DETECTING EXPERIMENTALLY INDUCED ITEM BIAS USING THE ITERATIVE LOGIT METHOD

A test for mental arithmetic was constructed, consisting of items written in Dutch (the subjects' native language), Spanish, and Roman numerals. A group of 286 subjects received some information on Spanish numerals. The group was randomly split into a Spanish Group and a Roman Group. The Spanish Group received further instruction on Spanish numerals, while the Roman Group got instruction on Roman numerals. Checks on the experimental manipulations showed that the Spanish Group had better knowledge of Spanish numerals than the Roman Group, whereas the Roman Group had better knowledge of Roman numerals. From the total test two subtests were constructed: a 30-item Dutch/Spanish subtest (15 items in Dutch and 15 in Spanish), and a 25-item Dutch/Roman subtest (15 items in Dutch and 10 in Roman). The Dutch items were unbiased between the Spanish and Roman groups, whereas the Spanish items of the Dutch/Spanish subtest were biased against the Roman Group, and the Roman items of the Dutch/Roman subtest were biased against the Spanish Group. The iterative logit method was applied to the two subtests. The method showed very good results in detecting biased items.     

Education and Life's Meaning

There are deep connections between education and the question of life's meaning, which derive, ultimately, from the fact that, for human beings, how to live—and therefore, how to raise one's children—is not a given but a question. One might see the meaning of life as constitutive of the meaning of education, and answers to the question of life's meaning might be seen as justifying (a particular form of) education. Our focus, however, lies on the contributory relation: our primary purpose is to investigate whether and how education might contribute to children's ability to find meaning in life or at least deal with the question. This issue is not only theoretically interesting (though relatively neglected)—it also has practical urgency. For people have a need for meaning that, if unfulfilled, leads to personal and potentially social crises—a need that often expresses itself first and strongly in adolescence; and there are reasons to have doubts about the contribution of today's traditional formal education system to the meaningfulness of children's (and future adults’) lives. We argue for the importance of frameworks of values, as well as for a greater emphasis on the affective dimension of meaning, though we reject pure subjectivism. The underlying purpose of this article, however, is not to argue for a particular comprehensive position, but to persuade philosophers of education of the importance of the issue of life's meaning in thinking about education today.     

Leadership and Strategic Management: keys to institutional priorities and planning*

Allocating and managing resources have always been important cornerstones of institutional leadership. Institutional resources include financial, physical and human components. Even in the best of times, it is a challenge to do this effectively. In times of diminished and shrinking resources, distributing these precious commodities across the institutions in the most equitable and productive manner is fraught with complications. As higher education funding streams expand and present more options, they also create new challenges. Leaders today must be well-versed in the emerging realms of philanthropy and entrepreneurialism. Beyond monetary resources, leaders and senior managers must monitor and understand the external environment in order to make discerning decisions about the viability of further infrastructure investments because of changing student demographics or the complexities of personnel within the dynamic culture of social organisations. This article will stress the need for leadership and an institutional planning process as essential prerequisites to effective resource allocations. Portugal will also be discussed as a case study.     

中情局官员回忆:国军残部撤离缅甸

1948年以后,中国大陆两股政治势力间的博弈出现转折性的变化,国民党军队开始习惯性溃败,战略要地轮番失守,大批军队和政府机关败退孤岛台湾。     

Teaching European Management to Student Business Engineers

This paper first examines the advantages of using inductive pedagogic methods to teach management to engineers, over the hypothetico-deductive model so typical of French further education generally. Then we shall attempt to describe the necessary conditions in which a student may be led to discover the complexity of a concrete management system; and this in two ways. First of all, by examining the nature of the system of interactions between students, managerial structures and the teacher and then by attempting to analyze how the mechanisms of skill transference work and what their limits are.     

Effects of Treatment of Hearing Loss in Middle‐Aged Persons with Down Syndrome: A Pilot Study

The extent to which therapeutic intervention of hearing loss may yield better communication and social interaction was investigated in a pilot study during seven months after treatment in twelve hearing impaired subjects with Down syndrome with a mean age of 50.6 years. Although according to spontaneous observations of staff subtle positive reactions to treatment occurred in five subjects, no significant improvement could be measured by means of objective methods. The influence of personal factors like degree of retardation and language development, severity and duration of hearing impairment, age, period of habituation and training, and environmental factors, is to be studied further.     

Modular Vocational Education and Training in Scotland and The Netherlands: Between specificity and coherence

Modularisation has frequently been advocated as a means to reform and modernise vocational education and training, to make it more flexible and responsive to economic, technological and social change, to take more account of individual differences and needs, and to improve its coherence and efficiency as a system. In this article developments in modularising vocational education and training in two countries-Scotland and The Netherlands-are compared. The analysis is restricted to modular initiatives within initial vocational education and training at a non-advanced level (that is at craft/technician level). Features and developments of the modular system in both countries seem to be closely related to strategies chosen to deal with the need to offer customised vocational (that is specific) training for various client groups, which at the same time does not limit opportunities for progression and transfer-the coherence of the system. In confronting the modular systems and strategies with these somewhat contradictory needs this comparative analysis draws on two perspectives: a sociological and a psychological, educationallearning theory. From these perspectives it might be argued that collaboration and/or certain characteristicsof modular vocational training offer a way out of the quandary of 'specificity' versus 'coherence'.     

M.C. Wittrock,a Giant of Educational Psychology

This is the introduction to a set of articles honoring the life and contributions of Merlin C. Wittrock. Wittrock's classic article, “Learning as a Generative Process,” originally published in the pages of Educational Psychologist in 1974, is reprinted, followed by comments from colleagues, friends, former students, and others on Professor Wittrock's lasting legacy.