Praxis und Verhältnis interner und externer Evaluation im Schulsystem im internationalen Vergleich

The overview article deals with the interaction of internal and external evaluation within the current paradigm of school governance. The actual practice of both approaches and the current state of research about the effects on school development is described. Both evaluation approaches are less focused on aspects of school output such as student performance, and more on school processes such as school management or the quality of teaching. External evaluation in the form of school inspection mainly fulfills the function of accountability and the identification of weak schools. Internal evaluation is probably a better way to achieve school development. However, the necessary competence to use internal evaluation as a systematic process of quality management for which each individual school takes responsibility is currently underdeveloped. Considerations about the future relationship between internal and external evaluation focus on using external evaluation as a kind of “meta-evaluation”. But before external evaluation can build on results of internal evaluation in this way, a broad capacity building in schools and a different understanding of the role of inspectors are necessary.     

Changing ideas about the periodic table of elements and students' alternative concepts of isotopes and allotropes

The Periodic Table of Elements (PTE) is one of the organizing principles in chemistry. Originally it was a list of elements (as substances). Later, the PTE developed into a list of atoms of the elements. However, isotopes and allotropes are difficult to integrate into the PTE. Therefore, difficulties in understanding these terms can be expected. The investigation set off to study secondary school students' concepts of isotopes and allotropes and how the concepts are linked to the PTE. Three specific research questions were addressed: (a) How do secondary school students describe the relationship between fundamental particles constituting an atom? (b) How do they conceive isotopes? and (c) What are students' concepts of graphite and diamond? Multiple choice items were given to 3074 senior high school students. In addition, six interviews were conducted with senior high school students. The data analysis revealed students' alternative concepts, which distinguished between standard atoms and atoms of isotopes. Standard atoms contain neutrons and protons in equal numbers and are more stable. The atomic masses are expressed as integers. Moreover, students considered graphite and diamond as isotopes. The analysis of the results shows that students actively tried to make sense of what they had experienced. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 257–277, 2003     

Streamlining high‐school homework

Western Youth Meets Eastern Culture. By Frances G. Sweeney, Emily Fanning Barry, and Alice E. Schoelkopf. Columbia University, 1932. Pp. xvi + 335.

Journalistic Vocations. By Charles Elkins Rogers. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1931. Pp. ix + 354.

Educational Views of Benjamin Franklin. By Thomas Woody. New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Co. 1931. Pp. ix + 270.

The Austrian Educational Institutes. By Beryl Parker. Vienna and Leipzig : Austrian Federal Publisher for Education, Science, and Art, 1931. Pp. 12 + 184.

Secondary Education. By Herbert G. Lull. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1932. Pp. xxii + 356.

Case Studies of Normal Adolescent Girls. By Elsie M. Smithies. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1933. Pp. ix + 284.

The Road to Health. Books I and II. By Bundesen &; Manry. New York: Laidlaw Brothers, 1932. Pp. 96 + 127.

Our Neighbors Near and Far. By Carpenter. Book One. American Book Company.

English Practice Books. Books 3, 4, and 6. By Fennek and Madden. The American Book Company.

The Art of Educational Research. By Harold H. Abelson. New York: World Book Company, 1933. Pp. xi + 332.

Educational Psychology. By Harry L. HoixingsworTh. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1933. Pp. xvi + 540.

Arithmetic Workbook, Grade I. By Clifford B. Upton. New York: American Book Company, 1933. Pp. 128.

Clothing. By Friend and Shultz. Pp. x + 300. Living in Our Homes. By Friend and Shultz. Pp. xviii + 274. New York : D. Appleton and Co., 1933.

Lina Sarger. By Marque Maier. Boston: The Christopher Publishing House, 1932. Pp. 249.

Study Guide in Secondary Education. By Edgar M. Draper and Alexander G. Roberts. New York : The Century Co., 1933. Pp. xi + 151.

Survey of Higher Education in Maine. By the University of Maine. Pp. x + 430.

Archery Simplified. By Phillip Rounsevelle. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1931. Pp. vii + 120.

The Dawn of Literature. By Cam, Holliday. New York : Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Pp. 377.

Problem Solving in Arithmetic. By Leon Nelson Neulen. New York City: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1931. Pp. v + 87.

A Text‐Book of Physics. Fourth Edition. By Louis Bevier Spinney. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1931. Pp. v + 679.

The Junior College. By Walter C. Eells. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931. Pp. xxviii + 833.

Realism in American Education. By William Setchel Learned. Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1932. Pp. 2 + 70.

Paraguay. By Arthur Elwood Elliott. New York City : Teachers College, Columbia University, 1931. Pp. v + 210.

Modern Business Geography. By Ellsworth Huntington and Sumner W, Cushing. New York : World Book Company. Pp. xii + 352.

The World We Live In. By Gertrude Hartman. Macmillan.

The Measurement of Certain Aspects of Personality Among Hard of Hearing Adults. By Henry Hunter Welles, III. New York : Columbia University, 1932. Pp. viii + 77.

The Educational and Occupational Preferences of College Seniors. By Marlin Ray Chauncey. New York: Columbia University, 1932. Pp. 72.

Making the Most of Books. By Leal A. Headley. Illinois: American Library Association, 1932. Pp. 342.

Relations of Religious Training and Life Patterns to the Adult Religious Life. By Luther Ellis Woodward. Teachers College, Columbia University, 1932. Pp. v + 75.     

Sprachförderkompetenz pädagogischer Fachkräfte

This paper introduces the basics of a (psycho)linguistically-oriented model of language-training competences of educators in pre-school and elementary education. It specifies competence criteria for language intervention based on psycholinguistic research. Ultimately, these criteria will be useful for grounding the additional training of educators and for certifying competences in early language intervention.     

Education in Europe and Muslim Demands for Competitive and Moral Education

International Review of Education - While European education systems fundamentally rest on a rather monolithic world-view, some of them are explicitly oriented towards Christianity and others are...     

Specific managerial human capital,firm age,and venture capital financing of biopharmaceutical ventures: A contingency approach

In this article we investigate how specific human capital in biopharmaceutical ventures' management teams impacts the financial commitment of venture capital investors. Further, we explore how this impact changes with the venture's age. We draw on data from 138 VC financing rounds in the US and Europe to show that biopharmaceutical ventures with greater portions of specific managerial human capital in the fields of management, law, medicine, and biosciences acquire more money in venture capital financing rounds, but this effect is contingent on the age of the venture. We discuss the implications of these findings for the literature on VC financing of high technology ventures.     

Konzeptueller und logischer Data-Warehouse-Entwurf

Zusammenfassung. Im Data-Warehouse-Bereich gibt es sowohl auf der konzeptuellen als auch auf der logischen Ebene unterschiedliche Modellierungsansätze, deren Entwicklung sich in der Regel an typischen Fragestellungen aus dem Bereich des Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) orientierte. Daneben spielen aber auch andere Ansätze zur Analyse der Daten in einem Data Warehouse eine bedeutende Rolle. Ein wichtiger Vertreter ist Data Mining, mit dessen Hilfe bislang unbekannte Muster und Zusammenhänge in Daten identifiziert werden können. Im vorliegenden Artikel wird untersucht, inwieweit sich die in der Literatur vorgeschlagenen konzeptuellen Datenmodelle für ein Data Warehouse eignen, das OLAP- und Data-Mining-Analysen gleichermaßen unterstützt. Hierzu wird das COCOM-Modell, das auf den Modellierungsmöglichkeiten verschiedener publizierter Modelle aufbaut, vorgestellt und bewertet. Für das logische Schema eines Data Warehouse wird häufig ein sogenanntes Star-Schema oder ein Snowflake-Schema erstellt. Für diese und weitere Schematypen wird analysiert, welchen Einfluss die Wahl des logischen Schemas auf Anwendungen aus den Bereichen OLAP und Data Mining hat. Wichtige Kriterien sind hier unter anderem der Informationsgehalt und die Performanz. Insgesamt zeigt dieser Beitrag, dass das COCOM-Modell und das Star-Schema eine gute Grundlage für den integrierten Einsatz von OLAP und Data-Mining bilden.Eingegangen am 30. April 2002, Angenommen am 25. Juni 2003 CR Subject Classification: H.2.1, H.2.7, H.2.8     

Skeletal maturation,fundamental motor skills and motor coordination in children 7–10 years

Relationships between skeletal maturation and fundamental motor skills and gross motor coordination were evaluated in 429 children (213 boys and 216 girls) 7–10 years. Skeletal age was assessed (Tanner-Whitehouse 2 method), and stature, body mass, motor coordination (Körperkoordinations Test für Kinder, KTK) and fundamental motor skills (Test of Gross Motor Development, TGMD-2) were measured. Relationships among chronological age, skeletal age (expressed as the standardised residual of skeletal age on chronological age) and body size and fundamental motor skills and motor coordination were analysed with hierarchical multiple regression. Standardised residual of skeletal age on chronological age interacting with stature and body mass explained a maximum of 7.0% of the variance in fundamental motor skills and motor coordination over that attributed to body size per se. Standardised residual of skeletal age on chronological age alone accounted for a maximum of 9.0% of variance in fundamental motor skills, and motor coordination over that attributed to body size per se and interactions between standardised residual of skeletal age on chronological age and body size. In conclusion, skeletal age alone or interacting with body size has a negligible influence on fundamental motor skills and motor coordination in children 7–10 years.     

Microfluidic system for near-patient extraction and detection of miR-122 microRNA biomarker for drug-induced liver injury diagnostics

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) results in over 100 000 hospital attendances per year in the UK alone and is a leading cause for the post-marketing withdrawal of new drugs, leading to significant financial losses. MicroRNA-122 (miR-122) has been proposed as a sensitive DILI marker although no commercial applications are available yet. Extracellular blood microRNAs (miRNAs) are promising clinical biomarkers but their measurement at point of care remains time-consuming, technically challenging, and expensive. For circulating miRNA to have an impact on healthcare, a key challenge to overcome is the development of rapid and reliable low-cost sample preparation. There is an acknowledged issue with miRNA stability in the presence of hemolysis and platelet activation, and no solution has been demonstrated for fast and robust extraction at the site of blood draw. Here, we report a novel microfluidic platform for the extraction of circulating miR-122 from blood enabled by a vertical approach and gravity-based bubble mixing. The performance of this disposable cartridge was verified by standard quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis on extracted miR-122. The cartridge performed equivalently or better than standard bench extraction kits. The extraction cartridge was combined with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy to detect miR-122 as an initial proof-of-concept toward an application in point-of-care detection. This platform enables the standardization of sample preparation and the detection of miRNAs at the point of blood draw and in resource limited settings and could aid the introduction of miRNA-based assays into routine clinical practice.