International University Education: An Australian Perspective

This paper attempts to explore the effectiveness of UK universities' websites. The area of branding in higher education has received increasing academic investigation, but little work has researched how universities demonstrate their brand promises through their websites. The quest to differentiate through branding can be challenging in the university context, however. It is argued that those institutions that have a strong distinctive image will be in a better position to face a changing future. Employing a multistage methodology, the web pages of 20 UK universities were investigated by using a combination of content and multivariable analysis. Results indicated ‘traditional values’ such as teaching and research were often well communicated in terms of online brand but ‘emotional values’ like social responsibility and the universities' environments were less consistently communicated, despite their increased topicality. It is therefore suggested that emotional values may offer a basis for possible future online differentiation.     

Resisting schoolification from the classroom. Exploring the professional identity of early childhood teachers in Chile / Resistiendo la escolarización desde el aula. Explorando la identidad profesional de las docentes de primera infancia en Chile

This article presents a study which aimed to explore the professional identity of early childhood teachers in Chile, applying a sociocultural approach. Relying on an exploratory qualitative design, data were collected through focus groups and photo-narratives. The findings show that these teachers understand that child-centred pedagogy is the pillar of their professional identity; that they perceive that this is under threat from the schoolification of early childhood education; and that they admit that their capacity to resist this tendency is limited to the classroom. These findings suggest that, having scarce resources available to negotiate their professional identity in their working context, early childhood teachers in Chile have a limited capacity for agency.     

Almost sure weak exponential stability with a certain decay function of semilinear stochastic evolutionequations

In this paper the weak exponential stability with decay function of sample path, which are given by mild solution to a class of semilinear stochastic evolution equations, are presented. The analyses consist in using exponential martingale formula, Lyapunov functional and some special inequalities derived for our stability purposes. Two examples are given to illustrate the theory.     

Young people’s expressed needs for Comprehensive Sexuality Education in Ecuadorian schools

This study analyses the expressed sexuality education needs of young people from Azuay, a region of Ecuador characterised by a large proportion of young people whose parents have migrated abroad, a group often considered at risk to developing of sexual health problems. Multi-stage stratified cluster sampling was used to recruit young people aged 11 and 19 years to the study. The expressed needs of participants were analysed in relation to gender, parents’ migratory status, age and geographical location. Survey findings revealed that young people expressed high needs with respect to the different components of Comprehensive Sexuality Education: gender roles, sexual and reproductive health, sexual citizenship, pleasure, violence, diversity and relationships. Ordinal regression analyses revealed few significant differences in relation to socio-demographic variables, which was surprising, in particular, with respect to the group of young people with migrating parents. Given the high levels of expressed needs, the findings carry important implications for the design and implementation of future sexuality education programmes.     

A case example of one state's efforts to measure and address the critical shortage of school psychologists

Despite persistent calls for school psychologists to provide comprehensive and integrated services, school psychologists may have difficulty providing these services because of critical shortages in the profession. This practical action research study involved surveying district supervisors of school psychologists and training program directors in the state to identify the current and projected shortages in Florida. This multimethod, multi‐informant case example also focused on facilitators of and barriers to addressing the critical shortage. How the data have been used to inform recruitment, retention, and advocacy efforts to identify school psychology as a critical shortage legislatively are provided as well as recommendations for future research.     

The assessment of universities in Argentina and Australia: Between autonomy and heteronomy

The field of university assessment, including quality assurance, is structured by power and conflict, and shaped by technologies of assessment such as self-studyby academic units, numerical performance indicators and whole institution evaluation and ranking. In reconstructing and comparing the recent evolution of assessment practices in Argentina and Australia we detect a common neo-liberal approach to assessment, supported by global agencies such as the World Bank.Assessment policies and practices are used toadvance neo-liberal agendas, often incontradiction with national traditions inhigher education. In both countries moreexternalised and institution-centred forms ofassessment have facilitated the reformedgovernment heteronomy vis-à-vis theuniversities, the rise of business-stylemanagement inside them at the expense ofparticipatory governance, the transformation ofintellectual autonomy into corporate autonomy,and the reduction of diversity and academicindependence. However, some forms of universityassessment can be used to facilitateinternally-controlled reflection withinacademic units, directed towards educationalobjectives.     

Shedding the content: semantics of teaching burdened by didactic formalisms

The paper argues that what is left behind in the current era of accountability is the educational content. The authors present shedding the content as the great challenge of teaching and learning in today’s schools. They turn to the tradition of Bildung and outline the theoretical background for the content-focused approach to (research on) teaching and learning. Their approach is based on analyses of authentic (real-life) teaching and learning situations. The paper highlights how didactic case studies can be used to generalize the findings across individual cases. Within the multiple case studies, 44 didactic case studies were reanalysed to identify didactic formalisms, i.e. problems in the semantic and logical structure of educational content, which corrupt the quality of instruction. Two specific types of didactic formalism are described in detail; stolen cognition and concealed cognition. Stolen cognition prevents cognitive activation of students when the teacher over-reduces the space allowed for the students’ cognitive work with the content, concealed cognition are instances of purposeless cognitive activation of students due to their being disconnected from the content.