The Influence of Motivation to Transfer,Action Planning,and Manager Support on the Transfer Process

This study investigated the influence of three variables (motivation to transfer, action planning as an intervention designed to promote transfer, and perception of manager support) on the transfer of skills taught in three interpersonal skills courses in a major corporation. The research was based on a reconceptualization of transfer as a process rather than an event or “product.” Transfer was assessed in terms of initiation of transfer, frequency of transfer, and overall transfer. Perception of manager support for the utilization of the skills exerted considerably more influence on the transfer process than did motivation. The influence of the action planning intervention was ambiguous. The findings suggest that designers and evaluators must take such influences—especially manager support-into account throughout the design, development, implementation and evaluation phases of training programs.     

Using applied behaviour analysis as standard practice in a UK special needs school

This article describes how applied behaviour analysis can be implemented effectively and affordably in a maintained special needs school in the UK. Behaviour analysts collaborate with classroom teachers to provide early intensive behaviour education for young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and function based behavioural interventions for children between the ages of three and 18 years. Data are presented that show how the model is effective. Children with ASD under the age of seven made significant gains on intelligence quotient and on a range of skills including language, social and play, and academic skills following three academic terms of intervention. Case study data for two children reveal a marked decrease in challenging behaviour following a function based behavioural intervention. These interventions have led to greater independence, integration and access to curricular activities. These data show that children are making significant gains within this cost‐effective model.     

Mentoring the Mentor: Professional development through a school-university partnership

Governments worldwide have invested in teaching standards and performance benchmarks to improve teacher preparation and teacher quality that impacts student achievement. As a means of addressing these imperatives, the Australian government has recently encouraged formal partnerships between tertiary providers, schools and education systems in delivering teacher education and professional development, in particular for mentors. This article documents challenges and initial findings of the first year of a school-university partnership involving an Australian regional university and K-12 teacher-mentors located in rural schools. It describes the design and implementation of a contextualised professional development model, using participatory action research to build teacher capacity for mentoring and foster a culture of collaborative inquiry. The model discussed reflects a systematic approach to constructing knowledge, skills and roles essential to effective mentoring.     

Quality Assessment Lessons from Australia and New Zealand

This article describes two recent efforts to rank the quality of higher education institutions in Australia and New Zealand. After a brief discussion of goals, methods, and results, the author evaluates each ranking using the following questions: Does this methodological approach achieve its objective? Can other countries use the methodology by extension? What can we learn about a country's higher education system using this approach? The aim is to provide readers with a framework for thinking critically about rankings, and about the role they might play in measuring and influencing higher education quality on a global scale.     

Expanding an Action Research framework for an evidence based mentoring program in nursing: an exploration of cooperative inquiry

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the development of cooperative inquiry as a methodology for nursing research. It commences with a historical overview of Action Research and its use in nursing. The applicability of Action Research approaches in higher education are then discussed in the context of creating partnerships between universities, students and the wider civic and social community. The concept of partnerships informs discussion of a peer mentoring project for undergraduate nursing students conducted using a cooperative inquiry methodology.     

A heterotopology of the academy: mapping assemblages as possibilised heterotopias

Heterotopias are counter-sites of enacted utopias through which reality is simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. They are physical or mental spaces where, although norms of behaviours are suspended, there are connections with a plethora of other spaces. This article constructs a collective biography as a heterotopology of the academy. Academic subjectivities are produced and often constrained within powerful Higher Education discourses. Constructing an affective assemblage of becomings as a heterotopology, the authors deploy poststructural philosophy to re-story academic life experiences and conceptualise agency in the academy. Taking licence with the notion of academicity and heterotopia, the article describes how spaces in the measured university can be deterritorialised through generative lines of flight. An affective assemblage is presented that ruptures the discursive orientation of category boundary work where academics are constituted as ‘productive metric-minded knowledge workers’. The collective biography research approach facilitates a mapping of affective cartographies as a heterotopology and a critique of the discursive production of selves. The subjectivations of identity politics in matricised assemblages may be, even if momentarily, evaded, refused and agentically resisted.     

Women's attitudes toward progressive rock radio

The following pages, something of an experiment for the Journal, are the results of an attempt to summarize the major issues, key events, important participants, and selected bibliographic sources related to one of the most unusual and controversial cases in broadcasting history. Dr. Smith is professor and chairman while Dr. Prince is assistant professor in the Department of Broadcasting and Film of the School of Public Communication of Boston University.