Will gender equality ever fit in? Contested discursive spaces of university reform

Similar to other European countries, the introduction of non-academic, especially managerial, criteria in higher education has shaped and altered Austrian universities since over a decade. This paper presents the results of a frame analysis of Austrian higher education debates from 1993 until 2010. It outlines how reforms in higher education were prepared and enhanced by a new policy discourse, with a special focus on the way gender equality is framed in reform debates. Our article describes three core frames: ‘from local to global’, ‘from ivory tower to business’ and ‘from civil servant to excellence’. We cluster these three frames around imaginations of space that are embedded in the normative foundations of academia, and discuss how this links up with arguments for gender equality. We furthermore propose to analytically separate two conceptions of the university: the ‘entrepreneurial’ and the ‘managerial’ university.     

The effects of a data use intervention on educators’ satisfaction and data literacy

Schools in many different countries are increasingly expected to use data for school improvement. However, schools struggle with the implementation of data use, because building human capacity around data use in education has not received enough attention. Educators urgently need to develop data literacy skills for being able to use data. For supporting schools with the endeavor of developing data literacy skills, we developed and implemented a data use intervention in secondary schools based in the Netherlands. This study therefore focuses on the effects of this intervention on educator satisfaction with the intervention and their data literacy skills and attitude toward data use. This study uses a quasi-experimental research design and employs a mixed-methods approach with a data use questionnaire filled in by data team schools (N = 9) and comparison schools (N = 42), a satisfaction questionnaire filled in by data team participants (N = 55), pre- and posttest knowledge tests filled in by data team participants (N = 36), and interview data (N = 11) from three case study schools. The results show that the participants were, for example, very satisfied with the support received during the intervention. Also, respondents developed new data literacy skills and showed a more positive attitude toward data use. The results show how teachers can be supported systematically in data use in their educational practice. In the conclusions, we discuss some important implications for practice regarding the intensity and duration of support and implications for further research.     

Do tuition fees affect the mobility of university applicants? Evidence from a natural experiment

Several German states recently introduced tuition fees for university education. We investigate whether these tuition fees influence the mobility of university applicants. Based on administrative data of applicants for medical schools in Germany, we estimate the effect of tuition fees on the probability of applying for a university in the home state. We find a small but significant reaction: The probability of applying for a university in the home state falls by 2 percentage points (baseline: 69%) for high-school graduates who come from a state with tuition fees. Moreover, we find that students with better high-school grades react more strongly to tuition fees. This might have important effects on the composition of students across states.     

On entrepreneurship,in a different voice? Finnish entrepreneurship education and pupils’ critical narratives of the entrepreneur

This study set out to explore the narratives of entrepreneurship that 15–16-year-old pupils in their last grade of comprehensive school produced in the Finnish annual writing competition Good Enterprise! We focused on narratives that can be categorized as tragedies, satires, comedies, and crime stories (N?=?219). In these stories, the pupils challenge the political ideal of the risk-taking entrepreneur by arguing for sustainable development and social justice as bases for entrepreneurship. On the one hand, the critical representations of entrepreneurs arise from the Protestant work ethic, and thus the values constructed in these stories are close to stories that can be characterized as romances of the modest entrepreneur where the motive for entrepreneurship was not the accumulation of material wealth. On the other hand, these critical stories represent “entrepreneur and consumer pathologies,” and hence make a mockery of the core neoliberal values of autonomy, competition, and choice.     

‘It's all scientific to me’: focus group insights into why young people do not apply safe-sex knowledge

Despite rising levels of safe-sex knowledge in Australia, sexually transmitted infection notifications continue to increase. A culture-centred approach suggests it is useful in attempting to reach a target population first to understand their perspective on the issues. Twenty focus groups were conducted with 89 young people between the ages of 14 and 16 years. Key findings suggest that scientific information does not articulate closely with everyday practice, that young people get the message that sex is bad and they should not be preparing for it and that it is not appropriate to talk about sex. Understanding how young people think about these issues is particularly important because the focus groups also found that young people disengage from sources of information that do not match their own experiences.     

Film Biography

Gary Carey, All the Stars in Heaven: Louis B. Mayer's M-G-M (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1981 -- $18.50 hardcover).

Wyn Wachhorst, Thomas Alva Edison: An American Myth (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981 -- $15.00).

Alexander Walker, Garbo: A Portrait (New York: Macmillan, 1980 -- $19.95 cloth).

Henry C. Rogers, Walking the Tightrope: The Private Confessions of a Public Relations Man (New York: William Morrow, 1980 -- $10.95 hardcover).

Scott Palmer, A Who's Who of British Film Actors (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1981 -- no price given).

Tony Thomas, The Films of Ronald Reagan (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1980 -- $16.95).

Jim Connor, Ann Miller: Tops in Taps, An Authorized Pictorial History (New York: Franklin Watts, 1981 -- $10.95 paper).

Raymond Strait and Terry Robinson in Lanza: His Tragic Life (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: 1981 -- $10.00 hardcover)

Irene Adler in I Remember Jimmy: The Life and Times of Jimmy Durante (New York: Arlington House, 1981 -- $8.95 paper)

Jack Oakie, Jack Oakie's Double Takes (San Francisco: Strawberry Hill Press, 1980 -- $10.95 paper).

Marilyn Henry and Ron De Sourdis, The Films of Alan Ladd (Secaucus, N.J.: The Citadel Press, 1981 -- $16.95).     

Making sense of institutional positioning in Finnish higher education

This paper examines how institutional positioning has emerged in the meaning-making activities between Finnish higher education institutions and the Ministry of Education and Culture. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of the performance agreement documents of all higher education institutions filed with the ministry for contract periods 2010–2012 and 2013–2016. The results show that, in the first cycle, higher education institutions used profiling vocabulary in vastly different ways, and their lists of priority areas were quite wide ranging. By the second cycle, profiling statements had become more specific and structurally more alike, but the lists of priority areas continued to have a wide scope. As a response, the Ministry has consistently demanded and rewarded more focused profiling efforts and used the concepts of profiling to support other steering measures.     

Fostering online learning at the workplace: A scheme to identify and analyse collaboration processes in asynchronous discussions

Research has shown that providing participants with high-quality learning material is not sufficient to help them profit most from online education. The level of interaction among participants is another key determinant for learning outcomes. However, merely proposing interaction does not automatically lead to fruitful discussion and collaboration. Specifically, social presence and facilitation activities add value to online discussions. In Murphy's collaboration framework, social presence represents the basis of successful online collaboration from which more reflective discussions and co-construction can evolve. In this paper, an adjusted version of this framework was applied in a workplace learning context. The content analysis of 1170 comments in an online course for careers practitioners of a public employment service showed that the extended framework generated deeper insights into the dynamics of online discussions. The results show that involvement in collaborative learning at the workplace was supported by a high social presence and influenced by course topic and tasks. Facilitation played an important role in creating a sympathetic sense of community and stimulating co-creation processes.     

A global perspective on disparity of gender and disability for deaf female athletes

Abstract

Although the significance of gender and disability issues has gradually increased in the global society during the past three decades, there are only few studies with regard to the deaf community and sport. This article examines the level of Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing women’s participation in sports and the factors for their continued underrepresentation. The WomenSport International’s Task Force on Deaf and Hard of Hearing Girls and Women in Sport conducted a world-wide survey to determine and assess the needs of deaf and hard of hearing girls and women in sport. A snapshot of the results and issues and future aspirations are provided.