Technical Education,the Performance of South Wales Industrialists and the Haldane Commission

The article begins with a brief introduction to the development of Welsh society and industry between 1870 and 1914. This is followed by a review of Welsh education, especially technical education, in that period, highlighting its backwardness and the factors accounting for that backwardness. The report of the Haldane Commission is then examined against a background of a brief statement of the ‘revisionist’ case. Against the British Retardation theory, the performance of south Wales' industrialists is assessed. This reveals that in contradiction to the ‘revisionist’ view that British industrialists did as well as could have been expected, such was not the case in south Wales.     

Hybrid Journals: Ensuring Systematic and Standard Discoverability of the Latest Open Access Articles

An important current challenge for research information providers is ensuring the automated discovery of Open Access (OA) content in hybrid journals. We found no evidence of discovery services that are able to systematically identify the crucially important free full-text availability of OA articles regardless of where and how such articles have been published (i.e., in fully OA journals or in hybrid journals). A solution is important because hybrid journals are proliferating and consequently the chances of missing OA articles is real and is happening. Nearly all of the major publishers now provide such journals in order to take advantage of recent changes in research funder requirements, and to be competitive in the new OA business model. By working with a group of scholarly publisher partners and by using standard metadata elements that publishers are already familiar with, we show a systematic and standardized manner to identify OA at the article level. Our proposal is to embed OA-related elements in the metadata freely exposed by publishers for aggregators and discovery services. For example, in the Table of Content (TOC) Really Simple Syndication feeds the publishers use to announce new journal issues and content. Based on the initial results obtained, we discuss the capabilities of our solution, and evaluate the impact produced by our application in the systematic discoverability of OA content from the participating hybrid journals, using an implementation done with the freely available journal current awareness service—JournalTOCs.     

Revisiting Zhang’s scale of transactional distance: refinement and validation using structural equation modeling

Transactional distance has been defined as barriers to students’ engagement with learning in the online environment. This research updates Zhang’s (2003) scale of transactional distance, which quantified the extent of the barriers, in light of the massive changes in today’s web-based learning environment. The resulting revised scale of transactional distance (RSTD) is a parsimonious version with 12 elements (compared to 31 original) that measure the transactional distance between student and teacher, student and student, and student and content. The RSTD has excellent factorial validity and reliability, yields better fit statistics, and is easier and less time-consuming to apply. The transactional distance values are unique predictors of student satisfaction, which is correlated to learning and persistence (a major concern with massive open online courses). This information can form the basis for a systematic approach to improving the design of today’s contemporary open, flexible, distance education courses and thus serve as a valuable tool for researchers and educators alike.     

Interfaith education: A new model for today’s interfaith families

With societal changes rapidly transforming cultures that had been largely homogenous, today’s multi-cultural – and in particular interfaith – families need new educational strategies to help them understand their cultural roots and identify and clarify what aspects of their heritages they wish to nurture and transmit to their children. This paper focuses on a new model for religious education, namely non-doctrinaire “dual-faith” education, which the principal author has helped to develop in the United States (US) through the Interfaith Community (IFC), a small, independent non-profit organisation created and led by dual-faith Jewish/Christian families. The model is premised on the notion that families can have two different faiths in one household and that – with respect and education – families can be harmonious, religion can be transmitted, and tolerance broadly nurtured. While the model is particular to the US and to families with Jewish and Christian heritages, its premises and structure have significant potential to be adaptable to other religious combinations and other cultures and countries. After reviewing relevant literature and situating the IFC model in the global and US contexts, the paper sets out to clarify the importance of the concept, describe its elements, and discuss its implications for religious education in this time of changing ethos and demography.