Policy change in Austrian higher education: indications of a new approach

Despite significant expansion in participation over the last three decades, Austrian higher education has been slow to change either its elitist self-concept or structure. But, as is the case elsewhere, the Austrian academic community is beginning to be confronted with such concepts as efficiency, strategic planning, deregulation, and performance evaluation. Inadequate admission policies, extreme overcrowding, and high dropout rates are but three factors placing pressure on Austrian higher education to reform. The system is not only in need of increased budget allocations, but also requires new policies to guide it into the 21st Century.     

Determining the level of inquiry in teachers' questions

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if an instrument, originally designed to classify levels of teachers' questions on the basis of logical operations, could be utilized to measure the level of inquiry present in a classroom discussion and to determine if the inquiry questioning behavior of the teacher influenced student achievement. The results of the study show that the modified classification scheme could accurately and reliably measure the inquiry level of teachers' classroom questions. The data also indicated that teachers who ask a greater proportion of high inquiry questions cause a greater change in students as measured by an achievement examination.     

Mergers and acquisitions: Their effect on the innovative performance of companies in high-tech industries

This study examines the post-M&A innovative performance of acquiring firms in four major high-tech sectors. Non-technological M&As appear to have a negative impact on the acquiring firm's post-M&A innovative performance. With respect to technological M&As, a large relative size of the acquired knowledge base reduces the innovative performance of the acquiring firm. The absolute size of the acquired knowledge base only has a positive effect during the first couple of years after which the effect turns around and we see a negative effect on the innovative performance of the acquiring firm. The relatedness between the acquired and acquiring firms’ knowledge bases has a curvilinear impact on the acquiring firm's innovative performance. This indicates that companies should target M&A ‘partners’ that are neither too unrelated nor too similar in terms of their knowledge base.     

Group Membership Influences More Social Identification Than Social Learning or Overimitation in Children

Group membership is a strong driver of everyday life in humans, influencing similarity judgments, trust choices, and learning processes. However, its ontogenetic development remains to be understood. This study investigated how group membership, age, sex, and identification with a team influenced 39- to 60-month-old children (N = 94) in a series of similarity, trust, and learning tasks. Group membership had the most influence on similarity and trust tasks, strongly biasing choices toward in-groups. In contrast, prior experience and identification with the team were the most important factors in the learning tasks. Finally, overimitation occurred most when the children's team, but not the opposite, displayed meaningless actions. Future work must investigate how these cognitive abilities combine during development to facilitate cultural processes.     

Modernising gender,civilising sex: perverse imaginary in the state feminist politics of Liu Yu‐hsiu

Abstract

The gender sexual politics of Liu Yu‐hsiu has been pivotal in the hegemonic ascendancy of Taiwan state feminism in recent years. Through an examination of Liu’s psychoanalytically mediated essays of cultural criticism, this article traces the contour of Liu’s sexual imaginary within the context of 1990s feminist and queer politics. Liu’s modernising project of gender equality, I argue, upholds heterosexual monogamy as a feminist ideal that seeks to purge all the masculine ills, including perversion and promiscuity. Meanwhile, queers and prostitutes come to be figured as the very negativity that must be repressed. Yet, like the Lacanian Real, they impinge on the symbolic order that Liu ordains as they thwart her desire to civilise sex.     

The Use of Telidon in Canada

Telidon is the result of the marriage between a computer and a telephone. There are multiple configurations that can be devised with its constituent elements: a TV monitor, a keyboard or keypad; a decoder; a telephone signal, wired or wireless; and a computer.