Zur Zul?ssigkeit der Vergabe von akademischen Ehrungen durch Privatuniversit?ten und andere postsekund?re Bildungseinrichtungen

Der VwGH hat unl?ngst ausgesprochen, dass die Verleihung von Ehrendoktoraten durch Privatuniversit?ten unzul?ssig ist. Der Beitrag untersucht diese Rechtsansicht und geht darüber hinaus der allgemeinen Frage der Zul?ssigkeit der Vergabe akademischer Ehrungen durch postsekund?re Bildungseinrichtungen nach.     

The relationship of interest to internal and external motivation

This study was conducted to examine the relationship between student interest and motivation. Previous studies have shown that measures of interest have attained positive relationships with global measures of motivation (Frymier, Shulman & Houser, 1996; Weber & Patterson, 2000). Additionally, even though a number of instructional researchers have speculated that interest is related to motivation through intrinsic means (Brophy, 1983; Mitchell, 1993; Schiefele, 1991; Schraw, Brunning & Svoboda, 1995; Stipiek, 1996; Tobias, 1994), there has been no systematic effort to provide any empirical evidence to these claims. Results indicate that interest is significantly related to intrinsic, but not extrinsic, motivation.     

Reported school experiences of young people living with sickle cell disorder in England

A survey of 569 young people with sickle cell disorder (SCD) in England has found such pupils miss considerable periods of time from school, typically in short periods of two or three days. One in eight has school absences equating to government‐defined ‘persistent absence’. Students with SCD report that they are not helped to catch up after these school absences. Half the children reported not being allowed to use the toilet when needed and not being allowed water in class; a third reported being made to take unsuitable exercise and being called lazy when tired. Children perceived both physical environment (temperature, school furniture) and social environment (being upset by teachers or other pupils) as triggers to episodes of their illness. Policy initiatives on school absences; preventive measures to ensure maintenance of good health; and measures to prevent perceived social attitudes precipitating ill health would also support children with other chronic illnesses at school.     

What makes teachers tick? Sustaining events in new teachers’ lives

To investigate what keeps teachers motivated on a day‐to‐day basis, we traced the importance of routinely encountered affective episodes. Significant research on emotions already highlights the relative importance of positive versus negative episodes, the importance of perceived origins of events and the need to differentiate between the frequency and affective intensity of episodes. Survey reports from 749 recently qualified primary teachers in Ireland strongly suggest the absence of positive experiences undermines commitment and efficacy rather than the occurrence of negative events. Furthermore, while remote structural factors may heavily influence teaching, it is the perception of events at micro‐level that impinge most strongly on motivation. Finally, the importance of particular experiences was, crucially, more related to their frequency than intensity. A major implication for teachers’ job satisfaction is the suggestion that while adverse episodes may be inevitably experienced, positive events (that occur independently of negative ones) fortify motivation and resilience.     

Cumulative and segmented learning: exploring the role of curriculum structures in knowledge‐building

The present article extends Basil Bernstein’s theorisation of ‘discourses’ and ‘knowledge structures’ to explore the potential of educational knowledge structures to enable or constrain cumulative learning, where students can transfer knowledge across contexts and build knowledge over time. It offers a means of overcoming dichotomies in Bernstein’s model by conceptualising knowledge in terms of legitimation codes (bases of achievement) and semantic gravity (context‐dependency of knowledge). This developed framework is used to analyse two contrasting examples of curriculum – from professional education at university and secondary school English – that aim to enable cumulative learning. Analyses of students’ work products show that both cases can constrain knowledge‐building by anchoring meaning within its context of acquisition. The basis for this potential is located in a mismatch between their aims of enabling students to learn higher‐order principles and their curricular means that focus on knowers’ dispositions rather than articulating principles of knowledge.     

Professional learning between past experience and future work

This paper deals with the professionalization of human service work. It analyses learning processes and identity development in the emerging profession of child care with concrete examples from empirical research, based on a life history approach. It discusses examples of careers mainly based on students’ life experience, pointing out that their immediate success in the workplace may inhibit an even better qualification they had been spurred to critical reflection. It further follows a sample of students through their theoretical education and trainee periods, illuminating their changing identification with and understanding of their future work, and their learning of professional knowledge and competences. The conclusion is that the new 3.5 year education in child care pedagogy clearly improves the professional competences of child care, but it also identifies a set of further specific challenges to be met for the development of real professional competences.     

THE STRUCTURE OF COGNITIVE ABILITIES IN HIGHLY AND MODERATELY GIFTED YOUNG PEOPLE

In order to assess the structure of cognitive abilities in highly and moderately gifted young people, data from the Munich Longitudinal Study of Giftedness were analyzed by conventional factor analysis. In the total group as well as in the subsample of the moderately gifted, a three factor solution was obtained which was subsequently confirmed by a LISREL analysis of the same data. In the subsample of the highly gifted, a two factor solution was obtained by conventional factor analysis and confirmed by a LISREL analysis. Contrary to the opinion voiced in the statistical literature that in groups formed on the basis of some cutoff value the reduced variances and covariances will lead to factorial artifacts, we argue that the factors obtained can be interpreted meaningfully. We were also able to predict, on the basis of the two factor solution, the occurrence of specific types of highly gifted youths.