Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:
L. Archer, M. Hutchings and A. Ross, with C. Leathwood, R. Gilchrist and D. Phillips, Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion
John Brennan and Tarla Shah, Managing Quality in Higher Education: An International Perspective on Institutional Assessment and Change
R. Taylor, J. Barr and T. Steele, For a Radical Higher Education: After Postmodernism     

The EFQM Excellence Model®: Higher Education's Latest Management Fad?

Robert Birnbaum argues that higher education tends to adopt management fads – newly conceived techniques enjoying brief popularity but which fail to live up to their promoters’ claims – at the point when the corporate sector and government are discarding them. Although fads may have failed in these sectors because of various reasons, their failure usually to engage with the complexity of higher education's structures and processes makes their failure here virtually inevitable. The European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model, it is argued here, is a classical fad in Birnbaum's sense, showing conceptual weaknesses and being unlikely to engage with the particular characteristics of higher education. The introduction of the Excellence Model into UK higher education is shown to have followed closely the path that Birnbaum has identified; there are also preliminary signs suggesting that it will decline along the predicted trajectory.     

Growth in Precursor and Reading‐Related Skills: Do Low‐Achieving and IQ‐Discrepant Readers Develop Differently?

Poor readers who met low achievement and IQ‐discrepancy definitions of reading disability were compared with nonimpaired readers on their development of eight precursor and reading‐related skills to evaluate developmental differences prior to students’ identification as reading disabled. Results indicated no evidence for differences between the two groups of poor readers in the development of the eight skills, with three exceptions. Students in the IQ‐discrepant group demonstrated greater growth in letter sound knowledge, greater mean performance in visual‐motor integration at the beginning of first grade, and greater deceleration in rapid naming of letters. When compared to the nonimpaired group, low‐achieving readers demonstrated poorer performance and development in all skills, while the IQ‐discrepant readers demonstrated poorer performance and development in phonemic awareness, rapid naming of letters and objects, spelling, and word reading. The largely null results for comparisons between the two groups of poor readers challenges the validity of the two‐group classification of reading disabilities based on IQ‐discrepancy.     

Data Return: The Sense of the Given in Educational Research

Educational research is dominated by a particular model: data is gathered and analysed. Much literature on methods concerns either ways of processing data, or ethical issues regarding its collection and handling. The present paper looks beyond these matters to the taken‐for‐granted idea of data itself. What can be meant by ‘data’? How does this connect with ideas of the given? What is the place of giving in education—in teaching and learning, in research itself? These issues are explored in the light of information technology’s impact on research, uncovering ethical dimensions that the seeming naturalness of data otherwise obscures.     

Literacy Through the Book Arts

Children as readers and writers-and now as book artists too. Paul Johnson shows how children can be helped to learn the skills of book-making, thus empowering them as writers and illustrators by helping them to become the creators of beautiful books. The story grammars of different cultures include the way a story is laid out for people to read; Paul Johnson describes book designs from various cultures and shows how different book forms require children to read and tell stories in certain ways. Illustrations of various designs are shown within the article.