Functional reading difficulties in Denmark

In this first Danish study of adult reading skills, 1124 adults between 18 and 67 years of age participated in an interview about reading habits and skills, and 445 were tested individually at home using six common texts. Great care was taken to ascertain that subjects were representative of the whole adult population and that the texts covered most types of everyday reading. Three percent of the participants were found to have severe functional reading difficulties and a further 9 percent to have moderate difficulties. Regression analyses found several unique predictors of reading difficulties: age (adults over 45 years reading more poorly than younger adults), limited basic education, no vocational training nor higher education, and a small amount of reading needed at work. The rate of poor readers was about four times higher among persons with low income than among others. Men and women read equally well although men tended to rate themselves lower as readers than women did. Methodological issues and some educational implications are discussed.     

Skills utilisation at work,the quality of the study programme and fields of study

This paper examines the factors that may have impact on the extent to which the knowledge and skills of master’s degree graduates in Norway are utilised at work, three years after graduation. The focus is on the impact of the quality of the study programme as well as the graduates’ fields of study, when also taking into account other factors influencing the utilisation of skills. The analysis indicates that the quality of the study programme has an independent effect on skills utilisation at work. The analysis also shows large differences in skills utilisation according to fields of study, even among graduates who are not formally overeducated for their job. Not formally overeducated graduates in humanities and social science utilise their knowledge and skills less frequently than other similar graduates. The findings involve challenges for higher education institutions and graduates, as well as employers, to find ways that the expertise of master's degree graduates could be better exploited.     

Characterising the different blogging behaviours of students on an online distance learning course

Since the early years of the twenty‐first century there has been an increasing interest in using Web 2.0 technologies to support learning in Higher Education. However, previous research suggests that the integration of blogging into courses can be difficult and cites problems with issues such as student compliance. We adopt a learner‐centred perspective and explore students’ (rather than their educators’) understanding of how blogs and blogging can support distance learning in Higher Education. We report on a study of UK Open University (OU) students on an online distance learning Masters course, that has enabled us to determine the issues that are important to these bloggers, and we describe five ways in which they appropriated blogging to suit their individual needs. We discuss the importance of making blogging activities flexible so that students can blog to meet their own needs whilst still attending to the requirements of their course.     

The reading efficiency model: an extension of the componential model of reading

The purpose of the present study was twofold: First, the authors investigated if an extended version of the component model of reading (CMR; Model 2), including decoding rate and oral vocabulary comprehension, accounted for more of the variance in reading comprehension than the commonly used measures of the cognitive factors in the CMR. Second, the authors investigated the fitness of a new model, titled the reading efficiency model (REM), which deviates from earlier models regarding how reading is defined. In the study, 780 Norwegian students from Grades 6 and 10 were recruited. Here, hierarchical regression analyses showed that the extended model did not account for more of the variance in reading comprehension than the traditional CMR model (Model 1). In the second part of the study the authors used structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the REM. The results showed that the REM explained an overall larger amount of variance in reading ability, compared to Model 1 and Model 2. This result is probably the result of the new definition of reading applied in the REM. The authors believe their model will more fully reflects students' differentiated reading skills by including reading fluency in the definition of reading.     

The case for investing in secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): challenges and opportunities

Over the next two decades, sub-Saharan Africa will face substantial pressure to expand its secondary education system. This is driven by the current low development of secondary education compared to other world regions, continued rapid population growth, the increase in the enrolment and completion rates at the primary education level, and the upsurge in the demand for skills. This paper suggests that in order to help countries respond to these pressures, external partners should now increase their support for secondary education, in terms of academic as well as technical and vocational skills training. Given the attributes of the African economies and the continuing need for foundation skills, this paper argues that in the current situation, particularly the lower secondary level will have to be strengthened, in many cases through a longer basic education cycle for all. The necessary rapid expansion of secondary education will require substantial investments, and this paper discusses how aid allocation can be made more evidence-based and used in a more strategic way to make these investments more effective and sustainable. While aid will continue to have a role to play over the next decade especially in fragile states, in the long run it is African countries’ capacity to achieve sustained economic growth which will be the single most important factor determining their ability to meet the financing needs.     

Embracing Social Sustainability in Design Education: A Reflection on a Case Study in Haiti

Sustainable design issues are complex and multi-faceted and need integration in the education of young designers. Current research recommends a holistic view based on problem-solving and inter-disciplinary work, yet few design educators have brought these ideas to their full consequence. Sustainability education for designers is still often rooted in environmental issues, providing incomplete understanding of the broader relationships at hand. The article reflects on a case study of a student-initiated multi-disciplinary design project in Haiti. This reflection allows for discussing a number of issues related to establishing an educational agenda for incorporating social sustainability in design education, including recommendations for how to address motivation, expected learning outcomes, and feedback and guidance.     

Next Generations,Catwalks, Random Walks and Arms Races: conceptualising the development of quality assurance schemes

The emergence and development of quality assurance schemes in European countries over the last 15–20 years has inspired many national case studies of the systems and procedures adopted. The methods, contexts, and procedures associated with this policy change are diverse. But although individual countries have set about changing policy in different ways there appear to be some common developmental patterns within the Europe of the Bologna Process. How can these developments be conceptualised? In a first step this paper advances a typology based on the quality assurance literature. In a second step, the paper applies the typology to quality assurance developments in three countries. The third part of the paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the modelling approach in the light of the empirical evidence and a political science analysis of policy change. The paper concludes with a discussion on future directions for the comparative study of policy change within the European Higher Education Area on the basis of this conceptualisation of developments in quality assurance policy.     

Text interpretation and educational design in Norwegian textbooks of religious education

Drawing on sociocultural perspectives on educational design, this article presents a qualitative study investigating how religious texts emerge as educational objects and mediating artefacts in Norwegian textbooks of religious and moral education. The article describes how the distribution of text references in textbooks influences the formation of religious traditions as objects. It also describes how religious texts are given various roles and how textbook assignments use various means to facilitate the interpretation of religious texts in a response to the demands posed by Norwegian syllabuses of religious and moral education.     

Teaching ‘Instant Experience’ with Graphical Model Validation Techniques

Graphical model validation techniques for linear normal models are often used to check the assumptions underlying a statistical model. We describe an approach to provide ‘instant experience’ in looking at a graphical model validation plot, so it becomes easier to validate if any of the underlying assumptions are violated.     

Early educational provision – emphasised in education policy reforms in Norway? An analysis of education policy documents

The article analyses how the intentions of early provision in Norwegian schools have been expressed in the education policy reforms in Norway from the 1970s to the present day. The first area deals with the intentions that most explicitly cover early provision; prevention, early detection and intervention. The second area of analysis relates to the early provision intentions with an emphasis on the correlation between individual and environmental factors seen in light of differentiation and disability. The third area examines how significance is attached to pupils’ social background with regard to early provision in learning in schools. Finally, consideration is given to the relationship between early provision intentions and efforts to prevent pupils dropping out of upper secondary education. The analysis also shows that the policy guidelines on early provision for schools and teachers have been weak and unclear. This is due to the fact that the early provision intentions have primarily been expressed in reports to the Storting, and rarely given any kind of focus in national curricula.