government policies for technological innovation: criteria for an experimental approach

The United States Government has had only limited success in conducting complex experiments on incentives to promote technological innovation in the public and private sectors. Political pressure for early success has distorted programme objectives and encouraged policy demonstrations under conditions favouring ‘successful’ outcomes, rather than true policy experiments.A wide range of conceptual and practical problems must be confronted before undertaking a major programme of experimentation in national policy related to technological innovation. Experiments to test the effect of specific governmental policies on the rate of and direction of technological innovation should be rigorously selected and designed so as to provide valid results that are useful to decision-makers. The problem of selecting experiments can be dealt with by applying selection criteria that relate to the importance of the problem or barrier in the innovation process to be overcome, to the implications of implementing the policy that will over-come the problem, and to the technical design and feasibility of conducting the experiment. Suggested criteria include: (1) value of the information generated; (2) leverage of the solution; (3) importance of the target population; (4) political acceptability of the policy; (5) legal aspects of the policy; (6) target population support; (7) cost acceptability; (8) policy effectiveness and range; (9) policy equity; (10) understanding of the policy; (11) administrative feasibility; (12) ease of policy monitoring; (13) organizational structure for implementation; (14) sound experimental hypothesis; (15) careful experimental design; (16) experimental feasibility; (17) time scale of the experiment; (18) experimental cost, and (19) relative cost-effectiveness.The proposed selection criteria are demonstrated using a current experiment of the US National Science Foundation.     

Going to Extremes

任意说出一种极限运动的名字,你首先想到的是什么？蹦极？跑酷？比起这些．还有更加极限的,比如悬崖跳水、极限跳伞、极限熨衣……     

Lesson and learning studies—An edifying story

It would be difficult to find any pedagogical story that is comparable to that of jugyou kenkyuu (or lesson study in English) that has been practised for over a century in Japan in isolation and became a method that was used worldwide in less than 10 years. Because of its uniqueness and its history, it is an irrefutable challenge to understand what it is really about, how its basic aspects such as a lesson or teachers' knowledge and its development, the culture of education, the measurability of educational activities and other main aspects of education are or can be conceptualised and in which ways these can travel in a globalised arena of education. In this article, we try to give answers to these and some other relevant issues related to lesson study via the author's subjective view and individually‐constructed narrative.     

The family environment of sexual abuse: a comparison of natal and stepfather abuse

Data from 17 states, drawn from the 1983 National Study on Child Neglect and Reporting, were used to compare families in which a daughter had been sexually abused by a natal father or stepfather. While broad comparisons are made in terms of age and race of victims, as well as household composition, the primary focus is on familial stress factors. Given the lower incidence of natal father abuse and the assumption that natal fathers have stronger emotional links to their children and greater commitment to the father role, we predicted that when they did engage in sexual abuse, it would be in a family environment characterized by relatively high levels of personal, social, and economic stress. This was confirmed to the extent that natal father abuser families showed significantly higher levels of drug and/or alcohol abuse, marital problems, and insufficient income than did stepfather abuser families.     

Effects of cuing in an “irrelevant” context

Normally, retention of an avoidance response by a rat is impaired when the test context is novel or does not correspond to the training context. Experiment 1 demonstrates that such an impairment of test performance can be alleviated if a rat receives a cuing treatment or reminder of training in the novel test context prior to testing. Experiment 2 indicates that when rats receive avoidance training in one context and then receive a reminder of training in a novel context, they perform more poorly when tested in the training context than do animals that receive no reminder. This finding is discussed in relation to current theories of contextual influence over retention performance.     

Connecting university science experiences to middle school science teaching

Summary Science teachers naturally rely on their university science experiences as a foundation for teaching middle school science. This foundation consists of knowledge far too complex for the middle level students to comprehend. In order for middle school science teachers to utilize their university science training they must search for ways to adapt their college experiences into appropriate middle school learning experience. The criteria set forth above provide broad-based guidelines for translating university science laboratory experiences into middle school activities. These guidelines are used by preservice teachers in our project as they identify, test, and organize a resource file of hands-on inquiry activities for use in their first year classrooms. It is anticipated that this file will provide a basis for future curriculum development as the teacher becomes more comfortable and more experienced in teaching hands-on science. The presentation of these guidelines is not meant to preclude any other criteria or considerations which a teacher or science department deems important. This is merely one example of how teachers may proceed to utilize their advanced science training as a basis for teaching middle school science.     

Fairness in multicultural assessment systems

This paper is about fairness (equity) in large‐scale assessment systems within multicultural societies. It makes the key assumptions that fairness is fundamentally a sociocultural, rather than a technical, issue and that fair assessment cannot be considered in isolation from both the curriculum and the educational opportunities of the students. Equity is defined as a qualitative concern for what is just. This involves, but is not the same as, equality of opportunity and of outcome. In relation to large‐scale assessment four topics are addressed: the nature of the assessment system; recognizing experiences of different groups; cultural diversity; and monitoring group performance. The conclusion is that, while we can never achieve fair assessment, we can make it fairer. At the heart of this improvement process is openness about design, constructs and scoring which brings out into the open the values and biases of the test design process.     

Why children tell: a model of children's disclosure of sexual abuse

OBJECTIVE: The present study investigated variables associated with delay of disclosure of child sexual abuse and tested a model of time to disclosure. METHOD: Data were obtained for 218 alleged child sexual abuse victims whose cases had been referred to District Attorneys' Offices. Five variables were posited to influence the delay between an abusive event and children's disclosure of that event to a reporting adult: child's age, gender, type of abuse experienced (intrafamilial or extrafamilial), perceived responsibility for the abuse, and fear of negative consequences of disclosure. These variables were used to create a model of factors influencing children's disclosure of sexual abuse. RESULTS: Results indicated that age, type of abuse, fear of negative consequences, and perceived responsibility all contributed to predicting time to disclosure. There was significant support for the model, suggesting that children who were older, came from incestuous families, felt greater responsibility for the abuse, and feared negative consequences of disclosure took longer to disclose. CONCLUSIONS: Children's cognitive appraisal of others' tolerance of disclosure of child sexual abuse, and their own perceptions of responsibility for the abuse, are crucial to the decision to disclose. When evaluating children for possible sexual abuse, developmental, cognitive, and socio-emotional factors need to be taken into consideration.