ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION OF INTELLECTUALLY GIFTED STUDENTS WHEN CONFRONTED WITH CHALLENGING AND UNCHALLENGING TASKS

Two groups of gifted adolescents solved two similar intelligence tests with differing levels of task difficulty in reverse order. Under both conditions the performance level on the less complex test was much lower, a result not observed in a control group of average intelligence. Behavioural observations revealed that the low performance of the gifted students was combined with lack of effort. This performance pattern is discussed with respect to recent postulates of achievement motivation theory, which empasize the impact not only of the achievement motive, but also of the informational value of a given task for evaluating own level of ability. It is argued that the perceived informational value of the easier test was not high enough to create an incentive for the gifted students to perform at the highest possible level     

Collaborative research for sustainable learning: the case of developing innovation capabilities at Volvo Cars

This paper aims to make a contribution to the stream of literature on action research by describing a longitudinal collaborative research project which evolved out of a long-term, participation partnership with Volvo Cars. The collaboration was aimed at developing innovation capabilities in the company and accumulating knowledge on how capabilities are developed. The paper provides insights into the design of collaborative research projects to enable mutual, sustainable learning. It draws on key notions in the literature on collaborative management research and action learning, highlighting the research design of the project at Volvo Cars and its relations to action learning. The paper describes how the research design opened the way to establishing a learning system at Volvo Cars while simultaneously generating new scientific knowledge within the area of innovation capabilities. The paper provides rich and detailed data on a collaborative research setting and highlights key aspects related to organizing and undertaking collaborative research.     

The Multiple Faces of Visual Arts Education

This article identifies recent, mainly Nordic, research approaches to visual arts education. A concept map was developed as a heuristic tool in order to highlight salient traits and blind spots. Contemporary research typically has its origin either in education or in the art world, with an emphasis either on art as language or on art as text. These two dimensions were used to organise the studies and to select representative exemplars in different domains. The framework helped to chart the knowledge base of, and research approaches to, visual arts education. However, the result of blending subject matter and pedagogy tended to be a ‘mixture’ of viewpoints rather than emerging domains of subject‐specific pedagogical knowledge (Lee Shulman: an ‘amalgam’).     

With Tools and Strategies Teachers Use in Online Courses： A Mexican Public University Case

The rapid development of ICT （information technology and communication） in the last two decades has changed society substantially as a whole. For higher education institutions, the external environment pressure to incorporate ICT in their educational and administrative processes has forced them to invest in resources for infrastructure and training. In addition, teachers have found that they can use technology in their teaching, but lack of full knowledge of how to use it effectively from a pedagogical point of view. The incorporation of new education modalities depends largely on the contextual variables prevailing in the institution and teachers. In UABC （Autonomous University of Baja California）, the early days of online education go hack to 1996, so the study period was from 1996 to 2009. An online survey was designed to fmd out the teachers＇ backgrounds and involvement in online education, their experience as online teachers, and the tools and practices used. Of 97 teachers who were identified with some experience in online teaching, 70% responded to the Survey （68）. It was found that the highest percentage （33%） of teachers who responded the survey started teaching online between 2003 and 2006. 56% of teachers have been teaching between one and five online courses. On the other hand, most teachers recognized that 30%-79% of the content of their courses were online based. The most popular learning management system used is moodle followed by blackboard in teachers＇ preference. In general, teachers expressed using the three main communication tools of online education： forums, chat and e-mail, favoring the use of e-mail. The communication slrategies teachers often use in their courses promoted student-student and student-teacher interaction. In their evaluation strategies, most said that they used self-assessment, rubrics and to a lesser extent online exams and co-evaluation. The results show that most teachers who have been involved in online education in UABC campus have expressed havi     

Excellence of analysis to diversity of advocacy: The multiple roles of the Leverhulme study into the future of higher education

The Leverhulme programme of study into the future of higher education is an impressive analytical effort carried through with expediency and allowing for wide participation. However, the programme is not only an ambitious exercise in policy analysis and unorthodox planning. It also involves processes of bargaining and policy advocacy. But the demands of these different roles have not been openly examined. Thus the programme has unnecessarily rendered itself open to criticism. In particular, many of the recommendations echo a consistent plea for new institutional arrangements for central co-ordination and top-down management and control. These recommendations, however, have received little or no underpinning and are actually at odds with some of the most qualified studies of the Leverhulme programme itself. Furthermore, the programme has tended to neglect two of the most urgent tasks of policy analysis, namely to outline a range of available options - rather than to produce a broad consensus view - and to clearly spell out major value tradeoffs involved - rather than to assure that there are no significant drawbacks attached to the options being advocated.Prepared when the author was a Visiting Scholar of the Comparative Higher Education Research Group, University of California, Los Angeles. The author is indebted to the Director of the Group, Professor Burton Clark, for incisive comments on some of the issues raised by the Leverhulme Programme and to Dr. Gary Rhoades of the same Group for helpful comments on a previous draft of the article.     

Power,Perceptions, and Relationships: A Model of Co-Teaching in Higher Education

Co-teaching has historically been used in K–12 education to provide students with disabilities access to general curriculum; therefore, much of the co-teaching literature has focused on the K–12 population. Research on collegiate co-teaching has been more limited and largely focused on the advantages and disadvantages of co-teaching, omitting important factors that affect relationships between partners. This qualitative study involved seven interviews of co-teachers of graduate and undergraduate classes in order to better understand interactions between college-level co-teaching dyads. Data analysis revealed themes of power and authority structures, dynamics of co-teaching relationships, and co-teachers' perceptions related to advantages of co-teaching, disadvantages of co-teaching, and student experiences. The researchers developed the Circular Model of Collegiate Co-Teaching, an original model to explain how these themes and subthemes are interrelated and affect each other. Specific best practices and new insights for collegiate co-teaching practice are discussed.     

Selection for special education services: the role of gender and socio-economic status

Children from some demographic groups disproportionately receive special education (SE) services. Due to methodological shortcoming in existing work, it remains unclear whether this is due to real differences in academic needs or cultural selection/bias. Hence, in a community sample of 1250 Norwegian children, we examined the role of third grade SE services, academic test scores, behavioural problems, and teacher’s level of helplessness in mediating the effect of family socio-economic status (SES) and students’ gender on fifth-grade SE services. Results revealed no direct effects of either gender or SES on fifth-grade SE, but four mediated pathways were identified: (1) Boys had a greater likelihood of receiving fifth-grade SE services when (a) they previously received SE and (b) they experienced more ADHD symptoms, both in third grade. (2) Students from low-SES families were more likely to receive SE services in fifth grade when (a) they performed poorly in math in third grade and (b) their teacher reported greater feelings of helplessness when teaching these students. The findings are discussed with respect to the differential-needs hypothesis, mechanisms of cultural selection and the possibility of gendered selection for SE at younger ages.     

When transnational curriculum policy reaches classrooms – teaching as directed exploration

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to explore how education policy that is both enabled and constrained by transnational policy flows and national policy built up by social, cultural and historical traditions are enacted through curriculum at the classroom level. The focus is on how policy rationality embedded in the structure and content of curriculum is transformed into certain rationalities in classroom teaching. By understanding lessons as ‘curriculum events’, the study reveals a dominant classroom discourse of recitation and similar triadic communication patterns, which is in accordance with other classroom studies. However, in the article it is argued that the version of teaching that emerges in this study, interpreted in a broader context of an international standards movement, can be understood in terms of directed exploration based on the teacher’s role as an explorer of what the students know, think and understand in relation to the acquisition of knowledge prescribed in the curriculum’s knowledge requirements. Even though the form of recitation is well known, the reason for choosing this teaching repertoire is somewhat new and can be related to the teacher authoring a basic oral text in accordance with assessment standards.