the beak closed; seed reinforcers of different sizes produced means for gape proportional to the seed diameters. Black or white circular stimuli of different sizes projected as conditioning signals had little influence upon gape, but a greater percentage of responses was directed to white stimuli. These results indicate that visual stimuli elicit and orient the peck, whereas the adjustment of gape also involves the somatosensory stimuli provided during previous experience with a particular reinforcer or food type.     

Maltreatment of children in The Netherlands: an update after ten years

Governmental consultation and advice on child abuse and neglect in the Netherlands started in 1972 as a two-year experiment with four offices for "confidential doctors" in four major cities of the country. After these two experimental years, a governmental institute for prevention of child abuse and neglect was organized. Over the ensuing decade the number of offices increased to ten, covering the whole country. The State Department of Welfare, Public Health, and Environment collected data from the confidential doctors and their coworkers every year. This study compares the data of the first year 1974 with those of 1983 in order to detect changing patterns over a 10-year period. The major changes are as follows: a threefold increase in cases, an extraordinary increase in cases of emotional maltreatment, an increase in detection of child fatalities but decrease in severity of physical abuse. Sexual abuse was hardly recognized in 1974 but gradually was recognized more frequently during the study decade and accounted for an alarming 7.2% of detected cases of maltreatment in 1983. No change was found in the social conditions of the family and the identity of the perpetrators--primarily fathers and/or mothers. A decrease was noted in the percentage of married parents. The increased percentage of single parents was primarily represented by mothers alone. An increase in the numbers of victims residing at home and a decrease in the need for children's homes as a temporary or permanent residence is attributed to aftercare. The discrepancy between the results of this voluntary notification system in the Netherlands and the results of a mandatory reporting system as used in the U.S.A. is still very high. The hope is that the government will decide to make reporting of maltreatment mandatory for everyone.     

Sex Differences in Spatial Competence: the ability of young children to map ‘primed’ unfamiliar environments

Abstract This paper reports on a study set up to investigate the effects of gender related differences in home range behaviour on the acquision of spatial and environmental skills amongst a group of children aged 8 to 11. The population was divided to form two groups (A and B) of similar sex composition and environmental experience. The children were informed that the aim of the project was to construct a map of an unfamiliar area which they were to visit. The two groups were ‘primed’ about their task in different ways, with children in Group B undertaking a slightly more complex exercise. The results show that whilst ‘priming’ has the effect of reducing disjunction between the spatial capabilities of boys and girls on simpler tasks, when the exercise is complicated boys do much better than girls in all but one of the spatial assessments. Such evidence lends further support to those who argue that the more extensive movements of boys through the environment leads to superior spatial ability. The educational implications of the results are considered.     

Developmental links of very early phonological and language skills to second grade reading outcomes: strong to accuracy but only minor to fluency

The authors examined second grade reading accuracy and fluency and their associations via letter knowledge to phonological and language predictors assessed at 3.5, 4.5, and 5.5 years in children in the Jyv?skyl? Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. Structural equation modeling showed that a developmentally highly stable factor (early phonological and language processing [EPLP]) behind key dyslexia predictors (i.e., phonological awareness, short-term memory, rapid naming, vocabulary, and pseudoword repetition) could already be identified at 3.5 years. EPLP was significantly associated with reading and spelling accuracy and by age with letter knowledge. However, EPLP had only a minor link with reading fluency, which was additionally explained by early letter knowledge. The results show that reading accuracy is well predicted by early phonological and language skills. Variation in fluent reading skills is not well explained by early skills, suggesting factors other than phonological core skills. Future research is suggested to explore the factors behind the development of fast and accurate decoding skills.     

Rats remember not wisely but too well

Rats were trained in a three-alternative spatial delayed matching-to-sample task in a starburst maze. Samples consisted of rewarded forced choices of one arm, and retention was indicated by rats’ returning to that arm after a 90-sec delay. If a rat made an error on its first choice, it was returned to the start compartment and allowed a second choice. Unlike in previous experiments with this task, all three arms were available during the animals’ second choices. The rats tended to perseverate in their second choices by returning to the arm that they had erroneously visited on their first choice. In Experiment 1, the accuracy of second choices following first-choice errors was below chance during the first block of sessions, when a 90-sec delay intervened between the first choice and the second choice, and at chance during the second block of sessions, when a short (5–6 see) delay intervened between first and second choices. In Experiment 2, long-delay and short-delay sessions were randomly presented to naive subjects. Similar results were obtained. In both experiments, the tendency to repeat the erroneous first choice was greater when long delays separated the two choices than when short delays were used. The results suggest that rats make their first-choice errors because they erroneously encode or remember the location of the sample and that they base their second choices on the same erroneous-memory. The increase in perseveration at long delays implies some kind of rehearsal-like mechanism that slows forgetting of the memory controlling the first choice.     

The role of educators of the deaf in the early identification of hearing loss

About 16,000 babies each year will be identified with hearing loss by age 3 months once universal newborn hearing screening becomes a reality. Identification of hearing loss in infancy, followed by appropriate intervention by age 6 months, can result in normal language development, regardless of degree of hearing loss. As the average age of identification of hearing loss moves downward toward 2 months, children with hearing loss will enter the educational system earlier and with language skills commensurate with those of their hearing peers. In order to provide appropriate services to children with hearing loss and their families, early interventionists will need to forge links to health care providers involved in universal newborn hearing screening programs, to have specialized training in deafness and hearing loss, and to have expertise in providing services to very young children and to children with hearing loss in the broad range from mild to profound.