Reforming governance through policy instruments: how and to what extent standards,tests and accountability in education spread worldwide

ABSTRACT

In the last decades, most countries have adopted data-intensive policy instruments aimed at modernizing the governance of education systems, and strengthening their competitiveness. Instruments such as national large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities have disseminated widely, to the point that they are being enacted in countries with very different administrative traditions and levels of economic development. Nonetheless, comparative research on the trajectories that governance instruments follow in different institutional and socio-economic contexts is still scarce. On the basis of a systematic literature review (n?=?158), this paper enquires into the scope and modalities of educational governance change that national large-scale assessments and test-based accountability instruments have triggered in a broad range of institutional settings. The paper shows that, internationally, educational governance reforms advance through path-dependent and contingent processes of policy instrumentation that are markedly conditioned by prevailing politico-administrative regimes. The paper also reflects on the additive and evolving nature of educational governance reforms.     

Western practices in Chinese governance: a case study of the implementation of action learning

This article argues that action learning has been incorporated into the Chinese administrative system because of a functional need for Western learning technology. This finding contrasts with those presented in the existing literature, which assert that Western practices have only been partially implemented, if implemented at all, because they were selected to serve certain political objectives. Therefore, this paper presents a different picture of Chinese governance, showing that it is not exclusively driven by political considerations but rather respectfully drawn to Western expertise and open to accommodating foreign ideas in order to update existing administrative knowledge. For practitioners, the findings suggest that, if a Western practice can serve major reform objectives and smoothly function within the constraints of the political ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and if its effectiveness is convincingly demonstrated, the practice can be accepted to improve the functioning of the system, and it can thus have a true impact on Chinese administrative governance.

本文认为,由于中国对西方的学习方法的功能需求,行动学习已被纳入中国的行政体系。这一发现与现有文献中提出的结论形成鲜明对比：现有文献认为,出于某些政治目的,西方实践被有选择性地施行。因此,本文提出了一个关于中国政府实施西方实践的不同的论点,表明中国政府在行政管理方面对西方实践的施行,不是完全由政治考虑所驱动,而是由于中国政府出于谦恭的态度被西方的专业知识所吸引,并愿意接受外国的思想,以更新现有的行政知识。研究结果表明,如果西方实践能够服务于重大的改革目标,并在中国共产党的政治意识形态约束下顺利运作,且其所展示出的价值令人信服,则其价值本身就会被中国政府所认同和接受,并且它因此而影响了中国政府的行政管理。     

Differences between skilled and less‐skilled young readers in the retrieval of semantic,phonological, and shape information

This study aimed to determine whether the reading skills of third‐grade schoolchildren are associated with their preferences for semantic, phonological, and shape competitors (images or printed words) after being exposed to a spoken critical word. Two groups of children participated: skilled readers and less‐skilled readers. Through a language‐mediated visual search, children's fixations on the three competitors and a distractor were measured. When looking at images, both groups of readers preferred to look at the semantic competitor. When reading words, both groups showed a preference for the phonological competitor, but only skilled readers were sensitive to semantic information. These results suggest that early reading skills influence access to different types of representations in response to hearing a word, and they confirm the existence of a cascaded activation of information retrieval in childhood.     

Scientific and technological training for traditional communities

The International Bureau of Education is launching a research project on the training of teachers for intercultural education. The project is called ‘Basic Education for Participation and Democracy: Key Issues in Human Resources Development (Teachers and Multicultural/Intercultural Education)’. The general objective of the project is to develop countries' capacities to improve basic education, especially in multicultural contexts, and particularly through teacher training. Another objective of the project is to improve teachers' capacities to educate minorities, which is an important element in the building of a more democratic society. This article summarizes the results of the project and integrates them with strategies and methods developed by the Laboratoire de didactique et épistémologie des sciences of the University of Geneva, the Department of Biology of the University of Pavia and other research and training centres in Europe and Latin America. Ph.D. Professor at the University of Pavia, Italy. Member of the Laboratoire de didactique et épistémologie des sciences, University of Geneva. Technical adviser to the UNESCO: International Bureau of Education's Project ‘Basic Education for Participation and Democracy: Key Issues in Human Resources Development (Teachers and Multicultural/Intercultural Education)’. His many publications includeTeacher training and multiculturalism: national studies (1995).     

Peace through history? The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s inquiry into European schoolbooks, 1921–1924

In 1924 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a volume investigating the teaching of school history in former belligerent states in Europe. The project sought to reconcile former enemies through mutual understanding and educational exchange and reflected a widely held belief that although the military conflict had finished, its ideas still resounded and served to perpetuate antagonism. The CEIP project, conceived in the internationalist spirit, was itself derailed by nationalist enmity, a consequence of the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923, demonstrating the limits of cultural reconciliation in the early 1920s, and the resultant volume showed that belligerent views of recent history were still being taught to schoolchildren in France and Germany in the early 1920s.     

血清CA-19-9测定对胰腺癌的诊断价值

目的：寻求胰腺癌的诊断方法，方法：用免疫放射分析法（IRMA）检测血清CA－19－9含量，106例血清CA－19－9含量3700u/L，进行追踪随访，结果：106例中，胰腺癌66例，结肠癌15例，胆管癌13例，肺癌9例，结论：检测血清CA－19－9含量，有利于胰腺癌的诊断和与结肠癌，胆管癌，肺癌等恶性肿瘤的鉴别。     

Second Screening Politics in the Social Media Sphere: Advancing Research on Dual Screen Use in Political Communication with Evidence from 20 Countries

The pervasive use of multiple technological tools to engage with media and political content (i.e., TV sets, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.) has deeply altered the way citizens around the world consume information and discuss public affair issues. Many are using 2, or even several “screens” at the same time to do so, a phenomenon known as second or dual screening.

The goal of this article is twofold. First, it introduces a set of novel studies published as a special section devoted to second screening. Second, based on nationally representative original survey data collected in twenty societies (N = 22.033), the study depicts a snapshot of second screening habits for news and politics around the world. Findings reveal that young people tend to second screen more than older counterparts. Similarly, there are also differences in political behaviors between groups of high and low frequency second screen users. More intensive users tend to politically express themselves in social media, and participate more often in offline political activities. On the other hand, results indicate little or no differences between these two groups in terms of their voting behavior.     

Correcting for sample problems in PISA and the improvement in Portuguese students’ performance

The results of large-scale international assessments such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have attracted a considerable attention worldwide and are often used by policy-makers to support educational policies. To ensure that the published results represent the actual population, these surveys go through a thorough scrutiny to ensure their validity. One important issue that may affect the results is the occurrence of different participation rates across groups with heterogeneous average student scores. In this study, we illustrate how problems of representativeness of the samples may be corrected by the use of post-stratified weights. We use the case of Portugal, a country where we uncover a meaningful difference between the actual population and the PISA samples in terms of the distribution of students per grade and track of studies. We show that after post-stratification, the temporal evolution of the PISA scores is quite different from the one reported.     

Greater basal skeletal muscle AMPKα phosphorylation in men than in women: Associations with anaerobic performance

Objectives: This study was designed to investigate the association of gender, fibre type composition, and anaerobic performance with the basal skeletal muscle signalling cascades regulating muscle phenotype. Design: Muscle biopsies were obtained from 25 men and 10 women all young and healthy. Methods. Protein phosphorylation of Thr¹⁷²AMPKα, Ser²²¹ACCβ, Thr²⁸⁶CaMKII as well as total protein abundance of PGC-1α, SIRT1, and CnA were measured by Western blot and anaerobic performance by the Wingate test. Results: Percent type I myosin heavy chain (MHC I) was lower in men (37.1?±?10.4 vs. 58.5?±?12.5, P?P?P?221ACCβ and Thr²⁸⁶CaMKII fractional phosphorylation tended to be higher in men (P?=?.1). PGC1-α and SIRT1 total protein expression was similar in men and women, whereas CnA tended to be higher in men (P?=?.1). Basal AMPKα phosphorylation was linearly related to the percentage of MHC I in men (r?=?0.56; P?Conclusion: In summary, skeletal muscle basal AMPKα phosphorylation is higher in men compared to women, with no apparent effect on anaerobic performance.