Cleavage structures and school politics: a Rokkanian comparative-historical analysis

ABSTRACT

This paper explores comparatively and historically why Nordic and Continental welfare and education regimes differ in the degree of comprehensiveness of their primary and lower secondary school systems. It analyses how school reforms, reform attempts and coalitions in the post-war decades were shaped by different cleavage structures in Norway and the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. While the class cleavage was most dominant in school politics in both cases, rural–urban, centre–periphery, state–church and communist–socialist cleavages shaped party systems, political alliances and outcomes decisively. In particular, the rural population was integrated into different cross-interest coalitions: in Norway, its political representatives consented to social democratic comprehensive school reforms, while in Germany, they opposed such reforms. This was related to cross-cutting conflicts concerning centralisation and language in the Norwegian case and regarding religion, centralisation and (anti-)communism in the German case.     

Learner Control in Hypermedia Environments

Contrary to system-controlled multimedia learning environments, hypermedia systems are characterized by a high level of interactivity. This interactivity is referred to as learner control in the respective literature. For several reasons this learner control is seen as a major advantage of hypermedia for learning and instruction. For instance, learner control might increase students’ interest and motivation, facilitate adaptive instruction, or provide affordances for active and constructive information processing. In this paper we analyze the instructional potentials of learner-controlled hypermedia environments as well as possible reasons for the ambiguous results of studies that have aimed at determining the effectiveness of hypermedia learning. According to our analysis, the potential effectiveness of self-controlled learning with hypermedia might be difficult to demonstrate due to (1) usability problems (i.e., disorientation, distraction, cognitive overload), (2) moderating learner characteristics (i.e., prior knowledge, self-regulatory skills, cognitive styles, and attitudes towards learning), (3) a lack of conceptual foundations, and (4) methodological shortcomings of many hypermedia studies. The findings reviewed in this paper and the corresponding claim that hypermedia may be effective only if used in a sensible way are used to derive a couple of guidelines for further research on hypermedia learning.     

Eye tracking as a tool to study and enhance multimedia learning

This special issue comprises a set of six papers, in which studies are presented that use eye tracking to analyse multimedia learning processes in detail. Most of the papers focus on the effects on visual attention of animations with different design features such as spoken vs. written text, different kinds of cues, or different presentation speeds. Two contributions concern effects of learner characteristics (prior knowledge) on visual attention when learning with video and complex graphics. In addition, in some papers eye tracking is not only used as a process measure in itself, but also as input for verbal reports (i.e., cued retrospective reporting). In the two commentaries, the contributions are discussed from a multimedia learning perspective and an eye tracking perspective, by prominent researchers in those fields. Together, the contributions to this issue give an overview of the various possibilities eye tracking opens up for research on multimedia learning and instruction.     

Urban neighbourhood quality and school leaving age: Gender differences and some hypotheses

This study used longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) to examine the role of neighbourhood quality, assessed when cohort members were aged five, in boys’ and girls’ school leaving age. It was expected that, since context is in general more strongly predictive of boys’ rather than girls’ behaviour, neighbourhood quality would be more strongly related to men’s than women’s school leaving age. Results showed that, as expected, even after controlling for cognitive ability, parental socio‐economic disadvantage and social class, family structure, and maternal education, age and depressed mood, neighbourhood quality was more strongly related to men’s than women’s school leaving age. To rule out the possibility that neighbourhood quality is simply picking up individual level social class the study also explored the interaction of neighbourhood quality with parental social class. It was found that, compared to cohort members of high social class groups, cohort members of lower social class groups were less likely to stay in education after the minimum school leaving age in both neighbourhood groups, but being in the lower social class groups was more of a disadvantage for children living in well‐to‐do rather than average or poor neighbourhoods at age five.     

Leniency and halo bias in industry-based assessments of student competencies: a critical,sector-based analysis

Industry placements are popular means to provide students with an opportunity to apply their skills, knowledge and experience in a ‘real world’ setting. Within this context, supervisor feedback allows educators to measure students’ performance beyond academic objectives, by benchmarking it against industry expectations. However, industry assessments appear to be frequently clouded and overwhelmingly positive by nature, which questions the reliability and validity of supervisors’ judgement of competencies. Supervisor bias has been paid much attention within the context of clinical placements, as well as within the domain of social work. However, the concept has been largely ignored within business education, despite the increasing emphasis on – and deep integration of – work-integrated learning in the business curriculum. This paper sets out to address this gap by examining variances in mark distribution and apparent leniency in the context of a final-year, compulsory placement unit, based on observations and data collected over nine semesters (n?=?546). The focus of this study is on gaining an understanding of the reasons behind assessment bias and the pressures placed on industry assessors. The data indicate that different types of placement locations apply dissimilar standards when assessing student performance. The author identifies three statistically different placement types (small business, not-for-profit and professional), which influence the strength and risk of grader bias, hence ultimately the assessment outcome.