Reviewing the Progress of School Discipline Reform

In the 1990s and early 2000s, schools across the United States employed exclusionary discipline at increasing rates as a response to student infractions. Researchers studying school discipline reported on these increases and highlighted the fact that exclusionary discipline for students was associated with myriad other negative outcomes, including lower academic achievement, grade retention and drop-out, and even involvement with the juvenile justice system. Moreover, a related strand of research emerged, providing evidence that these consequences were not being levied evenly to different types of students. That is, marginalized students were far more likely to be faced with disciplinary consequences at school. For these and other reasons, policymakers and school leaders implemented some high-profile reforms to discipline policies in school districts across the country in an attempt to limit the use of exclusionary discipline. In this article, I introduce several of these reforms and briefly describe the early impacts of these changes to school discipline policy in locations such as Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the state of Arkansas. I conclude by summarizing what lessons we can derive from these studies and describe the implications for future work in this area.     

Conditioned demand and professional response

This article draws attention to two basic features of British higher education which may influence the workability of certain Leverhulme proposals. These are vertical integration and professionalism. It is suggested that a consideration of these is crucial given the nature of the Leverhulme strategy. Many of the Leverhulme proposals are grounded in assumptions about the behaviour of institutions and actors in British higher education. An examination of vertical integration and professionalism in the system indicates that such assumptions may be unfounded. The discussion focuses both on how the proposals themselves are shaped by the professionalism of British higher education, and on how the feasibility of the proposals may be affected by the system's vertical integration and professionalism. Both the basic proposals of Leverhulme as a whole as well as of the monographs on access, teachers and learning, and institutional change are examined. In concluding it is noted that the treatment of vertical integration and professionalism provide policy makers and reformers with important levers of control to grasp in the future.The author is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar with the Comparative Higher Education Research Group at the UCLA Graduate School of Education.     

Benefits adults experience through participation in continuing higher education

A cross-sectional study of McGill management certificate students investigated the benefits adults experience through continuing education. Four groups totalling 1,234 students were surveyed: entrants, graduates, alumni, and a group who had voluntarily withdrawn. Analysis of benefits anticipated by entrants provided a framework of six categories of benefits: career development, fulfilling external requirements, personal development, networking, gaining knowledge and personal fulfilment. The benefits reported by graduates match the goals of entrants, but the relative importance of the various benefits appears to change during the program. For entrants, career development ranks first as the primary motivation, while more of the graduates focus on personal development, and personal fulfilment. Both entrants and graduates emphasize the importance of gaining knowledge. The results were interpreted in terms of the empowerment provided by continuing education.Interesting differences by various student characteristics were explored. Although equally satisfied with the program's contribution to career development, women report slower advancement than men. Further differences by gender are that women experience more personal development and personal fulfilment. While there are no significant differences by age, students with no prior university education report higher gains in several areas. Knowledge gained, however, is highly valued regardless of prior education. It is those with several years of work experience and those who are most certain of their goals who report acquiring more knowledge than others. These findings have implications for admissions policy, program delivery and design, and support services.     

Pre‐Service Teachers' Perceptions of a Short‐Term International Experience Programme

Short‐term international experiences (STIE) are becoming a regular, sometimes required, feature of pre‐service language teacher education programmes. Often inappropriately termed ‘immersion programmes’, they aim to give teachers the opportunity to improve their language proficiency in the language they will teach, to develop their pedagogical knowledge and to engage with an international sociocultural environment with which they are not familiar. In this article we report on a study which investigated pre‐service English second language teachers' perceptions of a six‐week international experience in Auckland, New Zealand. The student teachers, who were enrolled in a postgraduate diploma in teaching at a Hong Kong university, participated in an academic programme as well as a series of social events and school visits. They were encouraged to reflect on their expectations and experiences and to write about these in a pre‐programme questionnaire, reflective journals and a summative programme evaluation. The teachers' articulations reveal that their expectations and experiences interrelate in complex, sometimes unexpected, ways. The findings have important implications for the coordinators of the programme at the host institution and also for those further afield who are involved in planning and managing similar STIE programmes.     

Enhancing rice resistance to fungal pathogens by transformation with cell wall degrading enzyme genes from Trichoderma atroviride

Three genes encoding for fungal cell wall degrading enzymes (CWDEs), ech42, nag70 and gluc78 from the biocontrol fungus Trichoderma atroviride were inserted into the binary vector pCAMBIA1305.2 singly and in all possible combinations and transformed to rice plants. More than 1800 independently regenerated plantlets in seven different populations (for each of the three genes and each of the four gene combinations) were obtained. The ech42 gene encoding for an endochitinase increased resistance to sheath blight caused by Rhizoctonia solani, while the exochitinase-encoding gene, nag70, had lesser effect. The expression level of endochitinase but exochitinase was correlated with disease resistance. Nevertheless, exochitinase enhanced the effect of endochitinase on disease resistance when the two genes co-expressed in transgenics. Resistance to Magnaporthe grisea was found in all kinds of regenerated plants including that with single gluc78. A few lines expressing either ech42 or nag70 gene were immune to the disease. Transgenic plants are being tested to further evaluate disease resistance at field level. This is the first report of multiple of expression of genes encoding CWDEs from Trichoderma atroviride that result in resistance to blast and sheath blight in rice.     

Variation as Unalikeability

This article discusses concepts of variability and suggests a possible alternative measure that appears to support some students’ intuition.     

The processing of informative feedback about multiple-choice test performance

From a cognitive perspective, informative feedback is assumed to be confirmatory or corrective. However, feedback is not always effective and errors persist. In cases where errors persist, an analysis of errors as well as correct responses is recommended in order to better understand the processing of informative feedback. A model of multiple-choice processing is introduced to provide the context for a consideration of the role of error analysis. Data from experiment 1 demonstrate the use of semantic retrieval cues in multiple-choice performance. While informative feedback improves post-test performance, it is difficult to demonstrate a differential effect for type of feedback. Experiment 2 suggests a threshold effect for informative feedback. Information beyond that which is necessary for the confirmation of a correct response and/or the correction of an error has a deleterious effect on post-test performance. Error analysis indicated a disproportionate number of perseverative errors when the use of a retrieval process was not required at post-test.