Getting in,getting on,going further: Exploring the role of employers in the degree apprentice to graduate transition

Transitions from education into work, or as part of career change and development, are increasingly central to policy debate and academic inquiry. However, the role that employers play in shaping transition is often overlooked. In this paper, we examine this issue through the experiences of a graduating cohort of ‘degree apprentices’. We present original analysis of new empirical data from what we believe to be the first substantive qualitative longitudinal research conducted with those experiencing this new vocational pathway in the English Apprenticeships system. Through analysis of repeat semi-structured interviews with 22 degree apprenticeship graduates (44 interviews in total), we provide early empirical insights into experiences of this new pathway and add to existing theoretical conceptualisations of transition within the educational literature and the employer's role within it. We show that the degree apprentice to graduate transition can be broken down into three key stages: ‘getting in’, ‘getting on’ and ‘going further’, and that employers—at both strategic and relational levels—shape experiences at each stage.     

The Role of Extended Time and Item Content on a High‐Stakes Mathematics Test

The premise of a great deal of current research guiding policy development has been that accommodations are the catalyst for student performance differences. Rather than accepting this premise, two studies were conducted to investigate the influence of extended time and content knowledge on the performance of ninth‐grade students who took a statewide mathematics test with and without accommodations. Each study involved 1,250 accommodated students (extended time only) with learning disabilities and 1,250 nonaccommodated students demonstrating no disabilities. In Study One, a standard differential item functioning (DIF) analysis illustrated that the usual approach to studying the effects of accommodations contributes little to our understanding of the reason for performance differences across students. Next, a mixture item response theory DIF model was used to explore the most likely cause(s) for performance differences across the population. The results from both studies suggest that students for whom items were functioning differently were not accurately characterized by their accommodation status but rather by their content knowledge. That is, knowing students' accommodation status (i.e., accommodated or nonaccommodated) contributed little to understanding why accommodated and nonaccommodated students differed in their test performance. Rather, the data would suggest that a more likely explanation is that mathematics competency differentiated the groups of student learners regardless of their accommodation and/or reading levels.     

Real time search on the web: Queries,topics, and economic value

Real time search is an increasingly important area of information seeking on the Web. In this research, we analyze 1,005,296 user interactions with a real time search engine over a 190 day period. Using query log analysis, we investigate searching behavior, categorize search topics, and measure the economic value of this real time search stream. We examine aggregate usage of the search engine, including number of users, queries, and terms. We then classify queries into subject categories using the Google Directory topical hierarchy. We next estimate the economic value of the real time search traffic using the Google AdWords keyword advertising platform. Results shows that 30% of the queries were unique (used only once in the entire dataset), which is low compared to traditional Web searching. Also, 60% of the search traffic comes from the search engine’s application program interface, indicating that real time search is heavily leveraged by other applications. There are many repeated queries over time via these application program interfaces, perhaps indicating both long term interest in a topic and the polling nature of real time queries. Concerning search topics, the most used terms dealt with technology, entertainment, and politics, reflecting both the temporal nature of the queries and, perhaps, an early adopter user-based. However, 36% of the queries indicate some geographical affinity, pointing to a location-based aspect to real time search. In terms of economic value, we calculate this real time search stream to be worth approximately US $33,000,000 (US $33 M) on the online advertising market at the time of the study. We discuss the implications for search engines and content providers as real time content increasingly enters the main stream as an information source.     

现在我明白

每个人都有远行出走的冲动，一半是为了更好的生存，否则别无选择；另一半是为了逃避已经很好的生活，他们的选择恰恰太多。     

THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN THE TRAINING AND EDUCATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND CORRECTIONS PERSONNEL: A CURRICULUM FOR THE 21st CENTURY

Community colleges are in a unique position to meet the education and training needs of law enforcement and corrections personnel for the next century. The nature of the community college allows the proper blend of vocational and formal education in the design of a common curriculum to meet the needs of law enforcement. Location and cost also become factors as agencies attempt to stretch their training budgets. The community colleges have the flexibility and the resources to meet the needs of law enforcement for a practical, affordable, quality, and achievable education for employees in pre‐service, academy, and in‐service status.     

The Rise in Single-Mother Families and Children’s Cognitive Development: Evidence From Three British Birth Cohorts

This article assessed changes in the association between single motherhood and children’s verbal cognitive ability at age-11 using data from three cohorts of British children, born in 1958 (n = 10,675), 1970 (n = 8,933) and 2000 (n = 9,989), and mediation analysis. Consistent with previous studies, direct effects were small and insignificant. For those born in 1958 and 1970 indirect effects, operating through reduced economic and parental resources, were associated with −.107-SD to −.156-SD lower attainment. Differences between the two cohorts, and by children’s age when parents separated, were insignificant. For the 2000 cohort, effect sizes for children born to single mothers did not change significantly (−.112-SD) but attenuated for children whose parents separated in early childhood (−.076-SD) or while of school age (−.054-SD).     

Constraints on conceptual development: a case study of the acquisition of folkbiological and folksociological knowledge in Madagascar

How different are the concepts held by children who grow up in a North American middle class neighborhood and by children who grow up in a rural Malagasy fishing village? By probing Malagasy children's and adults' conceptual representations of human and animal kind, biological inheritance, innate potential and family relations, the studies presented in this Monograph address current debates about the acquisition and the nature of concepts in the domains of folkbiology and folksociology. Cross-cultural and developmental studies of this kind bear on the hypothesis that conceptual development in these domains is supported and constrained by innate conceptual content. If so, one would expect cross-cultural universality in the relevant adult concepts and their early emergence in childhood regardless of widely different input conditions. We chose to conduct these studies among the Vezo of Madagascar because the ethnographic literature has attributed to them folkbiological and folksociological theories that are radically different, even in commensurable, with those of North American adults. Vezo therefore provide a challenging test for the innate conceptual constraints hypothesis.Four studies probed aspects of biological and sociological reasoning of Vezo children, adolescents and adults through a number of adoption scenarios. Despite ethnographic reports to the contrary, we found cross-cultural convergence in adult concepts of biological inheritance, but the pattern of development of this concept differed greatly from that seen in North America. Moreover, in agreement with the ethnographic literature, we found that Vezo adults have constructed a distinctive theory of social group identity. However, we found that children's reasoning in this domain is under the influence of endogenous constraints that are overturned in the course of development. Finally, we found cross-cultural convergence in adults' concept of species kind, as well as evidence for the early emergence of this concept. In light of these findings, we discuss the nature of the constraints on children's conceptual representations, the developmental process through which the adults' concepts are constructed, and relations between Vezotheories of folkbiology and folksociology.