The attainment of White and ethnic minority students in distance education

At UK institutions of higher education, the academic attainment of White students tends to be higher than that of students from other ethnic groups. The present study confirmed this trend in students who were taking courses by distance learning with the UK’s Open University. It was apparent in students of all ages apart from the youngest, and it was largely independent of their gender, academic background and socioeconomic circumstances, or the particular course being taken. Students’ interactions with teachers and other students are attenuated in distance education, and so the results suggest that the explanation for the attainment gap in ethnic minority students must be sought elsewhere than in the nature of their relationships with teachers and other students.     

King PARS,Academic Nebuchadnezzer

The Modern American College: Responding to the New Realities of Diverse Students and a Changing Society By Arthur W. Chickering and Associates San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, xvii + 783 pages, $27.95 Reviewed by James L. Bess

Teaching Values in College Richard L. Morrill San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1980, 169 pages, index, $13.95 Reviewed by Frederick Stirton Weaver     

First Experiences with Reading Primary Literature by Undergraduate Life Science Students

Learning to read and understand research articles (primary literature) is an important step in the enculturation of higher education students into the scientific community. We presume, based on ideas from the field of genre analysis, that it is important for the development of reading skills to become conscious of the rhetorical structures in research articles. So, we determined how well science students are able to identify 2 important elements of this rhetorical structure: conclusions and grounds. First-year undergraduate life science students who followed a course called ‘Biomedical Research’ made assignments in which they had to identify these 2 elements. We analysed the answers of 20 students in detail and compared their answers with 2 expert readers. Furthermore, we conducted task-based interviews with 4 students to gain more insight into their reading strategies and to determine how they identify conclusions and grounds. Our results show that students and experts defined conclusions and grounds in different ways. Students and experts agreed on the most important conclusion of the articles. However, students identified a wide range of sentences which were not seen as conclusions by the experts. The grounds students mentioned mostly matched their conclusions. Students sometimes failed to mention important grounds for a particular conclusion. In conclusion, our study shows the differences between student and expert readers of primary literature. Based on our results, we formulated criteria for the design of a teaching strategy that aims to improve students' skills for reading primary literature.     

Goals for Effective Schools: The View from the Field

This paper reports on findings related to the perceptions held by members of school communities with respect to the tasks and role of effective schools. The data are from a study conducted in Melbourne, Australia in 1990‐91. Findings from this research indicate that members of school communities: principals, teachers, school council members, parents and students believe that the tasks of an effective school are more than those related to the academic program and include the development of citizenship and self concept, personal development and employment skills and a concern for the educational development of all members of the school community.     

Managing Dualities in Planned Change Initiatives

Dualities play an important role in creating the conditions for change and managing planned change initiatives. Building on Seo, Putnam, and Bartunek's (2003) work, this study focuses on the dualities associated with managing change processes. A case study of a planned change process called the Circle of Prosperity Initiative, a multi-stakeholder dialogue designed to bring information technology to Indian country, was analyzed. Three dualities emerged regarding the structuring and management of the change initiative: (1) inclusion–exclusion, (2) preservation–change, and (3) centrality–parity. The findings suggested that these dualities were managed using Seo et al.'s (2003) strategy of connection. Notably, the strategy of connection relied heavily on the ability of change agents to set context within and between the different phases of the initiative and involved three specific practices for setting context setting: (1) commonplacing, (2) bounded mutuality, and (3) reflexive positioning.     

Task role ambiguity and conflict in supervisor‐subordinate relationships

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of hierarchical communication distortion on the task role perceptions of subordinates working in the context of a goal setting program. The study used empirical data collected from junior officers, managers, staff employees (N=32) and their executive supervisors (N=15) in one division of a national insurance company. This sample formed 32 supervisor‐subordinate dyads which were classified as “high” or “low” in hierarchical communication distortion. Subordinates in “high” distortion dyads experienced more role stress in terms of conflict and ambiguity than did subordinates in “low” distortion dyads.     

相干否定与经典否定

在情境中使用的否定,是相干否定;在世界中使用的否定,是经典否定.我首先给定了两个逻辑,一个是信息的基础相干逻辑L1,另一个是与L1联系紧密的逻辑系L2.其中,L2被同时包含世界和情境两者的类模型所刻画.当我们只考虑某个L2模型中包含情境的部分(连同可达关系,不相容关系,以及可分辨情境的集合)时,我们将得到一个L1的模型结构.在给定了一些关联L1的模型结构与可能世界的直觉条件后,我们得到了一类特殊的模型--被这类模型刻画的逻辑可以合理地将相干否定与经典否定关联,并且允许我们认为此二者是相容的.在这篇文章中,我首先给定了一个简单的信息逻辑--一个非常弱的相干逻辑.然后,我尝试对其中的命题联结词的真值条件使用经典的处理.以上处理我分两步完成.首先,使用Routley-Meyer的语义以及相关的信息解释.然后,我给出了另一个能够整合环境(或情境)与可能世界之间关系的逻辑.这一关系,可以理解为信息与真之间的形而上的关联.在文章的最后,我将指出在在相干逻辑中整合经典否定的好处.