Successful Programs for Undergraduate Women in Science and Engineering: Adapting versus Adopting the Institutional Environment

This article focuses upon programs for undergraduate women in science and engineering, which are a strategic research site in the study of gender, science, and higher education. The design involves both quantitative and qualitative approaches, linking theory, method, questions, and analyses in ways not undertaken previously. Using a comprehensive, quantitative, cross-institutional, and longitudinal method, two extreme groups of programs are distinguished: those associated with the “most successful” and “least successful” outcomes in undergraduate degrees awarded to women in science and engineering. Qualitative analyses of interview data with key players in the programs in these two groups point to ways in which definitions of issues, problems, and solutions diverge (as well as converge), and thus to conceptual underpinnings that have important real-life consequences in these organizational settings of higher education. The programs that regard issues, problems, and solutions of women in science and engineering as rooted in “institutional/structural-centered,” as opposed to “individual/student-centered,” perspectives are associated with the most positive outcomes in undergraduate degrees awarded to women in science and engineering.

Recognising Prior Learning: Understanding the Relations Among Experience, Learning and Recognition from a Constructivist Perspective

This article discusses the relation between experience and learning in the context of recognition of prior learning (RPL) and from an experiential constructivist perspective. The study is based on a case of in-service training, based on RPL, in the care sector for elderly people. The data consist of interviews with actors in this process, which have been analysed with a qualitative interpretative approach. The results show how prior learning plays a central role in the training process, both on an individual and a collective level. The participants’ prior learning is taken as the starting point, particularly in learning conversations where prior learning is made visible and used, and where participants learn from each other. Further, new learning is taking place as a consequence of the recognition process, and the study particularly highlights how prior experiences could be the basis of new learning in a process of reflection and discussion.     

25 Years of Cooperation in Polymer Science:Looking Back and Forward

My feeling is that we are on a good road,which has its origin in the history of our interaction, and leads straight ahead, into a new quality of research culture, resting on a sound basis of mutual trust and friendship.     

Ein Fremdenrecht für Wissenschaftler und Auslandsstudierende?

Das Fremdenrechtspaket 2007 führte auch im Bereich des Aufenthalts von Studierenden und Wissenschaftlern zu einschneidenden ?nderungen. Von universit?rer Seite wird h?ufig kritisiert, die neuen – tendenziell restriktiveren – Regelungen beeintr?chtigen die Internationalit?t und Mobilit?t der ?sterreichischen Universit?ten. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht den Inhalt der einschl?gigen Regelungen, beleuchtet deren Auslegung durch die Praxis kritisch und zeigt auch aus rechtspolitischer Sicht m?gliche ?nderungsvorschl?ge auf.     

Information-system structure by communication-technology concepts: A cybernetic model approach

Information-systems are classified into two types, termed “Evidence-of Existence” and “Presentation” of information. The objective of the evidence-type system lies in the domain of documentation and retrieval of information. The structure of this system-type is developed, with application of cybernetic concepts, as an isomorphic model in analogy to the system-structure of communication technology. The latter postulates three criteria of structuring: (1) Source-Channel-Sink, with input-output characteristics, (2) Filter-type communication-channel, (3) Reversable code. These criteria are applied to the structuring of information-systems of the evidence-of-existence type. For the purpose of two-way communication the information-systems have to be represented by closed-loop models. The selective-retrieval requirements necessitate the system-channel to be a filter of information. These information-filters are implemented by keyword-phrases, being identical with the codewords. They yield a uniquely decodable code which is totally reversible to adequately serve both the documentation and the retrieval of documents. It is proven that hierarchic information-systems, applying categorization or subject-heading objects of information, do not meet the mandatory code-requirements. The inherent coding-deficiencies of hierarchic systems generate intolerable retrieval ambiguities. The same critique applies to the thesaurus concept. The development of a novel species of thesaurus is suggested, realizing a kind of Linnéan encyclopedia of general human knowledge, presenting all relevant interrelations of objects of knowledge. Such thesaurus would provide the much needed support for formulating efficient search queries. Other relevant features of communication technology, like the information-potential, should be isomorphically transformed into information-system models.     

CURIOSITY AND EXPLORATORY BEHAVIOUR IN ABILITY DEVELOPMENT

Effective diagnosis and appropriate fostering of giftedness require accurate knowledge of the nature and course of intellectual development. However, psychological theories developed until now have not paid sufficient attention to the influence of children on their own development. The study reported here shows that cognitively gifted children who display well developed exploratory behaviour interact with their environment in an active way. Confidence in exploring the environment, which children acquire as a result of favourable social processes, facilitates the emergence of problem solving behaviour. As a result, such children are able to expand their cognitive abilities independently on the basis of their own activity. The task for educators is to promote exploratory behaviour and systematically expand the child's repertoire of behaviours through the application of appropriate interaction strategies.     

Innovative Work Behaviour in Vocational Colleges: Understanding How and Why Innovations Are Developed

In workplaces, innovative products and processes are required to address emerging problems and challenges. Therefore, understanding of employees’ innovative work behaviour, including the generation, promotion, and realisation of ideas as components of this behaviour is important. In particular, what fosters innovation development and what triggers these activities is important for its promotion and adoption in contemporary workplaces. To investigate how and why innovations at work are developed and enacted, an explorative study comprising structured interviews with vocational teachers in the German vocational system was conducted. The teachers reported on activities they undertook during the development of a specific innovation. Furthermore, they provided information on factors that made this innovation necessary and that they were activated by. The study indicates that even when opportunities for innovation development existed in a workplace, the needs and goals of teachers were pivotal for these opportunities to be recognised and teachers’ innovative work behaviour to be triggered. By analysing vocational teachers’ work activities, we found that the development of innovations was a complex, iterative and primarily social process. By encouraging teachers to act on opportunities for change and by establishing a collaborative structure at schools, innovation development can be facilitated. We also found that throughout the development of an innovation, reflection played an important role. If the importance of reflective activities is acknowledged by workplaces such as these participants’ vocational schools, this not only fosters innovations but also the teachers’ professional development.