R&D spillovers, patents and the incentives to innovate in Japan and the United States

National surveys of R&D labs across the manufacturing sectors in the US and Japan show that intraindustry R&D knowledge flows and spillovers are greater in Japan than in the US and the appropriability of rents due to innovation less. Patents in particular are observed to play a more central role in diffusing information across rivals in Japan, and appear to be a key reason for greater intraindustry R&D spillovers there, suggesting that patent policy can importantly affect information flows. Uses of patents differ between the two nations, with strategic uses of patents, particularly for negotiations, being more common in Japan.     

To enter the castle of fear: engendering children's story writing from home to school at KS2

This paper describes a small‐scale writing project in which a class of KS 2 primary pupils were invited to import their own narrative interests into a task designed by their teacher and the researcher within the constraints of the National Literacy Strategy. By employing an adventure genre, based on problem and puzzle solving, pupils were encouraged to introduce familiar scenarios and characters from their favourite stories in books, comics, videos or computer games. The work produced has been analyzed to highlight the different ways in which boys and girls engaged with key aspects of narrative and how this enabled discussion of gendered literacy practices in which boys and girls held an equal stake. The author discusses the importance of developing strategies by means of which children's understanding and transformations of their preferred modes of narrative pleasures can be housed within the current literacy framework.     

Discipline and rules in four Hong Kong kindergarten classrooms: a qualitative case study

Classroom discipline is a topic of international interest and teachers are bombarded with advice regarding how to and why they should manage children’s behaviour in their classrooms. This paper draws on data related to classroom discipline gathered from a detailed classroom observation schedule, teacher interviews, and field notes with four purposively selected kindergarten teachers working in Hong Kong with children aged 5–6 years. The findings of this qualitative case study show that the teachers were concerned about disciplining children to ensure good behaviour. They expected all children to follow the rules and used characteristic discipline strategies such as stating expectations and ‘praising the opposite’ to maintain good behaviour. The paper discusses these findings in light of the Westernisation of kindergarten teaching practices in Hong Kong.     

Conceptions of Workplace University Education

This article examines how academic staff involved in the workplace supervision of students in vocational courses conceive of the workplace experience. Five conceptions have been identified which range from a view that the placement is about students picking up relevant skills in the workplace, to a view that the workplace experience is about giving students the opportunity to learn, to do and to question, by working collaboratively with the university and the workplace on relevant problems. The article suggests there is a relationship between these conceptions and the quality of student learning resulting from the experience. Where the workplace is seen as a simple picking up of skills there is least evidence of development and satisfaction. Where the experience is seen as an opportunity to help students engage with salient issues by working collaboratively with employers, there is most evidence of development and satisfaction. There is a clear parallel between this study of workplace supervision and the work of Prosser, Trigwell and Taylor [Learning and Instruction, 4, 217–231, 1994] on conceptions and approaches to teaching in the more conventional tertiary teaching setting of the lecture theatre.     

Teachers as metacognitive role models

This paper draws on data collected during a longitudinal collaborative project with teachers in England from schools and further education colleges. The project investigated ‘Learning to Learn’ in partnership with teacher–researchers with a focus on how metacognitive awareness can be improved by enquiring into creative combinations of pedagogy, environment and learners’ dispositions. The paper is an attempt to make clear the theoretical underpinnings of our belief that the project teachers were enacting something different, something metacognitive. We present a pragmatic model of metacognition development based on ideas collaboratively produced across the project. The five cycles of development are exemplified from the pedagogic and the professional learning perspective with quotes, vignettes and case study excerpts. We show a catalytic relationship between the pedagogies used by the teachers to develop their students’ metacognition and the teachers’ own learning and metacognitive knowledge and skilfulness.     

Effects of student anonymity-nonanonymity on the factor structure of a teacher rating form

Factor analysis of an instructor rating form administered to three successive student and teacher populations revealed a reasonably consistent factor structure across analyses. In one of the three administrations, students were asked to sign the evaluation form; in this case, substantial changes in proportions of common variance appeared for the first two factors when comparing anonymous versus nonanonymous conditions. Results are discussed in terms of methods for use of student ratings to improve instruction.